Infamous

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Speaker 5 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 6 Tonight on Dateline, Drew Peterson, convicted of murdering one wife and a suspect in the disappearance of another. After 14 years, there are still so many secrets.

Speaker 6 And now Drew Peterson is talking again.

Speaker 8 My sister was my love.

Speaker 8 My best friend.

Speaker 10 Stacy told me if anything happens to me, Drew did it.

Speaker 11 Once Stacy went missing, of course, people started saying, well, wait a minute, his other wife died in the bathtub.

Speaker 12 He says, Neil, I've done a lot of bad things in my life.

Speaker 13 I've always been my dad.

Speaker 13 Either he has the worst luck in the world or he's responsible for murdering two women.

Speaker 14 I wanted them to know.

Speaker 15 the truth. I was talking to this lady.

Speaker 16 She's prettier than you.

Speaker 18 It was almost as if he considered himself like a celebrity.

Speaker 19 It didn't do it.

Speaker 20 You didn't do what?

Speaker 21 Kill Kathleen or make Stacy disappear.

Speaker 20 So everybody's making things up.

Speaker 22 A lot of people are.

Speaker 20 You may be here for the rest of your life.

Speaker 23 Maybe, but I may not be.

Speaker 8 What keeps me going is my love, my heart. I will find her and I'll bring her home.

Speaker 24 And that's my promise.

Speaker 3 Here's Natalie Morales with Infamous.

Speaker 26 I just think about, like, is this ever going to end? Am I ever going to be able to find her and, you know, get the closure I need?

Speaker 20 In these murky, churning waters, a sister searches for answers.

Speaker 26 I'm going to keep doing this every day I can and every day I can afford until the day I die, until I can bring her home.

Speaker 20 Solving that mystery would close the circle on a notorious and sensational sensational case, the disappearance of Stacey Peterson.

Speaker 20 It brought the world's attention to a quiet bedroom community outside Chicago and put a megaphone in front of one of this country's most infamous villains.

Speaker 30 Taylor Five is over here.

Speaker 20 Drew Peterson.

Speaker 16 I can't stand here and cry for you.

Speaker 13 Would that make everybody happy?

Speaker 18 I never covered a story like Drew Peterson. I don't think I ever will again.
It was crazy.

Speaker 30 I'm going to come camp myself in front of your house and see if you like it.

Speaker 31 As this thing went further and further, I was shocked that he kept telling jokes.

Speaker 23 And at a certain point, you have to wonder,

Speaker 5 does he really have a lawyer?

Speaker 6 Please leave me alone.

Speaker 33 Please don't get involved in my little world.

Speaker 14 Why did it take someone to go missing to you to look at this?

Speaker 11 This isn't an accident. This is a cold-blooded murder.

Speaker 33 I'm really being portrayed as a monster here, and nobody's defending me.

Speaker 20 And now, more than a decade later, from inside prison, Drew Peterson agreed to sit down for an exclusive new interview.

Speaker 20 Can you understand why people may have been disgusted by the way you talked about your wives when one of them is missing, the other one is dead? Sure.

Speaker 22 Sure. I was being me.

Speaker 4 And if somebody don't like it, too bad.

Speaker 20 Why should people, do you think,

Speaker 20 have to hear or listen to what you're saying today?

Speaker 34 There's so much that hasn't been heard that everybody on the opposition, on the prosecution, gets to talk, call me names, say things, and I'm left in a cage.

Speaker 21 And I don't get to say publicly what I need to say, what needs to be said.

Speaker 20 But most important, at the heart of it all, is the story of two women, two moms, whose lives are now forever inextricably linked.

Speaker 20 What happened to Stacy had everything to do with what happened to Kathleen.

Speaker 12 On every level, and I think that their stories will be forever told together.

Speaker 20 The story began in late October 2007 in Bowling Brook, Illinois, 30 miles outside Chicago.

Speaker 10 We had dinner, we watched a movie.

Speaker 20 Cassandra Kales vividly remembers the last day she spent with her older sister, Stacey Peterson. It was just a simple evening in.

Speaker 8 She was going to call me

Speaker 35 when she woke up in the morning.

Speaker 20 When she said, I'll call you in the morning.

Speaker 24 That never happened.

Speaker 20 It was odd, to be sure, but the 23-year-old mother had a lot on her plate. Perhaps Stacey was just too busy, even for Cassandra.

Speaker 20 But after waiting hours, Cassandra picked up her phone and dialed Stacy.

Speaker 8 Her phone's never off.

Speaker 10 I don't care if she's washing the kids or doing anything.

Speaker 8 She'll answer, hey, I'm going to call you back.

Speaker 8 And she does. But there was, it went to voicemail, and that's when my gut started going.

Speaker 20 As the hours ticked by and still no word from Stacy, Cassandra became increasingly alarmed. She reached out to other family members, like stepsister Carrie Simmons.

Speaker 36 Right away, when she said that she couldn't get a hold of her, we knew something was wrong. We all knew how close

Speaker 36 Cassandra and Stacy were. And of course, we all felt

Speaker 36 the panic and the anxiety of where is she.

Speaker 20 Cassandra called Stacy's husband, Drew, a Bowling Brook police sergeant. He said he hadn't seen Stacy since early that morning when he got home after his overnight shift.

Speaker 20 As day turned to night, family friend Pam Bosco joined the efforts to try to locate Stacy. Then it goes into the morning hours and stuff.
We still can't find her.

Speaker 20 And I remember telling Cassandra at that point, you know, go to the police.

Speaker 20 And I think she placed the report at that point. She didn't let up.
She went from that morning with me all the way through

Speaker 20 the next morning trying to find Stacey.

Speaker 20 Cassandra filed a report with the state police, and the family fanned out to spread the word.

Speaker 20 Stacy Peterson was missing.

Speaker 20 Within days, a massive volunteer effort to find Stacy was underway.

Speaker 36 There was just an overflow of people that wanted to donate, wanted to bring in supplies, wanted to help search.

Speaker 20 Searchers blanketed the area.

Speaker 36 We had dozens of people that would come out every day.

Speaker 36 I think we started there in Bowling Brook and then we would pick different places to meet wherever we decided we were searching, combing fields and woods and rivers and take the boats and use the dogs.

Speaker 20 As the search for Stacy continued, stories began to emerge about her marriage, her much older husband, and one of her husband's ex-wives. Stories that would soon transfix the country.

Speaker 6 In his mid-40s when they met, Drew Peterson was old enough to be Stacy's father.

Speaker 20 When we come back, we were shocked who this man was and how lovey-dovey he was to this girl.

Speaker 37 For me, it was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 29 Just kind of young.

Speaker 8 And soon, Stacy was playing house in a new apartment everything that she could dream of and i'm like where the frick did this come from

Speaker 20 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. She was very pretty.
She was kind. She was gentle.

Speaker 20 She was a loving mother, loving sister. She was just a wonderful person.

Speaker 36 She just had the biggest heart. She would do anything for you.
Even though she had so much on her plate, she would drop everything and run to help

Speaker 36 whoever needed anything.

Speaker 20 But at the end of October 2007, it was Stacy's family dropping everything in a desperate bid to find her. The sense of urgency was almost crippling for her sister, Cassandra.

Speaker 10 I was up for like almost three days,

Speaker 10 and I actually had to go to the doctor, and they had to give me a shot to get me to relax.

Speaker 20 The sisters shared a special bond. I know that you guys didn't have it easy growing up, right?

Speaker 24 No, we didn't have it easy growing up at all.

Speaker 20 And you really looked out for each other.

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 20 Did you guys talk about your hopes and dreams, what you wanted someday?

Speaker 26 Not really.

Speaker 36 It was just

Speaker 8 surviving that day.

Speaker 9 And,

Speaker 10 you know, are we going to eat? Are we going to be fed?

Speaker 24 You know?

Speaker 20 Cassandra doesn't like to talk about their childhood. Their parents divorced when they were young, and Stacy and Cassandra lived mostly with their father.

Speaker 20 Their mother, who suffered from alcoholism and depression, was in and out of their lives. Strangely, when the girls were teenagers, she also disappeared and wasn't heard from again.

Speaker 20 Stacy, only 17 months older, kept a motherly eye on Cassandra. So Stacy was the one who kind of took over that responsibility in that role?

Speaker 29 Absolutely.

Speaker 8 She was on a mission to be better than what

Speaker 8 we had gone through.

Speaker 20 It appeared that Stacy was well on her way to accomplishing that mission. She was preparing to graduate from high school early.

Speaker 20 and was working at a hotel to earn enough money to continue her education. And there was someone new in her life.
A guy.

Speaker 29 She was like, I go see my friend Drew. I'm like, who's Drew? And she's like, oh,

Speaker 29 he's just a friend.

Speaker 20 And she was only 16. He was.

Speaker 29 She was 16, yes.

Speaker 20 Because I was 15, yes.

Speaker 20 Cassandra says everything changed as soon as Stacey turned 17 and had graduated from high school.

