The ex-cop who is a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife and whose third wife died suspiciously in a bathtub is planning to walk down the aisle for a fifth time.
Drew Peterson, 54, is engaged again, his lawyer and publicist confirmed Wednesday to FOXNews.com.
Though Peterson is still married to his fourth wife, Stacy, who was 23 when she disappeared last year, he has found a new 23-year-old fiancée, he told "Drew Peterson Exposed" author Derek Armstrong Tuesday.
"The kids have met her," said Armstrong. "They like her and they know about this engagement."
Peterson has two young children, Anthony, 6, and Lacy, 4, with Stacy Peterson. The missing mom's family contends she is dead.
"Oh my God, I’m speechless," Pam Bosco, a spokeswoman for Stacy Peterson's family told FOXNews.com when informed of Drew Peterson's engagement. "History repeats itself, so I imagine that that’s the same situation he had before: He’d be involved with somebody when he was getting rid of the one before."
Click here to read about Drew's previous wives.
Armstrong said the new fiancée, whom Peterson refused to identify, lives within 15 minutes of Peterson's Bolingbrook, Ill., home. He said the couple have been dating about four months. Lawyer Joel Brodsky and publicist Glenn Selig did not identify the woman either.
Selig said the engagement happened "sometime within the last couple of days."
A sticking point for Peterson is that he is currently married.
"This is not uncommon for Drew," said Selig. "When he was married to Kathleen still, he was in the process of divorcing Kathleen when he proposed to Stacy. He’s done this before and, you know, he seems very happy."
Peterson met with high-profile Chicago attorney Jeffery M. Leving — a lawyer in the Elian Gonzalez case — earlier this year to see what his rights to a split might be.
Leving told FOXNews.com that Peterson had not yet filed for divorce.
Desertion for at least one year is grounds for divorce under Illinois law — though Peterson, as the divorce petitioner, would have to show he wasn't at fault for causing his wife to leave, Leving said.
Peterson has been at the center of the investigation into the whereabouts of his wife, who vanished on Oct. 28, 2007.
After Stacy's disappearance, the body of Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio, was exhumed, and her 2004 bathtub drowning was re-labeled a homicide.
Earlier this year, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow issued a statement about the Savio and Stacy Peterson cases, indicating that a special grand jury is still weighing evidence in both.
"I fully expect there to be a resolution in at least one of these investigations in the near future," Glasgow said.
Stacy Peterson's family is pinning its hopes on that resolution.
"You’ve just got to stay focused on the investigation and hope that as the Illinois state prosecutor said, that they’ll have [it] resolved soon," Bosco said.
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