Wives just seem to disappear around this former cop - the Dark Secrets of Officer Drew Peterson
32:40 Share

Dispatch, this is Mindy at ME Flow.

Dispatch, this is Mindy. Go ahead.

Hi, friends. How are you today?

Good. I'm so glad to hear. My name is Bailey Sarian, and today is Monday, which means it's Murder Mystery Makeup Monday. If you're new here, hi, my name is Bailey Sarian, and on Mondays, I sit down and I talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my...

Noggin. And I do my makeup at the same time. But you're listening to the podcast, so you're just gonna listen to me, okay? That's what you're gonna do. You're gonna listen to me. Don't forget to like and subscribe and all that stuff 'cause I'm here for you on Monday. Okay, today's story is about a guy named Drew Peterson. Our story today centers on the little Illinois suburb of Boiling Brook. Maybe it's Balling Brook. It's probably Balling. I think it's Balling.

You know, I swear. I'm always like, I'm going to look this up to figure out how to pronounce it. And then I forget and I start recording. And then I'm like, oh, crap.

And then I could pause, but I'm already in the groove. I'm going to say it's Bolingbrook, okay? Go with me. It's in Illinois, and it's a suburb. Now, Bolingbrook isn't that old. It was, like, founded in 1964, which means that some of the people we're going to be talking about today are actually older than the community that they had lived in. Bolingbrook is a small town, you know, or at least it was back when it was founded. Nowadays, there's upwards of, like, 70,000 people living there. So it's not really...

tiny it's not huge but it's a good size you get it but back in the day like everyone knew everyone especially people at the center of government especially like if you're a police officer it's like in the in the town those are the faces that everyone knew because they would see them all the time and they were considered the most trusted and like well-known folks around but

We're here right now because, you know, that kind of reputation and trust in a community can just as easily be used to conceal things. One of these people that everyone trusted in Bolingbroke was a man named Drew Peterson, who was a police sergeant. Oh yes. Drew was 50 years old and by that point had been a member of the police force for around 20 years. Drew even owned a local bar.

I know, I was like, okay, that's kind of weird, but okay. I would just think like if you're a police officer and you owned a bar, you just park outside of your bar and then just arrest people for DUIs all the time and there you go. Whatever. Okay, anywho. Well, it was the last weekend in February of 2004, and Drew had spent the weekend with his two sons, Thomas and Christopher. Drew was headed to their house to drop them off with his ex-wife, Kathy.

So at this point, Drew and Kathy had been separated for some time and had worked out a joint custody agreement. So it ought to have been like a routine drop off. This day was very different because when Drew and his two boys got there, walked up the driveway and knocked on the door, Kathy never came out.

It was very strange. Drew and his kids stuck around for a little bit thinking Kathy might come back from the store or something like that. Maybe she just stepped out, but that never happened either. So Drew like calls Kathy a bunch on the cell phone. Bling, bling, bling, hello, hello. You know, no answer. Time is going by, it's getting later. He's like, okay, what do I do? So eventually Drew takes his boys back home with him.

You know, they can't wait there all night. They've got school, he's got work. So they go back home with Drew. The next day, Drew goes back to Kathy's house to try and see if she came home. But still there was no answer at the door.

So Drew starts going door to door in her neighborhood asking if any of the neighbors knew if Kathy was like out of town or if there had been some kind of an emergency, anything. And after a few houses, Drew must have like come across a neighbor Kathy trusted because as the story goes, one of the neighbors offered a key.

house key. So with their help Drew and a couple of those neighbors went looking for Kathy inside her house with the key. So they get inside and much to their surprise and probably horror they found her.

I keep getting like really great recommendations for television programs, but they're always on different streaming services. You know what I mean? So naturally I sign up for that free trial with yet another fake email address to watch what's going on. I wanna, you know, I wanna see what everyone's talking about with these programs. And I always tell myself, okay, once I'm done, I'll cancel, right? But here I am.

Yet again. Another $24.99 down the drain. Ugh! Why? Why? So annoying. I mean, it makes sense. I guess most Americans think that they spend like $62 per month on subscriptions. But really, that number is closer to $300. Ugh! That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which we've probably forgotten about. Great. So now what? Well, thankfully, you can have Rocket Money on your side.

Oh yes. If you didn't know, Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions. They monitor your spending and they help lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. With Rocket Money, you can see a clear view of like all your expenses in one place. And if you see something you don't want, like maybe a subscription you don't use, Rocket Money can help cancel it with just a few taps. You know, so that you can spend that money elsewhere. Like for me, on makeup or something.

