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I'm Lester Holt. Tonight on Dateline, Drew Peterson, convicted of murdering one wife and a suspect in the disappearance of another.
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After 14 years, there are still so many secrets, and now Drew Peterson is talking again.
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My sister was my love, my best friend. Stacy told me, if anything happens to me, Drew did it.
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Once Stacy went missing, of course, people start saying, well, wait a minute. His other wife died in the bathtub.
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He says, Neil, I've done a lot of bad things in my life. He'll always be my dad.
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Either he has the worst luck in the world or he's responsible for murdering two women.
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I wanted them to know the truth. I was talking to this lady. She's prettier than you.
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It was almost as if he considered himself like a celebrity. I didn't do it. You didn't do what?
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kill Kathleen or make Stacy disappear. So everybody's making things up. A lot of people are.
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You may be here for the rest of your life. Maybe, but I may not be. What keeps me going is my love, my heart.
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I will find her and I'll bring her home. And that's my promise. here's natalie morales with infamous
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i just think about like is this ever gonna end am i ever gonna be able to find her and, you know, get the closure I need.
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In these murky, churning waters, a sister searches for answers. I'm going to keep doing this every day I can and every day I can afford until the day I die,
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until I can bring her home. Solving that mystery would close the circle on a notorious and sensational case,
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the disappearance of Stacey Peterson. It brought the world's attention to a quiet, bedroom community outside Chicago
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and put a megaphone in front of one of this country's most infamous villains. Drew Peterson
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I can't stand here and cry for you. Would that make everybody happy? I never covered a story like Drew Peterson. I don't think I ever will again. It was crazy.
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I'm going to come camp myself in front of your house and see if you like it. As this thing went further and further, I was shocked that he kept telling jokes.
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And at a certain point, you have to wonder, does he really have a lawyer? Please leave me alone. Please don't get involved in my little world.
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Why did it take someone to go missing to you to look at this? This isn't an accident. This is a cold-blooded murder.
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I'm really being portrayed as a monster here, and nobody's defending me. And now, more than a decade later, from inside prison, Drew Peterson agreed to sit down for an exclusive new interview.
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Can you understand why people may have been disgusted by the way you talked about your wives?
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When one of them is missing, the other one is dead. Sure. Sure. I was being me. And if somebody don't like it, too bad.
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Why should people, do you think, have to hear or listen to what you're saying today?
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There's so much that hasn't been heard. Everybody on the opposition, on the prosecution, gets to talk, call me names, say things,
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and I'm left in a cage. And I don't get to say publicly what I need to say, what needs to be said.
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But most important, at the heart of it all, is the story of two women, two moms whose lives are now forever inextricably linked.
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What happened to Stacey had everything to do with what happened to Kathleen. On every level, and I think that their stories will be forever told together.
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The story began in late October 2007 in Bolingbrook, Illinois, 30 miles outside Chicago.
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We had dinner, we watched a movie. Cassandra Kales vividly remembers the last day she spent with her older sister, Stacey Peterson.
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It was just a simple evening in. She was going to call me when she woke up in the morning.
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When she said, I'll call you in the morning. That never happened. It was odd to be sure, but the 23-year-old mother had a lot on her plate.
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Perhaps Stacy was just too busy, even for Cassandra. But after waiting hours, Cassandra picked up her phone and dialed Stacy.
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Her phone's never off. I don't care if she's watching the kids. or doing anything, she'll answer, hey, I'm going to call you back.
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And she does. But it went to voicemail, and that's when my gut started going. As the hours ticked by and still no word from Stacey,
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Cassandra became increasingly alarmed. She reached out to other family members, like stepsister Carrie Simmons.
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Right away when she said that she couldn't get a hold of her, we knew something was wrong.
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We all knew how close Cassandra and Stacey were. And of course, we all felt the panic and the anxiety of where is she?
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Cassandra called Stacey's husband, Drew, a Bowling Brook police sergeant. He said he hadn't seen Stacey since early that morning when he got home after his overnight shift.
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As day turned to night, family friend Pam Bosco joined the efforts to try to locate Stacey.
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Then it goes into the morning hours and stuff. We still can't find her. And I remember telling Cassandra at that point you know go to the police And I think she placed the report at that point She didn let up She went from that morning with me all the way through the next morning trying to find Stacy
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Cassandra filed a report with the state police, and the family fanned out to spread the word.
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Stacy Peterson was missing. Within days, a massive volunteer effort to find Stacy was underway.
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There was just an overflow of people that wanted to donate, wanted to bring in supplies, wanted to help search.
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Searchers blanketed the area. We had dozens of people that would come out every day.
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I think we started there in Bolingbrook and then we would pick different places to meet wherever we decided we were searching.
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Combing fields and woods and rivers and take the boats and use the dogs. As the search for Stacey continued, stories began to emerge about her marriage, her much older husband, and one of her husband's ex-wives.
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Stories that would soon transfix the country. In his mid-40s when they met, Drew Peterson was old enough to be Stacey's father.
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When we come back... We were shocked who this man was and how lovey-dovey he was to this girl.
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For me, it was like, what are you doing? She's kind of young. And soon, Stacy was playing house in a new apartment.
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Everything that she could dream of. And I'm like, where the frick did this come from?
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If you found yourself caught in Stacey Peterson's orbit, those who knew her would tell you it was a pretty nice place to be.
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She was very pretty. She was kind. She was gentle. She was a loving mother, loving sister.
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She was just a wonderful person. She just had the biggest heart. She would do anything for you.
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Even though she had so much on her plate, she would drop everything and run to help whoever needed anything.
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But at the end of October 2007, it was Stacy's family dropping everything in a desperate bid to find her.
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The sense of urgency was almost crippling for her sister Cassandra. I was up for like almost three days and I actually had to go to the doctor and they had to give me a shot to get me to relax.
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The sisters shared a special bond. I know that you guys didn't have it easy growing up, right?
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No, we didn't have it easy growing up at all. And you really looked out for each other.
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Yes. Did you guys talk about your hopes and dreams, what you wanted, someday? day? Not really. It was just surviving that day. And, you know, are we going to eat? Are
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we going to be fed? You know? Cassandra doesn't like to talk about their childhood. Their
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parents divorced when they were young, and Stacy and Cassandra lived mostly with their
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father. Their mother, who suffered from alcoholism and depression, was in and out of their lives.
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Strangely, when the girls were teenagers, she also disappeared and wasn't heard from again.
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Stacey, only 17 months older, kept a motherly eye on Cassandra. So Stacey was the one who kind of took over that responsibility in that role.
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Absolutely. She was on a mission to be better than what we had gone through. It appeared that Stacey was well on her way to accomplishing that mission.
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She was preparing to graduate from high school early and was working at a hotel to earn enough money to continue her education.
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And there was someone new in her life, a guy. She was like, I go see my friend Drew. I'm like, who's Drew?
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And she was like, no, he's just a friend. And she was only 16. She was 16, yes, because I was 15, yes.
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Cassandra says everything changed as soon as Stacy turned 17 and had graduated from high school.
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She's living in an apartment, fully furnished leather furniture, everything that she could dream of.
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And then here I am, like, where the frick did this come from? No way Stacey could afford such nice things.
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Next thing you know, here comes Drew, fully uniformed, walking in like, hey, I'm Drew.
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Drew Peterson, a sergeant with the Bolingbrook Police Department. They had met at the hotel where Stacey worked.
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At 47, he was 30 years older. He was old enough to be her father. She was a little girl.
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She came to my party with little ponytails, you know. And we were shocked who this man was and how lovey-dovey he was to this girl.
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Drew was twice divorced, and his third marriage was imploding. He already had four children, two of whom were actually older than Stacey.
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Even his brother, Paul, who was speaking publicly about Drew for the first time,
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was struck by how young Stacey was. Actually, my oldest daughter is two months younger than Stacey.
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So for me, it was like, what are you doing? Why, you know, she's kind of young. What do you think attracted her to Drew?
