THE attorney attempting to quash Chester Weger’s 63-year-old murder charge claims fresh evidence points to mafia involvement.

Andy Hale, who is representing Weger in the push to finally clear his name in the Starved Rock murders of 1960, has told The U.S. Sun about the discovery of “millions” of clues that indicate Weger’s innocence.

While Hale waits for cutting-edge genetic genealogical DNA technology to potentially identify whose hair was found on the glove of one of the three women bludgeoned to death in the national park 100 miles outside of Chicago, he is convinced Weger wasn’t the killer.

Weger, now 84 years old, was working at the park as a dishwasher when he was convicted of killing 50-year-old Lillian Oetting, but prosecutors chose not to try him for the deaths of her friends Mildred Lindquist, 50, and Frances Murphy, 47, after he was sentenced to life in prison in 1961.

He later claimed he was forced into a confession by heavy-handed cops.

Yet following the release of an HBO documentary series about one of America’s most contentious cases, Hale stumbled onto new evidence, some of which he maintains was wrongly dismissed during the original prosecution six decades ago.

If he succeeds, Weger’s case would become the longest wrongful conviction in American history and could result in a monumental $120 million payout.

Hale was contacted on Facebook by a woman who said that her late grandfather, who was associated with the Chicago mafia, admitted he always knew Weger was innocent.

While she was caring for him during a battle with lung cancer, she was told about how her grandfather used to deliver packages for the mob and was privy to some of their business dealings.

He told the woman that a man had hired the mob to kill his wife, and the man handpicked the killers to do the job.

At the start of 2023, Hale also learned another local mobster, Smoky Rona, had also told someone he was involved in planning the murders but was told to forget it once the mafia became involved.

And after rifling through boxes of old documents, Hale struck gold again in what he described as a “huge breakthrough.”

A memo of an Illinois State Police interview described how a telephone operator had overheard two men talking about the murders and how to dispose of some bloody clothing.

One person commented how “they sure had a big write-up on tonight’s paper on the murders and the kid still has the bloody overalls in the trunk of the car and he’s not sure what to do with him.”

The other man was heard telling him to “get rid of them” before the conversation trailed off.

The phone operator quickly realized the serious nature of what she’d heard and, according to Hale, became very stressed “because she knows it’s supposed to be confidential, but she also knows It’s important.”

“When I saw this, I was like holy s**t,” exclaimed Hale. “Who were these guys?”

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He painstakingly trawled through the newspaper archives and found an article from the time that stated two brothers who owned a bar near Starved Rock were identified as the men heard by the telephone operator.

One owned a bar in Aurora, Illinois and the other brother was in Peru, Illinois, which is close to Starved Rock. Hale says both were reportedly “prominent men,” with the brother in Peru becoming mayor, something his sibling also attempted, but failed to get over the line.

They were taken into questioning and subsequently cleared after passing a lie detector test, while the woman failed her polygraph.

“What a joke,” Hale continued. “There’s no way, especially in 1960, you would ever clear somebody because they passed a polygraph.”

There is also some contention, according to the attorney, about Weger’s involvement after some twine was found around one of the women’s wrists.

One of the police reports stated how the twine had been cut on the victim, while another had theirs serrated by a blade.

Hale is adamant that that proves two different tools were used to cut the twine, which in turn indicates there was more than one person involved in the brutal murders.

The HBO mini-series, produced by A-lister Mark Wahlberg’s production company, attempted to be as balanced as possible, and by the end, it had performed a complete U-turn and left the viewer unsure if Weger was innocent.

Hale became involved following its release and has no doubts.

“I would not work on a case unless I was all in in terms of belief in the person’s innocence, ” Hale admitted.

“So when I, when I went down to meet Chester in jail, I told him I was interested and I’m willing to look into it. And if I think you’re innocent, I’ll help you.”

In the final episode of the three-part documentary, Hale is taken aback after David Raccuglia, whose father Tony was the assistant state’s attorney in the case, presented a previously unseen letter which, he claimed, portrayed Weger as the killer.

Hale was surprised not to be warned but holds no grudges.

“I don’t think at all it made any case that he’s innocent, but it’s fine,” he said of the documentary.

“It brought awareness to the case and started the dialogue.”

The U.S. Sun contacted Will County’s State Attorney office, but they refused to comment.

The next hearing is on January 10, ahead of a second one in March.