A year later, still no answers in Peterson case

[October 28, 2008]  CHICAGO (AP) -- It's been a year of hope and hype, despair and denials in the search for Stacy Peterson, the missing young wife of a former police officer.

On Tuesday, the anniversary of Peterson's disappearance will be marked in much the same way it began: Family members will hold an evening candlelight vigil and her husband will be in New York -- yet again telling a national television audience he had nothing to do with her disappearance.

"I've been always trying to get my story out," Drew Peterson said in a telephone interview from his New York hotel, where he and his attorney, Joel Brodsky, were staying before his scheduled appearance on the "Today" show.

From the beginning, the case played out like a made-for-TV movie.

The mysterious disappearance of the attractive woman -- the 23-year-old fourth wife of a police officer 30 years her senior -- drew a small army of television trucks that camped for weeks outside the Bolingbrook house where the couple had lived with their two young children and two of Drew Peterson's children from a previous marriage.

Authorities quickly called Peterson a suspect in his wife's disappearance and said it was a possible homicide.

Then they said the bathtub drowning of Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio, in 2004 might not have been an accident. After exhuming Savio's body, they labeled her death a homicide but did not name a suspect.

The media storm grew as police and volunteers searched frantically for Stacy Peterson and Savio's family told stories of alleged abuse of Savio by Drew Peterson. He went on TV time and again to profess his innocence.

But it's been months since there has been any news about Peterson's disappearance, and authorities have said little about the investigation into Savio's death.

In a statement to mark the one-year anniversary, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow called the investigations "highly productive."

"I fully expect there to be a resolution in at least one of these investigations in the near future," he wrote, but would not elaborate.

Meanwhile, the case already has been the subject of two books. And Peterson, 54, has continued to make headlines on a regular basis. He faces unrelated weapons charges and his court appearances attract a media crowd.

He recently took to the airwaves again, after a book written with his cooperation was published. Author Derek Armstrong wrote in "Drew Peterson Exposed" that a polygraph he had Peterson take showed the former police officer was "deceptive" in a few of his answers.

Peterson said he did not know why he was found to be "deceptive" to questions that asked about the last time he saw his wife, whether she told him she was leaving and whether he knows where she is.

But he and Brodsky maintain that he showed no deception when he answered that he did not harm either Stacy Peterson or Savio.

"If it is negative, it is big headlines (but) if something positive pops up, it's played down," Peterson said.

If he's asked on television, he also will also reiterate what he's said all along: His wife left him for another man and is alive.

But he may also say what he told The Associated Press on Monday: that he doesn't think she will ever come forward.

"If I was a little girl and the focus of all this media attention, I wouldn't be coming back," he said. "Why would a little girl come back to that?"

Brodsky, who has said he believes Stacy Peterson left willingly, says he wonders if something's happened to her since.

"The longer it goes on, the more possible that some harm came to her," he said. "Maybe she fell in with bad people ... I'm not saying it happened, but it certainly starts creeping into your thoughts as a possibility."

For Savio's family, the big concern is that authorities will lose interest in Kathleen Savio, just as they believed happened when her death was quickly ruled an accident in 2004.

That's why Savio's family members are taking part in the vigil, her nephew Charlie Doman said.

"We are going from my Aunt Kitty's (Savio's) house to Stacy's house to kind of keep it out there because things have really been dwindling," he said.

But there also are signs that at least some friends and family of Stacy Peterson just want the anniversary to come and go.

Pamela Bosco, a longtime family friend who has been acting as an unofficial family spokeswoman, said some decided that taking part in Tuesday night's vigil would be too difficult, particularly for Stacy Peterson's sister, Cassandra Cales.

"This one-year, it really hits home," she said. "I think we'd rather do something in private. We can let our tears go then."

[Associated Press; By DON BABWIN]

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