(CNN) -- After years policing Illinois streets for
criminals, Drew Peterson is now among them -- and will be for more than
three decades, a judge ruled Thursday.
Will County Judge Edward Burmila sentenced Peterson to 38 years in prison in the murder of his third ex-wife, Kathleen Savio, said state's attorney spokesman Charles B. Pelkie.
The former Chicago-area
police sergeant will get credit for the nearly four years that he has
been in custody, according to Pelkie, a spokesman for Will County
State's Attorney James Glasgow. He could have received as many as 60
years in prison; Illinois does not have a death penalty.
"The reason that I never
looked Drew Peterson in the eye is because I never acknowledged his
existence," said Glasgow, describing the convict as a "cold-blooded
killer."
"But I looked him in the eye today," the prosecutor said. "He knows that we did our job."
Peterson's wife's fam reacts to verdict
Peterson was convicted of
murder in September but had fought for a new trial, an effort that
Burmila denied Thursday, just before the sentencing, Pelkie said.
Peterson's lawyers
promised Thursday that they would press on with their appeal and
expressed confidence they would prevail. They stood by their client, who
made long and emotional remarks in court, claiming he never should have
been found guilty of murder.
"Wouldn't you be angry if you were wrongly convicted?" said one of his attorneys, Steve Greenberg.
"In this case, (the prosecution) changed everything ... How would you feel if you were railroaded?"
Savio was found dead in
her dry, clean bathtub on March 1, 2004. Prosecutors said Peterson
killed her; the defense contended that she fell, hit her head and
drowned.
The headline-grabbing
case did not arise until after Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy,
disappeared in October 2007. It was during the search for Stacy Peterson
-- who still has not been found -- that investigators said they'd look
again into Savio's death, which was initially ruled an accidental
drowning.
Authorities altered
their judgment and ruled Savio's death a homicide in February 2008,
setting the stage for the first-degree murder trial last year of
Peterson, a former police officer in Bolingbrook, Illinois.
A Will County jury convicted him of murder after nearly 14 hours of deliberation.
"Finally, somebody heard
Kathleen's cry," the victim's mother, Marcia Savio, said after the
verdict. "Twelve people did the right thing, oh, thank God."