Speaker 7 She's living in an apartment.

Speaker 8 Fully furnished leather furniture, everything that she could dream of.

Speaker 24 And then here I am, like, where the frick did this come from?

Speaker 20 No way Stacy could afford such nice things.

Speaker 29 Next thing you know, here comes Drew, fully uniformed, walking in like, hey, I'm Drew.

Speaker 20 Drew Peterson, a sergeant with the Bowling Brook Police Department. They had met at the hotel where Stacy worked.
At 47, he was 30 years older. He was old enough to be her father.

Speaker 20 She was a little girl. She came to my party with little ponytails, you know, and

Speaker 20 and we were shocked who this man was and how lovey-dovey he was to this girl.

Speaker 20 Drew was twice divorced and his third marriage was imploding. He already had four children, two of whom were actually older than Stacy.

Speaker 20 Even his brother Paul, who was speaking publicly about Drew for the first time, was struck by how young Stacy was.

Speaker 37 Actually, my oldest daughter is two months younger than Stacy.

Speaker 37 So for me, it was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 35 Why are you, you know, just kind of young.

Speaker 20 What do you think attracted her to Drew?

Speaker 10 Just a stable person.

Speaker 36 Obviously, he's a cop.

Speaker 10 She feels protected.

Speaker 29 She was like looking for a father figure, you know?

Speaker 10 Or just, you know, just to be taken care of a little bit.

Speaker 20 Cassandra says Drew did take care of Stacy. He paid for her furnished apartment, among other things.
But according to Cassandra, what Stacy really wanted was a family.

Speaker 20 And in July 2003, when Stacy was 19 years old, she and Drew had a baby boy.

Speaker 36 My gosh, Stacy was born to be a mom. She pretty much put us all to shame when it came to taking care of kids and stuff.

Speaker 20 Drew and Stacy married that October. And when Drew's ex-wife, Kathleen Savio, died suddenly five months later, Stacy adopted the two boys Kathleen had with Drew.

Speaker 20 Were you surprised surprised when Stacy said that she was adopting Kathleen's two boys?

Speaker 9 No, not at all.

Speaker 29 Stacy wanted a family.

Speaker 10 You know, they lost their mom, and it's

Speaker 10 she wanted to be there to comfort them.

Speaker 20 Stacy and Drew had another child together, a daughter.

Speaker 20 By the fall of 2007, with four kids, a home, and a police officer husband, Stacy, now 23, seemed to finally have what she and Cassandra had longed for.

Speaker 10 And it was just so beautiful because we didn't have that growing up. We didn't have that happy family.

Speaker 20 And she was building that with Drew. Right.

Speaker 20 But now Stacy was missing and none of it made any sense.

Speaker 20 Stacy's family and friends weren't the only ones to think so.

Speaker 20 Local crime reporter Joe Hosey had his own questions about Stacy's disappearance because this wasn't the first time he had reported on something happening to one of Drew Peterson's wives.

Speaker 20 At this point, it's just it's a missing person's report. Right, right.

Speaker 18 It's a missing person, but it's the missing wife of a man whose previous wife died under what I considered extremely suspicious circumstances.

Speaker 3 Coming up, the mysterious death of the previous Mrs.

Speaker 25 Peterson, according to Drew.

Speaker 37 So it's like she took some sleeping pills or something, drank some wine, and, you know,

Speaker 9 fell in the bathtub.

Speaker 41 When dateline continues

Speaker 20 when reporter joe hosey got the tip drew peterson's wife stacy was missing his antenna immediately went up i just knew that they were both married to drew peterson and one was dead and one was missing

Speaker 20 His thoughts went back to a story he'd covered three years earlier for the local paper, the Joliet Herald News.

Speaker 18 This guy's wife died in the bathtub. I think I was told it was suspicious.

Speaker 20 And he's a police sergeant.

Speaker 18 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 20 The suspicious death was that of Drew Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio.

Speaker 14 Smart, family-oriented,

Speaker 14 kind.

Speaker 20 Her sister, Sue Doman.

Speaker 14 She's just overall a good person. She would never hurt anybody.

Speaker 14 Loved her children to death.

Speaker 40 They were her life.

Speaker 20 Drew and Kathleen had split in 2001 after a nearly decade-long marriage. Kathleen had custody of their two boys.
Drew took them on weekends.

Speaker 20 And that's how it went until 2004 when Drew, by then married to Stacey and living just down the street from Kathleen, tried dropping the boys off after a weekend visit.

Speaker 20 Kathleen didn't answer the door. Not that night.
Not the following day.

Speaker 43 It was probably 9, 9.30 in the evening, and and Drew happened to come down the street and pulled up next to me in his squad car.

Speaker 20 Steve Carcerano was Drew's friend and Kathleen's neighbor.

Speaker 43 He asked me to go to the house and he's already contacted her best friend, Mary, to go to the house.

Speaker 43 He thinks something might be wrong because he's been trying to drop off the kids for the past day and a half.

Speaker 20 Drew said his ex-wife wouldn't want him inside her home regardless of the circumstances. So he waited outside.

Speaker 43 When we first walked into the house, it's dead silence in there.

Speaker 20 They went upstairs and into Kathleen's bedroom, saw the unmade bed, and they checked the bathroom.

Speaker 43 I was going towards the back of the bathroom and looked in the tub. It was Kathy laying there naked.
Mary came into the bathroom right away, and she started screaming.

Speaker 43 Drew came running up the stairs right away, ran into the bathroom. First thing he did was check her pulse.
And then he started screaming out, what am I going to tell my children?

Speaker 43 What am I going to tell my children? And very distraught. You know, I looked right into his eyes and he got very emotional very quickly.
And then he called the police department.

Speaker 20 Kathleen was dead. Sue remembers getting the call late that night.

Speaker 14 It was my sister, my older sister, and she said, Kitty's dead. Kathleen's dead.
We called her Kitty.

Speaker 20 Family members gathered to grieve. Everyone with the same question.

Speaker 20 What happened? Drew seemed to have the answers.

Speaker 14 They found her in the bathtub, and it looks like she drowned.

Speaker 20 Drew told your sister that.

Speaker 20 It was the same story Drew told his brother, Paul.

Speaker 37 Says, like, yeah, she took some

Speaker 37 sleeping pills or something, drinking some wine, and, you know,

Speaker 9 fell in the bathtub.

Speaker 20 Because Drew was a Bowling Brook police officer, the Illinois State Police took over the investigation into Kathleen's death.

Speaker 20 What are you finding out from the police and the sources at the time about her death?

Speaker 17 I wasn't finding out much.

Speaker 18 They weren't saying much.

Speaker 20 Joe heard the same thing the family heard. 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.

Speaker 20 The coroner was stumped and so formed an inquest to try to get to the bottom of what happened.

Speaker 18 They sent this sergeant to present evidence to the coroner's jury and in no uncertain terms said it was an accident, that this wasn't a suspicious death, there was no sign of foul play.

Speaker 18 And the coroner's jury deliberated and came back that it was an accident.

Speaker 20 An accident. Kathleen must have slipped in the tub, hit her head, been knocked unconscious, and drowned.

Speaker 20 The tub was dry because the water had slowly gone down the drain in the time it took for her body to be found. Did the facts of what you're reporting bother you?

Speaker 20 Did any of it linger with you that this seems

Speaker 18 weird. I mean,

Speaker 18 I remember covering stories of children drowning in bathtubs, but never an adult.

Speaker 18 I mean, that right there is a red flag that right there you would think would have caused the police to look at it a little closer than they did.

Speaker 20 Joe says his editors didn't share his suspicions and didn't want him to keep digging. The story went nowhere.

Speaker 18 I had bosses that were likely to say it's an accident. You know, we're not writing about this anymore.
That's where it ended.

Speaker 20 But now, three years later, Drew's wife, Stacey, was missing. Joe again wrote about Kathleen's bizarre death, linking the two women to Drew and each other.

Speaker 18 It wasn't much of a story, but I got it in the paper for the next day.

Speaker 20 It may have been a small story, but it made a huge impact.

Speaker 41 Coming up.

Speaker 15 I was talking to this lady.

Speaker 3 She's prettier than you. The Drew Peterson Show.

Speaker 18 It was almost as if he considered himself like a celebrity.

Speaker 20 In hindsight, it's hard to believe, but back in 2007, reporter Joe Hosey wasn't sure the Drew Peterson story had legs.

Speaker 18 The bosses that I was working for really weren't interested in pursuing it.

Speaker 20 But his local paper was owned by the Chicago Sun-Times, which also ran Joe's story. This tipped off the national media, which descended on Bowling Brook.

Speaker 20 We're also following the latest developments in the search for a missing suburban Chicago mother, Stacey Peterson, vanished after leaving home on Sunday.

Speaker 18 It was wild. I mean, Drew lived in a cul-de-sac in a subdivision.
It was packed with satellite trucks and cameramen and reporters. It was shoulder to shoulder with media.

