Christina Raines

Christina Raines spoke out about her relationship, engagement and breakup with Drew Peterson on the CBS Early Show this week. She spoke to Julie Chen. Several of you have asked for my opinion about Raines. One person says she “appears to know something”. Another asks was Raines engaged to Peterson, or not?

Who do you trust here? The suspected murderer who proclaimed he was engaged to Raines, or Raines, a young woman who says it wasn’t so?

Read moreIn the beginning of the interview, Raines tells us she knew Peterson since she was 15, and she also knew Stacy.

Chen: How did this relationship with Drew get to the point where you get engaged to him?

Raines: It started out as a friendship.
Notice how she doesn’t deny the engagement here?
….

Chen: Do you think he [Peterson] had anything to do with her [Stacy] disappearing?

Raines: I don’t feel comfortable answering that, at all, right now.
(Watch her expression here, her lip tenses)

Chen: Do you think he had anything to do with the mysterious death of his third wife?
(Notice the movement of her lips again).

Clearly, these questions cause Raines to become uncomfortable, and her lips truly confirm this, though she is trying to hide it as best she can. I wish they didn’t zoom in so close to Christina, because in this interview, her dad, Ernest, gives off some great body language. He answers questions for her, if only with his body.

Raines says she wants people to know that she is a good person, and that she fell for Peterson with her heart, but not her head. I think Raines is being very honest here when she says this, and I think everyone can see that.

Chen: Do you love him?

Raines: I don’t love him.

Chen: Did you love him?

Raines: I thought I did.

Chen: How did you become engaged to him? When did you become engaged to him?

Raines: It was never an engagement….really.

“Really” is what I have coined a hedge word. It’s notable. Raines tries to say a very affirming statement, yet when she finishes, she hedges with the word “really”. She is not confident, and the use of this word here tells us this. Furthermore, why didn’t she deny she was engaged when Chen asked earlier, “How did this relationship with Drew get to the point where you get engaged to him?”

The conversation continues:

Chen: What was it, then?

Raines: It was more like a “stunt”.
(Notice the words “like a”)

Chen: On whose part?

Raines: On Drew, so he could be in the media.

Chen: Did you know it was a stunt?

Raines: Well, he had told me that his lawyer wanted him…to… (notable, but slight shoulder shrug)…be in the media…and wanted to propose to…. someone…at a restaurant.

The last statement is very interesting. Raines pulls in her lips, which is indicative that she is feeling very uncomfortable, again. Notice how she doesn’t answer the last question? She rambles on, in what feels like an attempt to convince us it was a stunt, but she doesn’t say anything conclusive.

Notice how her rate of speech changed? Notice all the pauses, which are indicative of thinking on her feet? Notice how her shoulder shrugs? I can’t help but want to ask who wanted a proposal in a restaurant? Notice that this is missing? Was it Peterson? Or was it his attorney? Regardless, she doesn’t answer the question outright. Why is she being evasive?

My belief? I believe she didn’t think it was a stunt at the time, but now she feels it was, in hindsight.

I personally believed Raines’ dad, Ernest, was scared to death for his daughter when he came out in mid-December saying his daughter was engaged. He went public because he was mortified and wanted to stop her, and he didn’t know how. He talked about a ring on her hand. His actions were and are believable, and now for Raines to deny it and suggest her father was lying, doesn’t make logical sense. Mind you, four weeks after the supposed “stunt” engagement, Raines moved in with Peterson. It’s all supportive that the engagement did, in fact, occur.

The conversation continues:

Chen: And so he said to you, we’re friends, we’re dating, you want to be part of this stunt? Is that how it went down?

Raines: That’s how it went down, but I…would not…go with it. I would not go along with it.

Raines swallows awkwardly. I suspect this is due to her being “uncomfortable”, again. Notice how she also pauses again, as she speaks, and then once she gets it out, she repeats it? It’s indicative that she is not being forthright with us.

But more than that, what she is saying is nonsense. It doesn’t take any rocket scientist to see this. She says she thought she was in love with him, her father talks about her engagement to him, she moved in with him, and now she says she didn’t go along with this stunt? What am I missing? Does that make sense to anyone?

She got boondoggled, and I personally think she can’t admit it. It’s human. We’ve all been boondoggled in our lives, and she is no exception. When our emotions get in the mix, they cloud our judgment. She happened to get caught in a dangerous situation though, while the world was watching, and I am sure that makes it doubly hard to face, in the aftermath.

The conversation continued:

Chen: What would you say to him?

Raines: I told him no, and he said, if it comes out that I am engaged to someone, it’s not really true.

(not “really” true?)

Chen: So, you were never engaged to him, is that what you are saying?

Raines: No, I was never engaged to him.

