The Drew Peterson timeline:
While still married to his third wife, Kathleen Savio, Peterson meets the future Stacy Peterson. Drew Peterson appears at the hotel where Stacy Peterson works. They talk over coffee; he routinely drops in during her shift. He is 47 and she is 17. Months later, they become intimate, Stacy Peterson tells family. While still dating Drew Peterson, Stacy Peterson becomes pregnant. They marry in 2003, exchanging vows in a field in Bolingbrook. Drew Peterson invites a son from his first marriage as his witness. Stacy Peterspon asks her sister Cassandra Cales to be there.
“They didn’t want to tell any of the family,” Cales says. “They just wanted to get it done.”
March 1, 2004. Drew Peterson and Kathleen Savio are sorting out the messy finances of their divorce when he shows up at her Bolingbrook home. (Peterson has said he was dropping off the couple’s two sons at the time). When no one answers the locked door, Drew Peterson asks a neighbor for help and waits for a locksmith, Peterson says. The neighbor goes first, according to Peterson.
“I didn’t want any trouble,” Drew Peterson recalls later. “I stood outside, then I heard screaming and went in.”
Savio’s body is found in the bathtub of her home. There is no water in the tub, and her hair is drenched with blood from a head laceration. Savio’s death is ruled an accidental drowning.
August 2007. Just months before she disappears, Stacy Peterson meets with her pastor, Neil Schori, at a Bolingbrook coffee shop. Stacy Peterson confides to Schori that her husband has told her he killed Kathleen Savio, according to an interview Schori has with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News in December 2007. Stacy Peterson “gave me details that I really can’t share,” Schori tells Fox News. Schori says he believes Stacy Peterson never went to police because she was afraid for her safety. Schori says he doesn’t go to police at the time because he believes Stacy Peterson didn’t want him to.
Drew Peterson says his missing wife had a “big crush” on Schori.
“Every time she went out to see him, she was all dolled up, all sexed up,” Drew Peterson says. “All I know for sure is, Stacy had a big crush on him.”
Early October, 2007. Three weeks before she vanishes, Stacy Peterson calls a man she hasn’t spoken to in years — Scott Rossetto. The call is “out of the blue,” Rossetto recalls. About six years earlier, Rossetto’s twin brother, Keith, had dated Stacy Peterson. After that first surprise phone call, Stacy Peterson and Scott Rossetto talk or e-mail about every other day.
“She kinda mentioned she wanted to end the relationship with her husband,” Rossetto says later, adding she was “sick and tired of being trapped in the house all the time. I think she missed her independence.”
Less than 10 days before Stacy Peterson disappears, Drew Peterson confronts Scott Rossetto and his wife at a suburban Denny’s.
“He asked me how I’d react if my wife was with another man,” Scott Rossetto says in November 2007, after testifying before a Will County grand jury looking into Stacy Peterson’s disappearance.
Although Rossetto has admitted sending Stacy Peterson “flirty” e-mails, he has denied having an affair with her.
Oct. 29, 2007. One day after she is supposed to go to a family friend’s house to paint — Stacy Peterson disappears. When relatives can’t reach the 23-year-old mother of two by phone, they become alarmed and call police. Bolingbrook police classify Stacy Peterson’s disappearance as a missing person case and say Drew Peterson is cooperating with authorities. At the time, Drew Peterson tells authorities he spoke to his wife the evening before she disappeared and had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. Peterson later says he believes his wife left voluntarily, possibly with another man. Stacy Peterson’s relatives say she would never have run away, leaving her two small children behind. A massive manhunt for Stacy Peterson begins. Family and a host of volunteers — including the Texas EquuSearch Mounted Search and Recovery Team — help look for Stacy Peterson.
November, 2007. As the search for Stacy Peterson continues, Drew Peterson becomes a media sensation — and seems to enjoy the attention. He talks with cable TV commentator Greta Van Susteren, and then Geraldo Rivera. He also flies out to New York to chat with NBC’s “Today” show host Matt Lauer — and denies he has anything to do with Stacy Peterson’s disappearance. At one point, he makes an on-camera plea for Stacy Peterson to come home. He also lands on the front cover of People magazine, insisting — once again — in the five-page story he had no role in Stacy Peterson’s disappearance or Savio’s death.
Nov. 9, 2007. Drew Peterson officially becomes a suspect in Stacy Peterson’s disappearance and the case is now a “potential homicide,” no longer a missing person case. That announcement comes on the heels of a decision by a Will County judge to exhume Kathleen Savio’s body so investigators can re-examine her mysterious 2004 bathtub death, which prosecutors say now appears to be murder, not an accident. As the investigation continues, Drew Peterson resigns from the Bolingbrook Police Department and is later granted his full “$6,067.71-a-month police pension.
