The Drew Dumpster: 0 for 2; One Judge Nixes Guns Returns; Another Ayes Kathleen Savio Estate Changes

The odor from the Drew Dumpster just got a brief blast of air freshener as former Bolingbrook cop Drew Peterson didn't get his guns back from one judge, but did get a big money change from another--and finally, he faces liability for lawsuits from the family of third wife Kathleen Savio.

Peterson, you may recall, seems to have what he calls "bad luck" with women. Savio, who Peterson dumped after he impregnated a teenager he met on the job, wound up dead, and Peterson wound up with a seven-figure profit. Fourth wife Stacy Peterson, who confessed to a minister that Peterson killed Savio, has been missing for months.

Savio was repeatedly ignored by local authorities even though she had filed multiple abuse reports against Peterson. Despite a plea for help to a prosecutor, and her prediction that Peterson would kill her and get away with it, no one helped Savio, even though Peterson reportedly broke into her home and terrorized her.

A bruised Savior wound up "drowned" in a dry bathtub. Her death scene was one of several that Peterson, swinging his nightstick as a cop, took over when people who had displeased him wound up dead.

In November, 2007, as part of a series on this bizarre case, we told you how easy it is to kill someone and fake drowning. Out of respect to Dr. Baden's work, we held off on publishing that article, and the entire series, including this list of questions that should have been asked about Savio's death, but weren't asked despite her mysterious death.

Not, of course, that Peterson has been charged with anything, even though Stacy Peterson has been missing since November, 2007. Her family has led a sustained effort to find her. Eerily, Stacy, echoing Savio, had warned her family Peterson told her he could kill her and get away with it, because, as a cop, he knew how. His second wife, Vicki Connolly, said the same thing--and that she's still afraid of him.

Thanks to Fox News and expert Dr. Michael Baden, Savio was exhumed and two new autopsies, one by Baden, proved that her death was not an accidental drowning. Earlier this year, Savio's death was ruled a "wrongful homicide." This week, a judge appointed legal guardians for Savio's children, a move that's been long overdue, and changed the executors of the estate to Savio family members.





Really, it's hard to keep up with all the twists and turns in this dirty tangle. A former fiancee told of Peterson stalking and threatening her, using his badge to do so. Peterson was once fired as a cop for, among other things, outing an undercover cop to a known killer.

He was under investigation again for alleged improper conduct when he hastily resigned. Now represented by hoping-for-a-TV-movie mouthpiece Joel Brodsky, Peterson has been playing peep show teaser with the media. He's a regular on media circuits, talking about his "Mr. Mom" duties and oh yea, the women who are hot, hot, hot for this baggy-eyed, paunchy, Lothario of loathing.








However, he won't answer relevant questions about the fate of his wives. Most recently, he and Brodsky, in yet another Charlie McCarthy performance, finally went back to the Greta Van Susteren show--with of course, "no talk" rules.

Peterson bluntly said he'd take the Fifth Amendment if he's called to court in any civil action from Savio's family. Coyly, he giggled and said that he would do and say whatever Brodsky told him to say. Then Peterson, good buddy of media stars, reminded Greta that she's overdue for a tea party with Stacy's daughter.

At least he's still got one weapon: his mouth. But that's all he has, other than his Charlie McCarthy sidekick Brodsky. Peterson has again been blocked from getting his guns back.

Earlier this year, Brodsky asked the court to return Peterson's guns, and place them in the custody of Peterson's Oak Brook cop son. Judge Richard Schoenstedt agreed, if Peterson had a valid Illinois Firearm Owners Identification Card. Authorities immediately revoked Peterson's firearms card.

This time around,Brodsky asked that the weapons be returned to Peterson's adult son Stephen Peterson, an Oak Brook police officer. This dance-around idea, another entry in the growing pile of Brodsky-Peterson weirdness, made no sense. If Peterson needed *a* (not nine) guns for self-defense, then how would they be useful at Stephen his son's house? If he wanted them back because of their monetary value and he wanted them to be safe, why did he and Brodsky believe that police custody was an unsafe place for them to be?