Chen: But he was putting it out there that he was engaged?

Raines: That he was engaged.

Chen: To you?

Raines: He had told me that he never said it was me. He never said that he was engaged to me, but I have heard that off camera, he had told……um…his producer, the publicist, that it was me.

(Notice she doesn’t answer the question directly, again, and that she is evasive? It’s almost like she had an agreement with Peterson that she would get engaged, but only if he agreed not to talk publicly about it.)

Chen: Okay, but then let me ask you this. You did live with him, correct?

Raines: I did live with him.

Chen: What was the breaking point? Why did you break up with him?

Raines: All it was…was I…moved in with him…….and the reason why I left….is…I had went on a Monday…to collect some items from my apartment…that I shared with my ex-boyfriend, Mike, and he had sat me down…

(Notice the deep sigh? Pauses? Awkwardness of what she is saying?)

Chen: Who sat you down?

Raines: Mike. And he was telling me this is not right, he’s not a good guy…(cut out some conversation to shorten)…and Thursday is when Mike had asked me to move back in with him [Mike].

I’m not buying this is the reason for the break-up. One plus one doesn’t equal three here. If we look at the timing, and the news, the break-up actually occurred after Peterson did an interview with Martin Bashir for ABC. Raines was living with Peterson at this time. That’s when she left him, and I think the show will likely identify why the relationship fell apart, personally.

In that interview, Peterson says some very honest things. He really buries himself in this interview, because through much of it, he is shockingly honest when he talks about his womanizing, and I personally think that his honesty hit Raines hard. That, in my opinion, along with the hard facts of Peterson’s history, which Bashir concisely points out, must have broken through to her and what caused things to end.

I suspect that night when the show aired, they had a blowout. I also wonder, in that blowout, if Peterson let it be known to Raines that he truly is a threat to her, because she shows fear in her interview with Chen. That’s all speculation, of course, but it makes sense.

In the interview with Bashir on ABC, the following came out:

1. Peterson says when talking about his younger days as an undercover cop, the big joke at the time was “you had to lie to your girlfriend so you could go home and be with your wife”.
2. He also talks about how he cheated on his second wife.
3. He talks about how as a police officer “the temptations are out there for womanizing”.
4. Peterson goes on to talk about how on some TV show, he was asked if he can con anyone, and he said “Looking at it, objectively, how do you know?” He smiles eerily when he says this.
5. Bashir identifies that the police were called to Peterson’s house on 18 different occasions when he lived with Savio.
6. Peterson talks about and shows Bashir the house where Kathleen Savio died, as they are parked in front of it. When asked if it is painful to see the house, Peterson says, “Right. It was kind of emotional, but it was like, what can you do? Life goes on.” His response was really flippant.
7. In the interview, they show letters Savio wrote to authorities, stating she feared Peterson might kill her.
8. Bashir also uncovers that Stacy told Pam Bosco, “I love you. If anything happens to me, he killed me. It wasn’t an accident.”
9. In the interview, they show Stacy’s minister admitting publicly that Stacy told him Peterson confessed to killing Savio.
10. Bashir says in the interview that Raines’ father, Ernest, said his daughter was naive and vulnerable and that Peterson tricked her into the relationship. Peterson says, “I wouldn’t say I tricked her, but I sure romanced her real good.” His expression is horrifying at the end. He looks like, “Yup, I duped her, too”.
11. Bashir says he met with Raines during the interview. Notice he never says anything about them “not being engaged”?
12. Bashir talks with Peterson about how he enjoys being married, but then goes on to say, “But then you start having extramarital relationship.” Bashir says to Peterson, “So you enjoy the early stages of marriage, but once things settle down, you lose a little bit of interest”, to which Peterson says affirmatively, “Yes. Very much so.”
13. Peterson goes on to say that his ex-wives seemed to be bored with him after a few years and the affection on all levels died.
14. Bashir says it is a weakness in Drew, and isn’t that something that Peterson could sacrifice, to which Peterson says, “But it’s something I enjoy.” It’s interesting because Bashir is talking about having affairs and Peterson is thinking about his “affections”, and it sounds like Peterson is saying he feels he should not be denied an affair! Perhaps it was a subconscious slip? It’s certainly not the stuff to build a new relationship on when you are on shaky ground. That’s for sure.

All of this, I think, would inflame a would-be-spouse, wouldn’t you?

Hopefully, Raines learned numerous lessons in this experience. That’s all we can hope for. I just thought it was an interesting interview because most people will take Raines at face value because of all the nonsense that Peterson has put us through, but in this instance, I don’t think we can put the blame all on Peterson. Raines was a willing participant, and it was her actions that landed her as the live-in fiancee of Drew Peterson, at the very least, according to her dad.