Nearly 20 years after Drew Peterson became a nationally known figure following the disappearance of his fourth wife, the former Illinois police sergeant is living a starkly different life.
Peterson is serving a 78-year prison sentence for the 2004 murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, as well as a murder-for-hire scheme aimed at the prosecution. His fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared on Oct. 28, 2007. Her case remains unsolved, and Peterson is still considered a suspect, according to an Illinois State Police spokesperson.
Nineteen years later, here is a look at Drew Peterson’s life behind bars.
Who is Drew Peterson?
Peterson married his high school sweetheart, Carol Brown, in 1974. They had two sons, but divorced in 1980 after he was allegedly unfaithful. Two years later, he married Victoria Connolly. That marriage ended in divorce in 1992.
Later that year, Peterson married his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and the couple had two sons. Kathleen filed for divorce after discovering that he had been having an affair with hotel clerk Stacy Cales.
Eight days after the divorce was finalized in October 2003, Peterson married Stacy.
What Happened to Kathleen Savio?
On March 1, 2004, Kathleen was found dead in her bathtub. She had bruises and a laceration on her head.
Kathleen’s sister testified that she had feared something could happen to her during a property dispute with Peterson, according to an Illinois appellate court opinion.
At the time, however, Kathleen’s death was ruled accidental. Peterson continued working in law enforcement and raised his four youngest children with Stacy.
That changed in October 2007, when Stacy disappeared.
What Happened to Stacy Ann Peterson?
After Stacy was reported missing, Peterson told police that she had left because of problems in their marriage. Her family, however, said that although she had been planning to divorce him, she would not have abandoned her children.
Stacy’s disappearance also brought renewed scrutiny to Kathleen’s death when a new examination of the evidence raised the possibility that the death had been staged to look like an accidental drowning.
In a petition filed by prosecutors and obtained by CBS News, prosecutors wrote: “The one-inch gash in the back of Kathleen Savio’s head did not render her unconscious, which would have been necessary for her to accidentally drown in the bathtub.”
Investigators exhumed Kathleen’s body in November 2007. A second autopsy concluded that she had been the victim of a homicide.
Peterson continued to deny killing Kathleen while publicly appealing for Stacy to return home.
“Make yourself known. Make yourself seen,” Peterson told ABC News in November 2007. “Come out publicly. That’s it. Let this be over.”
He also disputed the results of a polygraph examination that indicated he had lied in three responses about Stacy’s disappearance.
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“I answered the questions truthfully,” Peterson told CBS News in 2008, “and why it showed up that I was deceptive, I have no idea.”
Peterson was arrested for murder in May 2009. A Will County indictment alleged that he “caused Kathleen Savio to inhale fluid,” leading to her death. He pleaded not guilty.
At his 2012 trial, prosecutors argued that Kathleen’s injuries pointed to a struggle and presented evidence that Peterson had previously threatened to kill her, according to a 2017 Illinois Supreme Court opinion. They also alleged that on the night Kathleen died, Stacy saw her husband wearing black and washing women’s clothing that did not belong to her.
A witness also testified that Drew had once offered him $25,000 to find someone to “take care of his third wife.”
Drew’s defense maintained there were no signs of a struggle and that Kathleen had fallen in the tub.
However, in 2012, Drew was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 38 years in prison.
Stacy remains a missing person and the investigation into her whereabouts is active, a spokesperson for the Illinois State Police told Oxygen. Drew has never been charged in her case.
Where Is Drew Peterson Today?
Drew’s legal troubles have continued behind bars.
In 2014, he hatched a murder-for-hire plot that targeted Will County prosecutor James Glasgow, who pursued murder charges in Kathleen’s death.
Drew pleaded not guilty to charges of solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation of murder. His attorney argued there was no evidence to support the charges, but in 2016, Drew was convicted and was sentenced to an additional 40 years in prison.
For security reasons, the exact location of his confinement isn’t publicly known. In 2017, he was moved to a federal prison in Indiana followed by a 2019 transfer to a state prison outside of Illinois.
Still, Drew maintains his innocence.
“I didn’t murder Kathy,” he told Fox 32 in 2019. “And I didn’t murder Stacy.”
In fact, he holds out hope that Stacy will surface one day.
“Well, there’s been all kinds of cases of a woman coming back years after,” he said, “as much as 10 or 12 years afterward.”
Spokespeople from the Illinois Department of Corrections and the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comments from Oxygen.