Episode 25: Drew Peterson

In this episode we look at Drew Peterson, the murder of his third wife, Kathleen, and the still unsolved disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hey, all you divas and dudes. Welcome to Deadly Divas, your favorite true crime podcast, where we discuss all those fascinating true crime stories you love to hear.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

And don't forget to join our Facebook page and our TikTok for all the latest information on upcoming episodes.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

And this week's episode is about Drew Peterson. Ugh. The cop who potentially murdered two of his four wives and the last in our Peterson trio after Scott and Michael. So this documentary is part of the An American Murder Mystery Series, and you can watch it on Prime Video. So on Monday, October 29th, 2007, at around 3 or 4 in the morning, a 22-year-old woman, Cassandra Kales, reports her sister, 23-year-old Stacy Peterson, a mother of four, missing. She had not heard from her since Sunday morning. Stacy lived in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and the sisters were very close and usually texted constantly, but she had had radio silence all day Sunday. This family had suffered a sad beginning. Before she was born, her family house burned down and her sister died in the fire. And while she was a baby, she had another baby sister passed from Sid's, and a brother who went to prison on a sex offense, and their mother left them all when they were just still young children. Sad. So Cassandra goes to Stacy's house to look for her, and one of Stacy's kids tells her that her mom and dad, who is Stacy's husband Drew, got in a fight, and Mum left, and Dad is out looking for her. So she calls Drew, who tells her that Stacy left him. She took a bunch of her stuff and said he believed Stacy was having an affair. So the speculation was that she was too overwhelmed with four kids at only 23 years old, and maybe followed in her mother's footsteps. She had also left her husband and kids. As police start looking into the missing persons report made by Stacy's sister, they realize Stacy's husband Drew is a police officer on the local force. He had originally been on the military police at the White House, and now he worked on the Bolingbrook Police Force. He had met Stacy in 2001 when she was only 16 and he was 46. And he was still married to his third wife, Kathleen. But he started affair behind Kathleen's back with the teenage Stacy.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

What a disgusting idiot.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, that's nasty. Stacy told her family that Kathleen was a bad person and that the age difference didn't bother her at all. But they all think that Stacy was just drawn to the financial security that Drew was able to offer her. And after two years of having the affair, Drew divorces Kathleen, and Drew and Stacy marry eight days later. After making the police report, Cassandra goes back to Stacy's house to see that Stacy's car is now back at the house. So she calls Drew to ask for an update, and he continues to state Stacy left him. So she asks, Well, why is her car at the house again now? And he says, Well, Stacy left the car at the airport and ran away with a boyfriend, and I had to go get it back from the airport. And I just want to point out here, unless he had a tracker on her car, how hard it would be to find a car in an airport parking if you had no idea where it was left. It could be an hourly, daily, overnight, off-site parking. I mean, we live in Georgia and the Atlanta airport. Admittedly, it's one of the busiest airports in America, but I can't even imagine it would be needle in a haystack.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Yeah, it would be. And I also want to point out that like this is the number one excuse for people who've murdered their spouses is, oh, she went off with another man. They went to Mexico or whatever. And it's so stupid.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Which is why he tried to say he'd left her car at the airport. You just found it there. Is it like neon pink or something that sticks out around? Hmm. So Cassandra asks police to pull video footage of the airport parking garage where the car was left, but finds out none of the cameras there work.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Shocker.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Shocker. Cassandra's not buying Drew's story at all. She believes Stacy would never leave her four kids. And by the way, this is two biological kids that she had with Drew, and she's also stepmom to two kids that he had with Kathleen and was a full-time parent to, as Kathleen had passed away. It also turned out that Drew had not such a great reputation in the police force as he had leaked information to a Viking gang about a previous case. Wow. The police go to Drew's home to question him about Stacey's disappearance, and he said he talked to her when he got home from work, but when he woke up later on, he received a phone call from her saying that she was leaving him for another man, and that was the last he heard from her. He claims he tried looking for her but found nothing, and he insists that she left home and he found the car at the airport. The officers notice that he seems to have no emotion about any of it, and with Drew's permission they decide to search the house. As they do not actually have a search warrant, it's not like a third check, and nothing really looks that unusual. So next they ask if they can search the car. And searching his, he's like, yeah, no problem. But he says no to searching her car, which was their first red flag. I guess second if you count the fact that he showed no emotions. Alright. The police start searching the surrounding area and the media attention grows. And what everyone notices is Drew's attitude towards the whole situation. He comes across as it being all about him, and he just laughs and jokes about it. And when asked by police why he's not more upset, he says, I'm not gonna sit at home and cry about it. He seems to love the spotlight and the media attention, and not really all that interested in how the missing person's case is coming along. His excuse is why would I be looking for somebody who isn't missing? I know that she left me for somebody else. So it does not take long for police to find proof that Stacy was texting with another man and quite intimately. So maybe Drew's story is feasible after all. They request her cell phone records and track down the man in question, Scott Rosetta.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

