LOCKPORT, Ill. – Drew Peterson, the brash, mustachioed former police sergeant who found tabloid fame after his fourth wife’s disappearance more than 1 1/2 years ago, was indicted Thursday in the drowning of an ex-wife found dead in an empty bathtub in 2004.
Peterson, charged with first-degree murder in the death of Kathleen Savio, was arrested during an evening traffic stop near his Bolingbrook home and was being held on $20 million bond, Illinois State Police Captain Carl Dobrich said.
“We are very confident in our case,” Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said.
Savio’s body was found in a dry bathtub, hair soaked in blood from a head wound, just before the couple’s divorce settlement was finalized. Her death initially was ruled an accidental drowning, but authorities later said it was a homicide staged to look like an accident.
The indictment alleges that “Peterson on or about Feb. 29, 2004 … caused Kathleen Savio to inhale fluid,” causing her death.
Savio’s family has long voiced suspicions, saying she feared Peterson and told relatives if she died it wouldn’t be an accident. Their fears resurfaced after the October 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson, then 23.
Drew Peterson, 55, is a suspect in the disappearance, which police have called a possible homicide, but he has not been charged. He repeatedly has said he thinks Stacy Peterson ran off with another man.
“I guess I should have returned those library books,” a handcuffed Peterson said as state police led him into headquarters after his arrest, according to The (Joliet) Herald-News.
One of Peterson’s attorneys, Andrew Abood, said the indictment was not a surprise.
“There was tremendous pressure for the government to do something in this case,” Abood said. But he said one of Peterson’s sons with Savio has “provided a lock tight alibi” for his father, who faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted.
In an appearance on CBS’ “The Early Show” last month, 16-year-old Thomas Peterson appeared alongside his father and defended him.
“I highly do not believe that my dad had murdered my mom. Because, first off, he wasn’t there, he was with us during that period of time,” Thomas Peterson said on the show.
Savio’s 73-year-old father, however, said Thursday that an arrest was long overdue.
“I always wondered,” about her death, said Henry Savio, who joined another of his daughters in filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Drew Peterson last month. “I was never pleased with the (coroner’s finding) from the beginning.”
Peterson has seemed to relish the spotlight since Stacy Peterson’s disappearance, appearing in a People magazine cover story and on multiple national talk shows — most recently to tout his new engagement to a 24-year-old woman.
Publicist Glenn Selig said this week that Peterson was interested in a job offer from a Nevada brothel that is the setting for the HBO reality show “Cathouse.” An HBO spokeswoman said the network would sooner cancel the show than allow Peterson to appear on it.
From the day Stacy Peterson was reported missing, her husband, a cop of nearly 30 years, knew that if investigators weren’t focused on him, they soon would be. Less than two weeks later, Illinois State Police called Peterson a suspect and her disappearance a possible homicide.
When authorities announced they believed Savio’s death looked like it was a homicide, Peterson knew authorities were looking closely at him as well.
“The husband is always a suspect, whether you declare him so or not,” another of Peterson’s attorneys, Joel Brodsky, said when authorities revealed an autopsy on Savio’s exhumed body showed she was murdered.
Savio’s body was found by a friend of Peterson after the police sergeant called him to say he was worried because he had not talked to or seen Savio for a few days. The couple had recently divorced.
The friend, Steve Carcerano, has said he went to the house and went upstairs while Peterson waited downstairs. When he found Savio’s body in the bathtub, he called downstairs to Peterson, who has said he ran upstairs and tried to take Savio’s pulse but found none.
Questions about Peterson surfaced immediately, with Savio’s sister telling a coroner’s jury that her sister feared Peterson and had told family members if she died that it might look like an accident but it wasn’t.
State lawmakers last year passed legislation — sought by Glasgow — that allows a judge to admit hearsay evidence in first-degree murder cases if prosecutors can prove the defendant killed a witness to prevent them from testifying.
Glasgow said Thursday that the case against Peterson would include evidence that previously might have been inadmissible.
“In essence what you’re basically allowing the victim of a violent crime to do is testify from the grave,” he said.
Peterson’s next wife was Stacy, who was 30 years younger. They had two children, who lived with the couple along with Peterson’s two children from his marriage to Savio.
On the morning of Oct. 28, 2007, Stacy Peterson talked to a friend. Stacy Peterson’s sister, Cassandra Cales, tried to call her in the middle of the afternoon and did not get through. Late that night, Cales went to the Petersons’ home, but neither Drew nor Stacy was there. A few minutes later, she reached Drew Peterson on his cell phone and he told her Stacy had left him.
Cales didn’t believe it and reported her sister missing the next day.
Pamela Bosco, a friend of Stacy Peterson’s family who has acted as an unofficial family spokeswoman, said “we’re just happy for the Savio family.”
“We always said that Stacy and Kathleen had one thing in common … Drew Peterson,” Bosco said.
___
Associated Press writers Tammy Webber and Don Babwin in Chicago contributed to this report.
