Stacy Peterson

Case background and investigation

Stacy Ann Peterson (nee Cales) was 23 years old and the fourth wife of Drew Peterson, a longtime sergeant with the Bolingbrook, Illinois, police department, when she vanished from the couple's home on Sunday, October 28, 2007. She was reported missing the following day after relatives were unable to reach her. At the time she was close to completing a nursing degree at Joliet Junior College. Drew Peterson told investigators that Stacy had telephoned him to say she was leaving him for another man, an account her family and the police did not accept. Despite extensive searches, Stacy Peterson has never been found, and authorities came to presume she was the victim of foul play.

Stacy's disappearance revived scrutiny of the death of Drew Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio. Savio's body had been discovered in a dry bathtub at her home on March 1, 2004, months after her divorce from Peterson was finalized. A coroner's jury initially ruled the death an accidental drowning. After Stacy vanished, Savio's body was exhumed in November 2007 and re-examined. A forensic pathologist concluded the death was a homicide staged to look like an accident, citing bruising and an unexplained gash to the scalp, and the manner of death was reclassified.

On May 7, 2009, Drew Peterson was indicted for Savio's murder, and bail was set at $20 million. Following a trial in which the prosecution relied in part on hearsay statements attributed to both Savio and Stacy Peterson, a jury on September 6, 2012, found Peterson guilty of the first-degree murder of Kathleen Savio. On February 21, 2013, he was sentenced to 38 years in prison. Peterson's conviction in the Savio case was subsequently upheld on appeal.

While serving that sentence, Peterson was charged in a separate case with plotting to have Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, who had prosecuted the Savio case, killed. Prosecutors said Peterson tried to hire a fellow inmate to carry out the killing, and that the inmate cooperated with the FBI. On May 31, 2016, a jury convicted Peterson of solicitation of murder and solicitation of murder for hire. He was sentenced on July 29, 2016, to an additional 40 years, to be served consecutively to his murder sentence.

Despite the convictions related to Kathleen Savio and to the plot against the prosecutor, Drew Peterson has never been charged in connection with Stacy Peterson's disappearance, and no one else has been charged. Her body has never been recovered. Investigators and Stacy's family have long publicly identified Peterson as a suspect in her case, but as a legal matter it remains an open, unsolved missing-persons investigation. Periodic searches and reported tips over the years have not led to a recovery of her remains or to charges.