Questions swirl on fates of two wives

For years, the family of Kathleen Savio has insisted that her police officer ex-husband was involved in her 2004 death.

They refused to believe an inquest’s finding that she had accidentally drowned. Her body had been found face down in an empty bathtub. They said Savio had feared her husband, a veteran police officer in the middle-class suburb of Bolingbrook.

It wasn’t until Drew Peterson’s next wife, Stacy Ann Peterson, mysteriously disappeared two weeks ago, that their claims were taken more seriously. Investigators launched a search for Stacy on Oct. 29. Days later, they reopened the case of Kathleen Savio.

On Friday, as search teams scoured nearby woods for 23-year-old Stacy Peterson, a judge granted a request by Will County State’s Atty. James Glasgow to exhume Savio’s body.

Police consider the 53-year-old police sergeant a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, a state law enforcement official said.

“I would say this case has shifted from a missing person case to a possible homicide case,” Illinois State Police Capt. Carl Dobrich said at a news conference Friday.

State police officials, who have searched Peterson’s home and taken a computer and some weapons, said he has cooperated with them since Stacy vanished Oct. 28.

Peterson could not be reached for comment Friday.

He has told reporters that Savio’s death was an “unusual accident,” and told police he had nothing to do with Stacy’s disappearance. Peterson reportedly said he last spoke with Stacy by cellphone on the evening she disappeared. Peterson said his wife told him she was leaving him for another man.

The court petition to exhume Savio’s body from the Queen of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Hillside, Ill., outlined numerous “suspicious” facts tied to the 40-year-old’s death.

Her body was found with a one-inch gash on the back of her head, and abrasions on her body. Originally, it was believed Savio had injured her head and fallen into a slow-draining tub, where she drowned.

A review of “the photographs of the crime scene and autopsy, the autopsy protocol and police reports shows in part that the one-inch gash on the back of Kathleen Savio’s head did not render her unconscious, which would have been necessary for her to accidentally drown in the bathtub,” according to the petition.

In addition, the patterns of blood found in the tub did not match the original explanation of Savio’s cause of death. Instead, according to the petition, the “evidence is consistent with the ‘staging’ of an accident to conceal a homicide.”

The petition also noted that “additional evidence has been obtained relative to the death of Kathleen Savio during the investigation into the disappearance of Stacy Peterson.” It did not say what the evidence was, and investigators declined to comment.

Savio’s family supported Glasgow’s bid to exhume her body and reopen the case, according to the petition. They believed Savio had long feared for her life.

In 2002, Savio got a temporary order of protection against her husband, after alleging that he physically abused her. Drew Peterson had been having an affair with “a minor,” Savio wrote in a letter to the state’s attorney’s office, adding that she feared her husband might try to kill her.

Stacy was 17 when she met Peterson.

“It’s sad that it took Stacy going missing for anyone to look into what happened to my aunt,” Melissa Doman, Savio’s niece, told reporters Friday. “Now, we might get some answers.”

p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com