This time, Schoenstedt ruled that the guns were evidence in an ongoing investigation of "possible criminal conduct," The Peanut crew wonders if the discovery of an illegal, hidden weapon at Drew Peterson's home may have swayed the judge about Peterson's reliability.

Not that the public is buying what Peterson is selling. A MediaCurves study of audience responses to Peterson's first interview with Today Show's Matt Lauer on TV showed that the audience believed only one thing Peterson said.

When Lauer asked Peterson if he could present anything that would clear him in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, or or the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, Peterson said "no." For the record, Peterson has continously said that Stacy ran off with another man--leaving her two children behind with no communication.

The search for Stacy Peterson goes on. Ditto the search for truth and justice for Kathleen Savio, Stacy Peterson, their children, and families.

Forensics Casebook II: Kathleen Savio, Stacy Peterson, Dr. Baden, & the Chicago Cop

The questions are falling faster than stacked dominoes now that noted expert pathologist Dr. Michael Baden says that Drew Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio, died as a result of a homicide. Baden, who donated his post-exhumation services to the Savio family, described his autopsy findings in a thorough interview with Fox's Greta Van Susteren.

Let's look at some key questions that didn't get answered--or in some cases, even asked--during the original investigation. To do that, we first re-visit the crime scene.

The physical background: Savio was found to be free of drugs or alcohol. She had no prior history of seizures or fainting spells. Yet she wound up drowned in a dry, blood-splotched bathtub with bruises all over her body, and a bloodied head from blunt force trauma.

Original reports said that her fingers were wrinkled from being in water. Here are some things worth questioning:

1. How long does it take for someone's fingers to get wrinkled in a bathtub?
2. Is there a difference in that time for someone who's alive and someone who's deceased?
3. The most important question of all about those fingers: why were the fingers on both hands reportedly wrinkled? Think about it--when someone takes a bath, or shower, they rarely have both hands equally submerged all the time. The dominant hand is used for bathing, washing hair, etc. Why were all the fingers on both of Savio's hands wrinkled?
4. The bathtub was dry of water when Savio's body was found. But her hair was wet. The blood, in some areas, was reportedly wet. There was blood splotched around the tub. If the tub had drained on its own, why were there splotches?
5. How long would it take that tub to drain on its own,if that happened?
6. How long do fingers stay wrinkled, ante and postmortem? There's a time correlation there that never got looked at.
7. Why was Drew Peterson allowed to clean blood out of that tub?

How did this death get classified as an accidental drowning? Even more compelling, how did Kathleen Savio's plight as an abused and terrified woman get ignored by the Bolingbrook Police Department and other authorities? And how did a cop who knew Peterson, and spoke up for him, almost as a "character reference," wind up on the coroner's jury?

Now-retired former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson threatened more than one wife, according to reports, taunting them that he could kill them and get away with it. Disturbing patterns continue to emerge about Peterson's treatment of his four wives, one of whom died mysteriously, and the fourth, Stacy Peterson, who is missing.

In an interview with the Chicago Sun Times, Dave Brown, husband of Peterson's first wife Carol, says that Peterson cheated on Carol during their brief marriage. This pattern repeated in his marriages to Vicki Connolly, and Savio.

Connolly, the second wife, said that Peterson hit her as well as spying on her, controlling her, and emotionally abusing her. The missing Stacy Peterson and her family said that Peterson was also controlled and her activities tracked by Peterson. Stacy told her family the same thing that Savio did: if something happens to me, it won't be an accident.

Savio filed 18 abuse reports on Peterson. In an ominous foreshadowing, one of Savio's ER visits was for a blow to the head, according to documents obtained by America's Most Wanted.

Dr. Baden detailed bruises on her hands, chest, abdomen, and thighs. In his interview with Van Susteren, Baden described the hand injuries as "defensive" wounds.

""There were indications then of multiple blunt force traumas, of being beaten up," Baden said. "One of the things we were able to look at today, those bruises were still there. And we could see from the naked eye they were fresh."

Even in death, Kathleen Savio is serving as witness to her own tragedy. Her family, having gone through the anguish of her death and a botched investigation and ruling, made sure that this time, they had their own expert, Dr. Baden, to perform a post-exhumation autopsy.

