Prosecutors Make Case on Drew Peterson Conviction to Appellate Court

Prosecutors on the Drew Peterson case filed a 60-page appellate brief in hopes of thwarting the wife-killer’s bid to get a new murder trial. Peterson’s lawyers will have two weeks to respond before appellate judges in Ottawa take a look at the case.

Peterson, 60, was found guilty in September 2012 of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio.

Savio, 40, was found drowned in a dry bathtub in March 2004. Peterson, a Bolingbrook police sergeant, and Savio were in the midst of a contentious divorce when she mysteriously happened to die, but investigators from the Illinois State Police found nothing suspicious about the matter and quickly decided it was an accident.

The demise of Peterson and Savio’s marriage was hastened when he was caught having an affair with a teenage girl from Romeoville, Stacy Cales. Peterson got Cales pregnant while he was still married to Savio. Peterson and Savio were able to dissolve their marriage without finalizing the financial issues in their divorce case. He and Cales then wed, and Peterson and his new bride, Mrs. Stacy Peterson, moved into a house on Pheasant Chase Court, just down the block from Savio’s home.

Savio’s death was quickly forgotten but leapt into the national consciousness when Stacy Peterson vanished in October 2007. The police named Drew Peterson a suspect in her “potential homicide” but never got around to charging him with harming her.

In May 2009 the police did charge Peterson with murdering Savio. He remained locked up in the Will County jail until he was shipped to prison in February 2013. Peterson insisted throughout that he did not kill Savio.

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