Speaker 20 Cameras were soon documenting every aspect of the developing story, from the searches for Stacey

Speaker 20 to marches and vigils. We come here, I think, united as a family, friends, and as a community.
And there, usually in the background, was Sister Cassandra. She didn't want the attention.

Speaker 20 She just wanted Stacy back. You were out helping in the searches and often in the background, but you were always there.

Speaker 10 Oh, I'm always there. Just because I'm not on camera doing anything doesn't mean I'm not out searching.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 42 We're trying to give them some semblance of normalcy. Here's mom and a dad.
We're going to take care of you. Don't mind that everything else is happening around you.

Speaker 37 And this is when the whole cul-de-sac is full of reporters and camera crews.

Speaker 20 All of them wanted a glimpse and a comment from Drew.

Speaker 37 Tell us where you were the night she died, sir.

Speaker 20 Police had searched Drew's home and were treating him as a person of interest.

Speaker 20 He had spoken to them after Stacy went missing, but was otherwise keeping his mouth shut.

Speaker 20 Until one evening, when reporters knocked on his door. I'm sorry, sir.
Sir, we can't hear you.

Speaker 14 I'm sorry one more time.

Speaker 4 Never again will I allow myself to have overdue books. This is a mess.

Speaker 20 Reporters strained to hear him as he joked about overdue library books.

Speaker 20 It was just a preview of the Drew Peterson show.

Speaker 15 I want to message you guys.

Speaker 20 He resigned from the Bowling Brook Police Department. He began holding court in his driveway.

Speaker 28 Your third wife wasn't.

Speaker 28 I can only hear one at a time. Okay, but let me know.

Speaker 15 I can't speed listen. I know, with Kathleen.
Well, I was talking to this lady.

Speaker 16 She's prettier than you.

Speaker 28 That she is.

Speaker 20 From day one, Joe Hosey had a front-row seat to Drew's antics.

Speaker 18 It was almost as if he considered himself like a celebrity, like we were all the paparazzi chasing him around because he was, you know, famous and not because he was suspected of killing his fourth wife and his third wife.

Speaker 23 I'm pretty well burnt out.

Speaker 45 Really? I've lost 30 pounds to date. So if anybody wants to go on a weight loss program, you could probably use it.
I need a big time.

Speaker 25 Where's Drew? We got him, Drew.

Speaker 32 Peterson. He finally picked up.

Speaker 23 I'm here.

Speaker 20 Eric Moeller, known over Chicago radio waves as the man cow, had Drew on his popular morning show.

Speaker 43 Are you Drew Peterson or the Cowardly Lion?

Speaker 17 We weren't supposed to ask about the murders, you know.

Speaker 32 And I said, well,

Speaker 17 I asked him about stupid stuff.

Speaker 26 What do you think of the weather?

Speaker 29 It's cold.

Speaker 32 I didn't really follow the rules.

Speaker 4 Did you kill your wife? No.

Speaker 12 Drew seems like every day.

Speaker 35 The attorney has to respond to something.

Speaker 9 Right, exactly. What are your thoughts about that?

Speaker 4 Well, I'm waiting for my eighth-grade prom date to show up and say I was a bad kisser. I don't think I was, but maybe, I don't know.
So, you folks have a good day.

Speaker 32 Did Drew cause all of his own problems? Absolutely.

Speaker 45 Watch this.

Speaker 32 Laughing about it and making light of it and joining the celebrity of my show and other shows. I think it repulsed a lot of people.

Speaker 20 While Drew was joking around with the media, he made no effort to search for his missing wife.

Speaker 37 Drew, a lot of people want to know why you're not helping in the search.

Speaker 18 People are trying to find out what happened to Stacy, searching for Stacy, trying to, you know, any

Speaker 18 proof of what happened to her. But Drew's there and Drew's acting out.

Speaker 20 Drew claimed that Stacy left on her own. He said she had taken cash and a bikini and abandoned her four kids and husband to start a new life with a mystery man.

Speaker 20 But something didn't add up for sister-in-law Norma.

Speaker 42 Why would you adopt two kids and then go off and leave all four for another man? That made no sense.

Speaker 20 It made no sense to the police either, who continued to investigate Drew. A family member told them he helped Drew remove a large blue barrel from the house the night Stacy disappeared.

Speaker 18 He's convinced that he helped carry Stacy'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.

Speaker 20 Another lead police followed, Drew's phone. Records showed it was near a canal just miles from Drew and Stacy's home that night.

Speaker 18 There would be no reason for him to be there. Stacy's last night that she was seen.
I know they searched the canal. I know they did an extensive dive that turned up nothing.

Speaker 20 Still, Drew was the last person known to have seen Stacy. That, coupled with his odd behavior in front of the cameras, led police to turn up the heat on Drew.

Speaker 4 Drew Peterson has gone from a person of interest to clearly being a suspect.

Speaker 20 That would be enough to make most people stop talking, but not Drew.

Speaker 45 There's an investigation, as there should be. so it's just like uh

Speaker 45 i'm a suspect officially but i think i was a suspect from the beginning so

Speaker 20 just because you're the husband because i'm the husband

Speaker 20 one family believed it was more than that they had been sounding the alarm for years it was just that nobody cared to listen

Speaker 3 coming up Behind closed doors, Drew and Kathleen's disastrous marriage.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 41 When Dateline continues

Speaker 20 Sue Doman was conflicted about the disappearance of Stacey Peterson.

Speaker 20 She knew it was a nightmare for Stacy's family, but she also knew it was an opportunity for the truth to finally come out.

Speaker 14 I saw them searching everywhere and I was hoping that someone would connect the dots.

Speaker 20 She wanted police and the public to look at another case, the 2004 death of her sister, Kathleen Savio, Drew's third wife.

Speaker 20 Sue never believed her sister died by accident and she never trusted Drew.

Speaker 14 I never felt comfortable with him.

Speaker 20 She says her sister was dazzled by Drew when they first met in the early 90s.

Speaker 14 She said, look, he's a police officer. He's a good guy.
And he treats me good. I mean, it was everything that a woman would want and more.

Speaker 20 And how soon before they got married?

Speaker 14 I would say six months. It was very fast.

Speaker 20 The couple had those two boys later adopted by Stacey and moved into this house in Bowling Brook. Drew charmed neighbors like Steve Carcerano.

Speaker 43 Drew came over to our house and said, you know, if there's anything that I ever need, it's a garage, a lawnmower, a tool, anything, his garage is always open to me. So I thought that was very nice.

Speaker 20 Very nice, eager to please. That was Drew Peterson.
Except Sue says when Mr. Nice Guy morphed into Mr.
Hyde, using insults to manipulate Kathleen.

Speaker 14 He would say that she's crazy. She's looking like a dog.
She was ugly. She wasn't a good mom.

Speaker 20 Soon, the cutting words became heated arguments. Drew's brother and sister-in-law, Paul and Norma Peterson.

Speaker 37 They were always fighting like cats and dogs.

Speaker 20 You saw it firsthand.

Speaker 37 Yeah, we saw it firsthand. They were always mad at each other, and it was

Speaker 29 always something.

Speaker 20 The end of the nine-year marriage came one day in 2001. It came in the mail.

Speaker 14 She called me, and she said, I got a letter. And it said he was having an affair and she was a laughingstock.

Speaker 20 The anonymous letter included this shocking tidbit. Drew's other woman was still in her teens.

Speaker 14 The thing that really stood out with Kathleen was that she was a baby. She said, I don't understand why he would

Speaker 14 do this.

Speaker 20 Come to find out that was Stacy.

Speaker 44 Right, right.

Speaker 20 Stacy, the future Mrs. Peterson.
Kathleen demanded a divorce, the house, and half of Drew's pension. He okayed the divorce, not the terms.
Kathleen stood firm.

Speaker 42 She was a fighter.

Speaker 42 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.

Speaker 20 When Stacey became pregnant, Kathleen did make one concession, a divorce that allowed Drew to remarry while lawyers worked out the finances. Things only got worse.

Speaker 14 She would call me and say he would be watching her.

Speaker 20 How was he watching her?

Speaker 14 He would pass by her house and slow down and look out the police window.

Speaker 20 Kathleen said Drew was intent on terrorizing her. Sometimes the fights turned violent when he stopped by.
She told her sister that Drew even sneaked into her house and threatened her.

Speaker 14 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 it.

Speaker 20 And did she tell you that?

Speaker 14 Oh, she was hysterical. She called the police and he denied the whole thing.

Speaker 20 Still, she says Kathleen kept calling Bolingbroke police after every confrontation. Drew, an officer, was never arrested.

Speaker 14 It got to be where the police would come over and they would just take Drew in the corner and then he would say, how's your day going? And this and that. Ah, she's crazy again.
Here we go again.

Speaker 14 They didn't take it seriously.

Speaker 20 In fact, after one fight, it was Kathleen who was charged with domestic battery. The record was later expunged.

Speaker 20 A police spokesman told the Associated Press that officers had followed proper procedure.

