Drew Peterson, Killer Policeman

Drew Peterson, Killer Policeman

Ruth Cartwell

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DREW PETERSON

THE AXEMAN

RODNEY ALCALA

KILLER HANDYMAN

ROBERT HOWARD

A MONSTER IN THE CHURCH

RAY COPELAND

JUANA BARRAZA

PETER SUTCLIFFE

Drew Peterson

On October 28, 2007, 23-year-old Stacy Peterson disappeared without a trace. Her husband, Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson, became a media sensation, sparking questions about what really happened to his third wife, Kathleen Savio.

Marriages

In 1974, Drew Peterson married Carol Brown, his high school sweetheart. The couple had met while attending high school in Dillon Park, Illinois. In the six years they remained married, they had two sons – Stephen and Eric Peterson. In 1980, Carol filed for divorce, citing Drew’s rampant infidelity, which he had stopped bothering to hide.

In 1982, Drew married Victoria Connolly. Victoria was well aware of Drew’s infidelities, and seemed willing to put up with it. However, the charming man she had married turned into an abusive husband, and the marriage began fracturing. Victoria’s daughter, who had been eight years old when her mother married Drew, later told the media that Drew had often been abusive to her mom in the ten years that they had been married. Drew and Victoria divorced in 1992.

Two months after Drew’s divorce was finalized, he married Kathleen Savio, his mistress during the time he had been married to Victoria. In 1993, the couple had their first son, Thomas, with the second son, Christopher, born in 1994. Just like in his two previous marriages, Drew was often unfaithful, going so far as sneaking his mistress into the basement of his home while Kathleen slept upstairs. After years of abuse, Kathleen finally filed for divorce and custody of their two sons.

While he was still married to Kathleen Savio, 47-year-old Drew began dating 17-year-old Stacy Cales. Drew told Stacy that his marriage to Kathleen had been over for a long time, and that they were only together because of the children. He would ply Stacy with gifts, even buying her a car once. As their relationship progressed, he would sneak Stacy into his home for sex, even when Kathleen was in the home. When his divorce to Kathleen was finalized in October 2003, Drew and Stacy got married eight days later. Drew was 49 years old at the time, and Stacy was 19.

Acrimonious Divorce

Kathleen Savio and Drew Peterson met on a blind date while Drew was still married to Victoria. Drew fancied himself a ladies man, and would go on numerous dates without trying to hide his infidelities from his colleagues or wife. After a few more dates, during which Drew showered Kathleen with gifts, he convinced her that he was single. Even when she found out that was not the case, she chose to stay with him. Following their marriage, Kathleen watched as Drew turned from the loving man that she knew to an abusive husband. He was physically and emotionally abusive, often taking jabs at her looks after she had given birth to their sons.

The relationship soon turned tumultuous, with Kathleen refusing to take the abuse without pitching a fight of her own. The fights would always escalate, prompting Kathleen to call 911. However, the officers who would respond to the call were Drew’s friends on the force, and despite Kathleen’s constant complaints, no action was ever taken against Drew. It is unclear whether Kathleen knew about Drew’s infidelities, but it all came to a head with a single anonymous letter.

The letter, which Kathleen received in late 2001, detailed Drew’s affair with Stacy, including how Drew had snuck Stacy into their basement while she slept upstairs. The letter also threatened Kathleen, warning her against speaking to police or anyone from the government. This letter seemed to have been the last straw for Kathleen, and she filed for divorce. However, despite their separation as they waited for the divorce to be finalized, the fights between Kathleen and Drew only escalated. From 2002 to 2004, there were 18 separate 911 calls made from Kathleen’s home. Just as it had been during their marriage, none of the responding officers ever took any action against Drew. He was popular in the department, and had risen up the ranks in the force. Drew would also talk about Kathleen at work in a disrespectful manner, portraying her as a hysterical woman and someone with a penchant for overreacting.

After Kathleen filed for divorce, Drew moved in with Stacy just a quarter of a mile from Kathleen’s home. This sparked even more fights, with Kathleen reluctant to let her kids stay with Drew and his teenage girlfriend. On her part, Stacy Cales fanned the flames, often joining Drew in taunting Kathleen. On more than one occasion, the two would drive by Kathleen’s home and moon her or show her the finger. When the kids would stay over at Drew’s house, he would drop them off alone, choosing to leave Stacy behind. One afternoon though, Drew pulled up outside Kathleen’s house to drop off the boys. When Kathleen saw Stacy in the car, she was livid. A fight ensued between the two women, with Drew watching for a few moments before he got his camera and recording the fight. Drew then joined in the fight, grabbed Kathleen and pinned her to the ground. He called 911 and had Kathleen arrested for assault despite the fact that he was the one who had started taunting Kathleen and Stacy joined in.

