Drew Peterson, the retired policeman who has been in the news since his fourth wife, Stacy, turned up missing, recently ended an engagement – that is, if he was truly ever engaged.
Peterson had reportedly asked girlfriend Christina Raines to marry him. However, after Raines moved herself and son out of Peterson’s home, she told the media that the whole engagement was just a stunt.
Last Monday, Raines and her father Ernie appeared on CBS’ “The Early Show” to tell Lisa Bloom that the whole relationship was created just so Peterson could be in the news. She had originally met Peterson while still a teenager, then later at a bar. She called Peterson a “charmer” and a good father to his children.
But, after Raines moved in with Peterson, her suspicions about him began to arise. She mentioned seeing pictures of Stacy and her children in the house and wondering how she could have left them. Then she claimed Peterson’s attorney arranged the engagement as a publicity stunt.
Raine’s father had appeared a week earlier on the “Dr. Phil” show (before the “breakup”), asking for help to deal with his daughter’s relationship with a man he referred to as “the devil.” After the show, Ernie Raines said he applied reverse psychology, telling his daughter he was fine with her marrying Peterson if it made her happy. Raines told Bloom that she left Peterson in part because she saw how it was upsetting her father and she loved him.
Raines also told Bloom that she wasn’t comfortable answering questions about Stacy Peterson, who disappeared on October 28, 2007. The police still consider Peterson a suspect in his wife’s disappearance. He said his wife left him for another man, but her family said there was no way she would go off and leave her children behind. Peterson’s third wife, Kathleen Savio, died after drowning in the bathtub. It was originally ruled accidental, but the case has been reopened and a pathologist is now calling it a homicide, with Peterson a possible suspect
If all that isn’t weird enough, now Ernie Raines is contracting his daughter, saying the engagement was in fact legitimate and not a publicity stunt.
This is all just too crazy. Number one, if you are a suspect in two murders, why do you want your name in the news? Number two, why would any woman have anything to do with a man who officials think may have killed his last two wives? And, even if the engagement was a sham, why? It really didn’t display Raines in a great light, so why go through with it? And it certainly doesn’t make Peterson look any better. This reminds me a bit of the octuplet mother – it seems some people will do anything to appear in the news!
To me, this who thing was just a lose-lose situation. What do you think?