The Dana Pretzer Show on Scared Monkeys Radio - Tuesday, February 10,2009

Drew Peterson and Joel Brodsky discuss Drew’s engagement to Christina RainesPRETZER: You’ve got an announcement.PETERSON: Which announcement is that? My fiancée who left the home; she’s back.PRETZER: OK. So let’s make this perfectly clear. What was announced in themainstream media and on cable TV shows last week as a PR stunt--and we’ll getinto that in a little bit—the gal that left your house, you’re saying she is back.PETERSON: She’s now back, yes.PRETZER: That is certainly breaking news and if you’re just tuning in, Drew Petersonand Joel Brodsky are here and I want to start with Joel, Drew, if that’s OK? You gotslammed pretty hard in the media last week Joel, or the week before or whatever itwas. Basically, you were accused of orchestrating an engagement between Drewand the young lady and it was something that I’d like you to address right now.BRODSKY: Yeah, it was very upsetting to me. I’d never even met Chrissy—ChristinaRaines. I’d never met her before this evening and I actually advised Drew, and thisis probably the only time anybody will ever hear what my advice to a client is, Iactually advised Drew that it was a bad idea for him to get engaged at this point intime and it was certainly a bad idea to have this girl—young lady—move in withhim. So to be accused of orchestrating any type of publicity stunt involving thisengagement, I was very taken aback at. It was simply untrue and it was veryupsetting for me when I heard it. We later found out, or I just found out whathappened which is…we’ll get into I suppose, but it’s very disconcerting.PRETZER: We’ll get into that in a few minutes. Drew, if you could…I’m sure there’stimes that you wish you don’t say anything, but I think you can feel fairlycomfortable on my program explaining just what happened. I know you were on TVthe night before and all of a sudden, the next day we’re hearing reports of policecars and father-in-laws and all sorts of crazy things. What really happened?PETERSON: What happened was she was at work and she went ahead and heard memake some comments, off-the-cuff comments, joking around with the televisionshow, the CBS people and that I was really dismissive with women. If I didn’t likethem I would move on and trade them in or whatever and basically they didn’t playthe whole thing. As usual, when you tape something it gets cut up and turnedaround and twisted and that’s what happened here. And then all of a sudden therewas like a…everybody in her family, there was TV producers, there was lawyers,there was other family members from Kathleen were there , friends and family and

it was like an intervention. Everybody was there trying to get her off of me, actuallyand she was very upset. Her father was there and he doesn’t like the relationshipand he was doing what he could. He threatened her with, if she didn’t go home withhim that night he would disown her, that type of thing. Next thing you know she’sfreaking out. Next thing you know she’s in New York going on television saying thatit was a publicity stunt—the engagement, when actually it was very real. The onlything that was not real about the whole engagement was the ring I gave her and thering I gave her was only a temporary one. You still there?PRETZER: I’m still here.PETERSON: So, I gave her a ring that really wasn’t that good but she did ask me tomarry her five or six times and I agreed and we were in fact, for real, engaged.PRETZER: I want to stick with Drew for a second Joel. You’ve known her, Chrissy, forsome time and her father, have you not?PETERSON: Right. When she was fifteen years old, she’s twenty-four now, so I guessnine years ago. She was just a kid who was raised by a single parent so she gotherself into some trouble now and then and I was just involved with the family,bringing her home. That type of thing.PRETZER: Joel Brodsky, attorney for Drew Peterson, again the mainstream media,the book people, the lawyers, everyone jumps on this story like a bird on a bug, forlack of a better term. It’s hardly even cold, as we like to say sometimes in thisbusiness, before everyone starts to get involved and you talk about a young twenty-four girl who could be easily influenced by everyone, and Drew admits himself heprobably said some things the night before on TV that he shouldn’t have said thatmaybe scared her or whatever. Let’s talk about that: the media and how they jumped on this story.BRODSKY: That’s what I found out tonight. I really wanted to ask Chrissy why shesaid that. She explained to me that these people from a couple of the morningshows had been on her for literally three days. There was one girl she said—I forgotthe name of the girl—from one of the shows that literally had been with herpractically for three days straight, while she was at work , feeding her, telling herthings, giving her copies of transcripts, watching news with her, just trying to gether to come on their show and then all these other people that Drew mentionedwere also talking to her and it’s no wonder that you go through this traumaticbreakup of your relationship, or being pulled out of his house where you werecomfortable , thrown on an airplane to New York, get a few hours sleep, up at fouro’clock in the morning, five o’clock in makeup, five-thirty on the set, and it’s nowonder she looked like a deer caught in the headlights when she was on that showand it was no wonder she was a little bit confused about what she was saying. So, Idon’t blame her. She made a mistake. She basically confused a couple of things sheoverheard and just didn’t know what she was really saying as opposed to… And

that’s why it happened and I can understand that. Certainly, I’ve seen how thesepeople operate so I can understand how it happened and I don’t bear any grudge.She’s setting the record straight now and that’s great and hopefully the real story orat least the correct story will get out there. And the correct story is her and Dreware engaged. They’re eventually going to get married and go on with their lives asbest they can and that’s the real story here.PRETZER: Drew Peterson, you’re no stranger to having fifteen hundred camerasstuck in your face. You can’t even go out and blow your nose or fart in a windstormwithout somebody making a story about it. All of a sudden you’ve got this young galnow. You’re engaged. You’re trying to have some sort of semblance of privacy, Iassume. Are you two talking about this – that you know as soon as this gets outtonight those cameras are going to be all over you again.PETERSON: Well, we’re just basically setting up some sort of a game plan where weget the story out to one set of people and one group—different than you, of course—you’re getting a first exclusive here. We want to get it out to one group and we’lltell the story once and hopefully it will die down. What we’re trying to do is have ahappy life together and raise our kids. In between us we’ve got eight kids andthere’ll be six at home so…we’re just trying to get through and scratch around andmake life like everybody else trying to do.PRETZER: Joel Brodsky, when you see media coverage of this story and you’ll seemore media coverage of this story either tonight or tomorrow, the question will be,immediately, not so much the focus on the engagement. What will be the purportedindictment of your client. That it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming.BRODSKY: This is great. I’m the lawyer and I love talking about legal issues. I’m gladI’m not talking about Drew’s private life. I’m not his relationship counselor. I’m hislawyer. I think clearly there is nothing imminent. Watching the witnesses they call,we get some feedback from some of the witnesses that have been before the grand jury or been interrogated by the police we’re able to piece together what theirinvestigation is and where it’s going and there’s nothing imminent at all. They’re just plodding along, for lack of a better word, with an investigation and trying to seeif they can put together a case. However they keep coming up against the samefundamental flaws that they had in accusing Drew in the first place. Fundamentalflaw with the Kathleen Savio matter is that they cannot put Drew anywhere nearKathy’s home during the time when she died. I don’t care how long they investigate;they can’t do that so if you can’t do that, you can’t accuse him of killing her. Letalone, you have to remember you have two pathologists who have differentopinions. We have pathologists; the original pathologist said it was an accident. Sothey’re going to have a difficult time even proving that the death was anything butan accident, which we still believe it was. As far as Stacy goes, there is not onepiece of forensic evidence that anything wrong happened regarding Stacy—nothing—and without that they’re never going to be able to get to square one. So, I don’t