I thought you were about to say Scott Peterson. Oh God. I'm so traumatized.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

I mean, if so, she had a type for sure. For sure. Anyway, so they track down Scott Rosetta to ask him the nature of the relationship and when he last saw her. He says it was a platonic relationship because he knew that she was married. But they asked him for his alibi and he proves he was working as a nurse on the night of her disappearance. He does tell them about an incident when him and Stacy went out to dinner and Drew started to circle the restaurant in his squad car until he eventually came in, sits down with them in full uniform, and asks the man for his ID and tells him he doesn't want him to have any communication with his wife. And to be honest, this seems a bit unethical for a police officer. Big time. However, Stacy's phone pings from the area Scott Rosetto resides. At the time that Drew said she called him to say she was leaving him for another man. The police also discover very intimate texts between Stacy and Scott, hidden in her friend data. So they call Scott back in for questioning, and he says, look, it was harmless flirting. Though he felt she really did want to hook up with him. This alibi working at the hospital checked out, which makes it even more confusing that her cell phone pinged from his home area that night when he was at work. And a new witness emerges. This is Thomas Morphe, Drew Peterson's stepbrother, saying Drew called him saying that Stacy was having an affair and he needed help dealing with it.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Dealing with an em w okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

He assumed that he needed help maybe scaring the boyfriend away, but no. He needed help moving a very large, heavy blue barrel out of his bedroom. He needed help carrying it down the stairs to the car. And Thomas had no idea what was inside. Thomas told the police it was warm to the touch, and Drew was very worried about spilling anything from it. And he thinks he may have just helped Drew move Stacey's body.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Oh my god. This is the one of the most chilling details in any case ever, I think, because this was just like his friend, right? It was his stepbrother. And I mean, can you imagine calling your stepbrother and saying, Hey, I need you to help me out? And they don't know what it is. They're like, I need you to help me kill you.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

I can't believe his brother wasn't like, What is this?

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Right. But I guess in situations like that, if it's your family, especially, you don't want to believe that they would have you transport a body.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Well, it played on his mind so much that he actually tried to overdose on purpose. But his girlfriend found him, rushed him to the hospital, and he survived. Thank God. So police now start to search for the barrel. And Drew makes a statement to the media that his stepbrother's lying. He's losing his house, he's losing his wife, he has a drinking problem.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

And then you throw him under the bus after you had him help you carry out this heinous body. Like, no, no, this guy sucks.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

However, police are able to verify at least part of Thomas's story, as he said he and Drew went through a Starbucks drive-thru that night, and the Starbucks cameras clearly show Drew and Thomas in the car together.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

I guess moving bodies works up an appetite. Like, hey, let's go get coffee.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

What the fuck? And you know, for a police officer whom you would assume had been parts of investigations like this before himself, did not play this very smart. No. It also turns out that her sister Cassandra saw a blue barrel in the Peterson's garage. Police are starting to think that Drew caught Stacy texting Scott and killed her in the bedroom, used the barrel to dispose of her, then took her phone to the area that Scott lived to call his own phone. So he had a cell phone call, evidence of her call from her to him from that area to go along with his story that she had called him to say she was leaving him for Scott.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

