Looks like Peter Visich will be behind bars for a while longer, serving the life-without-parole sentence imposed in 2004 in his conviction for hiring a hit man to kill his wife and make it look like the work of an intruder.

A state Appellate Division panel has upheld the Visich convictions, but his lawyer expects to continue the appeal process right through the federal courts after exhausting state appeals with a petition to the Court of Appeals.

At the time of Evelyn Visich’s murder, she and her husband were estranged but still living together while a court appointed authority was determining who should get custody of their  son Ryan.

Police and prosecutors linked Peter Visich to Frank Thon, using prepaid telephone cards found in Visich’s van showing 44 calls between the two men. Thon cut a deal for himself, getting 20 years to life for testimony against Visich.

Thon said he waited for Evelyn Visich in her Chestnut Ridge home and then cut her throat and stabbed her several times, saying her husband’s last words to him earlier that evening had been, “Do a good job.”

The jury also hear how Visich arrived home a short time later with their son, only to find the woman dead.

Mrs. Visich had worked for Home Depot in Paramus, as did a friend of mine, Fabian Perez. I met Perez outside the courtroom on the day Peter Visich was sentenced. Perez said he had eaten lunch with his co-worker a few days before she was found slain. She had told him then, Perez said, that her husband promised she would never get custody of their son.

A short time after speaking with Perez, Evelyn Visich’s aunt, Aida Mercado, read a statement for her  family. She recounted how her niece had once told her, “If I’m missing, look in the back yard. He’ll have me six feet under.”

It all seemed to bolster the jury’s verdict, after an eight-day trial, that Visich was guilty and then-County Judge William Kelly’s decision that he should spend the rest of his life in prison.