Speaker 20 But then Kathleen was found dead in her bathtub. Sue thought there would be a criminal investigation.
Instead, that inquest found Kathleen's death was an accident.

Speaker 20 When you heard that news, what did you think?

Speaker 35 Oh my God.

Speaker 14 Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening.

Speaker 20 She refused to give up, pestering those in power to look at the case again.

Speaker 14 They got tired of me, the Bolingbrook Police Department, and told me if I continued on with this, that I would be charged.

Speaker 20 The police told you that? I mean, you're just asking for answers.

Speaker 40 Oh, my people.

Speaker 20 A Bolingbrook 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.

Speaker 20 The bottom line, Sue says, is that neither she nor her sister ever felt heard.

Speaker 20 Now Stacy was gone. 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.

Speaker 41 Coming up.

Speaker 17 Another gathering storm.

Speaker 42 I happened to catch a glimpse of a bruise and I'm like, what happened? Well, Drew pushed me up against the

Speaker 42 TV.

Speaker 3 And Stacey shares a secret.

Speaker 12 She just blurted out. She said, he did it.

Speaker 20 Norma Peterson had seen it. Her brother-in-law, Drew's marriage to third wife, Kathleen Savio, was a disaster.
Their breakup worse, which is why Kathleen's sudden death never sat right.

Speaker 42 So now you're going to come and tell me that there is a 40-year-old woman who drowned in a dry bathtub two weeks before you guys were supposed to settle everything in court financially. It just seemed

Speaker 42 just too convenient for me.

Speaker 20 Then she saw the past repeat itself with Drew's next wife, Stacey, his need to control. How early on in their marriage did she confide in you, the problems that they were dealing with?

Speaker 42 I knew that they were having difficulty. She didn't hide any of that.
He would just call her incessantly.

Speaker 42 One time when we were out and I answered the phone and I finally just told him, we're out, we're having a girls day out.

Speaker 20 She saw signs of violence.

Speaker 42 I happened to catch a glimpse of a bruise and I'm like, what happened? Well, Drew pushed me up against the

Speaker 42 TV.

Speaker 20 At the time, Norma didn't report her concerns to police because she didn't think they'd do anything. Cassandra says she didn't call them either for the same reason.

Speaker 8 I remember sitting on the couch one time.

Speaker 24 She came flying out of the room backwards and landed on her back.

Speaker 36 He threw her?

Speaker 37 He like shoved her.

Speaker 20 Eventually, Stacy sought help for her troubled marriage.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 20 Pastor Neil Shorey says he began counseling Drew and Stacy. One day he says Drew approached him.

Speaker 12 He goes, would you ever do a ride along with me in my police car?

Speaker 5 And I said, yeah, why not?

Speaker 20 He says Drew drove them around, made small talk, then got to the point.

Speaker 12 And he says, yeah, you know, I really wanted to talk to you about Stacy.

Speaker 18 Neil, she really gets crazy.

Speaker 12 Well, you know, at that time of the month, and I just, he could see my displeasure with this. I, it felt so disrespectful.

Speaker 20 The pastor tried to change the subject. He asked Drew about his faith.
He says Drew replied that he wasn't religious.

Speaker 12 He says, Neil, I've done a lot of bad things in my life. And I said, yeah, I mean, we all have, Drew.
He sort of looked off into the distance, looked like he went somewhere.

Speaker 12 And he said, Neil, well, the difference is

Speaker 36 I've never felt bad for anything I've done in my life.

Speaker 12 And I just thought,

Speaker 40 that's it.

Speaker 12 The way he said it was so

Speaker 11 absent of emotion.

Speaker 12 And I just knew, don't ask him another question.

Speaker 20 The pastor's last conversation with Stacey was in August 2007, two months before she disappeared. She asked to meet something urgent.

Speaker 12 And I got there, she was already sitting there outside at a cafe just like this.

Speaker 12 And she looked concerned and she was quiet and then very suddenly she just blurted out. She said, he did it.

Speaker 12 I said, Stacy, he did what?

Speaker 12 And she said, Drew killed Kathleen.

Speaker 20 Stacy told the pastor what she knew about that night in 2004. She said Drew came home late.
At first he wouldn't say where he'd been, but eventually she said, He told her enough to make it clear.

Speaker 20 He had just murdered his ex-wife. Did she want you to go to the police?

Speaker 12 She certainly didn't want me to, because I asked her and she said, I don't want you to do anything with my story. I just want you to know.
I think things were really dire for her by that point.

Speaker 12 And I think that she probably sensed that she was in grave danger.

Speaker 20 It was the last time he saw her. Just before she disappeared, Stacy also confided in her sister.

Speaker 8 Stacy just looked up at me and she goes, how do you feel about me getting a divorce?

Speaker 10 And that's when she told me, if anything happens to me, Drew did it.

Speaker 20 Days later, Stacy vanished. Her pastor immediately thought the worst.

Speaker 27 I absolutely know in my heart what happened to her.

Speaker 7 I believe that Drew killed her.

Speaker 20 He knew he had to tell someone about his last conversation with Stacy, her story about Kathleen's death. He called a police tip line.

Speaker 12 I thought, thought, oh my gosh, good, I finally get to tell this story. So I called them two different times and I left voicemails.

Speaker 20 Nobody ever came to question you?

Speaker 12 Nobody did anything.

Speaker 20 Until fate intervened, days after Stacey vanished, the pastor was serving on a grand jury, hearing evidence in a series of unrelated cases before the court.

Speaker 20 An officer with the state police took the stand and referenced Drew Peterson.

Speaker 12 And I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I raised my hand and I I said, Excuse me, excuse me.

Speaker 20 That stopped the hearing. The pastor met with the officer in the hallway, told his story, and eventually went down to the station to make a formal statement.

Speaker 12 I remember writing out my testimony, and then I had a video interview. And so I definitely knew at that moment they finally had taken it seriously.

Speaker 20 It was time to unlock the past and unearth the truth.

Speaker 3 Coming up, leaks in the bathtub theory of Kathleen's death.

Speaker 11 As soon as we pulled the pictures of her in the bathtub, we're like, this is wrong. I don't know of any case where a healthy, middle-aged adult has ever drowned in a bathtub.

Speaker 41 When Dateline continues,

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Speaker 20 Jim Glasgow remembers when it happened.

Speaker 20 When everyone started buzzing about Drew Peterson and the strange case of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. At what point did you learn of Kathleen Savio's death?

Speaker 11 Well, that would have been in 2007 when Stacy disappeared.

Speaker 20 Glasgow is the state's attorney for Will County, but he wasn't in office when Kathleen died in 2004.

Speaker 11 You have to understand, it was tucked away as an accident, so nobody mentioned it or even knew about it in my administration.

Speaker 11 So once Stacy went missing, of course, people start saying, well, wait a minute, his other wife died in the bathtub.

Speaker 20 And hearing that, died in the bathtub.

Speaker 27 Yes, I, well, first of all, what do you think?

Speaker 11 I don't know of any case where a healthy middle-aged adult has ever drowned in a bathtub.

Speaker 20 The prosecutor called in the old photos taken the day Kathleen's body was found.

Speaker 11 As soon as we pulled the pictures of her in the bathtub, we're like, this is wrong.

Speaker 19 Something's very wrong here.

Speaker 20 Starting with the tub itself. And looking at the size of this tub, I mean, pretty small.

Speaker 11 It's 22 inches wide at the bottom and 40 inches long. So think about 22 inches.
I mean, it's like this.

Speaker 31 I mean, it's just

Speaker 11 enough to barely fit in there.

Speaker 20 It's like a baby tub, almost.

Speaker 20 He found it hard to believe anyone could have drowned in a tub that size or even slipped in it.

Speaker 11 I had an opportunity to sit in the tub myself.

Speaker 20 How tall are you?

Speaker 11 Well, I'm six foot.

Speaker 11 But I sat there and my knees were in my face. So if you were standing up in this tub and you went to slip, your front foot would almost immediately hit the front of the tub and stop your fall.

Speaker 20 But if Kathleen had fallen, the prosecutor would at the very least expect to see nearby soap bottles knocked over. He didn't.

Speaker 11 You see all these toiletries. Nothing has been disturbed.

Speaker 31 So if you have a violent fall backwards,

Speaker 11 you're going to see that.

Speaker 20 Then there was the matter of bloodstains inside the tub. In 2004, investigators believed Kathleen hit her head, fell unconscious, and drowned as blood oozed from her wound.

Speaker 20 The water drained away, but the blood remained. That didn't make sense to Glasgow.

Speaker 11 That shouldn't be there. If it's filled with water, the blood is going to dilute into the water.
And by the time it drains out because the plug isn't 100%,

Speaker 11 then you're not going to see blood stains on the bottom of the tub.

Speaker 20 The position of her body also bothered him. Her feet pushed against the side of the tub.
He thought that odd for a drowning victim. Here, it's like almost like there was a struggle, and then she was

Speaker 11 forced into that position. Whereas, when you're floating, you wouldn't, there'd be no force, you would just come to rest.
We've handed out the petition for exhumation that was filed today.