Usually makeup, always makeup. Isn't it Bailey? Yes, it is. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of 500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features. So stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com/makeup. That's rocketmoney.com/makeup.

rocketmoney.com/makeup. According to the police, Kathy was found face down in her own bedroom's bathtub with blood running down the tiles of the shower walls that looked to be from a gash in her head. Her hair was still damp, but the tub was drained. After a two month investigation, Kathy's death was ruled an accident.

Yeah. The theory was that she had like taken a bath, she must have gotten up, slipped, smacked her head and then knocked herself unconscious, landing her face down in the water. And from there it was a simple drowning. The police figured that the water had probably drained from the tub sometime between when she died to when Drew and the neighbors found her.

Now, there was no evidence of struggle or suspicious items lying around the house, so that was it.

Case closed. Yeah, it was pretty open and shut. It was very tragic, especially for Kathy's sons who had come home from their father's house to now a world without their mother. Kathy's friends were completely broken up about it too. Kathy was looking forward to the end of her divorce proceedings with Drew that she had even recently started dating again. She and her friends were even planning a big party to...

to conclude the rocky divorce. You know, people have divorce parties. Yeah, it was going to be one of those. And now to have it like all taken away by an accident, it was just, it was brutal. So that was all in 2004.

Kathy's death was ruled an accident and Drew and his sons, they just now have to move on. Which seems like it may have been easier for Drew than obviously for his boys. Because before Kathy and Drew's divorce had even finished, Drew was already married to another woman. I mean, that can happen, you know, that's not a bad thing. But...

It was kind of weird, you know, but that woman's name was Stacy and she was 20 years old who worked in the local government. I guess, listen, Drew had proposed to Stacy just weeks after filing for divorce from Kathy. Oh yeah. Hmm.

Mm-hmm. By October of 2003, Drew and Stacey were married. Now at this point, like Kathy and Drew's divorce hadn't even gone through yet, but okay, they were married, ready to move on. And not only that, but he and Stacey had even had a three month old daughter by this point. Yeah. And I guess the daughter had attended their wedding and I mean, he had moved on like so quick. My God. Now let's jump to 2007.

Stacy is now 23 and Drew is 53. Oh yeah. And at this point, I guess they had been married for four years. Which if you do the math, wait a minute, does that mean she was like 18, 19? Fucking perv. Well, legal, but you know, like, okay. The two of them, they had two more children together and apparently the marriage was a little fiery, it was said. Stacy was rumored to have told her friends that she was thinking of leaving him.

but she never got the chance because on October 29th, 2007, three and a half years after his last wife was found dead, Stacey was now reported missing. Now I forgot to mention this. Okay, I'm so sorry. But Stacey was Drew's fourth marriage. Yes, this was his fourth marriage. You heard that right. I say after two, well, you know, people love love, but you know,

Fourth wife? Sheesh. I'm not judging, but I'm a little judgy. We can judge because he's bad. Okay, you get it. Stacy is missing, okay? Now, I guess the day before, on October 28th, Stacy had made plans with her sister, Cassandra, to come over and help her paint. It was a little weird when Stacy didn't show up.

because the two sisters had talked the night before and had confirmed their plans. Stacey had even promised to call Cassandra in the morning before coming over, but that never happened. Meanwhile, Drew's side of the story was a little different. He told police that Stacey had called him in the middle of the night on the 28th

and told him that she was leaving him for another man. Fucking idiot, who would believe that? Cassandra and Stacy's friends immediately called bullshit. They were like, "That is something Stacy would never do. She wouldn't just abandon her kids."

In fact, you know who it did sound like to them? Kind of sounded like something Drew would do, huh? Not only that, but Kathy, remember Kathy? Kathy was Drew's third wife, but you know, she was the one found dead in the bathtub. Her friends started talking to the police again about Drew and they were hella suspish.

of Drew back when he was married to Kathy for reasons we'll get to in a minute. But they started coming out of the woodwork around the time search parties started being organized for Stacy. By three days into that search, the police announced that they were reopening Kathy's case. They even had Kathy's body exhumed for a second autopsy. And it was conducted by a third party coroner. And they concluded that Kathy's death

actually might have been a homicide. Everyone knows I love a DIY project. Oh yes, I do. You know, being crafty. I love it. Ladies sewing circles. Honey, I'm in. Scrapbooking. Pass that glue stick. Okay.

