Beast's Partner in Crime Testifies at Drew Peterson Trial, Says Snitch Lies a Lot

CHESTER, IL — A convict serving 25 years for ordering the star snitch of the Drew Peterson murder-for-hire trial to slash a woman’s throat called his partner in crime a liar.

“No, he wasn’t truthful,” Jacob Bohannon, 23, said of wire-wearing informer Antonio “Beast” Smith.

“Sometimes he told the truth,” Bohannon said.”Most times he wasn’t.”

Smith, 25, wore a wire for the FBI in hopes of catching Peterson plotting the murder of Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow from behind the walls of Menard Correctional Center in Downstate Randolph County.

Peterson’s trial is being held in Randolph County court.

Glasgow led Peterson’s prosecution in 2012 and got him sentenced to 38 years in prison for drowning his third wife, Kathleen Savio.

Peterson’s murder-for-hire trial started Monday and Smith was on the witness stand the first four days. During the trial’s first three days, prosecutors also played hours of Smith and Peterson’s secretly recorded conversations.

The recordings captured Peterson, 62, speaking at length about his hopes to someday smuggle drugs from Mexico for a cartel, that time he got it on with three Russian hookers in a Florida swimming pool, and the movies he likes to watch. One thing he does not do is explicitly order Glasgow’s murder.

After working for the authorities to record Peterson in late 2014, Smith was taken from Menard and eventually landed in a federal prison where he can come and go from his cell as he pleases, lift weights, play fantasy football and enjoy a generally “better environment, better food.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is keeping Smith’s location secret.

Bohannon was the third of three convicts called to testify Friday morning. Peterson’s attorney, Lucas Liefer, asked the first two about their relationships with both Peterson and Smith, and what they thought of Smith’s character.

A fourth convict, 47-year-old Shelly “T-Real” McGree, got out of testifying when he told Judge Richard Brown he wouldn’t talk.

“It’s in my interest to stay out of that,” McGree said Thursday afternoon.

Liefer asked Judge Brown to compel McGree’s testimony. McGree is serving a life sentence for murder.

“Here we have a person who’s serving a natural life sentence and you’re asking me to compel him to testify,” the judge said. “What’s my remedy?”

On Friday, Liefer again asked Judge Brown if he could call McGree as a witness. Brown again told him he could not.

On Thursday, McGree admitted he had previously spoken to Liefer about Peterson’s case — but insisted it was “off the record.”

“I already told him, off the record, that Drew Peterson was set up and he didn’t do this, but I’m not going to testify to it in court,” McGree said.

On Friday, Liefer said that, if McGree had agreed to testify, he would say he was acquainted with both Peterson and Smith while the three were in protective custody at Menard, that they were all involved in a scam to get McGree moved to a different prison, and that he “does not believe Antonio Smith to be a truthful person.”

Bohannon and Smith were teenagers when they broke into a woman’s house to rob her, according to a story in the Southern Illinoisan. During the attack, Smith slashed the woman’s throat at the direction of Bohannon.