Fiancee moves in with Drew?
BOLINGBROOK -- It's kind of like "The Brady Bunch" -- if the TV dad's last wife was missing and the one before that was murdered.
Drew Peterson is melding his family with that of his much-younger fiancee, as the mother of two has moved in with Peterson and four of his six children, his supposed future father-in-law said Monday.
Ernest Raines said his daughter, 24-year-old Christina, told him Sunday that she and her two young children had moved into Peterson's Bolingbrook home.
And that's only the first step, his daughter told him.
"She's planning on living there, and they're planning on getting married -- after he gets divorced," Raines said.
The move means six children, all age 15 and under, will be living in the Bolingbrook home Peterson shared with his fourth wife, Stacy, until she vanished in October 2007. His third wife was slain in 2004.
But the families may not be staying there for long, Raines said his daughter told him. Peterson -- who has yet to file for divorce from Stacy -- has already mentioned finding a new place to live, he said.
"He's talking about moving to a bigger place," Raines said of Peterson.
"I don't like the fact that she's with him, but what can I do?" he said. "This is not right, but my hands are tied."
He has talked by phone several times to his daughter since she moved from Romeoville to Peterson's home and she's told him things are going well.
"She said, 'I'm all right, dad. I'm fine," Raines said.
He's also talked several times to his grandchildren -- one is 5 years old, the other 4 Â-- who also told him they have moved in with Peterson, Raines said.
"They said, 'We're in Drew's house,'" Raines recalled.
He said he met with his daughter Friday at a suburban coffee shop to try to persuade her to end her relationship with Peterson, but that didn't work out the way he hoped it would.
"I was hoping it would go the other way," he said, adding his daughter was wearing new diamond earrings she said she received from Drew.
He plans to keep communicating with his daughter and grandchildren -- calling and e-mailing them regularly -- but he doesn't want to visit the house or see Peterson.
"I don't want to talk to him," Raines said. "I've got to communicate with my daughter and my grandkids, but not him."
"If there's any trouble," he said, "I'm going to be over there.''
Raines, a Chicago resident, said he is even weighing a move back to the southwest suburbs himself, so he can be closer to his daughter and his grandchildren.
"I'm going to try to move out there so I can be closer if they need me," he said, adding: "I'm not backing off, not at all."
Ernest Raines called Bolingbrook police several times over the weekend, expressing concern about his daughter because she had not answered her cell phone, said Lt. Ken Teppel, a police spokesman. Officers went once Friday night to Drew Peterson's home to check on her, but neither she nor Peterson were there at the time, Teppel said.
Police will not be making any more visits, Teppel said, noting that since Christina Raines is an adult they have no grounds to continue stopping at Peterson's home.
"We don't want to get caught in the middle," Teppel said.
The neighbor, Sharon Bychowski, believes she knows why Raines is taking up with a man old enough to be her grandfather.
"She's thinking, 'You won't even have to work. I'll give you a car. I'll take care of your kids,'" Bychowski said. "That's what she's thinking, poor girl."
"It's the same thing as Stacy, plus a few kids," she said. "He does the same exact thing over and over."
And Bychowski knows what she would like to tell Christina Raines.
"All I can say is, 'You're going to die,'" she said. "It looks good on paper now, but that's what Stacy thought, too."