Speaker 20 Days later, he was in front of TV cameras saying he wanted a new autopsy performed on Kathleen. Kathleen's family gave him the go-ahead.

Speaker 14 We were very, very fortunate to have a state's attorney, Jim Glasco, a very strong man,

Speaker 14 wouldn't give up, was very determined.

Speaker 20 Two weeks after Drew's fourth wife, Stacey, vanished, workers exhumed the body of his third, Kathleen. The pathologist got to work.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 20 Undercutting the original finding that Kathleen had fallen just before her death.

Speaker 20 But there were bruises.

Speaker 11 She had 16 other fresh bruises on all four planes of her body, including her collarbone.

Speaker 19 There was the two bruises to her clavicle, identical bruises here and here. How do you get those?

Speaker 11 Nobody's going to come up and punch you, you know, in the clavicles.

Speaker 20 The prosecutor was convinced Kathleen had not died by accident and she had not drowned in that tub.

Speaker 11 And these two bruises would line up with the edge of the toilet rim if you put somebody's face into the toilet.

Speaker 20 He said the bruising on Kathleen's body spoke of a struggle. Her assailant overcoming and then drowning her in the toilet.

Speaker 20 She was likely placed in the tub and hit over the head to make it look like an accident. You knew right away

Speaker 27 she had been murdered. Yes.

Speaker 20 And he had a pretty good idea who the killer was. The prosecutor was building building a murder case, photo by photo, story by story.

Speaker 20 But then someone else was also building a case for all to hear.

Speaker 41 Coming up.

Speaker 20 Did you

Speaker 20 kill your wife, Stacy?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 3 So where is Stacy?

Speaker 33 I'd be looking on a beach.

Speaker 49 What do you mean?

Speaker 50 A beach somewhere, somewhere warm.

Speaker 20 The state of Illinois was zeroing in on Drew Peterson in late 2007. Police called him a suspect in his fourth wife's disappearance.

Speaker 45 Because I'm the husband. You know, I'm the husband.
You always look at the husband.

Speaker 20 While a prosecutor was eyeing him for the murder of his third and looking harder.

Speaker 45 Watch this.

Speaker 20 Every time Drew mugged for the cameras.

Speaker 11 I mean, obviously, it was a tell to me that this is not an innocent man, and he wasn't showing any remorse.

Speaker 20 But Drew couldn't stop. The worse things got, the more he talked, including right here to us.
He sat down that November with Today Show co-anchor Hoda Cottby, then a dateline correspondent.

Speaker 20 It's been a couple weeks now since your wife went missing. Correct.

Speaker 20 He pretty much shrugged when it came to finding Stacy.

Speaker 33 I'd be looking on a beach.

Speaker 49 What do you mean?

Speaker 50 A beach somewhere or somewhere warm.

Speaker 20 You think she ran off with someone and is just enjoying herself on a beach somewhere?

Speaker 19 I believe that, but I'm guessing.

Speaker 9 Uh-huh.

Speaker 20 He said he had no idea why she took off. He didn't see the point in shedding any tears.
Dishing the dirt, that he could do.

Speaker 33 Stacy was spoiled. Stacy wanted it, she got it.
I mean, she wanted a boob job. I got her a boob job.
She wanted a tummy talk, she got that. Stacy loved male attention.

Speaker 33 And we did all these repairs on her and she wanted she got it.

Speaker 20 In what had become a pattern, he repeated offensive comments about her, ones he'd already shared with Pastor Neil Shorey and other reporters.

Speaker 50 Stacy was on an emotional roller coaster from month to month and I'm not trying to be funny here, but it seemed to go with her menstrual cycle.

Speaker 33 If she was PMSing, she wanted a divorce.

Speaker 50 And if she wasn't, everything was good and romantic and happy.

Speaker 20 Reporter Joe Hosey.

Speaker 18 Drew had his own narrative where, you know, Stacy was depressed and she was medicated and erratic and it wasn't about him.

Speaker 20 Drew didn't have anything kind to say about his ex-wife, Kathleen, either.

Speaker 33 She was easily agitated and more demanding.

Speaker 20 When you say easily agitated, what do you mean?

Speaker 33 She would snap quickly.

Speaker 20 As for her death in that bathtub, He didn't think it was so suspicious. There was talk in the police department that it was done so well, it looked like it was staged.

Speaker 20 It was like someone who knew what they were doing. Okay.

Speaker 33 That I'm sure people will say that.

Speaker 20 And people would say, who else would know better than you? You're a police officer with many years on the force. Sure.
What do you say to that?

Speaker 33 I said, I didn't do it.

Speaker 52 Who do you think might have then?

Speaker 33 I don't know.

Speaker 50 And I don't know if it wasn't an accident.

Speaker 20 If he was guilty of anything here, he said, it was choosing the wrong woman more than once. I want you to be 100% honest with me.

Speaker 19 Okay, no, I'm going to lie to you. I want you to be 100% honest.

Speaker 20 Seriously.

Speaker 20 Did you

Speaker 20 kill your wife, Stacey? No.

Speaker 20 What about your wife, Kathy? Did you have anything to do with the death of Kathy?

Speaker 35 Nothing.

Speaker 20 Nothing at all. Nope.

Speaker 20 Someone said either you're guilty of both of these or you have the worst luck in the world.

Speaker 20 You just happen to marry two women, one is missing and one who's dead.

Speaker 44 Correct.

Speaker 20 Which is it? You just have bad luck?

Speaker 33 I guess this is bad luck.

Speaker 20 Drew Peterson, the victim. It was a theme he returned to the following year when he sat down with us again.
By this point, a new autopsy revealed Kathleen's death wasn't an accident.

Speaker 20 It was a homicide. Drew didn't buy it.
I still don't get how someone who's healthy, able-bodied dies in a bathtub.

Speaker 33 Well, it happens, and everybody says it's impossible, but I guess if if you look at statistics from the

Speaker 33 National

Speaker 51 Safety Council, it shows that people do die in the bathtubs.

Speaker 20 He also didn't buy that story from Pastor Neil Shorey. He said he never confessed anything to Stacy about Kathleen's death.

Speaker 20 Let me just ask you flat out then. Did you ever tell Stacey that you killed Kathleen?

Speaker 35 Never.

Speaker 20 Never. So if she told her preacher that, she was telling a lie.

Speaker 33 If she told him that, yes, she was lying.

Speaker 20 That's right, he said. Stacy was a liar and a cheat.
She had run out and left him in a world of trouble. He had no choice but to defend himself.

Speaker 18 And the longer she's gone, the more he seems to relish the attention. I mean, he's on national television

Speaker 18 criticizing his dead and missing wives.

Speaker 18 I mean, more than anything, it just, it was hard to believe.

Speaker 20 Do you enjoy all of this? The television interviews, the attention, the Drew, can I talk to you?

Speaker 50 Sometimes.

Speaker 51 Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

Speaker 20 What do you like about it?

Speaker 4 I get to go to New York. I get to go to Hollywood.

Speaker 33 I get to meet famous, exciting people like yourself.

Speaker 51 And just

Speaker 50 the traveling, and I don't like the constant

Speaker 33 looks in the stores and stuff.

Speaker 51 You know, that type of thing.

Speaker 20 Are you a good con?

Speaker 50 Am I a good con?

Speaker 49 I believe I can be, yeah.

Speaker 50 But I'm not conning anybody about this.

Speaker 20 So, how does one know when you're conning and when you're not?

Speaker 4 If you're good, I guess you don't.

Speaker 51 I guess you don't.

Speaker 20 For more than a year, while investigators plugged away, Drew Peterson spent his days telling everyone he was innocent.

Speaker 45 Just working through the case.

Speaker 20 And that the world just had to believe him. But those days were numbered.

Speaker 3 Coming up, a sister's desperate call.

Speaker 8 What'd you do to my sister?

Speaker 13 Matt Athene.

Speaker 3 And Drew Peterson's bizarre walk of shame.

Speaker 41 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 20 Despite Drew Peterson's claim that Stacy was probably sitting on a beach somewhere, her sister Cassandra continued to look elsewhere.

Speaker 20 She She focused on the dirty, murky waters of a canal a few miles from Drew and Stacey's house, where it had been widely reported Drew might have been that night.

Speaker 26 This particular waterway was

Speaker 26 where Drew's cell phone was pinging, so there's many thoughts that she was thrown in the canal.

Speaker 20 Cassandra believed her sister's body was here, somewhere.

Speaker 26 She told me that if something happened to her, that Drew did something to her.

Speaker 26 That Drew did it and to find her.

Speaker 20 So that was Cassandra's mission: find Stacy.

Speaker 20 Even after police stopped searching the waters, volunteers, some on the force, stepped in to help her. She was able to get sonar equipment to scour the muddy bottom of the canal.

Speaker 20 In several places and at different times, she says sonar picked up images of what looked like a body. She was convinced it was Stacy.
Police were not.

