Drew Peterson has been charged with trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who led the 2012 trial that resulted in the former police officer being convicted of killing his third wife.

State and local prosecutors said on Monday that Peterson is charged with solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation for murder after allegedly trying to hire someone to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow while Peterson was in prison.

The charges relate to the time period September 2013 to December 2014 and a preliminary hearing is set for March 3.

The 61-year-old is serving a 38-year prison sentence at the Menard Correctional Center in Menard, Illinois, after being convicted in the 2004 drowning death of Kathleen Savio.

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Drew Peterson has been charged with trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who led the 2012 trial that resulted in the former police officer being convicted of killing his third wife

An investigation into Savio's death was reopened after Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy, disappeared in 2007.

Authorities have said they believe Stacy Peterson is dead and that Drew Peterson is a suspect, but he hasn't been charged in that case.

The former cop is being held by the Illinois Department of Corrections where he awaits the appeals court's decision on offering him a new trial over the murder of Savio.

The first arguments from his defense lawyers in the appeal are to be held in April at the earliest, according to Radar Online.

Peterson was found guilty in 2012 for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, eight years before.

On March 1, 2004, Ms Savio was discovered by a neighbor face down in her dry bathtub, her thick, black hair soaked in blood and a two-inch gash in the back of her head.

Peterson is charged with solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation for murder after allegedly trying to hire someone to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, above, while Peterson was in prison

The death of the 40-year-old aspiring nurse was initially deemed an accident.

After Peterson's fourth wife, 23-year-old Stacy Peterson, vanished in 2007, Savio's body was exhumed, re-examined and her death reclassified as a homicide.

Peterson had divorced Savio a year before her death. His motive for killing her, prosecutors said, was fear that a pending settlement would wipe him out financially

He is currently serving 38 years for her murder and is not due to be released until May 2050 when he will be well into his nineties.

Questions remain about Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy, who has been missing since 2007 and whose body has never been found.

Peterson revealed in 2013 that he lived in fear of being killed behind bars.

According to a letter to his lawyer at the time, he was not adapting well to his new home.

Peterson, a former cop, is serving 38 years for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio (pictured) in 2004

'I’m in a cell the size of a broom closet, peeling paint, rusting fixtures, I have no TV or anything and I haven’t been out since I got here,' he wrote to his former attorney Joel Brodsky in one letter.

'Prison is all the nightmarish things that one would think.'

Peterson is incarcerated at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois where he is being held in protective custody throughout his sentence because of his former profession as a cop.

Drew Peterson's 2012 trial was the first in Illinois history where prosecutors built their case on hearsay thanks in part to a new law, dubbed ‘Drew's Law,’ tailored to the case.

The hearsay, prosecutors said, let his wives ‘speak from their graves’ through family and friends.

The hearsay - any information reported by a witness not based on the witness' direct knowledge - included a friend who said Savio told her Peterson once put a knife to her throat and warned her: ‘I could kill you and make it look like an accident.’

Savio so feared for her life that she kept a knife under her mattress.

Stacy Peterson (pictured) was just 19 and 26 years younger than her husband when they married. She mysteriously vanished in 2007. Her body has never been found

A former co-worker of Peterson's, Jeff Pachter, testified that Peterson offered him $25,000 to hire a hit man to kill Savio, though he never followed through.

Peterson was 26 years older than his fourth wife, Stacy, when they married, only eight days after his third divorce was finalized. Four years later, the 23-year-old went missing in 2007.

This disappearance prompted Illinois State Police and the FBI to investigate, and they later had Savio's body exhumed, re-examined and her death reclassified as a homicide.

When her sister called the police reporting Stacy's disappearance, Peterson said that she had called him several days before and said that she left him for another man. Her car was found at the airport.

One of the biggest aspects in the case of her disappearance was the issue of whether or not he disposed of her body in a large blue container, three of which he bought prior to when she went missing.

Stacy Peterson's family hoped a conviction in Savio's murder could lead to charges against Drew Peterson in Stacy's disappearance.

Stacy's pastor, Neil Schori, testified she told him that her husband got up from bed and left their house in the middle of the night around the time of Savio's death.