Stacy A. Peterson

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[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.

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[glow=red,2,300]Stacy Holding Daughter Lacy With Drew on their wedding day[/glow]


[glow=red,2,300]Stacy and Drew with children[/glow]


[glow=red,2,300]Drew with third wife, Kathleen Savio who drowned in a bathtub in 2004[/glow]

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[glow=red,2,300]Stats on the third wife[/glow]
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST: Stacy Peterson, wife number 4 of Sergeant Drew Peterson, is missing. She has not been seen since Sunday. And complicating matters for Sergeant Peterson tonight is that his third wife's bathtub death is now being re-investigated. A prosecutor has re-opened the investigation into her death. It was declared an accident at the time. The coroner said she drowned, but did she?

Joining us is forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden. Dr. Baden, we have gotten a copy of the autopsy report from wife number three's family.

BADEN: It is not an accident. The hair, her head hair, was soaked in blood, as the medical examiner says, and she had a laceration, a blunt force laceration on the top of her head. She had a dozen other black-and- blue bruises and scraping abrasions of the extremities and of the abdomen. It looks as if she — from the description that she was beaten up, apart from drowning. Her heart was good. Her brain was good. There were no drugs in her body on toxicology. There's no reason for her to have drowned. Adults don't drown if they're in good health.

VAN SUSTEREN: Dr. Baden, what would possess a coroner to call it accident? When I looked at it and I saw the hair full of blood, I thought, What's that? But I figured I just — you know, I went to law school and not medical school. What would possess this coroner to say this was an accident?

BADEN: Well, the doctor who did the autopsy, the pathologist who did the autopsy just said drowning. The non-physician coroner, who's elected, determined that it was also an accident. And he just made a mistake. I don't know...

VAN SUSTEREN: I mean, you don't have the body to examine. You're looking at the report. But is this a close call, in your mind?

BADEN: No, it's not a close call. It should not have been called an accident.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, then how — then how can you say it was a mistake, if it's not a close call?

BADEN: Well, because it depends on the qualification of the coroner. Medical examiners have to be physicians. Coroners are often funeral directors.

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[glow=red,2,300]Drew Peterson carryed out a large plastic container from the bedroom of the home[/glow]
Police cadaver dogs taught to react to the scent of dead bodies got positive hits in the Bolingbrook home of Stacy Peterson and beside a nearby pond.
tinyurl.com/37vasq

[glow=red,2,300]Search for Missing Mom Continues in Pond
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tinyurl.com/2yg4g2

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Police officers were searching nine "areas of interest" in the effort to find Peterson, Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Luis Gutierrez said. At each site, seven police officers and a canine team, consisting of a handler and cadaver-sniffing dog, looked for Peterson, a mother of two young children.

There was no news from the searches, Gutierrez said Monday evening.

Peterson disappeared two days after telling her husband, a 29-year Bolingbrook police veteran, that she wanted a divorce, Stacy's relatives said.

Police are using tracking dogs, airplanes, infrared sensors and volunteers on foot Tuesday to look for a young mother who disappeared nine days ago, leaving her 4- and 2-year-old children behind.

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[glow=red,2,300]Family Of Bolingbrook Cop's Deceased Wife Speaks[/glow]
The search continues for missing Bolingbrook mother Stacy Peterson. Meanwhile, after not being seen for days, her husband, Drew Peterson, made an appearance in Joliet.

CBS 2 news partner the Naperville Sun saw Drew Peterson leaving the courthouse annex at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. It was rumored that he would be there for grand jury proceedings but officials would not confirm that.

CBS 2 West Suburban Bureau Chief Mike Puccinelli made a trip to the coroner's office on the fourth floor of that building where Drew Peterson was spotted. An official asked that he leave. When asked if the building was a public building, the official responded, "Not today." That, as prosecutors discussed whether to exhume the body of Drew Peterson's third wife.

Three and a half years after Kathleen Savio was found dead in a bathtub, her sister is speaking out for the first time for her desire to see her youngest sister exhumed from her eternal resting place.

When asked if she would support the exhuming of her sister, Anna Doman said, "Yes, if that's what it takes. In a minute."

That's because Anna Doman says Kathleen always believed that her husband, Drew Peterson, would hurt her.

"She told me she'd never make it to the end of the divorce. She'd never make the property settlement," Anna Doman said. "That's a shame."

Anna Doman said Kathleen Savio told her she knew she would be killed. And although she's never said publicly that she believed Drew Peterson killed Kathleen, she's not holding back anymore.

When asked if she thinks Drew Peterson killed Kathleen Savio, Anna Doman said, "It's hard to say… yeah, I do. …He had the most to gain – money."

She says there was $1 million in life insurance and a more than $600,000 estate that stood to be divided.

"She would have gotten half. Instead she got none," Anna Doman said. "He got it all."

When Kathleen Savio died, Melissa Doman lost her favorite aunt. But she thinks of the woman she called Kitty every time she looks at her daughter.

"When I had my daughter, I named her after my aunt, so that no matter what I'll never forget," Melissa Doman said.