But lately, trying to sell your own homemade goods, crafts, or products has become a sort of nightmare, hasn't it? These websites that we used to know and love have upped their fees, have complicated algorithms, all of that, and just making it almost impossible to make any type of profit on your craft or your art. Well, it's time to get off these sites and start your own website powered by Shopify.

with shopify you can sell your products or goods online in store on social media and beyond shopify pos is your command center for your retail store from accepting payments to managing inventory shopify has everything you need to start manage and grow a business with shopify

You get a powerhouse selling partner that effortlessly unites your in-person and online sales into one source of truth. So you can track every sale in one place and know exactly what's in stock. You can connect with customers in line and online and Shopify helps you drive store traffic with plug and play tools built from marketing campaigns from TikTok to Instagram and whatever else you use.

Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way. So do retail right with Shopify.

Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash makeup. Now makeup is all lowercase, okay? So you're going to go to shopify.com slash makeup to take your retail business to the next level. shopify.com slash makeup.

So now like people are talking, right? People are like, what the fuck is going on? There's questions and accusations just flying in every direction. Local and national media come into play and suddenly Drew Peterson is all over the news talking about his missing wife, his dead ex-wife, and absolutely refusing any notion that he had anything to do with either incident. It sounds like, what's his name?

Chris Watts, huh? He went on the news and was like, I don't know. And like everyone knew in that moment that he had something to do with it. That's what Drew was doing. And honestly, it was said that like when people watched him on the news, it looked kind of like he was enjoying the spotlight.

Like, he didn't appear to be broken up. You know, his wife was missing. The mother of his two daughters. I mean, where is she? Right? Like, nothing. He was like, well, very matter of fact. Like, la-da-da. I mean, on top of that, too, like, his two sons lost their parent. And now, like, the stepmom is missing. Ugh. Just sad.

You wouldn't tell he was sad. I mean, if Drew was feeling any of that, he didn't let it, you know, show to the cameras. Instead, he hammed it up. He made jokes. He kind of made a show of the whole thing, all the while denying he had anything to do with it and just being really smug about it.

even kind of blaming Stacey for her own disappearance. If you asked him, he had nothing to do with it and his attitude on TV was just a reflection of that. Now Drew thought he was untouchable, which coincidentally is the name of the Lifetime movie they made about this guy. Yeah, I was gonna watch it before I wrote the script, but I didn't wanna mix up the facts with the movies. It stars like Rob Lowe, if you wanted to know.

Um, so if you watch it, let me know. Let me know. So Drew was, you know, most certainly not untouchable. I mean, after all, he's freaking suspicious as hell. And it only got worse for him as police started interviewing some of Kathy's friends about her and Drew's relationship from years prior. And it turns out, maybe you guessed it, Drew wasn't a great guy.

Yeah. Hmm. So Kathy had married Drew in 1992 and they were together for 12 years before her death. She was 29 at the time and he was 38. And at first it didn't seem like anything was outright strange about the guy. So the two of them had gotten married six months after their first date. So, you know, he was speedy.

And you can kind of notice maybe a pattern. He would jump from one marriage to a younger woman. That was his pattern. Besides all that, according to everyone else, things looked okay on the outside. They had kids, they went on vacations, they seemed like a great family and did family stuff. There was one story from 1993 though, where apparently Kathy had visited a hospital to treat a bruised head. She told doctors that she hit her head on the dining room table

But Kathy's sisters remember seeing those bruises and they suspected Drew was maybe abusing her, you know, and they were asking. But Kathy, she just kept saying that she didn't want to talk about it, you know. So they suspected that, but there was never like confirmation. And Drew, I guess like to this day, he claimed he never abused Kathy. Things really start to get rocky is in the 2000s, specifically October of 2001.

Kathy got a letter that day in her mailbox, an unaddressed envelope with a single sheet of paper inside. The fuck? Yeah. So there was no signature, no name from the sender.

And it just had one message. All it said was that her husband, Drew, was having an affair with a 17-year-old named Stacy. And that everyone at the city center, the mayor and his people, they all knew about it. It was said, quote,

Now, nobody knows what Kathy was thinking at this moment, but the protect yourself and your family is

just seems like really scary. So understandably, she immediately separated from Drew and much like he had before, very shortly after they had separated, Drew filed for divorce, bam. It's like almost like he had been planning for it. It was said that the divorce was a nightmare, explosive, okay? Over the course of it, which took two fricking years,

Kathy called for police intervention or assistance 19 times. To be clear, not all these 19 calls from Kathy to police were about Drew coming and posing a danger to her, but a lot of them were. There are two records specifically of Kathy reporting abuse from Drew during one of their scheduled joint custody drop-offs.