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She's a stable person. Obviously, she's a cop. She feels protected. She was like looking for a father figure, you know,
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or just, you know, just to be taken care of a little bit. Cassandra says Drew did take care of Stacy.
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He paid for her furnished apartment, among other things. But according to Cassandra what Stacy really wanted was a family And in July 2003 when Stacey was 19 years old she and Drew had a baby boy
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My gosh. Stacey was born to be a mom. She pretty much put us all to shame when it came to taking care of kids and stuff.
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Drew and Stacey married that October. And when Drew's ex-wife Kathleen Savio died suddenly five months later,
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Stacey adopted the two boys Kathleen had with Drew. Were you surprised when Stacey said that she was adopting Kathleen's two boys?
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No, not at all. Stacey wanted a family. You know, they lost their mom, and she wanted to be there to comfort them.
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Stacey and Drew had another child together, a daughter. By the fall of 2007, with four kids, a home, and a police officer husband,
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Stacey, now 23, seemed to finally have what she and Cassandra had longed for. And it was just so beautiful because we didn't have that growing up.
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We didn't have that happy family. And she was building that with Drew. Right. But now Stacey was missing, and none of it made any sense.
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Stacey's family and friends weren't the only ones to think so. Local crime reporter Joe Hosey had his own questions about Stacey's disappearance
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because this wasn't the first time he had reported on something happening to one of Drew Peterson's wives.
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At this point, it's just it's a missing persons report, right? It's a missing person, but it's the missing wife of a man whose previous wife died under what I consider extremely suspicious circumstances.
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Coming up, the mysterious death of the previous Mrs. Peterson, according to Drew.
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She took some sleeping pills or something, drank some wine and fell in the bathtub.
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When Dateline continues. When reporter Joe Hosey got the tip Drew Peterson's wife Stacy was missing,
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his antenna immediately went up. I just knew that they were both married to Drew Peterson,
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and one was dead and one was missing. His thoughts went back to a story he'd covered three years earlier for the local paper,
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The Joliet Herald News. This guy's wife died in the bathtub. I think I was told it was suspicious.
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And he's a police sergeant. Yes, exactly. The suspicious death was that of Drew Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio.
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Smart, family-oriented, kind. Her sister, Sue Doman. She was just overall a good person.
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She would never hurt anybody. Loved her children to death. They were her life. Drew and Kathleen had split in 2001 after a nearly decade-long marriage.
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Kathleen had custody of their two boys. Drew took them on weekends. And that's how it went until 2004 when Drew, by then married to Stacy
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and living just down the street from Kathleen, tried dropping the boys off after a weekend visit.
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Kathleen didn't answer the door. Not that night. Not the following day. It was probably 9, 9.30 in the evening.
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And Drew happened to come down the street and pulled up next to me in his squad car.
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Steve Carcerano was Drew's friend and Kathleen's neighbor. He asked me to go to the house, and he's already contacted her best friend, Mary, to go to the house.
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He thinks something might be wrong because he's been trying to drop off the kids for the past day and a half.
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Drew said his ex-wife wouldn't want him inside her home, regardless of the circumstances.
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So he waited outside. When we first walked into the house, it's dead silence in there.
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They went upstairs and into Kathleen's bedroom, saw the unmade bed, and they checked the bathroom.
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I was going towards the back of the bathroom and looked in the tub. It was Kathy laying there naked.
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Mary came into the bathroom right away, and she started screaming. Drew came running up the stairs right away, ran into the bathroom.
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First thing he did was check her pulse. And then he started screaming out. What am I going to tell my children? What am I going to tell my children?
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And very distraught. I looked right into his eyes, and he got very emotional very quickly.
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And then he called the police department. Kathleen was dead. Sue remembers getting the call late that night.
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It was my sister, my older sister, and she said, Kitty's dead. Kathleen's dead. We called her Kitty.
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Family members gathered to grieve, everyone with the same question. What happened?
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Drew seemed to have the answers. They found her in the bathtub, and it looks like she drowned.
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Drew told your sister that? Mm-hmm. It was the same story Drew told his brother, Paul.
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She took some sleeping pills or something, drank some wine, and, you know, fell in the bathtub.
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Because Drew was a Bowling Brook police officer, the Illinois State Police took over the investigation into Kathleen's death.
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What are you finding out from the police and the sources at the time about her death?
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I wasn't finding out much. They weren't saying much. Joe heard the same thing the family heard.
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Kathleen was found naked in her bathtub. It appeared she had drowned, but the bathtub was dry and streaked with blood from a wound in her head.
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The coroner was stumped and so formed an inquest to try to get to the bottom of what happened.
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They sent this sergeant to present evidence to the coroner jury and in no uncertain terms said it was an accident that this wasn a suspicious death there was no sign of foul play And the coroner jury deliberated and came back that it was an accident
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An accident. Kathleen must have slipped in the tub, hit her head, been knocked unconscious, and drowned.
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The tub was dry because the water had slowly gone down the drain in the time it took for her body to be found.
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Did the facts of what you're reporting bother you? Did any of it linger with you that this seems too weird?
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I remember covering stories of children drowning in bathhouses, but never an adult.
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I mean, that right there is a red flag. Right there, you would think, would have caused the police to look at it a little closer than they did.
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Joe says his editors didn't share his suspicions and didn't want him to keep digging.
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The story went nowhere. I had bosses that were likely to say it's an accident. We're not writing about this anymore.
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That's where it ended. But now, three years later, Drew's wife Stacy was missing.
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Joe again wrote about Kathleen's bizarre death, linking the two women to Drew and each other.
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It wasn't much of a story, but I got it in the paper for the next day. It may have been a small story, but it made a huge impact.
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Coming up... I was talking to this lady. She's prettier than you. The Drew Peterson Show.
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It was almost as if he considered himself like a celebrity. In hindsight, it's hard to believe.
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But back in 2007, reporter Joe Hosey wasn't sure that Drew Peterson's story had legs.
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The bosses that I was working for really weren't interested in pursuing it. But his local paper was owned by the Chicago Sun-Times, which also ran Joe's story.
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This tipped off the national media, which descended on Bolingbroke. We're also following the latest developments in the search for a missing suburban Chicago mother.
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Stacey Peterson vanished after leaving home on Sunday. It was wild. I mean, Drew lived in a cul-de-sac in a subdivision.
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It was packed with satellite trucks and cameramen and reporters. It was shoulder to shoulder with media.
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Cameras were soon documenting every aspect of the developing story, from the searches for Stacey to marches and vigils.
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We come here, I think, united as a family, friends, and as a community. And there, usually in the background, was Sister Cassandra.
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She didn't want the attention. She just wanted Stacy back. You were out helping in the searches and often in the background, but you were always there.
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Oh, I'm always there. Just because I'm not on camera doing anything doesn't mean I'm not out searching.
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Other family members were also in the background offering support. Drew's brother Paul and Paul's wife Norma moved into Drew's house to help with the kids.
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We're trying to give them some semblance of normalcy. Here's mom and a dad. We're going to take care of you.
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Don't mind that everything else is happening around you. This is when the whole cul-de-sacs flood with reporters and camera crews.
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All of them wanted a glimpse and a comment from Drew. Can you tell us where you were the night she died, sir?
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Police had searched Drew's home and were treating him as a person of interest. He had spoken to them after Stacy went missing, but was otherwise keeping his mouth shut.
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Until one evening when reporters knocked on his door. I'm sorry, sir. Sir, we can't hear you. I'm sorry. One more time.
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Never again will I allow myself to have overdue books. This is a mess. Reporters strained to hear him as he joked about overdue library books.
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It was just a preview of the Drew Peterson show. I want to message you guys. He resigned from the Bolingbrook Police Department.
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He began holding court in his driveway. Your third wife was... I can only hear one of you at a time.
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I can't speed listen. I know, but Kathleen... Well, I was talking to this lady. She's prettier than you.