So that's what I was thinking. So he went over to that area with her phone. Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

But left his phone at home and then called himself. Right. Okay. So he thinks he's smart. He thinks he is, yeah. But he's still got Starbucks. Right. Which wasn't smart. Police now say they believe this to be a homicide and that Drew is the main suspect. However, they don't have enough evidence to charge him yet. So they dig deeper into Drew's past and discover his previous wife, Kathleen, had also died suddenly. She had died the same year that Drew and Stacy had married in what appeared to be at the time an accident. But now they're not so sure. Kathleen's family say how badly Drew treated her, calling her names, calling her fat, hitting her, telling other people she was crazy. But Kathleen stuck in there and tried to make the marriage work until she found out about his affair with Stacy. And I and I just want to say there, we always say why don't people get out of these things? But she's married to a police officer that's hitting her. Who's she gonna go to? His work colleagues? Yeah. And be like, he's hitting me? Who are they gonna side with? I mean, I can understand more in her situation than most abused women uh why she didn't stand up for herself with that.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

And even if the coworkers did believe her, do you think they care? The the cops? They don't care if women are being abused. Most of them are abusers statistically.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

This guy was. So once she found out about Stacy, it seems that Stacy would even come over to the family house he shared with Kathleen and their two kids and have sex with her in his basement with his wife and son sleeping upstairs. So Kathleen files for divorce, and Stacy and Drew move in together just down the road from Kathleen. And meeting to swap the kids between them starts to turn nasty. At one time, Stacy is filming the exchange using Kathleen's camera, so just rub salt into that wound. So Kathleen tries to take it from her, and Stacy accuses her of attacking her. So Drew places Kathleen under arrest for battery in front of her children. The charges are later dismissed. And I just put power trip anyone.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Yeah, that just seems oh so unethical.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

That is like, don't start with me, I'm a police officer, I'm always gonna have the upper hand, which is probably how he was for the whole marriage, to be fair. A while later, Drew is returning the kids to her, and she doesn't appear to be home. And the neighbors don't know where she is. So he gets a locksmith to let him in and asks neighbors to go into the house to check on Kathleen. Now I find that exceedingly strange. I have taken kids back to a parent before, and I have never used a locksmith to break into the house when they weren't home. Right. I then start calling their phone and are like, where are you at? And then if I absolutely can't find them, maybe I would like call it mom and be like, Hey, can I leave them with you? And she can get them from you. I don't start getting a locksmith to break into the house.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Because if they're not coming to the door, or they even like, what's the point? Again, there's the power trip thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

I'm a policeman, I'm untouchable. Yeah. So neighbors go in after the locksmith comes and opens the door. He sends the neighbors in, and they find Kathleen in the bathtub, obviously dead. Drew runs in the house when he hears the screams from the neighbors, and her death is ruled as an accident, assuming she had hit her head in the bathtub and drowned. However, now that Stacy's missing and the police have their suspicions about it, they exhume Kathleen's body to take another look and realize she has way too many injuries to have just fallen and drowned in the tub.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

And what a scummy thing for him to do. He he I don't care what anybody says. I think obviously he killed her and he knew what they were walking into, and he went and got those neighbors and put them through this, and they probably are traumatized and they'll never forget the sight of her body.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

So a lot of this comes back definitely to him being a cop. I think the reason why they didn't look at it closer before they buried her the first time is because he's a cop. I think the reason that he didn't go in and find the body is because as a cop, he knows that it's the person that found the body that they looked at first. It is the ex-husband and the person that found the body are the two highest suspects, and you don't want to be both in one gun. Right. So looking back at all four marriages, it seems he cheated on all wives, and each wife was left for another woman. The second wife claimed to have been physically abused and at one time had a bad accident in her car that she thinks may have been from Drew tampering with her car. So Drew decides to lawyer up, but despite his lawyer's advice, keeps talking to the press and lapping up the attention. This attention whore just can't help it. He can't get enough.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