Late November 2007. a source tells the Sun-Times that on the day Stacy Peterson disappeared, Drew Peterson's stepbrother Tom Morphey helped him move a blue barrel out of Drew and Stacy Peterson’s home and into Drew Peterson’s SUV. Morphey describes the barrel to police as feeling warm and weighing about 120 pounds, sources say. Walter Martineck Jr., a neighbor of Morphey's, appears on the “Today” show saying a distraught Morphey told him Oct. 29 he believed he moved Stacy Peterson's body in the barrel. He says Drew Peterson gave him money for helping with the move. After helping Peterson move the barrel, Morphey overdosed on pills, according to sources.
Feb. 21, 2008. The results of a new Savio autopsy are released, showing the death of the 40-year-old woman was a murder, not an accident, as investigators originally concluded. The results of the forensic exam, conducted in November 2007, are a surprise to her former husband.
“That’s hard to believe. I’m shocked,” Drew Peterson tells the Sun-Times. Meanwhile, relatives of Savio and Stacy Peterson say they hope the findings by pathologist Dr. Larry Blum help solve Savio’s slaying and Stacy Peterson’s disappearance. One of Savio’s relatives says she is angry that authorities didn’t rule Savio’s death a homicide immediately after she was found dead.
“It’s something that should have been done the right way almost four years ago,” says Melissa Doman, Savio’s niece. “It would have been done the right way, if people listened.”
May. 21. Drew Peterson is arrested and charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon for allegedly owning a Colt AR-15 assault rifle that lacked the minimum 16-inch barrel required under state law. His arrest comes months after a Nov. 1, 2007, police search that results in 11 guns — including the assault rifle — being removed from his Bolingbrook home. Joel Brodsky, Drew Peterson’s attorney, rips the arrest as a heavy-handed attempt to rattle the man named a suspect in Stacy Peterson’s disappearance. A trial is set for December.
July 23. Two longtime friends of Drew Peterson — Len Wawczak and his wife, Paula Stark — tell the Sun-Times that they cooperated with Illinois State Police, wearing a wire and recording seven months of intimate conversations with the former Bolingbrook cop. State Police decline to comment to the Sun-Times.
“We got him,” Wawczak, tells the Sun-Times.
Drew Peterson mocked investigators as “idiots,” called his third wife “a bitch” whose body he should have had cremated, and predicted he’d be tried and acquitted long before his fourth wife’s remains were found, Wawczak says in the Sun-Times interview.
Oct. 28. On the one-year anniversary of Stacy Peterson’s disappearance, 70 marchers carrying candles walk from the Bolingbrook home Drew Peterson once shared with Savio to the house where he and Stacy Peterson lived. Stacy Peterson’s sister, Cassandra Cales, and other close relatives don’t attend the vigil, saying they wish to mourn privately. Drew Peterson is in New York to appear on NBC’s “Today” show. “There is not a single day that goes by that I don’t think about Stacy, so to me Tuesday is just another day of her being away,” Drew Peterson says in a statement.
Nov. 11. Drew Peterson meets with high-profile Chicago divorce attorney Jeffery Leving. Joel Brodsky, Peterson’s criminal defense attorney, says Drew Peterson discussed his legal options following Stacy Peterson’s Oct. 28, 2007, disappearance. “All he’s done is consult with him,” Brodsky said at the time. “Nothing has been finalized. No decisions have been made.”
Nov. 19. Legislation goes into effect that is expected to give Will County prosecutors a powerful new took in probing the Savio slaying and Stacy Peterson’s disappearance. The legislation is to allow as evidence hearsay statements from murdered witnesses. The new legislation could come into play in connection with a minister who has said Stacy Peterson told him that Drew Peterson killed Savio. In the Savio case, Savio sent a letter to a prosecutor that said, Peterson “knows how to manipulate the system, and his next step is to take my children away. Or kill me instead.”
December 2008. Will County Prosecutor James Glasgow says he is confident 2009 will bring new information that will help investigators find out what happened to either Savio or Stacy Peterson — or both. “I’m very positive. I’m very encouraged by the work the police have done,” Glasgow said. “We are not at a dead end by any stretch of the imagination.”
January 2009. Drew Peterson moves fiancee Christina Raines, 24, and her two young children into the home he formerly shared with Stacy Peterson. It’s the beginning of a tempestuous romantic saga seemingly without end. Raines’ father, Ernie Raines, tells the media he’s determined to end the relationship, calling Drew Peterson “the devil.” Christina Raines moves out of the Peterson house, but then moves back in again. She walks out again in April. But for good?
March 7. The Sun-Times News Group reports that Thomas Morphey, Drew Peterson’s step-brother, has an immunity deal with prosecutors — if Morphey truthfully tells investigators what he knows about Stacy Peterson’s disappearance.
March 10. After nearly 17 months of silence, Morphey finally talks. In an interview with the Sun-Times News Group, Morphey talks about trying to kill himself after he suspected he’d helped Drew Peterson remove Stacy Peterson’s body.
“It kills me,” Morphey said. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish I could take back the events of that day.”
May 7. Drew Peterson is indicted on two counts of murder in the slaying of Savio. State Police take him into custody without incident.
“I guess I should have returned those library books,” Peterson jokes.
_________________ Do not go gentle into that good night.___________ Rage, rage against the dying of the light
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