The Stacy Peterson Disappearance: Illinois's Most Watched Cold Case

On the evening of October 28, 2007, Stacy Peterson left the home she shared with her husband in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and was never seen again. She was 23 years old. Her husband, Drew Peterson, a sergeant with the Bolingbrook Police Department, reported her missing two days later. He told investigators she had called to say she was leaving him for another man. Police found no evidence of that call, no evidence of another man, and no evidence that Stacy had packed a bag.

What they found instead, in the months and years that followed, was a pattern. Drew Peterson had been married four times. His third wife was dead. And now his fourth wife had vanished.

The couple

Stacy Ann Cales was born in 1984 and grew up in the Chicago suburbs. She met Drew Peterson in 2001, when she was 17 and he was 47. They married in 2003. She was 19. He was 49. They had two young children together, and Drew had children from his previous marriages living in the house as well.

By 2007, neighbors and family members would later say, the marriage had become visibly strained. Stacy had confided in her pastor, Neil Schori, that she was thinking about divorce. According to Schori's later testimony, she told him something else too: that Drew had confessed to her he had "taken care of" Kathleen Savio, his third wife, who had died in a bathtub in 2004.

Stacy told at least two people about that conversation. Neither went immediately to police.

The third wife

Kathleen Savio had been found dead in her Bolingbrook home on February 29, 2004. She was discovered in a dry bathtub with a small cut on her scalp. The medical examiner, working without full documentation of the scene, ruled her death an accidental drowning. The case was closed.

At the time of Savio's death, she and Drew Peterson were in the middle of a contentious divorce. She had complained to authorities on at least one occasion about Drew's behavior, but nothing came of it. He collected her life insurance.

After Stacy went missing in October 2007, investigators took a second look at Savio's death. Her body was exhumed. A second autopsy, conducted by forensic pathologist Larry Blum, reached a different conclusion: the wound pattern, the absence of water in her lungs, and the position of the body were inconsistent with accident. Her death was re-classified as homicide. Drew Peterson was arrested in May 2009 and charged with her murder.

The night Stacy vanished

What happened in the Peterson house on the night of October 28, 2007 has never been definitively established. Drew Peterson has consistently maintained that Stacy called him from another man's phone to say she was leaving. He said he thought nothing of it and went to bed.

A witness who came forward in the days that followed told investigators a different story. Thomas Morphey, who was related to Stacy by family connection, said Peterson had contacted him that evening and asked him to come to the house to help move something heavy. Morphey described carrying a large container of some kind out of the house and loading it into Peterson's vehicle. He later said the container was warm and heavy in a way that disturbed him. He subsequently attempted suicide, and his account has been inconsistent in its details over the years, complicating its evidentiary value.

No blue barrel, no body, and no physical evidence directly linking Drew Peterson to Stacy's disappearance has ever been publicly confirmed.

Hearsay and the law

The prosecution of Drew Peterson for Kathleen Savio's murder relied significantly on hearsay testimony, including statements Savio had made before her death about fearing her husband and statements Stacy had made about Drew's supposed confession. Illinois passed a law specifically allowing such statements as evidence in cases where the defendant's own conduct caused the witness to be unavailable. It became known informally as "Drew's Law."

The law was challenged but upheld. Peterson's 2012 trial included testimony from Stacy's pastor, from Savio's divorce attorney, and from other individuals who said Savio had named Drew as a potential killer in the event of her death. The jury convicted Peterson of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 38 years. A judge later added 2.5 years for witness tampering.

Additional legal trouble

In 2021, Peterson's legal situation became substantially more complicated. He received an additional 40-year sentence after being convicted of soliciting a murder-for-hire plot against Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, the prosecutor who had brought the Savio murder charges. The plot was uncovered through a cooperating witness who had been contacted by intermediaries acting on Peterson's behalf while he was in prison.

Peterson, who had been the subject of national media coverage and a television movie, was now facing a cumulative sentence he would realistically never survive. He has continued to maintain his innocence in the Savio case and has never addressed Stacy's disappearance in any substantive public statement.

The investigation, stalled

Investigators have conducted periodic searches for Stacy Peterson's remains since 2007. No body has been found. Various tips and reported sightings have been investigated and not substantiated. The case remains officially open, classified as a missing persons case rather than a homicide, because there is no physical evidence that Stacy is dead.

Her family has never accepted that she walked away. Her brother, Cassandra Cales, and other relatives have spoken publicly over the years about their belief that she was killed and that Drew Peterson is responsible. The circumstantial weight is considerable: the timing of her disappearance, the history of the marriage, the subsequent revelations about Kathleen Savio's death, and the testimony of multiple people about what Stacy had told them in the weeks before she vanished.

None of that is enough to file charges.

Where the case stands

The Illinois State Police continue to list Stacy Peterson as a missing person. She would be 42 years old today. Drew Peterson, now in his seventies, is serving his sentences at Menard Correctional Center. His convictions, so far, relate only to Kathleen Savio's murder and the attempted murder of a prosecutor.

The Stacy Peterson disappearance remains exactly what it was in 2007: an open case with a suspect who has been convicted of killing a different wife, statements from multiple witnesses suggesting his guilt, no physical evidence connecting him to this crime, and no Stacy Peterson.

Cold cases of this type tend to resolve in one of two ways. New physical evidence surfaces, usually through construction or farm work, and a body is identified. Or they do not resolve at all, and the primary suspect dies in prison on a different count. The pattern of a missing woman, a named suspect close to her, and no charges ever filed also defines cases like the disappearance of Crystal Rogers in Bardstown, Kentucky. Either way, a woman who confided her fears to her pastor, then vanished from a Chicago suburb, is still out there somewhere.

The case has attracted sustained attention partly because of Drew Peterson's behavior after Stacy's disappearance, drawing the kind of relentless media coverage more often associated with cases like the JonBenet Ramsey investigation. He gave numerous media interviews, appeared on national television programs, and made comments about his missing wife that struck many observers as callous. He became, in a peculiar way, a public figure through the investigation rather than despite it. Joel Brodsky, his defense attorney during the Savio trial, later publicly stated that he believed Peterson had in fact killed Stacy. His own lawyer.

Eighteen years later, no one who knows where she is has said a word.