He disgusts me.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

He even goes on a radio show and they plan a winner date with Drew competition. Ew. But the public is so appalled that the radio station pulls the idea. I mean, whoever thought it was a good idea. What were they thinking? They weren't.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

I will pay him to stay the fuck away from me.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

They were probably thinking ratings, and he was hot news at the time. But they pulled it once they realized how bad their radio station would look. Right. So five years after Kathleen's death, Drew is arrested for her murder, as they have a body for that murder. However, they are not allowed to bring up Stacey's disappearance at the trial because they have no real evidence that she's even dead. The motive they say is financial. He didn't want Kathleen to get the house, half of his pension. They also bring up an encounter that Kathleen told a lawyer during the divorce when Drew threatened to kill her. But he couldn't do it because she was the mother of his children. Drew's lawyers say she made that up due to the nasty divorce. Of course she did. At the trial, the prosecution called Mary, Kathleen's best friend, who was the neighbor who went into the house and discovered the body. She recounts what she saw at the scene, and certain things to her seemed very strange, like jewelry Kathleen had on in the bathtub that she would usually take off to bathe, and just a couple of other small details that she noticed. Right. The scene was originally never processed as a crime scene, and there was blood coming from Kathleen's head, but no head injury was ever looked at closely. Unbelievable. Again, I'm pretty sure because he was a police officer. It also appears that Stacy was Drew's alibi for that night, but he wouldn't let her be interviewed alone. Wow. At the trial, they go over all the injuries found on Kathleen's body and how they indicate she was being held around the body while her head was held down for her to drown, probably in the toilet, before she was placed in the bath. The laceration on the back of her head was also not consistent with any of the bathroom services, and no blood was found around the bath. Neil Shorey was a pastor who offered counseling to Stacy and Drew when they were having issues, and he was called as a witness, and he said Stacy met with him alone to tell him that on the night that Kathleen died, Drew had left the house, come back later, put clothing, including women's clothing, into the washing machine, and then took her aside and coached her for hours on what to say to the police. And she admitted, lying to the police about Drew's alibi. Hence why he would not let her be interviewed alone by the police. Right. Which I have to say was probably something he was only able to insist on due to him being a police officer because anybody else would not have had a choice in that. Right. The defense say Stacy was laying the groundwork for divorce and making sure that Drew looked bad. So that was their excuse for her saying that. And they called to the stand a divorce attorney she had contacted about filing for divorce. And she had asked him if she could get more money on the divorce if she mentioned the way that Drew killed Kathleen.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

This disgusted me. This disgusted me. You should have come forward as soon as you knew something. And how dare you try to financially capitalize on it.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

They also call Kathleen's boyfriend, who admits that he and Kathleen had rough sex the night before her death, and that some of the bruises and injuries could have been a result from that.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Oh, okay. I totally believe that.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

I think that's his five minutes of fame.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Fucking We have rough sex. I am men. It is also interesting to note that after Sousie's disappearance, Drew had started to date two other young girls that he had met in bars. One knew of the other, but one thought that she was the only one. And even though both these women knew that he was on trial for the possible murder of wife number three and under suspicion of the disappearance of wife number four, it seems either one was willing to be wife number five or maybe even victim number three. I don't understand these women at all. I put it baffles both of us why women would even entertain starting a relationship with somebody suspected of such crimes. Women less than half his age at that. And overall, what the general attraction was to this man, like ever.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

There's nothing aesthetically pleasing about him.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

He They said he was charming, but he comes across as a dick.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

He comes across as an arrogant piece of shit, and he has nothing to back up that arrogance. I don't see any redeeming qualities at all.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

And I put here, join us in the after show as we talk more in depth about what women see in this type of thing.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

