BOOHOO DREW
The Peterson file ...
Convicted wife murderer Drew Peterson misses his family.
And he’s having a hernia operation in a few weeks. Let’s rebake this cake. “Put it this way,” said Steve Greenberg, Peterson’s attorney, who tells Sneed he talked to his client two days ago. “Peterson hasn’t seen his kids in years, now finds it very difficult to stay in contact with his family, continues to maintain his innocence, wants to get out of jail and told me he is having hernia surgery soon.”
The subject of numerous TV specials airing this year, Peterson, the once- affable former Bolingbrook cop, is now back on the celeb crime radar big time.
“Look. It’s coming up on 10 years since the death of ( Kathleen) Savio ( Peterson’s third wife) and the disappearance of Stacy ( Peterson’s still- missing fourth wife). That’s a long time to be in prison if you believe you are innocent, ” said Greenberg.
“I presume it’s also been difficult since his son Stephen ( who had been the caretaker of Peterson’s youngest children) went public on TV earlier this year stating he believed his father probably killed Savio and told the press he had come to believe his father also killed Stacy,” said Greenberg.
The father of six children by three of his wives, Peterson had relied on Stephen to take care of his family on his police pension fund, which has since been taken away.
“He cared for his kids, no matter what else was said,” Greenberg said. “And Drew believes the southern Illinois case ( an attempt to order a hit on Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, which netted him a 40- year sentence) was a set- up.”
Peterson is also serving a 38year prison sentence for the 2004 bathtub murder of Savio — and is now being held in federal custody in Terre Haute, Ind., for being “a threat to safety.”
“He ( Peterson) tells me he likes the federal pen better than the state ( Menard Correctional Center), where he had been held — and which he claims is unfit for humans,” Greenberg said.
“The reason we were in touch recently is because he’s wondering why it’s taking so long for the Illinois Supreme Court to rule on his appeal,” said Greenberg. “I told him I was taking it as a positive sign.”
Greenberg is also being interviewed by former O. J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark on Monday for “The First 48,” a show on the Investigation Discovery channel.
Stay tuned.
Hope floats . . .
She’s the one permanent nonfamily fixture in the Oval Office. She’s also drop- dead gorgeous. Word that President Donald Trump’s longtime aide Hope Hicks, who mans the main gate to Trump’s office door, had been picked as the interim White House director of communications — replacing Anthony ‘ The Mooch” Scaramucci — netted this little vignette to Sneed from an earlier interview with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
“He ( Trump) always called Hope and I the ‘ kids,’” Lewandowski told Sneed.
“Hope and I would be working together on the ( Trump campaign) plane and he’d shout, “Good morning, kids!”
“Hope is fantastic. Terrific. There is nothing more important to him than loyalty. That says it all,” said Lewandowski, who is back, firmly ensconced, in the Trump camp.
Rahm ’ em . . .
Pull up a barstool. Well, maybe not. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has nicknamed Rosa Escareno, the city’s Business Affairs and Consumer Protection chief — “Sheriff Bad Ass.”
“Rosa has only been in the job since the end of June, but has become the new sheriff in town for bad bars, illegal party buses, and bad actors,” said a top City Hall source.
Translation: Escareno has shut down “illegal party buses [ that are] putting customers and the community at risk with onboard guests using drugs and carrying illegal weapons; revoked a bar’s liquor license where employees were charged with 22 narcotics violations; issued 83 citations to non- compliant valet companies; and revoked licenses from food stores and gas stations found selling unstamped and/ or loose cigarettes,” the source said.
“He ( Emanuel) loves it!”
The Balbo brouhaha . . .
A move by two Chicago aldermen to rename Balbo Drive because it is named after a fascist buddy of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, a sidekick of Adolf Hitler, netted this comment from President of PROactive Strategies Inc. Phil O’Connor:
“How interesting if a 2,000- year- old Roman column were to have survived every manner of peril, including numerous invasions by the Vandals, Huns, Visigoths and other barbarian tribes, only to be destroyed by the most fearsome tribe of all — the aldermen.”
Movin’ on . . .
Gov. Bruce Rauner’s former chief of staff, Rich Goldberg, is launching a strategic consulting firm based in Chicago. The new firm, RG Solutions, will also offer communications and crisis management consulting services to a wide range of corporate, non- profit and political clients.
Sneedlings . . .
Saturday’s birthdays: John Stamos, 54; Bill Clinton, 71; and Matthew Perry, 48. . . . Sunday’s birthdays: Demi Lovato, 25; Al Roker, 63; and Olivia Pierson, 28.