Speaker 8 I mean, stuff shifts and moves.

Speaker 7 It's.

Speaker 20 Are you afraid you may never really know the answer?

Speaker 10 Oh, I'm gonna know the answer because I'm not gonna stop.

Speaker 20 And then one day in 2009, her mounting frustration turned to fury when she turned on the radio.

Speaker 13 Well, different things happen to our relationship.

Speaker 8 I just stopped what I was doing and I said, forget this.

Speaker 20 It was Drew joking with his go-to radio host, the guy known as the Man Cow.

Speaker 20 And hearing him there on the radio show, and he's joking with the DJs.

Speaker 10 It's just disgusting.

Speaker 20 Cassandra called in.

Speaker 31 And they're waving to me,

Speaker 32 you know, with a note.

Speaker 46 Stacey's sister's on the phone.

Speaker 27 Well, of course, I want to hear from her.

Speaker 8 This is about you, Drew. What'd you do to my sister?

Speaker 13 Not a thing.

Speaker 8 You killed her after she got off the phone. Can the state police know where you were and what you did? You will pay.

Speaker 20 Drew didn't want to hear it.

Speaker 52 His attitude was: hang up on her, annoyed, bored.

Speaker 5 Take Take another call.

Speaker 31 That was Drew's reaction.

Speaker 20 Just a few days after Cassandra confronted him, Drew Peterson was making news again. Again, we begin with the arrest of former Illinois police officer Drew Peterson.

Speaker 20 Drew Peterson was arrested not in connection with Stacey's disappearance, but for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, three years earlier.

Speaker 20 Prosecutor Jim Glasgow knew this would be no slam dunk.

Speaker 11 When I went to indict this case, 10 of the 12 attorneys that were with me said, don't do it.

Speaker 9 Why?

Speaker 20 Because it was mostly circumstantial.

Speaker 27 We could prove it.

Speaker 11 And I knew we could. I just knew we could.
And so we went ahead.

Speaker 20 Normally, this is the walk of shame where the accused shuffles along, head down, ignoring reporters' questions.

Speaker 20 But not in this case. When reporters shouted questions to Peterson, his face lit up as he joked about his current situation.

Speaker 20 Odd, bizarre, it appears it was just Drew being Drew.

Speaker 20 And within no time, even from jail, he was out there again for all to hear.

Speaker 6 Drew? Yeah, what's up?

Speaker 53 Did you call Collect Drew?

Speaker 4 I called Collect live from the Will County Adult Detention Facility in Joliette, Illinois. And how are things?

Speaker 20 Even behind bars, Drew Peterson continued to call into talk radio.

Speaker 31 I think I asked him, if he gets clear of all this, what's he he going to do?

Speaker 5 And, you know, he was enjoying the showbiz side of this.

Speaker 17 And I think he said, well, I'd like to try stand-up.

Speaker 32 And I said, well, go ahead. I'm thinking what we should do is like, when a constant visit with you, let's do that.

Speaker 22 He did some of the jokes on the show.

Speaker 7 Some of them were,

Speaker 16 I mean, just

Speaker 31 they're cringe-worthy.

Speaker 53 It's just creepy. It's just weird, man.

Speaker 53 This guy's sitting in jail calling ours stupid.

Speaker 31 Brother, these are strange days we live in, okay? And the fact is, it doesn't matter what you've done anymore. He was famous.

Speaker 3 Oh, no, he was better than that.

Speaker 31 He was infamous.

Speaker 20 Peterson's lead attorney, Joel Brodsky, also was not one to shy away from the media.

Speaker 12 I might need a job after this.

Speaker 20 The radio host says reporters hung on his every word.

Speaker 32 In my opinion, the lawyer, Joel Brodsky, was interested in promoting his name. Everybody knows his name in Chicago now.

Speaker 27 We didn't before. It worked.

Speaker 20 Peterson now had a whole team of defense lawyers. Attorney Stephen Greenberg was the last to join and says he had a very different approach to Drew speaking with the media.

Speaker 54 Once I was in the case, there was no more of the shenanigans. There was no more calling the media or speaking to anyone.

Speaker 20 As both sides got ready for trial, prosecutors faced a major hurdle. They wanted to use witnesses to recount things both Kathleen and Stacey said to them about Drew.

Speaker 20 It's called hearsay testimony, but it's rarely allowed.

Speaker 11 What Drew Peterson knew from being a policeman is that that would be a hearsay statement that would die with the victim.

Speaker 20 Prosecutor Jim Glasgow was going to challenge that.

Speaker 14 It was just a waiting game, and I thought, if it's not going to be allowed, what are we going to do?

Speaker 14 I didn't know what would happen next.

Speaker 41 Coming up.

Speaker 3 Did the missing Stacy help get justice for Kathleen?

Speaker 35 She gave me details about the night that Kathleen died.

Speaker 5 Drew came back into the house wearing all black.

Speaker 54 And the dumbest thing I've ever seen in a courtroom.

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Speaker 20 Time did not diminish the media hunger for Drew Peterson as he went on trial for the murder of his ex-wife Kathleen.

Speaker 11 This is a complicated case.

Speaker 54 I think that the media circus makes it harder for everybody in a case like this.

Speaker 20 Defense Attorney Steve Greenberg.

Speaker 54 I think it's harder for jurors to acquit somebody where the public so overwhelmingly wants to see that person convicted.

Speaker 54 And there's no doubt that the public certainly wanted Drew Peterson to get convicted.

Speaker 20 It had been eight years since Kathleen Savio died and five years since Stacy went missing. And prosecutors had won a big pretrial victory after the court made an unusual ruling.

Speaker 20 It said the state could use hearsay witnesses to tell the jury what Kathleen and Stacy told them about Peterson. Prosecutor Jim Glasgow's strategy would rely heavily on that.

Speaker 20 But first, he would paint a portrait of Drew Peterson as a controlling and violent husband.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 20 Kathleen's sister Sue recounted some of those incidents. And you told them about all the times you heard your sister being abused.

Speaker 14 Yes, I didn't let Drew make me uncomfortable. I felt him staring at me, but I would not let him get to me.
I wanted them to know the truth.

Speaker 20 As for motive, prosecutors say Peterson's was financial. He didn't want to give Kathleen the house nor half his pension.

Speaker 11 Push was coming to shove with that property settlement, and he did not want her to get any of his pension.

Speaker 20 The big twist in the trial was that prosecutors used the words of one wife, Stacey, who was still missing, to help make the case that Peterson killed his ex-wife, Kathleen.

Speaker 20 Jurors heard blockbuster testimony from the state star witness, Pastor Neil Shorey, about those conversations he had at a local Starbucks.

Speaker 20 The coffee shop turned confessional for Stacey, who told him about the night Kathleen died.

Speaker 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, dumped it in the washing machine, took his clothes off, and then told her, the police will be here soon.

Speaker 12 And if you tell them what I tell you to tell them, then this will be the perfect crime. And she did exactly what he said.

Speaker 12 With the cops questioning her, with Drew allowed to sit right next to her in the same room.

Speaker 20 Controlling her even in that time where she's basically giving him an alibi.

Speaker 12 Start to finish.

Speaker 20 The pastor's story stunned the courtroom for sure. But the defense responded that a good story is not evidence, insisting the state's case was purely circumstantial.

Speaker 54 The prosecutors in this trial were unable to say how he got in the house, when he got in the house, how he supposedly drowned her. They didn't find any defensive wounds on him.

Speaker 54 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.

Speaker 20 After first attacking the lack of physical evidence, the defense argued the hearsay testimony was not reliable. Nothing more than rumor and innuendo.

Speaker 20 The defense also denied Peterson was abusive to women, as his sister-in-law had testified.

Speaker 20 In all the heated confrontations between Peterson and Kathleen, he was never charged with anything. But Kathleen was charged with domestic battery.
The record was later expunged.

Speaker 20 Are you going to tell me you don't believe that a police officer calling his own police force to come investigate? They're not going to say, of course we believe the guy that works with us.

Speaker 54 I'm going to say that the police had a job to investigate. They investigated.
And based on that investigation, they brought charges.

Speaker 20 As for the pastor, the state star witness, the defense said his testimony rang hollow. The pastor's story was and his testimony was pretty damning.

Speaker 54 But it wasn't enough. There were so many problems with that story.

Speaker 20 The biggest problem, Defense Attorney Greenberg said, is the idea that Peterson, a police officer, would take Kathleen's clothing back to his house that night.

Speaker 54 If you had someone's clothing and you had to take it because it was evidence, you're not going to bring it into your own house.

Speaker 54 If someone finds that dead person in the middle of the night, where's the first place they're going to come looking?

Speaker 7 Drew's house.

Speaker 20 As for the credibility of these witnesses, the defense questioned their motivation, suggesting it was fame, not the truth.

Speaker 54 Almost all of these people who came forward after Stacy disappeared first did so by calling the media, not the police.