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That she is. Take my hand. Take my hand. What's wrong? From day one, Joe Hosey had a front row seat to Drew's antics.
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It was almost as if he considered himself like a celebrity. Like we were all the paparazzi chasing him around because he was famous
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and not because he was suspected of killing his fourth wife and his third wife. I'm pretty well burnt out.
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Really? I've lost 30 pounds to date, so if anybody wants to go on a weight loss program, you could probably use it.
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I need a big time. Where's Drew? We got him, Drew. Drew Peterson. He finally picked up.
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I'm here. Eric Moeller, known over Chicago radio waves as the man cow, had Drew on his popular morning show.
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Are you Drew Peterson or the Cowardly Lion? We weren't supposed to ask about the murders, you know.
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And I said, well, I asked them about stupid stuff. What do you think of the weather? It's cold.
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I didn't really follow the rules. Did you kill your wife? No. Drew, it seems like every day your attorney has to respond to something.
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Right, exactly. What are your thoughts about that? Well, I'm waiting for my eighth grade prom date to show up and say it was a bad kisser.
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I don't think I was, but maybe, I don't know. So you folks have a good day. Did Drew cause all of his own problems? Absolutely.
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What's this? Laughing about it and making light of it and joining the celebrity of my show and other
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shows, I think it repulsed a lot of people. While Drew was joking around with the media, he made no effort to search for his missing
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wife. Drew, a lot of people want to know why you're not helping in the search. People are trying to find out what happened to Stacey, searching for Stacey, trying to,
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you know, any proof of what happened to her, but Drew's there and Drew's there. acting out.
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Drew claimed that Stacy left on her own. He said she had taken cash in a bikini and abandoned her four kids and husband
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to start a new life with a mystery man. But something didn't add up for sister-in-law Norma.
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Why would you adopt two kids and then go off and leave all four for another man?
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That made no sense. It made no sense to the police either, who continued to investigate Drew.
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A family member told them he helped Drew remove a large blue barrel from the house the night Stacey disappeared.
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He's convinced that he helped carry Stacey's body down to Drew's Denali. He never saw her body, never looked in the barrel, but he was overcome with remorse from having done that.
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Another lead police followed Drew's phone. Records showed it was near a canal just miles from Drew and Stacey's home that night.
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There would be no reason for him to be there. Stacey's last night that she was seen.
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I know they searched the canal. I know they did an extensive dive that turned up nothing.
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Still, Drew was the last person known to have seen Stacey. That, coupled with his odd behavior in front of the cameras, led police to turn up the heat on Drew.
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Drew Peterson has gone from a person of interest to clearly being a suspect. That would be enough to make most people stop talking.
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but not drew there's an investigation as there should be so it's just like uh i'm a suspect
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officially but i think it was a suspect from the beginning so just because you're the husband because
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i'm the husband one family believed it was more than that they had been sounding the alarm for
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years it was just that nobody cared to listen coming up behind closed doors drew and kathleen's
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disastrous marriage. He had her by the neck with a knife and he said, I can kill you now and I can
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make it look like an accident and I will get away with that. When Dateline continues.
00:26:16
Sue Doman was conflicted about the disappearance of Stacey Peterson. She knew it was a nightmare for Stacey's family,
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but she also knew it was an opportunity for the truth to finally come out. I saw them searching everywhere, and I was hoping that someone would connect the dots.
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She wanted police and the public to look at another case, the 2004 death of her sister, Kathleen Savio, Drew's third wife.
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Sue never believed her sister died by accident, and she never trusted Drew. I never felt comfortable with him.
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She says her sister was dazzled by Drew when they first met in the early 90s. She said, look, he's a police officer, he's a good guy, and he treats me good.
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I mean, it was everything that a woman would want and more. And how soon before they got married?
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I would say six months. It was very fast. The couple had those two boys, later adopted by Stacy, and moved into this house in Bolingbrook.
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Drew charmed neighbors like Steve Carcerano. Drew came over to our house and said, you know, if there's anything that I ever need in his garage, a lawnmower, a tool, anything, his garage is always open to me.
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So I thought that was very nice. Very nice. Eager to please. That was Drew Peterson.
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Except, Sue says, when Mr. Nice Guy morphed into Mr. Hyde, using insults to manipulate Kathleen.
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He would say that she's crazy. She's looking like a dog. She was ugly. She wasn't a good mom.
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Soon, the cutting words became heated arguments. Drew's brother and sister-in-law, Paul and Norma Peterson.
00:28:03
They were always fighting like cats and dogs. You saw it firsthand? Yeah, we saw it firsthand.
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and they were always mad at each other, and it was always something. The end of the nine-year marriage came one day in 2001.
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It came in the mail. She called me, and she said, I got a letter, and it said he was having an affair, and she was a laughingstock.
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The anonymous letter included this shocking tidbit. Drew's other woman was still in her teens.
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The thing that really stood out with Kathleen was that she was a baby. She said, I don't understand why he would do this.
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Come to find out that was Stacy. Right, right. Stacy, the future Mrs. Peterson. Kathleen demanded a divorce, the house, and half of Drew's pension.
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He okayed the divorce, not the terms. Kathleen stood firm. She was a fighter. She wasn't going to give up.
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She wasn't going to give up. She wasn't going to let him win. She felt like she had the truth on her side.
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When Stacey became pregnant, Kathleen did make one concession, a divorce that allowed Drew to remarry while lawyers worked out the finances.
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Things only got worse. She would call me and say he would be watching her. How was he watching her?
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He would pass by her house and slow down and look out the police window. Kathleen said Drew was intent on terrorizing her.
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Sometimes the fights turned violent when he stopped by. She told her sister that Drew even sneaked into her house and threatened her.
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He had her by the neck with a knife. And he said, I can kill you now and I can make it look like an accident and I will get away with that.
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And did she tell you that? Oh she was hysterical She called the police and he denied the whole thing Still she says Kathleen kept calling Bolingbroke police after every confrontation
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Drew, an officer, was never arrested. It got to be where the police would come over and they would just take Drew in the corner
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and then he would say, how's your day going and this and that. Ah, she's crazy again. Here we go again. They didn't take it seriously.
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In fact, after one fight, it was Kathleen who was charged with domestic battery.
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The record was later expunged. A police spokesman told the Associated Press that officers had followed proper procedure.
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But then Kathleen was found dead in her bathtub. Sue thought there would be a criminal investigation.
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Instead, that inquest found Kathleen's death was an accident. When you heard that news, what did you think?
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Oh, my God. Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. She refused to give up, pestering those in power to look at the case again.
00:31:01
They got tired of me, the Bolingbroke Police Department, and told me if I continued on with this that I would be charged.
00:31:09
The police told you that? Yes. I mean, you're just asking for answers and for people to listen to you.
00:31:14
I bothered him and tried to convince them that he pretty much said that he would kill her and get away with it.
00:31:19
A Bowling Brook police spokesman said he had no knowledge of Sue's calls. He said the department did not investigate Kathleen's death and would have referred any requests to state police.
00:31:31
The bottom line, Sue says, is that neither she nor her sister ever felt heard. Now Stacey was gone.
00:31:39
And now Sue wasn't the only grieving relative who wanted investigators to take a long, hard look at one of their own, Drew Peterson.
00:31:49
Coming up, another gathering storm. I happened to catch a glimpse of a bruise and I'm like, what happened?
00:31:58
Well, Drew pushed me up against the TV. And Stacey shares a secret. She just blurted out, she said, he did it.
00:32:19
Norma Peterson had seen it. Her brother-in-law Drew's marriage to third wife Kathleen Savio was a disaster.
00:32:28
Their breakup worse. Which is why Kathleen's sudden death never sat right. So now you're going to come and tell me that there is a 40-year-old woman
00:32:38
who drowned in a dry bathtub two weeks before you guys were supposed to settle everything in court financially.
00:32:45
It just seemed just too convenient for me. Then she saw the past repeat itself with Drew's next wife, Stacy, his need to control.
