This article was originally published on Huffpost Crime on May 31, 2016
Drew Peterson, a former Chicago-area police officer imprisoned for murdering his wife, was found guilty on Tuesday of trying to hire someone in 2014 to kill the prosecutor who convicted him, prosecutors said.
Peterson, 62, was found guilty of solicitation of murder and solicitation of murder for hire. He faces mandatory sentences of 20 to 40 years for the first charge and 15 to 30 years for the second charge, according to a statement by the Illinois Attorney General’s office, which helped prosecute the case.
The jury deliberated for about an hour before finding Peterson guilty, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Sentencing is scheduled for July 26 before Randolph County Judge Richard Brown.
Peterson was accused of trying to contract the killing of James Glasgow, the Will County prosecutor.
Peterson was charged with seeking a hitman from prison, where he is serving a 38-year sentence for the 2004 murder of Kathleen Savio, his third wife, a case that was made into a television movie starring Rob Lowe.
The murder-for-hire case centers on recordings made at the maximum security Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois where Peterson is serving his sentence and where a fellow inmate, Antonio Smith, taped him saying he wanted to hire someone to kill Glasgow, according to prosecutors.
Peterson’s defense attorney Lucas Liefer said the recordings were nonsensical prison talk and that Peterson never directly said on the recordings that he wanted Glasgow killed. He also said Smith, serving time for attempted murder, was unreliable and a liar, newspaper reported.
Liefer could not be immediately reached by Reuters for comment.
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