Overview
- Weger’s attorneys filed a petition with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board asking Gov. JB Pritzker to grant a posthumous pardon that would formally clear him after his 2025 death.
- The legal filing advances a new allegation that the killings were part of a murder‑for‑hire plot allegedly led by the husband of one victim and cites witness accounts the lawyers say were not previously considered.
- Weger was convicted in 1960 for the murder of Lillian Oetting after what police recorded as a confession that he later said was coerced, while the other two killings were never tried.
- Weger spent decades seeking parole and retrial, was denied multiple times before being released in 2020, and had a final request for a new trial denied shortly before he died in 2025.
- The Prisoner Review Board will review the petition and may forward a recommendation to the governor, a rare administrative step that would not itself vacate the original conviction but could change the public record and affect the victims’ families and Weger’s relatives.