00:32:59
How early on in their marriage did she confide in you the problems that they were dealing with?
00:33:05
I knew that they were having difficulty. She didn't hide any of that. He would just call her incessantly.
00:33:10
One time when we were out and I answered the phone and I finally just told him, we're out we're having a girl's day out she saw signs of violence i happened to catch a
00:33:22
glimpse of a bruise and i'm like what happened well drew pushed me up against the
00:33:27
the tv at the time norma didn't report her concerns to police because she didn't think
00:33:33
they'd do anything cassandra says she didn't call them either for the same reason i remember
00:33:38
sitting on the couch one time she came flying out of the room backwards and landed on her back
00:33:43
He threw her. He, like, shoved her. Eventually, Stacy sought help for her troubled marriage.
00:33:51
Stacy approached me after one of our church services, and she said, Neil, I believe that you're the counseling pastor here at the church, right?
00:33:59
Pastor Neil Shorey says he began counseling Drew and Stacy. One day, he says, Drew approached him.
00:34:06
He goes, would you ever do a ride-along with me in my police car? And I said, yeah, why not?
00:34:11
He says Drew drove them around, made small talk, then got to the point. He says, yeah, you know, I really wanted to talk to you about Stacy.
00:34:20
Nails, she really gets crazy. Well, you know, at that time of the month, and I just, he could see my displeasure with this.
00:34:31
It felt so disrespectful. The pastor tried to change the subject. He asked Drew about his faith.
00:34:38
He says Drew replied that he wasn't religious. He says, Neil, I've done a lot of bad things in my life.
00:34:43
And I said, yeah, I mean, we all have, Drew. He sort of looked off into the distance, looked like he went somewhere.
00:34:50
And he said, Neil, well, the difference is I've never felt bad for anything I've done in my life.
00:34:58
And I just thought, that's it. The way he said it was so absent of emotion. And I just knew, don't ask him another question.
00:35:09
The pastor's last conversation with Stacy was in August 2007, two months before she disappeared.
00:35:18
She asked to meet. Something urgent. And I got there. She was already sitting there outside at a cafe just like this.
00:35:26
And she looked concerned and she was quiet. And then very suddenly she just blurted out.
00:35:32
She said, he did it. I said, Stacy, he did what? and she said Drew killed Kathleen. Stacy told the pastor what she knew about that night in 2004.
00:35:46
She said Drew came home late. At first he wouldn't say where he'd been but eventually she said he told
00:35:52
her enough to make it clear he had just murdered his ex Did she want you to go to the police She certainly didn want me to because I asked her and she said I don want you to do anything with my story
00:36:06
I just want you to know. I think things were really dire for her by that point, and I think that she probably sensed
00:36:13
that she was in grave danger. It was the last time he saw her. Just before she disappeared,
00:36:21
Stacey also confided in her sister. Stacey just looked up at me, and she goes, how do you feel about me getting a divorce?
00:36:29
And that's when she told me, if anything happens to me, Drew did it. Days later, Stacey vanished.
00:36:38
Her pastor immediately thought the worst. I absolutely know in my heart what happened to her.
00:36:46
I believe that Drew killed her. He knew he had to tell someone about his last conversation with Stacey.
00:36:53
her story about Kathleen's death. He called a police tip line. I thought, oh my gosh, good, I finally get to tell this story.
00:37:01
So I called them two different times and I left voicemails. Nobody ever came to question you?
00:37:07
Nobody did anything. Until fate intervened, days after Stacey vanished, the pastor was serving on a grand jury,
00:37:16
hearing evidence in a series of unrelated cases before the court. An officer with the state police took the stand.
00:37:23
and referenced Drew Peterson. And I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I raised my hand and I said,
00:37:28
excuse me, excuse me. That stopped the hearing. The pastor met with the officer in the hallway, told his story,
00:37:35
and eventually went down to the station to make a formal statement. I remember writing out my testimony, and then I had a video interview.
00:37:44
And so I definitely knew at that moment they finally had taken it seriously. It was time to unlock the past and unearth the truth.
00:37:56
Coming up, leaks in the bathtub theory of Kathleen's death. As soon as we pulled the pictures of her in the bathtub, we're like, this is wrong.
00:38:06
I don't know of any case where a healthy middle-aged adult has ever drowned in a bathtub.
00:38:12
When Dateline continues. Jim Glasgow remembers when it happened. When everyone started buzzing about Drew Peterson
00:38:31
and the strange case of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. At what point did you learn of Kathleen Savio's death?
00:38:40
Well, that would have been in 2007 when Stacey disappeared. Glasgow is the state's attorney for Will County,
00:38:47
but he wasn't in office when Kathleen died in 2004. You have to understand it was tucked away as an accident
00:38:53
so nobody mentioned it or even knew about it in my administration. So once Stacey went missing, of course, people start saying,
00:39:03
well, wait a minute, his other wife died in the bathtub. And hearing that died in the bathtub.
00:39:09
Yes, well, first of all, I don't know of any case where a healthy middle-aged adult has ever drowned in a bathtub.
00:39:17
The prosecutor called in the old photos taken the day Kathleen's body was found.
00:39:23
As soon as we pulled the pictures of her in the bathtub we're like this is wrong.
00:39:26
Something's very wrong here. Starting with the tub itself. And looking at the size of this tub I mean pretty small. It's 22 inches wide at the bottom and 40
00:39:39
inches long. So think about 22 inches. I mean it's like this. It's just just enough to barely fit in there. It's like a baby tub almost. He found it hard to believe anyone
00:39:50
could have drowned in a tub that size or even slipped in it. I had an opportunity to sit in
00:39:56
the tub myself. How tall are you? Well I'm six foot but but I sat there and my knees were in my
00:40:02
face. So if you were standing up in this tub and you went to slip your front foot would almost
00:40:09
immediately hit the front of the tub and stop your fall. But if Kathleen had fallen, the prosecutor
00:40:15
would at the very least expect to see nearby soap bottles knocked over. He didn't. You see all these
00:40:22
toiletries. Nothing has been disturbed. So if you have a violent fall backwards, you're going to see
00:40:29
that. Then there was the matter of bloodstains inside the tub. In 2004, investigators believed
00:40:35
Kathleen hit her head, fell unconscious and drowned as blood oozed from her wound.
00:40:41
The water drained away, but the blood remained. That didn't make sense to Glasgow.
00:40:47
That shouldn't be there. If it's filled with water, the blood is going to dilute into the water,
00:40:52
and by the time it drains out because the plug isn't 100%, then you're not going to see blood stains on the bottom of the tub.
00:40:59
The position of her body also bothered him. Her feet pushed against the side of the tub.
00:41:06
He thought that odd for a drowning victim. Here, it's almost like there was a struggle.
00:41:12
And then she was... And she's forced into that position. Whereas when you're floating, there'd be no force.
00:41:17
You would just come to rest. We've handed out the petition for exhumation that was filed today.
00:41:22
Days later, he was in front of TV cameras, saying he wanted a new autopsy performed on Kathleen.
00:41:29
Kathleen's family gave him the go-ahead. We were very, very fortunate to have a state's attorney, Jim Glasgow, a very strong man, wouldn't give up, was very determined.
00:41:42
Two weeks after Drew's fourth wife, Stacy, vanished, workers exhumed the body of his third, Kathleen.
00:41:50
The pathologist got to work. He was able to show that there were no bruises on the backs of her arms where if she fell backwards you have a natural instinct to flail your arms And no bruises on her back or on her buttocks
00:42:05
Undercutting the original finding that Kathleen had fallen just before her death.
00:42:10
But there were bruises. She had 16 other fresh bruises on all four planes of her body.
00:42:18
Including her collarbone. There was the two bruises to her clavicle, identical bruises here and here.
00:42:25
How do you get those? Nobody's going to come up and punch you in the clavicles. The prosecutor was convinced Kathleen had not died by accident, and she had not drowned in that tub.
00:42:37
These two bruises would line up with the edge of the toilet rim if you put somebody's face into the toilet.