According to Kathleen’s friends and family, Drew became even more abusive after Kathleen filed for divorce because she was looking to get half of his assets, including his pension. He would threaten her on a regular basis, telling her that he was going to kill her and make it look like an accident. She knew that his threats had merit because he had been a police officer for decades. She told a number of people that Drew was looking to control every aspect of her life despite their separation, and that she was so scared that she slept with a knife under her pillow every night. In an act of desperation, she wrote letters to a media station and the States Attorney’s Office, detailing the abuse and Drew’s threats. She wrote that on numerous occasions, Drew had threatened to kill her and take the kids. Her calls for help went unanswered.

‘Accidental’ Death

On March 1, 2004, Drew drove the boys to Kathleen’s house, and knocked on a neighbor’s door. He told the neighbor that it was his third stopping by Kathleen’s house to drop off the boys after they had spent the night at his house. He said that he had tried knocking several times, but no one had answered the door, and that Kathleen was not picking up the phone. He told the neighbor that he couldn’t check in on Kathleen to make sure she was safe because she had changed the locks. The neighbor offered to call a locksmith, who managed to break the locks open. Drew turned to the neighbor and asked if they could check inside the house. He maintained that he was reluctant to go in because of his acrimonious relationship with Kathleen, and that he didn’t want her to call the cops on him again.

When the neighbor went inside the master bedroom, there was a gruesome scene waiting for them. Inside the waterless tub was the lifeless body of Kathleen Savio, and she was lying head-first in the tub. The neighbor rushed outside and told Drew about what they had seen, and called police. Owing to the fact that Drew was a sergeant at the Bolingbrook Police Department, the State Police was called in. The detective placed in charge of Kathleen’s case had never handled a homicide case, and the state police was inexperienced in handling homicide cases. Partly due to this, the case was handled poorly from the beginning. The house was never classified as a crime scene or cordoned off, and people were allowed to go in and out of the house as they saw fit. Drew, in particular, was allowed to roam freely in every room of the house, unsupervised.

The detectives placed on the case quickly concluded that Kathleen had slipped and fell into the bathtub. She had drowned, and the water had drained after her death. Because of this, they did not bother to collect any evidence from the scene. All they did was take photos of the crime scene and send the body for autopsy. Less than a month after Kathleen’s death, a coroner’s jury ruled Kathleen’s death an accidental drowning. One member of the coroner’s jury was a police officer who was a close friend of Drew’s, and claims surfaced that he had assured the other jurors that Drew was a good man who would have never hurt his wife.

The autopsy report stated that there was no significant trauma, and concluded that Kathleen’s death was an accidental drowning. However, towards the end of the report, there was a comment which stated that there was a laceration at the back of Kathleen’s head that might have been related to her fall into the tub. No other injuries – external or internal – were mentioned in the autopsy report.

Kathleen’s family was convinced that Drew had something to do with her death, but no one seemed willing to listen to their pleas. State Police ignored their requests to have the case reopened.

Stacy Cales Peterson

Soon after Drew moved in with Stacy Cales, she became pregnant. Just like in Kathleen’s case, it did not take long for Stacy to realize that Drew’s charming persona hid a much darker side. He would monitor every single one of her communications, and followed her every move. Stacy couldn’t even go to the store without Drew’s knowledge. He would look at every single receipt to check the time she left the store and calculate whether she had headed straight home from the store. If she had taken long, he would begin verbal abuses, sometimes physically attacking. One afternoon, Stacy came home to find Drew waiting for her. He demanded to know where she had been, and when she answered that she had been out shopping, he demanded to see the receipts. She lost her cool and asked him whether he had a problem with her buying shoes. Drew flew into a rage, came at Stacy and held her against the wall. He stripped her naked and began looking for evidence of sexual contact with other men.

Stacy told her sister Cassandra that she was terrified of Drew. On more than one occasion, she would look up from what she was doing only to find Drew watching her with a scary look in his eye. She got pregnant with their second child