In one of the most poignant documents related to this case, Kathleen Savio pleaded for help. In a letter to Assistant State Attorney Elizabeth Fragales on Nov. 14, 2002 Savio said that police didn't file reports when she'd called for help.

Another foreshadowing: she detailed how Peterson secretly programmed a way to open her garage door and get into her house. She told how Peterson ambushed her, threw around his authority as a police officer, and held a knife to her throat.

This incident is significant because when Savio's body was found, Peterson made sure he told Steve Carcerano that he couldn't get into the house. Carcerano, who found the body, has been called to testify before the grand jury. One question: why did a trained, and reportedly aggressive, cop, send an unarmed civilian into a home where the cop thought something might be wrong?

I've covered crime before. I've covered multiple murders. Savio's suffering as a terrified and abused woman who saw her doom closing in on her is one of the most gut-wrenching storiers I've ever researched.

In the first article in this series, Forensics Casebook I: Kathleen Savio, Stacy Peterson, the Chicago Cop & Fox's Greta Van Susteren, I said that both the Savio and Stacy Peterson cases revolved around water. Officials have repeatedly searched for Stacy in bodies of water near the Peterson home. In Drew's Clues: Wife #2 Said Peterson Bragged He Could Safely Kill Her, Vicki Connolly speaks out and Dr. Phil weighs in.

In the next article, I'll reveal how easy it is to kill someone and make it look like a drowning.

Missing Woman Case: True Crimes, A Chicago Cop & The Media

The increasingly bizarre story of a cop's missing wife continues as Stacy Peterson's sister tells Greta Van Susteren that Stacy feared her husband would kill her. Meanwhile, police used cadaver dogs to search a pond near Chicago's Clow Airport and removed guns from Sgt. Drew Peterson's home.

Missing Woman Case: The True Crimes of Bad Journalism turned the spotlight on the disappearance of young Stacy Peterson, Stacy, who's now 23, is the 53-year-old Peterson's fourth wife. His third, Kathleen Savio, drowned in a mysterious bathtub accident after Peterson became involved with Stacy, who was then 17.

Fox News has stepped up to the plate, deploying Van Susteren to the scene. Her exclusive interview with Stacy's sister, Cassandra Cales, revealed a tangled web of strange actions and comments by Peterson as Stacy's family launched a search for her.

Former Los Angeles detective Mark Furhman is also on the scene with Van Susteran. Furhman, who took a career and personal beating during the O.J. Simpson murder case, has rightfully had his public credibility boosted since O.J.'s recent Las Vegas arrest in an armed robbery case. He's now an author, radio talk show host, and analyst/commentator on crime cases.

Their interview with Cales revealed several key components, including a fight between the couple just before Stacy disappeared, and a strange late night shuffling of the family cars. Peterson, was seen watching police activities wearing a mask made from an American flag bandana, dark sunglasses,and a dark cap pulled over his forehead.

Peterson, who was giving "abandoned husband and father" type media interviews, at the same time insisted that he doesn't want to be photographed, citing privacy concerns. If you think that's inconsistent, listen to what Cales related in Van Susteran's interview. Peterson earlier said that his wife left him for another man, that she has psychiatric problems, and that she had planned to disappear "deep down" like her mother. Stacy's mother disappeared eight years ago; that case has not yet been solved.

The Chicago Tribune, recovering from the sob sister account of Peterson's reaction to his missing wife, followed the money. Peterson received close to two million dollars in insurance policies and funds from the sale of joint properties after this third wife, Kathleen Savio, died in a mysterious bathtub accident.

Stavio's life insurance paid one million dollars to the couple's sons, who lived with Peterson and Stacy while Peterson, as guardian, controlled those funds. Investigators have reopened that case.

Also curious: Stacy disappeared at a time when media coverage of the disappearance of two other young Chicago-area women was at an all-time high. With Peterson saying that Stacy left him and her children, would those disappearances have provided an additional cover for any potential discovery of another body? This case has multiple possibilities and twists, but one overwhelming reality: Stacy Peterson is missing, and her family is terrified of what the police might find.

The Illinois State Police has opened a Tip Line at 1-815-726-6377.