00:42:44
He said the bruising on Kathleen's body spoke of a struggle. her assailant overcoming and then drowning her in the toilet.
00:42:52
She was likely placed in the tub and hit over the head to make it look like an accident.
00:42:58
You knew right away she had been murdered. And he had a pretty good idea who the killer was.
00:43:05
The prosecutor was building a murder case, photo by photo, story by story. But then someone else was also building a case for all to hear.
00:43:18
Coming up. Did you kill your wife, Stacy? No. So where is Stacy? I'd be looking on a beach.
00:43:28
What do you mean? A beach somewhere, somewhere warm. The state of Illinois was zeroing in on Drew Peterson in late 2007.
00:43:49
Police called him a suspect in his fourth wife's disappearance. Because I'm the husband, you know, I'm the husband, you always look at the husband.
00:43:57
While a prosecutor was eyeing him for the murder of his third and looking harder.
00:44:03
Watch this. Every time Drew mugged for the cameras. I mean, obviously it was a tell to me that this is not an innocent man and he wasn't showing any remorse.
00:44:14
But Drew couldn't stop. The worse things got, the more he talked, including right here to us.
00:44:21
He sat down that November with Today Show co-anchor Hoda Kotb, then a Dateline correspondent.
00:44:26
It's been a couple weeks now since your wife went missing. Correct. He pretty much shrugged when it came to finding Stacy.
00:44:34
I'd be looking on a beach. What do you mean? A beach somewhere, somewhere warm. You think she ran off with someone and is just enjoying herself on a beach somewhere?
00:44:43
I believe that, but I'm guessing. Uh-huh. He said he had no idea why she took off.
00:44:50
He didn't see the point in shedding any tears. Dishing the dirt? That he could do.
00:44:57
Stacey was spoiled. Stacey wanted it, she got it. I mean, she wanted a boob job.
00:45:01
I got her a boob job. She wanted a tummy tuck, she got that. Stacey loved male attention.
00:45:05
And we did all these repairs on her. She wanted it, she got it. In what had become a pattern,
00:45:11
he repeated offensive comments about her, ones he'd already shared with Pastor Neil Shory
00:45:17
and other reporters. Stacey was on an emotional roller coaster from month to month.
00:45:23
And I'm not trying to be funny here, but it seemed to go with her menstrual cycle.
00:45:28
If she was PMSing, she wanted a divorce. And if she wasn't, everything was good and romantic and happy.
00:45:35
Reporter Joe Hosey. Drew had his own narrative where, you know, Stacy was depressed and she was medicated and erratic and it wasn't about him.
00:45:46
Drew didn't have anything kind to say about his ex-wife Kathleen either. She was easily agitated and more demanding.
00:45:53
When you say easily agitated, what do you mean? She would snap quickly. As for her death in that bathtub, he didn't think it was so suspicious.
00:46:02
There was talk in the police department that it was done so well, it looked like it was staged.
00:46:07
It was someone who knew what they were doing. Okay. I'm sure people will say that.
00:46:12
And people would say, who else would know better than you? You're a police officer with many years on the force.
00:46:17
Sure. What do you say to that? I said, I didn't do it. Who do you think might have been?
00:46:22
I don't know. And I don't know if it wasn't an accident. If he was guilty of anything here, he said,
00:46:29
it was choosing the wrong woman more than once. I want you to be 100% honest with me.
00:46:35
Okay, no, I'm going to lie to you. I want you to be 100% honest, seriously. Did you kill your wife, Stacy?
00:46:42
No. What about your wife, Kathy? No. Did you have anything to do with the death of Kathy?
00:46:49
Nothing. Nothing at all? Nope. Someone said either you're guilty of both of these or you have the worst luck in the world.
00:47:00
You just happen to marry two women. One is missing and one who's dead. Correct. Which is it? You just have bad luck?
00:47:08
I guess this is bad luck. Drew Peterson, the victim. It was a theme he returned to the following year when he sat down with us again.
00:47:19
By this point, a new autopsy revealed Kathleen's death wasn't an accident. It was a homicide.
00:47:26
Drew didn't buy it. I still don't get how someone who's healthy, able-bodied dies in a bathtub.
00:47:33
Well, it happens, and everybody says it's impossible, but I guess if you look at statistics from the National Safety Council,
00:47:44
it shows that people do die in the bathtubs. He also didn't buy that story from Pastor Neil Shorey.
00:47:50
He said he never confessed anything to Stacey about Kathleen's death. Let me just ask you flat out then.
00:47:56
Did you ever tell Stacey that you killed Kathleen? Never, never. So if she told her preacher that, she was telling a lie?
00:48:05
If she told him that, yes, she was lying. That's right, he said. Stacy was a liar and a cheat.
00:48:12
She had run out and left him in a world of trouble. He had no choice but to defend himself.
00:48:18
And the longer she's gone, the more he seems to relish the attention. I mean, he's on national television, criticizing his dead and missing wives.
00:48:31
I mean, more than anything, it was hard to believe. Do you enjoy all of this, the television interviews, the attention, the, Drew, can I talk to you?
00:48:42
Sometimes. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. What do you like about it? I get to go to New York. I get to go to Hollywood.
00:48:49
I get to meet famous, exciting people like yourself and just traveling. And I don't like the constant looks in the stores and stuff, that type of thing.
00:49:03
Are you a good con? Am I a good con? I believe I can be, yeah. But I'm not conning anybody about this.
00:49:09
So how does one know when you're conning and when you're not, if you're good at it?
00:49:13
I guess you don't. I guess you don't. For more than a year, while investigators plugged away, Drew Peterson spent his days telling everyone he was innocent.
00:49:23
Just working through the days. And that the world just had to believe him. But those days were numbered.
00:49:31
Coming up, a sister's desperate call. What'd you do to my sister? Not a thing. And Drew Peterson's bizarre walk of shame.
00:49:41
He swears a negative. How did he get? When Dateline continues. Despite Drew Peterson's claim that Stacy was probably sitting on a beach somewhere,
00:50:03
her sister Cassandra continued to look elsewhere. She focused on the dirty, murky waters of a canal a few miles from Drew and Stacy's house
00:50:12
where it had been widely reported Drew might have been that night. This particular waterway was where Drew's cell phone was pinging.
00:50:21
So there's many thoughts that she was thrown in the canal. Cassandra believed her sister's body was here, somewhere.
00:50:29
She told me that if something happened to her, that Drew did something to her. That Drew did it to find her.
00:50:38
So that was Cassandra's mission. find Stacy. Even after police stopped searching the waters, volunteers, some on the force,
00:50:47
stepped in to help her. She was able to get sonar equipment to scour the muddy bottom of the canal.
00:50:53
In several places and at different times, she says sonar picked up images of what looked like a body.
00:51:00
She was convinced it was Stacy. Police were not. I mean, stuff shifts and moves.
00:51:05
Are you afraid you may never really know the answer? Oh, I'm going to know the answer because I'm not going to stop.
00:51:14
And then one day in 2009, her mounting frustration turned to fury when she turned on the radio.
00:51:22
Well, different things happen throughout our relationship. I just stopped what I was doing and I said, forget this.
00:51:29
It was Drew joking with his go-to radio host, the guy known as the Man Cow. and hearing him there on the radio show and he's joking with the DJs.
00:51:40
It's just disgusting. Cassandra called in. And they're waving to me, you know, with a note.
00:51:47
Stacy's sister's on the phone. Well, of course I want to hear from her. This is about you, Drew.
00:51:51
What'd you do to my sister? Not a thing. You killed her after she got off the phone.
00:51:54
I'm trying to stay. Please know where you were and what you did. You will pay. Drew didn't want to hear it.
00:51:59
His attitude was hang up on her. annoyed, bored, take another call. That was Drew's reaction.
00:52:10
Just a few days after Cassandra confronted him, Drew Peterson was making news again.