As for the other reports, they may have been like minor disagreements, but they tell a story anyway. Kathy was terrified of Drew. Her entire family, I guess, could see it. Over the course of their divorce proceedings, Kathy consistently told her family and even the police, who you have to remember were Drew's coworkers, that she thought Drew was going to kill her. Now, according to Kathy's sister, Sue,

Kathy was convinced that this was going to happen. Kathy thought that because Drew was a police officer, he would know exactly how to kill her and make it look like an accident, which like, just gives me goosebumps, right? Like, so scary. Who do you go to? And like, she had this feeling and she told police about it on several occasions.

She reached out to a lawyer and this lawyer was obviously working with city officials on the case and was trying to get some kind of police protection, but...

Nothing ever came of it, like, okay. Kathy tried more official channels too, like filing for an emergency order of protection from the police in 2002. She even wrote in an application that she thought Drew wanted to kill her and that he would go to great lengths to do it. A judge actually granted her the protection, but Drew's attorney in the divorce got the court to dismiss it. Ugh, ugh.

It's like she's doing everything she can to protect herself and no one has her back. Back in 2001 the mayor of Bolingbroke was a man named Roger Clare? Clare. Clare I think. Now this guy had been in politics in Bolingbroke for just about as long as Drew had been a police officer. He was like a

pillar of the community. So Mayor Klar admitted to meeting with Drew that year about his affair with Stacey and the mayor had claimed that he was furious with Drew, even saying that Drew would never be promoted as long as he kept this kind of thing up. The thing is, well remember the the letter that Kathy had received in the mail? The letter claimed that it was a well-known joke among the local government that Drew was seeing Stacey

Which, given that the mayor admitted that he knew about it and met with Drew about it, it lends like some believability there. In fact, Drew remembers that meeting pretty differently. Instead of being threatened or denied a promotion, Drew says that the mayor almost congratulated him on his affair with Stacy. What a fucking dweeb, huh?

Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly how it went, huh? Well, congratulations. You're gonna get a promotion for sleeping with a 17-year-old. Sure, my guy. So the divorce was getting worse and worse. There were a few more flare-ups like we had talked about. I mean, once the police had to get involved between them when Drew reportedly pushed Kathy down, told her not to move, and then pulled a knife on her. And then Drew, he gave his own version and it was different.

He said that they talked for a long time and that Kathy tried to seduce him. And that's what happened. She was making the whole thing up, which I'm sure if we were both thinking about this, it doesn't make sense. Fucking moron. Anyway, Kathy wanted to get enough from Drew in the divorce to make sure that she and her children were safe. So she was trying to get as much as possible from him in the deal. And as the divorce goes on and scary things like this keep happening,

Kathy is desperate to get someone from the city, someone from the police, or someone from the state's attorney office on her side, and there's nothing, nobody. She even went to the chief of police at the time, and I guess the chief of police said that he took her seriously, but that he gave her his cell phone number, and like, that was it. And that's kind of how the story goes.

Yep, all the way through to March of 2004. Kathy's reaching out, trying to find someone who will listen as tensions between her and Drew continue to rise. But by that point, two years in, it seemed like maybe it was going to just finally end. Well...

It did. And that brings us back to Kathy's death and Stacy's disappearance. So given the coroner's new autopsy and the mountain of evidence that Kathy was afraid she was going to be killed during the divorce,

The police were able to arrest Drew on two counts of first-degree murder for Kathy's death, but it took them until 2009 to do it, and his hearing, it didn't even start until 2010. He did have to, like, stay in jail while he awaited trial, so there's that, I mean. All throughout that time, the search for Stacy continued, and unfortunately, the

It still continues today. She was never found. The police never connected Drew to Stacy's disappearance. So her murder was never attributed to him. Nor is it classified as a murder. She's a missing person still today, which is wild. My God, like where the fuck did he put her?

So scary. Drew's trial was not like usual. I don't typically talk about those developments because it's a lot of arguing and legal jargon. It's easier just to tell you what the jury learned.

but for this one the police's case was mostly based on interviews and testimony that they had collected. Since Kathy's death was ruled an accident initially, the spot she died in wasn't treated as a crime scene so there wasn't the usual collection of evidence to present, you know? So frustrating when they do that.

Just sucks. Instead, the prosecution sought to get Drew convicted of killing Kathy and presented witness after witness who could talk about how

awful his and Kathy's relationship was during the divorce. In other words, it was hearsay. It was he said, she said. There was no smoking gun and there was no confession. So it's a bold strategy, especially when this kind of evidence is normally inadmissible.

especially so long after Kathy's death, but a law that had been passed earlier that year allowed for it in special circumstances. In any case, they allowed these statements to serve as evidence in court. And let me tell you, it was quite significant

Oh yes.

