The brazen and rather ghastly saga of police sergeant and army veteran Drew Peterson, who allegedly killed his third and fourth wives, is perhaps one of the most shocking kind of its kind. More often than not, we attribute those who dedicate themselves to public service to the best that humanity has to offer. Ironically, this was also why the bone-chilling Peterson case achieved the level of notoriety that it did since Stacy Peterson went missing in 2007.
In fact, the investigation and ensuing legal drama owing to the case’s direct ties to law enforcement inspired several books and TV shows. REELZ’s ‘Drew Peterson: Killer-In-Law’, is probably the most in-depth account of what really happened — featuring several legal commentators, first-hand witnesses, and family members involved in the case. Stacy, the former cop’s fourth wife, disappeared without a trace in October 2007. Drew became a “person of interest” in the investigation after it emerged that he had purchased three large blue barrels before Stacy abruptly went missing, and was seen carrying one of those barrels shortly after her disappearance. Authorities searched his residence multiple times but were unable to find any trace of his 23-year-old wife.
It was later revealed that Peterson and his stepbrother had moved one of the plastic barrels from the former’s Bolingbrook, Illinois house. The stepbrother, later identified as Thomas Morphey, was reportedly coerced by Peterson into helping him and later apparently tried to kill himself over guilt. Speaking to ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ in February 2009, Walter Martineck, a friend of Morphey’s, recalled how he spoke about the barrel the night he helped Peterson move it. “A blue tote,” Martineck told the program. “A sealed blue tote, and this is where he really got shook up, he goes, ‘I know she was in there.’”
“What do you mean you know she was in there?” Martineck said he asked Morphey, and continued, “he goes, ‘It was warm to the touch.’” In April 2014, it was reported that Martineck had died after crashing his delivery truck into a semitrailer in the northbound lanes of I-55 in Bolingbrook. Will County authorities called the crash accidental.
That said, Stacy’s disappearance was a key factor in setting alarms off among law enforcement as well as some keen journalists. Before long, the dots were connected and the death of Peterson’s third wife, Kathleen Savio, was once again brought to the focus. Peterson, as a law enforcement insider, had previously manipulated the investigation to clear himself of any liability. Nonetheless, new developments surrounding Peterson soon caught the national media’s attention.
Kathleen was found dead in a bathtub six months after she and Peterson divorced. The coroner, at the time, ruled her death an accidental drowning owing to a lack of evidence collected by Illinois State Police. However, Stacy’s disappearance led authorities to exhume Kathleen’s body for further forensic examination, as requested by Kathleen’s relatives and Fox News, a network that extensively covered Stacy’s disappearance.
Re-examination found that Kathleen had drowned following a violent struggle, and state prosecutors subsequently decided to present the case for indictment. Prosecutor James Glasgow described the tragedy as a “homicide staged to look like an accident.”
In May 2009, a grand jury in Illinois indicted Drew Peterson and charged him with the murder of Kathleen Savio, his third wife. In 2012, he was convicted of the same and sentenced to 38 years in prison the following year. In 2015, authorities slapped the remorseless killer with two more felonies – solicitation of murder and solicitation of murder for hire – after he plotted to have Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow killed. In light of the same, Peterson was sentenced to an additional 40 years in July 2016. The following year, the former cop was transferred from Illinois Department of Corrections custody to the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. And last December, he was transferred to an undisclosed out of state facility.
Norma Peterson, the sister-in-law of Stacy Peterson (and wife of Drew’s younger brother Paul Peterson), contributed to the highly-anticipated REELZ documentary from the perspective of a close family member who witnessed first-hand Drew’s “narcissistic” behavior during the tumultuous years before and after the tragedies. “He followed a lot of the characteristics that narcissists have, where they are more concerned about themselves and how you relate to them,” she told producers of the show. “In a normal relationship, there is a give and a take. With Drew, it was only take and take. What can you give me? What can I take from you? In what way can you serve my purposes?”