00:52:15
And we begin with the arrest of former Illinois police officer Drew Peterson. Drew Peterson was arrested not in connection with Stacey's disappearance,
00:52:25
but for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, three years earlier. prosecutor jim glasgow knew this would be no slam dunk when i went to indict this case
00:52:37
10 of the 12 attorneys that were with me said don't do it why because it was mostly
00:52:42
circumstantial prove it and i knew we could i just knew we could and so we went ahead
00:52:49
normally this is the walk of shame where the accused shuffles along head down, ignoring reporters' questions.
00:52:58
But not in this case. When reporters shouted questions to Peterson, his face lit up as he joked about his current situation.
00:53:10
Odd, bizarre, it appears it was just Drew being Drew. And within no time, even from jail,
00:53:19
he was out there again for all to hear. Drew? Yeah, what's up? Did you call Collect Drew?
00:53:24
I call Collect Live from the Will County Adult Detention Facility in Joliet, Illinois.
00:53:29
Even behind bars, Drew Peterson continued to call in to talk radio. I think I asked him, if he gets clear of all this, what's he going to do?
00:53:37
You know, he was enjoying the showbiz side of this. And I think he said, well, I'd like to try stand-up.
00:53:44
And I said, well, go ahead. I'm thinking what we should do is, like, when the council go visit with you, let's do that.
00:53:50
He did some of the jokes on the show. some of them were I mean just they they they cringeworthy it just creepy it just weird man this guy sitting in jail calling our stupid Brother these are strange days we live in okay
00:54:06
And the fact is, it doesn't matter what you've done anymore. He was famous. Oh, no, he was better than that.
00:54:13
He was infamous. Peterson's lead attorney, Joel Brodsky, also was not one to shy away from the media.
00:54:19
I might need a job after this. The radio host says reporters hung on his every word.
00:54:27
In my opinion, the lawyer, Joel Brodsky, was interested in promoting his name. Everybody knows his name in Chicago now.
00:54:33
We didn't before. It worked. Peterson now had a whole team of defense lawyers. Attorney Steven Greenberg was the last to join
00:54:41
and says he had a very different approach to Drew speaking with the media. Once I was in the case, there was no more of the shenanigans.
00:54:48
There was no more calling the media or speaking to anyone. As both sides got ready for trial, prosecutors faced a major hurdle.
00:54:58
They wanted to use witnesses to recount things both Kathleen and Stacy said to them about Drew.
00:55:04
It's called hearsay testimony, but it's rarely allowed. What Drew Peterson knew from being a policeman is that
00:55:11
that would be a hearsay statement that would die with the victim. Prosecutor Jim Glasgow was going to challenge that.
00:55:19
It was just a waiting game, and I thought, if it's not going to be allowed, what are we going to do?
00:55:26
I didn't know what would happen next. Coming up, did the missing Stacy help get justice for Kathleen?
00:55:36
She gave me details about the night that Kathleen died. Drew came back into the house wearing all black.
00:55:42
And the dumbest thing I've ever seen in a courtroom. Time did not diminish the media hunger for Drew Peterson
00:56:01
as he went on trial for the murder of his ex-wife Kathleen. This is a complicated case.
00:56:07
I think that the media circus makes it harder for everybody in a case like this.
00:56:11
Defense attorney Steve Greenberg. I think it's harder for jurors to acquit somebody where the public so overwhelmingly wants to see that person convicted.
00:56:22
And there's no doubt that the public certainly wanted Drew Peterson to get convicted.
00:56:27
It had been eight years since Kathleen Savio died and five years since Stacey went missing.
00:56:34
And prosecutors had won a big pretrial victory after the court made an unusual ruling.
00:56:40
It said the state could use hearsay witnesses to tell the jury what Kathleen and Stacey told them about Peterson.
00:56:48
Prosecutor Jim Glasgow's strategy would rely heavily on that. But first, he would paint a portrait of Drew Peterson as a controlling and violent husband.
00:56:58
She had a number of incidents with Drew where he was very physical with her. And then there was another time where he broke into her house and put a knife to her neck.
00:57:07
Kathleen's sister Sue recounted some of those incidents and you told them about all the times you heard your sister being abused.
00:57:16
Yes, I didn't let Drew make me uncomfortable. I felt him staring at me, but I would not let him get to me.
00:57:25
I wanted them to know the truth. As for motive, prosecutors say Peterson's was financial.
00:57:34
He didn't want to give Kathleen the house nor half his pension. Push was coming to shove with that property settlement,
00:57:40
and he did not want her to get any of his pension. The big twist in the trial was that prosecutors used the words of one wife, Stacy,
00:57:49
who was still missing, to help make the case that Peterson killed his ex-wife Kathleen.
00:57:56
Jurors heard blockbuster testimony from the state's star witness, Pastor Neil Shorey about those conversations he had at a local Starbucks.
00:58:05
The coffee shop turned confessional for Stacy, who told him about the night Kathleen died.
00:58:12
Drew went out of the house and then came back into the house wearing all black and carrying a duffel bag with women's clothes that weren't hers,
00:58:19
dumped it in the washing machine, took his clothes off, and then told her, the police will be here soon.
00:58:25
And if you tell them what I tell you to tell them, then this would be the perfect crime.
00:58:33
And she did exactly what he said. With the cops questioning her, withdrew aloud to sit right next to her in the same room.
00:58:43
Controlling her even in that time where she's basically giving him an alibi. Start to finish.
00:58:50
The pastor's story stunned the courtroom for sure. But the defense responded that a good story is not evidence,
00:58:58
insisting the state's case was purely circumstantial. The prosecutors in this trial were unable to say how he got in the house,
00:59:07
when he got in the house, how he supposedly drowned her. They didn't find any defensive wounds on him.
00:59:13
They didn't find any DNA under her fingernails like she had done anything. There was just absolutely no who, what, where, when, how in this case.
00:59:25
After first attacking the lack of physical evidence, the defense argued the hearsay testimony was not reliable,
00:59:33
nothing more than rumor and innuendo. The defense also denied Peterson was abusive to women,
00:59:39
as his sister-in-law had testified. In all the heated confrontations between Peterson and Kathleen,
00:59:46
he was never charged with anything. But Kathleen was charged with domestic battery. The record was later expunged.
00:59:55
Are you going to tell me you don believe that a police officer calling his own police force to come investigate They not going to say of course we believe the guy that works with us
01:00:05
I'm going to say that the police had a job to investigate. They investigated. And based on that investigation, they brought charges.
01:00:13
As for the pastor, the state star witness, the defense said his testimony rang hollow.
01:00:20
The pastor's story was, and his testimony, was pretty damning. But it wasn't enough. There were so many problems with that story.
01:00:30
The biggest problem, defense attorney Greenberg said, is the idea that Peterson, a police officer,
01:00:36
would take Kathleen's clothing back to his house that night. If you had someone's clothing and you had to take it because it was evidence,
01:00:44
you're not going to bring it into your own house. If someone finds that dead person in the middle of the night, where's the first place they're going to come looking?
01:00:53
Truce House. As for the credibility of these witnesses, the defense questioned their motivation, suggesting it was fame, not the truth.
01:01:03
Almost all of these people who came forward after Stacey disappeared first did so by calling the media, not the police.
01:01:10
none of them came forward, none of them, out of the good of their heart or out of concern for Kathleen or concern for Stacey.
01:01:20
None of them. Right down the line. Then, at the last minute, the defense called one more witness, Harry Smith.
01:01:28
Harry Smith is a divorce attorney, and he had represented Kathleen Savio. He was originally supposed to be a prosecution witness.
01:01:38
But then... The defense said, we are going to call with you, which I couldn't fathom why or on what basis they would do that.
01:01:45
Turns out Smith had also talked to Stacey. She had called him because she was considering divorcing Peterson.
01:01:53
But there was something else the defense wanted the jury to hear. She said, can I get more money out of Drew if we tell either the police or the cops how he killed Kathy?
