Scott Peterson is still ensconced in California’s Death Row after being sentenced to death in 2005 for the murder of his wife Laci. There are updates on two of the other (alleged) wife-killing Petersons, though…
Author Michael Peterson, convicted in 2003 of killing his wife Kathleen two years earlier, was released on bond last week after a judge ruled that a North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation agent had misled the jurors about certain evidence.
He will be retried, though no date has been announced. Kathleen Peterson died after falling down a flight of stairs — but evidence suggested that she’d suffered several head lacerations before the fall, suggesting this was not an accident.
Drew Peterson, the Illinois man who basked in his celebrity after his fourth wife Stacy’s 2007 disappearance, and whose high profile (see previous articles) played in a role in investigators exhuming his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and determining that her death, originally ruled an accident was probably murder, was also in the news: Peterson, currently in prison charged with Savio’s murder, is demanding an apology from the Illinois State Police for…
Well, it’s not really clear what.
According to a statement released by his publicist, Glenn Selig — yes, Peterson has a publicist — the Illinois State Police apparently owes Peterson an apology for suspecting that Stacy is dead, probably by Drew’s hand, though he was never charged with any crimes related to Stacy’s disappearance.
This could all be as simple as Drew Peterson feeling that he hadn’t gotten enough attention lately…
When the Illinois State Police made public statements that Drew Peterson’s wife, Stacy Peterson, was “missing and presumed dead” it immediately focused attention and cast suspicion on him, but Drew Peterson has always believed that Stacy is still very much alive and he deserves an apology.
What prompted the demand for an apology is the case of a Washington State mother who had been missing for 18 years until just this month. Judith Bello vanished under suspicious circumstances but just voluntarily resurfaced after being featured in a cold case story.
Back in 1993, Judith Bello failed to pick up her three year old child at the daycare center after work and just vanished. Police found her car abandoned at the local post office later that day and she left no word with her family. Suspicion was cast on her husband because they were having marital difficulties. Police at the time said that it was unlikely Bello would voluntarily leave because she was a good mother and was close to her family.
It turns out that’s exactly what she did.
This case shows that “there are a lot of reasons why people go missing, and not all of them are bad,” Snohomish County Sheriff’s chief Kevin Prentiss told a local newspaper. “Sometimes people just don’t want to be found.”
And that’s point, according to Drew Peterson.
His lead criminal defense attorney says what the State Police did was just plain wrong.
“There is a huge cloud of suspicion cast over Drew Peterson because of the Illinois State Police’s statement that Stacy Peterson is presumed dead; however there is absolutely no evidence to support that statement,” says Joel A. Brodsky, Drew Peterson’s lead attorney. “They made it seem like no woman, no mother, would ever just disappear, but as this most recent case shows, it does happen. In fact it happens more often than you would think”
In fact Stacy Peterson’s own mother disappeared when Stacy was a youngster. “In Stacy’s mind disappearing may be ‘normal,’” says Brodsky.
Peterson has not been charged in Stacy’s disappearance. He is in jail awaiting trial for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen, which was ruled an accident at the time of her death. Peterson vehemently denies any wrongdoing in both cases.
I think I’ve got these three guys all mixed up in my head.
Memo to Self: Don’t marry anyone named Peterson
Any word on what Drew’s most recent (and less than half his age) girlfriend thinks? Are they even still involved, since he’s been in jail a while?
Typo — that should be “originally ruled an accident, was probably murder”. Unless he has a time machine and went back to kill her just before she died, of course.