Speaker 54 None of them came forward, none of them, out of the good of their heart or out of concern for Kathleen or concern for Stacy. None of them, right down the line.

Speaker 20 Then, at the last minute, the defense called one more witness, Harry Smith.

Speaker 11 Harry Smith is a divorce attorney, and he had represented Kathleen Savio.

Speaker 20 He was originally supposed to be a prosecution witness.

Speaker 40 But then?

Speaker 22 The defense said, we are going to call with you, which I couldn't fathom why or on what basis they would do that.

Speaker 20 Turns out, Smith had also talked to Stacey. She had called him because she was considering divorcing Peterson.
But there was something else the defense wanted the jury to hear.

Speaker 22 She said, can I get more money money out of Drew if we tell either the police or the cops how he killed Kathy?

Speaker 11 The reason that the defense called Harry Smith was to muddy up Stacy, that she was a gold digger, and that she was trying to plant all this phony information to get more money out of Drew.

Speaker 20 But the move backfired. The jury heard Smith repeat the story of Drew confessing to Stacy that he killed Kathleen.
And this time there was more.

Speaker 20 Details about Drew listening listening in on the phone call.

Speaker 54 Terry Smith said that Stacey called me and she said she knew Drew had committed this murder. And I could hear Drew in the background yelling at her.
And that was the last I heard of Stacy.

Speaker 54 It's not so much what she said, but it's him yelling in the background, I think, that was almost more damning.

Speaker 20 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. Did you know he was going to say this?

Speaker 54 Sure, we knew it. And I think what's widely recognized as sort of on the Mount Rushmore of legal mistakes is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in a courtroom.

Speaker 20 As for Drew Peterson, the man who loved to talk, he decided not to take the stand in his own defense.

Speaker 20 After two days of deliberations, the jury came back. Drew Peterson guilty of of first-degree murder.
Greenberg said the verdict was sealed when Smith took the stand.

Speaker 20 Did you know in that moment we just lost it?

Speaker 54 When he got called, I actually crawled under the table. I didn't want any part of it.
It was tragic to me because, frankly, we were winning. And then that bonehead move takes place.

Speaker 20 Brodsky insists Greenberg is lying. He says all the defense attorneys agreed to put Smith on the stand.
Whatever happened with the defense, prosecutor Jim Glasgow felt his team did everything right.

Speaker 11 It was

Speaker 11 obviously the best verdict I've ever gotten in my career, and because it was against all odds.

Speaker 20 Kathleen's family had waited eight years.

Speaker 14 I wanted to look at him good for the last time and say, gotcha, babe.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And growing up, Peterson, we've been through the worst thing possible and had the odds against us.

Speaker 41 When Dateline continues

Speaker 20 In 2014, two years after he put Drew Peterson away for murder, state's attorney Jim Glasgow got a letter from an inmate serving time with Peterson.

Speaker 11 We sent a team down to interview him, and his story just rang true.

Speaker 20 His story? Drew Peterson was trying to hire a hitman to kill prosecutor Glasgow. They put a wire on the inmate and had him play along with Peterson.

Speaker 9 So how long before you think you want to get to work?

Speaker 56 It'll be done by Christmas.

Speaker 56 If you say, if you say, it'd be a nice Christmas, right?

Speaker 56 Tell me what you say.

Speaker 56 Basically, go ahead and kill him.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 5 That's what you wanted, right?

Speaker 56 It ain't no

Speaker 56 turning back, okay?

Speaker 56 All right, right here. If I can get some losing here, we'll celebrate now.

Speaker 20 Peterson was charged with solicitation of murder, tried and convicted. Another 40 years added to his sentence.

Speaker 20 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 Stacey.

Speaker 13 I'm not going to have them be split up,

Speaker 13 you know, during my siblings.

Speaker 20 His son Stephen, 29 years old with his own baby at the time, stepped in to care for his younger siblings.

Speaker 13 You know, we always thought my dad would get out and he'd beat these charges and he'd get him back. So it was always like a temporary thing at first.

Speaker 13 And then we did, as time went on, it just, you know, obviously became permanent. Like I said, I committed to it.
And again, they were my siblings. And, you know, as time went on, they were my kids.

Speaker 13 You know.

Speaker 20 Despite their notorious father, Stephen was determined to give the kids a stable home.

Speaker 13 What I wanted to do with them, and that was to give them the most normal life. So, yeah, we did travel sports,

Speaker 13 you know, Girl Scouts, all that kind of thing. Every kind of sport we probably played or tried at least once.

Speaker 13 And then with the older ones, it was college visits and, you know, making sure they had everything they needed.

Speaker 20 Ironically, Steven says he had an excellent role model.

Speaker 13 I would say for the first 28 years of my life, I had a great dad.

Speaker 13 Yeah, you question his decisions with women and, you know, getting married quickly, but if there was anything any of his kids ever needed, he would do it.

Speaker 20 Looking looking back he never could have imagined what was to come when he first met his dad's new girlfriend stacy and he's like ah there's one thing you know she's a little younger i'm like okay you know not thinking she's 17.

Speaker 13 she was a child you know there's no way around that um yeah she was she was four years younger than me but they seemed happy so stephen supported his dad 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 it just doesn't happen your brain doesn't work that way.

Speaker 13 Obviously, things got a little crazy, more media, more press, all that kind of, the whole circus started.

Speaker 20 Stephen, like much of America, was not impressed by the Drew show.

Speaker 13 Every time he talked from the start, people just started to hate him. You know, if you're talking about women's menstruation, no one's going to take your side.
You know, no one's going to like you.

Speaker 13 I said, hey, dad, it's not working. Don't do it.
And, you know, his response is, oh, no, it's helping.

Speaker 20 Stephen wanted to believe his dad that Stacey had walked out, that Kathleen's death had been an accident. But after his father's murder conviction, he began to accept the painful reality.

Speaker 13 Knowing that the guy you looked up for your entire life, who did give me 28 amazing years, is capable of something like that is very difficult to wrap your head around. And

Speaker 13 it doesn't come overnight.

Speaker 19 Again,

Speaker 13 either he has the worst luck in the world or, you know, he's responsible for murdering two women.

Speaker 20 As for his siblings, they all have different opinions about their father.

Speaker 13 We don't really talk about, hey, what do you think? You know, you think dad's guilty or innocent, you know.

Speaker 20 Kathleen's kids have visited their dad in prison. Stacy's had been too young until now.

Speaker 13 Maybe they're at the point where they do want to go see him because they know he's getting older and they do want to maybe even ask him what happened.

Speaker 13 But now everybody's old enough where they can make those own decisions.

Speaker 20 For his part, Stephen hasn't seen his dad in years, but he talks to him on the phone.

Speaker 13 I'll talk to him on the holidays and when he calls and we pass around the phone and everybody says hello.

Speaker 13 But a lot of times when he talks,

Speaker 13 it's not the same guy that I grew up with.

Speaker 20 Despite everything, Stephen is proud of how the Peterson kids have thrived.

Speaker 13 The older two, you know, they're in their late 20s and entrepreneurs and owning businesses.

Speaker 13 And And then the younger ones are, you know, one's just out of high school and one's still in high school and they're finding their way and what they're going to do.

Speaker 13 You know, we've been through the worst thing possible and had the odds against us, but we all kind of stayed together and were there for each other.

Speaker 20 Drew's brother, Paul, has also accepted the harsh truth about someone he once so admired. Now you know the worst of your brother.

Speaker 9 Right.

Speaker 20 And to have that, had to come to terms with that. that.

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah. Yeah, what a nightmare.

Speaker 37 He's still my brother.

Speaker 9 Still love him.

Speaker 37 But I can't forgive him for what he did.

Speaker 20 Do you feel like he is where he should be?

Speaker 37 Where he deserves to be, absolutely.

Speaker 20 What about the man at the center of all this? Has he changed? Since his conviction, we've heard little from Drew Peterson.

Speaker 20 But now he's filed a new appeal and is breaking his silence.

Speaker 20 Talking once again to Dateline.

Speaker 41 Coming up.

Speaker 35 All these people are out looking for a place I know she's not.

Speaker 25 Drew Peterson's first network interview in more than 10 years.

Speaker 20 You may be here for the rest of your life.

Speaker 9 Maybe, but I may not be.

Speaker 20 Even after all these years, Cassandra has not given up. She still searches these waters at every opportunity for her sister Stacey.

Speaker 26 It's just like I'm never gonna stop until I bring my sister home. So

Speaker 26 just never ending.

Speaker 20 Last month, the FBI sent divers into the canal to investigate a site flagged by Cassandra and her team. She said sonar picked up what looked to be a body.
The FBI found nothing.

Speaker 4 You got to be frustrated. Very frustrated.

Speaker 26 I know Drew's in jail, but with everything I've had

Speaker 10 since the beginning, I should have had justice first.

Speaker 20 In fact, Drew Peterson, who Cassandra blames for her sister's disappearance, says she is wasting her time.