01:02:04
The reason that the defense called Harry Smith was to muddy up Stacey, that she was a gold digger, and that she was trying to plant all this phony information to get more money out of Drew.
01:02:15
But the move backfired. The jury heard Smith repeat the story of Drew confessing to Stacey that he killed Kathleen.
01:02:24
And this time there was more. Details about Drew listening in on the phone call.
01:02:29
Harry Smith said that Stacey called me and she said she knew Drew had committed this murder.
01:02:36
And I could hear Drew in the background yelling at her. And that was the last I heard of Stacey.
01:02:43
It's not so much what she said, but it's him yelling in the background, I think, that was almost more damning.
01:02:51
Disastrous. Here was a defense witness reinforcing the pastor's story. Greenberg blamed lead attorney Joel Brodsky for gambling by putting Smith on the stand.
01:03:02
Did you know he was going to say this? Sure, we knew it. And I think what's widely recognized as sort of on the Mount Rushmore of legal mistakes,
01:03:12
it's the dumbest thing I've ever seen in a courtroom. As for Drew Peterson, the man who loved to talk,
01:03:17
he decided not to take the stand in his own defense. After two days of deliberations, the jury came back.
01:03:26
Drew Peterson guilty of first-degree murder. Greenberg said the verdict was sealed when Smith took the stand.
01:03:34
Did you know in that moment we just lost it? When he got called, I actually crawled under the table.
01:03:40
I didn't want any part of it. It was tragic to me because, frankly, we were winning.
01:03:46
And then that bonehead move takes place. Brodsky insists Greenberg is lying. He says all the defense attorneys agreed to put Smith on the stand.
01:03:58
Whatever happened with the defense, prosecutor Jim Glasgow felt his team did everything right.
01:04:05
It was obviously the best verdict I've ever gotten in my career, and because it was against all odds.
01:04:14
Kathleen's family had waited eight years. I wanted to look at him good for the last time and say,
01:04:20
gotcha, babe. Peterson was sentenced to 38 years in prison, but it wouldn't be long before his name surfaced again, this time in a new murder plot.
01:04:34
Coming up, Drew Peterson's son gives his verdict. Either he has the worst luck in the world or he's responsible for murdering two women.
01:04:43
And growing up, Peterson? We've been through the worst thing possible and had the odds against us.
01:04:49
When Dateline continues. In 2014, two years after he put Drew Peterson away for murder,
01:05:07
state's attorney Jim Glasgow got a letter from an inmate serving time with Peterson.
01:05:12
We sent a team down to interview him, and his story just rang true. His story? Drew Peterson was trying to hire a hitman to kill prosecutor Glasgow.
01:05:22
They put a wire on the inmate and had him play along with Peterson. So how long before you think you're going to take care of this?
01:05:30
It'll be done by Christmas. If you say, if you say, it'll be a nice Christmas. It's only what you say.
01:05:41
Basically, go ahead and kill him. That's what you wanted, right? It ain't no turning back.
01:05:49
Okay. If I get some booze in here, we'll sell it right now. Peterson was charged with solicitation of murder tried and convicted Another 40 years added to his sentence
01:06:05
When he was arrested, he left behind six children, including two teenage boys with Kathleen and a five-year-old son and four-year-old daughter with Stacy.
01:06:15
I'm not going to have them be split up, you know, during my siblings. His son, Stephen, 29 years old with his own baby at the time,
01:06:25
stepped in to care for his younger siblings. We always thought my dad would get out and he'd beat these charges and he'd get them back.
01:06:32
So it was always a temporary thing at first. And then as time went on, it just obviously became permanent.
01:06:40
So I committed to it. And again, they were my siblings. And as time went on, they were my kids.
01:06:47
you know. Despite their notorious father, Steven was determined to give the kids a stable home.
01:06:54
What I wanted to do with them and that was to give them the most normal life. So yeah, we did
01:06:58
travel sports, you know, Girl Scouts, all that kind of thing. Every kind of sport we probably
01:07:04
played or tried at least once. And then with the older ones, it was college visits and,
01:07:09
you know, making sure they had everything they needed. Ironically, Steven says he had an excellent
01:07:14
role model. I would say for the first 28 years of my life, I had a great dad. Yeah, you question
01:07:20
his decisions with women and, you know, getting married quickly, but if there's anything any of
01:07:26
his kids ever needed, he would do it. Looking back, he never could have imagined what was to
01:07:30
come when he first met his dad's new girlfriend, Stacy. And he's like, I just want to say, you know,
01:07:35
she's a little younger. I'm like, okay, you know, not thinking she's 17. She was a child. You know,
01:07:42
There's no way around that. Yeah, she was four years younger than me. But they seemed happy, so Stephen supported his dad.
01:07:49
Then Stacy disappeared, and his dad was a suspect. You couldn't wrap your head around the fact that he had something to do with it.
01:07:56
It just doesn't happen. Your brain doesn't work that way. Obviously, things got a little crazy, more media, more press, all that kind of the whole circus started.
01:08:04
Stephen, like much of America, was not impressed by the Drew Show. Every time he talked from the start, people just started to hate him.
01:08:14
You know, if you're talking about women's menstruation, no one's going to take your side.
01:08:18
You know, no one's going to like you. I said, Dad, it's not working. Don't do it.
01:08:22
And, you know, his response is, oh, no, it's helping. Stephen wanted to believe his dad that Stacy had walked out, that Kathleen's death had been an accident.
01:08:32
But after his father's murder conviction, he began to accept the painful reality.
01:08:37
Knowing that the guy you looked up for your entire life, who did give me 28 amazing years,
01:08:43
is capable of something like that is very difficult to wrap your head around. And, you know, it doesn't come overnight.
01:08:53
Again, either he has the worst luck in the world or, you know, he's responsible for murdering two women.
01:09:01
As for his siblings, they all have different opinions about their father. We don't really talk about, hey, what do you think?
01:09:08
You know, do you think Dad's guilty or innocent? Kathleen's kids have visited their dad in prison.
01:09:15
Stacy's had been too young until now. Maybe they're at the point where they do want to go see him
01:09:20
because they know he's getting older and they do want to maybe even ask him what happened.
01:09:26
But now everybody's old enough where they can make those own decisions. For his part, Stephen hasn't seen his dad in years,
01:09:33
but he talks to him on the phone. I'll talk to him on the holidays and when he calls and we pass around the phone and everybody says hello.
01:09:41
But a lot of times when he talks, it's not the same guy that I grew up with. Despite everything, Stephen is proud of how the Peterson kids have thrived.
01:09:52
The older two, they're in their late 20s and entrepreneurs and owning businesses.
01:09:58
And then the younger ones are just out of high school and one's still in high school.
01:10:02
And they're finding their way and what they're going to do. You know, we'd been through the worst thing possible and had the odds against us,
01:10:09
but we all kind of stayed together and were there for each other. Drew's brother, Paul, has also accepted the harsh truth about someone he once so admired.
01:10:21
Now you know the worst of your brother. Right. And to have that, had to come to terms with that.
01:10:28
Oh, yeah. Yeah, what a nightmare. He's still my brother. still love him, but I can't forgive him for what he did.
01:10:36
Do you feel like he is where he should be? Where he deserves to be, absolutely. What about the man at the center of all this?
01:10:45
Has he changed? Since his conviction, we've heard little from Drew Peterson. But now he's filed a new appeal and is breaking his silence.
01:10:56
Talking once again to Dateline. Coming up... All these people are out looking for a place I know she's not.
01:11:05
Drew Peterson's first network interview in more than 10 years. You may be here for the rest of your life.
01:11:12
Maybe, but I may not be. Even after all these years, Cassandra has not given up.
01:11:30
She still searches these waters at every opportunity for her sister Stacy. It's just like I'm never going to stop until I bring my sister home.
01:11:41
So, it's just never ending. Last month, the FBI sent divers into the canal to investigate a site flagged by Cassandra and her team.
01:11:52
She said sonar picked up what looked to be a body. The FBI found nothing. You've got to be frustrated.
