Ex-Illinois policeman sentenced to 40 years in murder-for-hire

(Reuters) – Drew Peterson, a former Chicago-area police officer who is in prison for murdering his wife, was sentenced on Friday to an additional 40 years for trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who convicted him, Illinois’ attorney general said.

Peterson, 62, 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.

In May he was found guilty of solicitation of murder and solicitation of murder for hire when a jury agreed he had plotted in 2014 to find someone to kill James Glasgow, the Will County state’s attorney who prosecuted him in the case of his wife’s murder.

Randolph County Judge Richard Brown handed down the sentence on Friday against Peterson, who faced up to 70 years for the two solicitation crimes.

“Today’s sentencing is a just and fair result for a serious crime that must be punished,” Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a statement. Prosecutors from Madigan’s office tried the case along with Randolph County State’s Attorney Jeremy Walker.

Peterson is serving his original murder sentence at the maximum security Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois. That is where a fellow inmate taped him discussing the murder-for-hire plot.

(Reporting by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Leslie Adler, Bernard Orr)