Speaker 20 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. Still sticking to his story, Stacy's not dead.

Speaker 20 She walked out on him 14 years ago. And there was never any point in looking for her now or back in 2007.

Speaker 35 All these people are out looking for a place I know she's not.

Speaker 20 How do you know that then?

Speaker 35 Well, unless somebody else threw her in a field somewhere, then, but I didn't.

Speaker 49 So why should I go look for something? Look, go ahead.

Speaker 20 How do you know she's not in a field somewhere? How do you know she's not in a canal somewhere unless you know exactly where she is?

Speaker 23 I don't know.

Speaker 34 I don't know for sure. But I would believe she ran off.

Speaker 20 There's no evidence to show that a ticket was purchased, that

Speaker 20 she could have actually even gone abroad or anywhere.

Speaker 20 And what's obvious is that she is somewhere in a canal or is in a field somewhere 14 years later.

Speaker 9 No, not really.

Speaker 34 How many women show up years later after running off?

Speaker 9 A lot.

Speaker 34 It's in the news all the time.

Speaker 20 I haven't seen those stories. I haven't reported on those stories.
Usually it's the body is exhumed 14 years later.

Speaker 22 I've seen those stories.

Speaker 34 Women coming back.

Speaker 23 So you're just not paying attention.

Speaker 20 The fact that no one has even heard from her in all these years,

Speaker 20 not surprising to him. 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?

Speaker 35 She was a young girl.

Speaker 21 All of a sudden, she's saddled with four kids. It was too much for her.

Speaker 20 She loved those kids. She adopted

Speaker 20 Kathleen's kids.

Speaker 49 It was still too much for her.

Speaker 9 Feels like I was getting older.

Speaker 35 Here's a young, beautiful woman married to an old man.

Speaker 20 As for that haunting conversation Cassandra says she had with Stacey, she said, if something happens to me, Drew did it.

Speaker 35 I've never heard that before.

Speaker 21 Unless she's most recently making it up.

Speaker 20 So everybody's making things up.

Speaker 22 A lot of people are. Mostly Stacy.

Speaker 20 Stacy's not here to make things up anymore.

Speaker 34 She already did her damage.

Speaker 20 Or maybe you did the damage.

Speaker 9 Nope.

Speaker 34 Did nothing but take care of her.

Speaker 20 Many have said that if Stacy hadn't disappeared, you would have gotten away with Kathleen's murder.

Speaker 20 What do you say to that?

Speaker 19 I'd say I didn't do it.

Speaker 23 And.

Speaker 20 You didn't do what?

Speaker 21 Kill Kathleen or make Stacy disappear.

Speaker 34 So Stacy disappearing, I think, just prompted this

Speaker 21 frenzy that was created by the media.

Speaker 30 I'm going to come and camp myself in front of your house and see if you like it.

Speaker 20 A frenzy. He admits he helped fuel.

Speaker 20 You've always made light of things, including

Speaker 20 the death of Kathleen Savio, your third wife, the disappearance of Stacy Peterson, your fourth wife. Right.

Speaker 20 You still in here laughing about that? No.

Speaker 9 It's just

Speaker 49 when you put a camera in front of an obnoxious guy, he's going to say obnoxious things.

Speaker 20 So you believe you know you're an obnoxious guy. Oh, yeah.
Without a doubt. Do you regret being that guy who was in front of the cameras and parading and doing the Drew sideshow that we all saw?

Speaker 35 The thing is, that was all

Speaker 23 forced by my then attorney, Joel Bratzky.

Speaker 21 He put me out there in front of the cameras and he said to me, He said,

Speaker 23 if you're innocent, just go out and show them you didn't do nothing wrong and be you.

Speaker 23 And I was.

Speaker 20 Brodsky is on the record saying he never pushed Peterson to go out in front of the cameras and that courts have rejected Peterson's claims that he was ineffective at trial.

Speaker 20 Still, in court filings, Peterson blames his murder conviction on his attorney. He also blames what he calls a tainted jury and an overzealous prosecutor.

Speaker 20 At the end of the day, you're saying then everybody else is lying. Everybody else is making up facts.
The jury didn't do their job. It seems everybody else but you is to blame here.

Speaker 34 This prosecution's making up facts.

Speaker 21 This prosecution

Speaker 35 staged a prosecution

Speaker 9 with Kathy.

Speaker 49 They took an accident and staged a prosecution.

Speaker 34 Everybody's twisting it to make me look bad. Okay, they're twisting it to make their prosecution or what they're trying to say against me work.

Speaker 20 Peterson continues to deny he ever abused his two wives. You weren't a controlling husband, you weren't threatening, you weren't abusive to both Kathleen and Stacey? Correct.

Speaker 20 What kind of husband were you?

Speaker 9 I was a loving husband.

Speaker 9 Okay, I was,

Speaker 49 what can I say?

Speaker 35 I was a good husband, a good provider.

Speaker 20 If you were such a good husband and such a good provider in interviews that we did with you, you talked about Kathleen having mood swings.

Speaker 20 Stacey, you said, had mood swings that were tied to her menstrual cycle.

Speaker 20 How about the way you talk about women? How do you justify talking about, these are the mothers of your children

Speaker 20 the way you did.

Speaker 9 Right.

Speaker 20 You don't see anything wrong with that?

Speaker 34 Everybody complains about their wives.

Speaker 20 But one thing he doesn't complain about is the fact his children grew up motherless. They grew up without a mother.

Speaker 49 My son, Steve, took over,

Speaker 23 and

Speaker 21 I think he raised them pretty well.

Speaker 7 They're all

Speaker 23 polite, they're all good-mannered, they're all hard-working kids.

Speaker 19 So it's just like

Speaker 23 having a mother, isn't it?

Speaker 49 And all it's cracked up to be, maybe.

Speaker 9 Really?

Speaker 7 Really?

Speaker 21 Because you could have a bad mother,

Speaker 27 right?

Speaker 20 By the sounds of it, these two women, Kathleen and Stacy, were extraordinary mothers.

Speaker 23 Depends who you're talking to.

Speaker 20 Peterson has just filed a new round of appeals, even brought the papers with him to this interview.

Speaker 20 He's hoping to overturn his convictions for Kathleen's murder and the intended hit on Prosecutor Glasgow. We'll see what happens.

Speaker 7 We'll see what happens.

Speaker 20 You may be here for the rest of your life.

Speaker 9 Maybe, but I may not be.

Speaker 35 Who knows?

Speaker 20 As for Stacey Peterson's case, the prosecutor says it is still open and Drew's the main suspect. If the prosecutor walked in right now and said, Drew, I will give you a deal.

Speaker 20 If you tell us what happened to Stacy, where the body is, you'll get no additional jail time. What would you say to him? No.

Speaker 35 I got nothing else to tell you.

Speaker 23 I got nothing else to tell you.

Speaker 20 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, the mistakes made, and the ways to avoid them.

Speaker 20 I know that you've been very frank about feeling like you, in some way, failed Stacy.

Speaker 12 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 22 Absolutely.

Speaker 12 I failed her because I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 12 But I know that I've honored her by doing what I've done since. And I've been very blessed to be able to help women from all over the country

Speaker 12 with this new information that I have to recognize the signs of domestic violence.

Speaker 20 Neil Shorey works in part with Drew Peterson's sister-in-law, Norma. She's the executive director of a nonprofit called Document the Abuse.

Speaker 20 The group helps victims create written records of their abuse that can be used in court.

Speaker 42 So now that becomes the legacy that I want to see for both Kathleen and for Stacey. That they not will only be Trebeterson's wives.

Speaker 42 They will be the reason that other women and other victims will be able to hopefully survive these types of situations.

Speaker 20 Kathleen's sister, Sue Doman, also advocates for victims of domestic violence by telling Kathleen's story.

Speaker 14 Everybody wanted to hear her story and it gave me great relief because I wanted to help someone someone else in her name because it wasn't fair for her. She had no voice.

Speaker 20 And you still grieve every day your loss.

Speaker 14 Every single day.

Speaker 20 You feel her there beside you.

Speaker 14 I do.

Speaker 14 I feel her right there with me. And I say, hi.

Speaker 52 Hi, Kathleen.

Speaker 9 I know you're here.

Speaker 20 I got you.

Speaker 20 We got him.

Speaker 20 You had a death that you could mourn, a body that you could say goodbye to, but Stacey's family and her sister Cassandra, they don't have that closure.

Speaker 14 No, they don't, and I couldn't imagine what they're going through. I just couldn't imagine that.

Speaker 26 Chance, ready?

Speaker 20 Justice for one family, not yet for the other. Justice is something Cassandra thinks about, but is not obsessed with.
Her obsession is to complete the mission she embarked on almost 15 years ago.

Speaker 8 You don't realize the love that I lost. My sister was my love.

Speaker 10 My friend, my mom,

Speaker 8 my best friend.

Speaker 10 And I will find her.

Speaker 8 And I'll bring her home.

Speaker 29 And that's my promise.

Speaker 6 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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