The next step in the ex-Northwestern professor alleged sexual-fantasy murder case has been set

This undated photo released by the Chicago Police Department shows Wyndham Lathem, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Northwestern University. An arrest warrant was issued Monday, July 31, 2017, for Lathem and another man in connection to the stabbing death of a Chicago man on July 27. (Chicago Police Department via AP)

CHICAGO (AP) — A hearing is scheduled for an ex-Northwestern University professor and an Oxford University employee accused in the fatal July stabbing of a hairstylist in Chicago as part of a sexual fantasy they allegedly hatched in an online chatroom.

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Friday’s hearing gives attorneys a chance to update a Cook County judge on the status of the murder case, including on whether a formal indictment has been filed. Once it is, an arraignment would be set for Wyndham Lathem and Oxford financial official Andrew Warren. A bond-court judge ordered in August that they remain jailed.

Prosecutors say they stabbed Lathem’s 26-year-old boyfriend Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau 70 times at Lathem’s Chicago apartment. They say the 46-year-old Lathem and 56-year-old Warren communicated for months about their sexual fantasy of killing others and then themselves.

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