She lied for him when the police asked him for his alibi for Kathy's time of death. I mean, at least according to this guy. But I believe it. I believe it. But again, it's hard because it's a lot of he said, she said. But if that was the case, then that meant that Stacy lied about Drew being home with her at the time of Kathy's death.

which was the whole reason he wasn't picked up for that in the first place. But like, that wasn't all. Jeff Pachter, a former coworker of Drew's from like before he was a cop,

testified that Drew offered him $25,000 just months before Kathy died to go and hire a hitman to kill her. Oh God, yep. They also heard from Tom Morphy, who was Drew's stepbrother. And boy, did he have some things to say. He said that in late 2000, Drew asked him to come over and help him lift like a large blue barrel into his truck.

When Tom got there and helped Drew with it, he said that the barrel weighed about 120 pounds and it was big enough to carry a person. What's even wilder is that the day after Tom went to help Drew with the barrel, Tom was hospitalized after an apparent suicide attempt. He, Tom, survived, but I think Tom might have caught on to like what he helped Drew do and the guilt behind it.

just really messed with him. Or maybe Drew tried to kill him. I don't know. I don't know. But you know, yep. I mean, look, this court was, ooh, it was quite the cast of people. Even one of Drew's own sons, his name's Eric, from his first marriage before Kathy or Stacey. And Eric testified that in 1993, he watched his dad, Drew,

drag Kathy down a set of stairs as she shouted for help. And he was like just a kid at this time, just in case you're thinking, well, why didn't he do anything? He was just a kid.

That's what he told everyone in court. So the trial didn't reach its full conclusion until 2012, but by September that year, a jury found Drew Peterson guilty of the murder of Kathy in the first degree, and he was sentenced to 38 years in prison that following February in 2013. Sadly, nothing for Stacey. She's still listed as a missing person, but hey.

Yeah, I mean, at least he got sentenced to 38 years. Again, it's tricky because there's no physical evidence, but it's like, you know that motherfucker did something. You know it, you know it. I know you know. I know you know that we know that he knows that we know that he did something. So Drew was convicted of murder for the death of Kathy, not for the death of Stacey. In fact, to this day, no arrest or headway has been made in the investigation into her disappearance.

Her sister, Cassandra, was interviewed in November of 2021. Yeah, so not that long ago. And she said that no matter what, she is going to find out what happened to her sister. And for her, the search has never ended. Meanwhile, Drew continues to shout to the media however he can from prison. He has attempted numerous times for appeal. The most recent...

of which was in 2017. And he argued that he was convicted exclusively on hearsay, which I mean, isn't incorrect.

But that's his argument. But again, all of the testimony was so strong and Drew's pattern of like dumping women in favor of younger ones had just become very obvious. And I didn't even mention because I didn't want to like throw so many names at you. He was seeing another young woman when the search for Stacy was going on.

Yeah, he started seeing someone else. What a fuckhead. Drew's own defense lawyer from the trial stated that the Supreme Court of Illinois' opinion on Drew, like the official one that resulted in his conviction, was pretty sound. And when your own lawyer is convinced of the other side's argument, I mean, that says something.

Yeah. And speaking of Drew's defense lawyer, I'll leave you all with this one last note. In February of 2015, Peterson was charged for yet another crime. Something he did inside of prison. And if you guessed attempted to hire a hitman to kill his defense lawyer...

then you would be right. He sure did. While in prison, this guy does, he just did not stop. He needs to be put down. Sorry, he does. There's no place for him, I believe. Put him down. Well, because of this, he got caught and a jury sentenced him to an additional 40 years in prison.

Now, does that sound like a forgiving person to you? No, don't be an idiot. Oh, God. This story is so awful, especially because there's no answers as far as, like, where's Stacy? And, like, what about his other wives? Are they okay? Like, did anyone check on them? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I truly believe that he murdered Kathy. Unfortunately, like, there's no hard evidence, but I'm glad that they found him, like, guilty on that. Because this guy seems psycho. Fuck.

fucking psycho right oh so gross oh i know i'm gonna go watch that lifetime movie see how it is now that i'm done with this but i hope this guy stays locked up forever and he does not get out right right i'm glad we agree but other than that i hope you have a good rest of your day you make good choices please be safe out there if you see something say some like some psycho like hitting someone or something you know i don't know

I just feel bad. Okay. Anyways, have a good day. Make good choices. And I'll be talking to you guys later. Goodbye.