Former police officer indicted in third wife's death

LOCKPORT, Ill. -- Drew Peterson, the former police sergeant who found tabloid fame after his fourth wife's disappearance more than a year and a half ago, was indicted Thursday in the drowning death of a former wife found dead in an empty bathtub in 2004.

Peterson, charged with first-degree murder in the death of Kathleen Savio, was arrested during an evening traffic stop near his Bolingbrook, Ill., home and was held on $20 million bond, Illinois State Police Capt. Carl Dobrich told an evening news conference.

"We are very confident in our case," said Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow.

Savio's body was found in a dry bathtub. Her death originally was ruled an accidental drowning, but authorities later said it was a homicide staged to look like an accident.

The two-count indictment against Peterson alleges that "Peterson on or about Feb. 29, 2004 ... caused Kathleen Savio to inhale fluid," causing Savio's death.

Savio's family has long voiced suspicions, saying she feared Peterson and told relatives if she died it wouldn't be an accident. Their fears resurfaced after the October 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson, then 23.

Drew Peterson is a suspect in the disappearance, which police have called a possible homicide but has not been charged.

"I guess I should have returned those library books," a handcuffed Peterson said as state police led him into headquarters following his Thursday arrest, according to The (Joliet) Herald-News.

One of Peterson's attorneys, Andrew Abood, said the indictment was not a complete surprise.

"There was tremendous pressure for the government to do something in this case," Abood said Thursday evening. But Abood said one of Peterson's sons with Savio has "provided a lock tight alibi" for his father.

In an appearance on CBS' "The Early Show" last month, 16-year-old Thomas Peterson appeared alongside his father and defended him.

"I highly do not believe that my dad had murdered my mom. Because, first off, he wasn't there, he was with us during that period of time," Thomas Peterson said at the time.

Savio's 73-year-old father, however, said Thursday that an arrest was long overdue.

"I always wondered," about her death, said Henry Savio, who joined another of his daughters in filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Drew Peterson last month. "I was never pleased with the (coroner's finding of suicide) from the beginning."

Drew Peterson has seemed to relish being under the media microscope since Stacy Peterson's disappearance, appearing in a People magazine feature and on multiple national talk shows -- most recently to tout his new engagement to a 24-year-old woman.

Publicist Glenn Selig said this week that Peterson was interested in a job offer from the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a Nevada brothel that is the setting for the HBO reality show "Cathouse." An HBO spokeswoman said the network would sooner cancel the show than allow Peterson to appear on it.

From the day Stacy Peterson was reported missing, her husband, a cop of nearly 30 years, knew if investigators weren't focused on him, they soon would be. And it wasn't two weeks before the Illinois State Police made it official, calling Peterson a suspect and her disappearance a possible homicide.

When at the same time, authorities announced they believed the 2004 death of his ex-wife looked like it was a homicide, Peterson knew authorities were looking closely at him in that death as well.

"The husband is always a suspect, whether you declare him so or not," another of Peterson's attorneys, Joel Brodsky, said after authorities said an autopsy on Savio's exhumed body revealed she was murdered.

Savio's body was found in March 2004 by a friend of Peterson after the police sergeant called to say he was worried because he had not talked to or seen her for a few days. The couple had recently divorced.

Questions about Peterson surfaced immediately, with Savio's sister telling a coroner's jury that her sister feared Peterson and had told family members if she died that it might look like an accident but it wasn't.

Peterson married Stacy, who was 30 years younger. They had two children, who lived with the couple along with Peterson's two children from his marriage to Savio.

On the morning of Oct. 28, 2007, Stacy Peterson talked to a friend. Stacy's sister, Cassandra Cales, tried to call her in the middle of the afternoon, and did not get through. Late that night, Cales went to Peterson's home, but neither Drew nor Stacy was there. A few minutes later, she reached Peterson on his cell phone, with Peterson telling her that Stacy had left him.

Cales didn't believe it and reported her sister missing the next day.