Post by LadyBlue on Nov 10, 2007 20:46:37 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Whom do you believe?[/glow]
In the months before Bolingbrook Police Sgt. Drew Peterson's ex-wife drowned in her own bathtub in 2004, she told a relative she had detailed notes about her fights with her ex-husband -- just in case something bad happened to her.
Shortly before Peterson's current wife, Stacy A. Peterson, went missing earlier this week, she began telling her relatives she wanted people to know she was afraid -- in case she disappeared.
But on Wednesday, Drew Peterson -- facing a swarm of media -- fiercely denied he had anything to do with the drowning of Kathleen Savio or Stacy Peterson's disappearance.
"It bothers me," Peterson said during an interview in his Bolingbrook home. "I've led an honorable life, and people are looking at me sideways. It hurts. "
Drew Peterson, 53, a 29-year police veteran, said he believes his wife left voluntarily, even taking clothes with her. He said she's been suffering from "mood issues" since her sister Tina Ryan death's last year from colon cancer.
"Ever since then, Stacy has been different," Peterson said. ". . . She's been under the care of a psychiatrist." She's taking anti-depressants, he said.
The mother of two was supposed to help her sister, Cassandra, paint an apartment in Yorkville on Sunday but she never showed up, her family told the Sun-Times Wednesday. Drew Peterson said he last spoke to his wife Sunday about 9 p.m. He said he didn't know where she was calling from.
"She seemed snotty," Drew Peterson said, describing the call as "unusual," though he wouldn't disclose details of what was said.
"I believe she's not missing," he said. "She's where she wants to be. I have no reason to suspect foul play."
Besides the disappearance of his wife, Drew Peterson is also dealing with Will County prosecutors' decision to take another look at the 2004 drowning death of his ex-wife, Kathleen Savio.
Savio's relatives say they have always doubted the official conclusion that her death was accidental.
"I just have to live through it," Drew Peterson said of the renewed suspicions.
As for Stacy Peterson, Illinois State Police said Wednesday they have used tracking dogs and an airplane equipped with a heat-sensing device to search for the 5-foot-2-inch tall, 100-pound woman, but have not located her.
Investigators have found no signs of foul play.
On one point, Stacy Peterson's family agreed with her husband: Stacy was deeply depressed, "lost and confused," according to one relative. But they say she was troubled because her husband was watching her every move, and she wanted out of their four-year marriage.
"She just wanted people to know she was unhappy, and she didn't like how she was being treated," said her aunt, Candace Aikin, 48, of El Monte, Calif. "In case she disappeared -- if something bad happened to her."
Aikin stayed with the Petersons for a week earlier this month.
"Drew was very distant, and it was just a weird feeling," Aikin said. "I don't know how to explain it."
At one point during the visit, Aikin and her niece drove to a Bolingbrook grocery store and talked for an hour in the parking lot.
"She didn't feel like she loved Drew any more," Aikin said Stacy Peterson told her. "He was following her around. She wasn't allowed to have friends. She couldn't have a social life. She always had to be with him."
Drew Peterson repeatedly asked his spouse, 30 years his junior and his fourth wife, if she had a boyfriend, Aikin said.
Stacy Peterson told her aunt she'd asked her cop husband for a divorce, and he'd said to wait until he retired, Aikin said. Stacy Peterson wanted a way to leave, but she didn't want to lose the children she adored, Lacy, 2, and Anthony, 4.
"I know d**n well she wouldn't go without them kids," said her uncle, Gary Cales, 68, of Hemet, Calif.
On Wednesday, Drew Peterson said: "I believed our marriage was good, but maybe she didn't."
When Stacy Peterson didn't show up for painting Sunday, her family called her repeatedly on her cell phone, but she didn't answer, and the family then called police.
Monday morning, Aikin called Drew Peterson at home. He wasn't there, but he returned her call that afternoon, she said.
Peterson told Aikin he'd spoken to his wife Sunday evening and "he said she went with someone. He didn't say who."
Aikin didn't probe further, but assumed Peterson meant his wife was with another man.
"He said she was with someone, and she was OK," Aikin said. Peterson also said his wife had taken some money from the couple's safe and had bought some new clothes.
"He got a little upset at one point because he said he didn't know what he was going to do," Aikin said.
Stacy Peterson's distraught relatives say they have heard nothing from her.
Aikin said she spoke to her niece weekly and knows she didn't have a boyfriend.
"She didn't have time for a boyfriend," Aikin insisted. "She had a husband who was following her 24/7."
The missing woman's mother has a history of disappearing and hasn't been heard from in years, Aikin said.
But Aikin says Stacy Peterson isn't like her mother and would never have abandoned her children.