So back to the trial. Now both sides rest and it goes to the jury, who deliberate for only 14 hours, and they find Drew Peterson guilty of the murder of Kathleen. Stacy's family still don't have an answer about Stacy, but they were elated that Drew is now being held responsible at least for something. At the sentencing hearing, Drew addresses the court and yells insanely at everyone that he did not kill Kathleen. Oh, I believe you. Sentenced to 38 years in prison. So two years after Drew is found guilty, another inmate in the prison tells authorities that Drew is trying to solicit someone to murder the Will County State's attorney, James Glasgow, for ruining his life. Wow. Wow. The other inmate agrees to wear a wire to record Drew asking him to find a hitman. So Drew is then also charged with attempted murder. And in the trial, Antonio Smith, who's the other inmate, tells jurors that Drew told him what happened to Stacy. He had killed her and he had put her body in Lake Michigan. Drew is found guilty of attempted murder of James Glasgow after only an hour of jury deliberation, and his sentence is extended by another 40 years, longer than he got for killing.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

That just goes to show you how nobody gives a fuck about women.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

38 years for killing his own wife and the mother of his children, but 40 years for attempted murder of a state attorney.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Of a man.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

So Stacey's body has never been found. Her case remains open, and Drew has never been tried for her murder, and her family are still looking for her. So this brings us to the end of the Peterson trio. Scott, Michael, and Drew, all wife killers, all liars, all arrogant narcissists with very similar personalities. What do you have for me?

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Well, I don't like any of them. And I hope they all get what they deserve.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

We've said what's up with the name Peterson, and obviously not every Peterson's bad. We're not saying that. But we've got Peterson, Peterson, Peterson, we've got Stacy and Lacey, and you realize that we have two dead Kathleen Petersons. Mm-hmm. So it's odd. Yes. And both killed by husbands who made it look like an accident. I mean, that's just bizarre. Two of them named Kathleen Peterson. It is. It is extremely bizarre. One that accidentally slipped and drowned in a bathtub, and one that accidentally fell down the stairs. Supposedly. Yeah. I mean, it's just odd.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

It's very odd. It's surreal. I just want to say again that I have no idea, and we'll go over this in the after show, but I just so strongly don't understand how these women are so attracted to him. Especially after he's on trial for murder of two women. And you're trying to get with him? Something is is wrong there.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

One of the girls, her dad was there the night that she met Drew in the bar, and his red flags went up straight.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

Immediately, I saw that.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

He tried to stop the dating. And the more he tried to stop it, the more. I mean, it's I don't I don't remember how old she was. Assuming she was like between 16 and 18. Yeah. Stacey was. Yeah. I mean, a 16 to 18-year-old girl and your dad's like in a bar with you, number one, and then says, Oh, don't date him, he's no good. You're gonna do the opposite. Yeah, you are. So just so you know, I'm not gonna discuss these, but these are my aftershow questions. Why are such young women attracted to a man so much older with missing and dead wives who have multiple children? Who is looking after these four children while Drew is dating these new girls? And do you think if he had not been a police officer, Kathleen's death would have been looked more closely into when it happened? And do you think Stacy would have been interviewed alone? So don't answer me now. I want these guys to know what we're gonna talk about in the after show so they can decide whether or not they want to hear it. Um, but all interesting questions, I think.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

Yes, okay, and here's what I have for the after show. So the Peterson trifecta, and like you just said, and like we discussed briefly, women who are attracted to these fucking murder. And then there's the sister-in-law's phone call into the radio show. Do you know about that? Was it to do with the dating thing? No.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Oh, okay. No, I don't. She Oh no, hold on to that.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

Okay, okay, okay. His smirk and his mugshot.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Yeah. Every time you see him on any kind of media ever, including his mugshot, he just needs to be punched in the face.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Yeah, and just his general behavior in the media, how he loves the attention, and then possible remains at the bottom of the Illinois Canal that Stacy's sister found with sonar technology. That's bizarre. All right. Well, I can't wait to record it. Yeah, so we will see you subscribers in the after show.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Yes, we will. Until then. Be divas.