Savio's family will never forget a loving mother and sister, who is always in their hearts, a woman whose story they are telling now because she no longer can.

"How in the world could anyone say it was an accident?" Anna Doman said. "The cut was on the back of her head, and she was on her face in a waterless bathtub. Give me a break."

CBS 2 tried to reach Drew Peterson Wednesday but he did not return calls. Anna Doman says she has not spoken to authorities since Stacy Peterson went missing, but says she is now ready to.

cbs2chicago.com/westsuburbanbureau/drew.stacy.peterson.2.538116.html

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[glow=red,2,300]Stacy And Laci Peterson: The Eerie Similarities
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This missing woman might not be pregnant, but the similiarities in the Stacey Peterson and Laci Peterson cases are eerie at best....and not just because of their names.

[glow=red,2,300]LACI PETERSON[/glow]

What the husband said: Scott said Laci took the dog for a walk.

Murder in the first: Police have been investigating whether a college student, Kristin Smart, who went to Cal Poly at the same time of Scott Peterson might have been murdered by him.

A watery grave: Police found the remains of Laci after they washed up in the San Francsico Bay. The remains of the couple's unborn son, Connor, washed up days before.

In the family way: Laci Rocha Peterson was eight months pregnant when she was killed on December 24, 2002.

I'm not guilty: Scott Peterson is on death row in San Quentin for the murder of Laci and their unborn child. He maintains his innocence.

Ironically: Laci's best friend, since third grade, was a woman named Stacey (Boyers.)

[glow=red,2,300]STACY PETERSON[/glow]

What the husband said: Drew said Stacy left voluntarily.

Murder in the first: Police now think Drew Peterson might have had something to do with his third wife's (Kathleen Salvio) mysterious bathtub drowning.

A watery grave: Search crews are still looking for Stacy. They recently dredged a nearby lake but found nothing.

In the family way: Stacy Peterson had two children with her husband Drew when she was reported missing.

I'm not guilty: While he was officially called a "suspect" on November 9th for the October 28th dissapearance of his wife, Drew maintains his innocence.

Ironically: Stacy Peterson has a daughter named Lacey.

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For years, the family of Kathleen Savio has insisted that her police officer ex-husband was involved in her 2004 death.

They refused to believe an inquest's finding that she had accidentally drowned. Her body had been found face down in an empty bathtub. They said Savio had feared her husband, a veteran police officer in the middle-class suburb of Bolingbrook.

It wasn't until Drew Peterson's next wife, Stacy Ann Peterson, mysteriously disappeared two weeks ago, that their claims were taken more seriously. Investigators launched a search for Stacy on Oct. 29. Days later, they reopened the case of Kathleen Savio.

On Friday, as search teams scoured nearby woods for 23-year-old Stacy Peterson, a judge granted a request by Will County State's Atty. James Glasgow to exhume Savio's body.

Police consider the 53-year-old police sergeant a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, a state law enforcement official said.

"I would say this case has shifted from a missing person case to a possible homicide case," Illinois State Police Capt. Carl Dobrich said at a news conference Friday.

State police officials, who have searched Peterson's home and taken a computer and some weapons, said he has cooperated with them since Stacy vanished Oct. 28.

Peterson could not be reached for comment Friday.

He has told reporters that Savio's death was an "unusual accident," and told police he had nothing to do with Stacy's disappearance. Peterson reportedly said he last spoke with Stacy by cellphone on the evening she disappeared. Peterson said his wife told him she was leaving him for another man.

The court petition to exhume Savio's body from the Queen of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Hillside, Ill., outlined numerous "suspicious" facts tied to the 40-year-old's death.

Her body was found with a one-inch gash on the back of her head, and abrasions on her body. Originally, it was believed Savio had injured her head and fallen into a slow-draining tub, where she drowned.

A review of "the photographs of the crime scene and autopsy, the autopsy protocol and police reports shows in part that the one-inch gash on the back of Kathleen Savio's head did not render her unconscious, which would have been necessary for her to accidentally drown in the bathtub," according to the petition.

In addition, the patterns of blood found in the tub did not match the original explanation of Savio's cause of death. Instead, according to the petition, the "evidence is consistent with the 'staging' of an accident to conceal a homicide."

The petition also noted that "additional evidence has been obtained relative to the death of Kathleen Savio during the investigation into the disappearance of Stacy Peterson." It did not say what the evidence was, and investigators declined to comment.

Savio's family supported Glasgow's bid to exhume her body and reopen the case, according to the petition. They believed Savio had long feared for her life.

In 2002, Savio got a temporary order of protection against her husband, after alleging that he physically abused her. Drew Peterson had been having an affair with "a minor," Savio wrote in a letter to the state's attorney's office, adding that she feared her husband might try to kill her.

Stacy was 17 when she met Peterson.

"It's sad that it took Stacy going missing for anyone to look into what happened to my aunt," Melissa Doman, Savio's niece, told reporters Friday. "Now, we might get some answers."