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

July 29 (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, Chicago's NBC affiliate reported.

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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.

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Peterson faced a possible sentence of up to 70 years for the two crimes.

It was not immediately possible to confirm the new 40-year sentence reported by NBC and a number of other media outlets. No one answered the phone at the courtroom of Randolph County Judge Richard Brown.

Peterson is serving his 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)