01:12:00
I'm very frustrated. I know Drew's in jail, but with everything I've had since the beginning, I should have had justice first.
01:12:10
In fact, Drew Peterson, who Cassandra blames for her sister's disappearance, says she is wasting her time.
01:12:17
At a prison we were asked not to name, Peterson, now 67, sat down with us for his first network interview in more than a decade.
01:12:27
Still sticking to his story, Stacy's not dead. She walked out on him 14 years ago.
01:12:33
And there was never any point in looking for her now or back in 2007. All these people are out looking for a place I know she's not.
01:12:44
How do you know that then? Well, unless somebody else threw her in a field somewhere, but I didn't.
01:12:53
So why should I go look for something? How do you know she's not in a field somewhere?
01:12:57
How do you know she's not in a canal somewhere unless you know exactly where she is?
01:13:01
I don't know. I don't know for sure. But I would believe she ran off. There's no evidence to show that a ticket was purchased,
01:13:13
that she could have actually even gone abroad or anywhere. The more obvious is that she is somewhere in a canal or is in a field somewhere 14 years later.
01:13:28
Not really. How many women show up years later after running off? A lot. It's in the news all the time.
01:13:36
I haven't seen those stories. I haven't reported on those stories. Usually it's the body is exhumed 14 years later.
01:13:42
I've seen those stories, women coming back. So you're just not paying attention.
01:13:46
The fact that no one has even heard from her in all these years, not surprising to him.
01:13:54
Where would she go and why would she leave her kids for so long and never call the people she loved and say, I'm okay?
01:14:02
She was a young girl. All of a sudden she saddled with four kids. It was too much for her.
01:14:07
She loved those kids. She adopted Kathleen's kids. It was still too much for her. Plus I was getting older.
01:14:15
Here's a young beautiful woman married to an old man. As for that haunting conversation Cassandra says she had with Stacy, she said if something
01:14:25
happens to me, Drew did it. I never heard that before unless she most recently making it up So everybody making things up A lot of people are mostly Stacy Stacy not here to make things up anymore She already did her damage
01:14:42
Or maybe you did the damage. Nope. Did nothing but take care of her. Many have said that if Stacy hadn't disappeared, you would have gotten away with Kathleen's murder.
01:14:52
What do you say to that? I'd say I didn't do it. You didn't do what? kill Kathleen or make Stacy disappear. So Stacy disappearing, I think, just prompted this
01:15:06
frenzy that was created by the media. I'm going to come camp myself in front of your house and
01:15:15
see if you like it. A frenzy he admits he helped fuel. You've always made light of things, including
01:15:21
the death of Kathleen Savio, your third wife, the disappearance of Stacy Peterson,
01:15:28
your fourth wife. Right. You still in here laughing about that? No. It's just when you put a camera in
01:15:35
front of an obnoxious guy, he's going to say obnoxious things. So you believe you're, you know
01:15:39
you're an obnoxious guy. Oh yeah, without a doubt. Do you regret being that guy who was in front of
01:15:44
the cameras and parading and doing the Drew sideshow that we all saw? The thing is that was all
01:15:49
forced by my then attorney, Joel Brodsky. He put me out there in front of the cameras,
01:15:59
and he said to me, he said, if you're innocent, just go out and show me you didn't do nothing wrong and be you.
01:16:07
And I was. Brodsky is on the record saying he never pushed Peterson to go out in front of the cameras,
01:16:15
and that courts have rejected Peterson's claims that he was ineffective at trial.
01:16:20
Still in court bilings, Peterson blames his murder conviction on his attorney. He also blames what he calls a tainted jury
01:16:27
and an overzealous prosecutor. At the end of the day, you're saying then, everybody else is lying.
01:16:34
Everybody else is making up facts. The jury didn't do their job. It seems everybody else but you is to blame here, Drew.
01:16:42
The prosecution's making up facts. This prosecution staged a prosecution with Kathy.
01:16:52
They took an accident and staged a prosecution. Everybody's twisting it to make me look bad.
01:16:59
Okay, they're twisting it to make their prosecution, or what they're trying to say, against me work.
01:17:06
Peterson continues to deny he ever abused his two wives You weren a controlling husband You weren threatening You weren abusive to both Kathleen and Stacey Correct What kind of husband were you
01:17:20
I was a loving husband. Okay, I was, what can I say? I was a good husband, a good provider.
01:17:29
If you were such a good husband and such a good provider, in interviews that we did with you,
01:17:33
you talked about Kathleen having mood swings. Stacy, you said, had mood swings that were tied to her menstrual cycle.
01:17:40
How about the way you talk about women? How do you justify talking about, these are the mothers of your children, the way you did?
01:17:50
Right. You don't see anything wrong with that? Everybody complains about their wives.
01:17:56
But one thing he doesn't complain about is the fact his children grew up motherless.
01:18:02
They grew up without a mother. My son, Steve, took over. And I think he raised them pretty well.
01:18:10
They're all polite. They're all good-mannered. They're all hard-working kids. So it's just like having a mother, isn't it?
01:18:20
And all it's cracked up to be, maybe. Really? Really. Because you could have a bad mother, right?
01:18:29
By the sounds of it, these two women, Kathleen and Stacey, were extraordinary mothers.
01:18:36
Depends who you're talking to. Peterson has just filed a new round of appeals, even brought the papers with him to this interview.
01:18:44
He's hoping to overturn his convictions for Kathleen's murder and the intended hit on Prosecutor Glasgow.
01:18:51
We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. You may be here for the rest of your life.
01:18:56
Maybe, but I may not be. Who knows? As for Stacey Peterson's case, the prosecutor says it is still open and Drew's the main suspect.
01:19:08
If the prosecutor walked in right now and said, Drew, I will give you a deal. If you tell us what happened to Stacey, where the body is, you'll get no additional jail time.
01:19:19
What would you say to him? No, I got nothing else to tell you. I got nothing else to tell you.
01:19:26
That's no surprise to those who want to honor Stacy and Kathleen. They're focused on building a legacy from what happened to these two women,
01:19:35
the mistakes made and the ways to avoid them. I know that you've been very frank about feeling like you in some way failed Stacy.
01:19:44
Oh absolutely Absolutely I failed her because I didn know what to do But I know that I honored her by doing what I done since And I been very blessed to be able to help women from all over
01:20:01
the country with this new information that I have to recognize the signs of domestic violence.
01:20:08
Neal Shorey works in part with Drew Peterson's sister-in-law, Norma. She's the executive
01:20:13
director of a non-profit called Document the Abuse. The group helps victims create written
01:20:19
records of their abuse that can be used in court. So now that becomes the legacy that I want to see
01:20:26
for both Kathleen and for Stacey. That they not will only be Drew Ederson's wives. They will be
01:20:34
the reason that other women and other victims will be able to hopefully survive these types of
01:20:40
situations. Kathleen's sister, Sue Doman, also advocates for victims of domestic violence by
01:20:48
telling Kathleen's story. Everybody wanted to hear her story and it gave me great relief because
01:20:55
I wanted to help someone else in her name because it wasn't fair for her. She had no voice.
01:21:04
And you still grieve every day your loss? Every single day. You feel her there beside you? I do.
01:21:10
I feel her right there with me. And I say, hi. Hi, Kathleen. I know you're here.
01:21:17
I got you. We got them. You had a death that you could mourn, a body that you could say goodbye to.
01:21:26
But Stacy's family and her sister Cassandra, they don't have that closure. No, they don't.
01:21:32
And I couldn't imagine what they're going through. I just couldn't imagine that.
01:21:36
Chance, ready? Justice for one family, not yet for the other. Justice is something Cassandra thinks about but is not obsessed with.
01:21:46
Her obsession is to complete the mission she embarked on almost 15 years ago. You don't realize the love that I lost. My sister was my love. My friend, my mom,
01:22:01
my best friend, and I will find her. And I'll bring her home. And that's my promise.
01:22:14
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.