Crime & Safety
Drew Peterson Lawyer Believes Wife-Killer's Murder-For-Hire Rap A 'Setup'
There have been problems with guards at the prison where the former Bolingbrook cop is locked up, the attorney said.
The attorney for wife-killer Drew Peterson was taken aback when told of the murder-for-hire charges filed against the imprisoned former cop and said he believes it’s nothing but a “setup.”
“It’s hard to believe he would do anything like that. I don’t believe it,” said Steve Greenberg, one of the six attorneys who represented Peterson at his 2012 murder trial and the lawyer spearheading the convicted killer’s appeal effort.
Peterson, 61, allegedly tried to put a hit on Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow from inside the walls of Menard Correctional Center.
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“There’ve been some issues with guards at that institution,” Greenberg said. “To me, it’s a setup. That would be my guess. I can’t imagine Peterson would get caught saying or doing anything like that.”
Tom Shaer, the spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections, disputed Greenberg’s claim.
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“There absolutely have not been ’some issues’ with (officers) and offender Drew Peterson at Menard Correctional Center,” Shaer said.
“There was one allegation last year by offender Peterson of a minor, non-physical situation,” he said. “There were no witnesses. Offender Peterson’s allegation was thoroughly investigated and found to be completely without merit.”
Peterson was already serving a 38-year prison sentence at Downstate Menard for murder when he was charged Monday with solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation of murder. The charges filed against Peterson allege he “procured” an unnamed person to “find another to kill James Glasgow,” and that he was willing to pay to get the job done.
The Randolph County State’s Attorney and Illinois Attorney General will handle Peterson’s prosecution.
The Attorney General’s office released a statement saying Peterson “solicited an individual to carry out a murder-for-hire plot against Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow” between September 2013 and December 2014.
Glasgow declined to answer questions about the hit Peterson supposedly tried to put on him. He did confirm he was a “potential witness” in the case and released a written statement saying he has “absolute faith in law enforcement and our criminal justice system to handle this case appropriately.”
“It is unfortunate that prosecutors sometimes must deal with allegations of this nature,” Glasgow said in the written statement. “However, in no way will a threat to my personal safety deter me from the important work I perform as the state’s attorney on behalf of the citizens of Will County.”
Peterson arrived at Menard Correctional Center seven months before he allegedly put his plot to murder Glasgow into motion. He was found guilty in September 2012 of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
Savio, 40, turned up drowned in a dry bathtub in March 2004. She and Peterson, a Bolingbrook police sergeant, were in the midst of a contentious divorce when she mysteriously happened to die, but investigators from the Illinois State Police found nothing suspicious about the matter and quickly decided Savio was merely the unlucky victim of a freak bathtub accident.
The demise of Peterson and Savio’s marriage was hastened when he was caught having an affair with Stacy Cales, a teenage girl from Romeoville. Peterson got Cales pregnant while he was still married to Savio. He was somehow able to dissolve his marriage to Savio without finalizing the financial issues in his divorce case so he could get on with marrying Stacy.
After Peterson and Cales wed, he and his new bride moved into a house just down the block from Savio’s home. Savio was killed soon after.
Savio’s death was quickly forgotten but leapt into the national consciousness when Stacy Peterson vanished in October 2007. The police named Drew Peterson a suspect in her “potential homicide” but never got around to charging him with harming her.
In May 2009 Peterson was arrested for Savio’s murder. He remained locked up in the Will County jail until he was shipped to prison in February 2013. Peterson insisted throughout that he did not kill Savio.
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