Feb 2, 2009---Happy Groundhog Day!The former fiancée of Drew Peterson said Monday that she was never engaged to the former Bolingbrook, Ill., police officer and that their engagement was “more like a stunt” to get him media attention.
Appearing on CBS’s “The Early Show,” Christina Raines said she had known Peterson since she was 15 years old, and he was very kind to her, but she could not go along with an engagement.
“He had told me that his lawyer had wanted him to be in the media and wanted to propose to someone at a restaurant,” Raines said.
Raines, 24, packed up and moved out of Peterson's Chicago-area house Friday with her two children after her father, Ernie Raines, forced the issue, according to "Drew Peterson Exposed" author Derek Armstrong.
Christina Raines refused to answer questions on whether or not Drew Peterson spoke of his missing fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.
“I don't feel comfortable answering that right now,” she said.
In a statement released later Monday, Peterson’s attorney Joel Brodsky denied the engagement was a media ploy, and blamed the woman’s father for their breakup.
"It is Ernie Raines who put his daughter on national television. It is Ernie Raines who brought the cameras along when he went to help Christina move out. It is Ernie Raines who cried on 'Dr. Phil' about his daughter. It is Ernie Raines who threatened to drive his car through Mr. Peterson's house."
Ernie Raines, 53, came to Peterson's home in Bollingbrook, Ill., Friday morning with a news crew and the police and demanded that his daughter leave, he told FOX News. He said he feared for Christina's life and didn’t like how Peterson had begun to act toward Christina.
"He was starting to control her," he said. "He was trying to use my daughter as a doormat to try to watch his kids."
Raines said Peterson told him "F— you" when he arrived at his house with police to collect his daughter.
Peterson's fourth wife, 23-year-old Stacy Peterson, disappeared in October 2007. The death in a bathtub of his third wife Kathleen Savio was ruled a homicide after initially being deemed accidental. Savio's body was exhumed and re-examined after Stacy Peterson vanished. A grand jury is still weighing evidence in both cases.
Drew and Stacy Peterson have two children, 6-year-old Anthony and 4-year-old Lacy.They remain married, though Peterson met with high-profile Chicago attorney Jeffery M. Leving — a lawyer in the Elian Gonzalez case — earlier this year to see what his rights to a split might be.
Desertion for at least one year is grounds for divorce under Illinois law, though Peterson would have to show he wasn't at fault for causing his wife to leave, Leving said.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment