Ex-cop’s wife’s death declared homicide

JOLIET, Ill. – After four years, three autopsies and an exhumation, the death in a bathtub of Drew Peterson’s third wife, Kathleen Savio, was called murder on Thursday.

“We have been investigating this as a murder since reopening the case,” Will County State’s Atty. James Glasgow said in a written statement announcing that the new autopsy determined her death was a homicide. “We now have a scientific basis to formally and publicly classify it as such.”

Peterson, 54, a former Bolingbrook, Ill., police sergeant, has not been named a suspect in Savio’s death.

But he is considered a suspect in the Oct. 28 disappearance of his current wife, Stacy Peterson, 24. And as authorities investigated that case, suspicion about the circumstances of Savio’s drowning led them to reopen the investigation into her death. Peterson has denied wrongdoing in both cases.

Thursday marked the first time Savio’s death has been classified a murder, said Glasgow spokesman Charles Pelkie. Homicide is a technical term meaning that a person died at the hands of another and does not necessarily mean the death was the result of a criminal act.

Thursday’s announcement was a step forward in an investigation that has been before a special grand jury since November.

The development was encouraging to Savio’s sister, Anna Marie Doman.

“We’ve always known in our hearts that it was (murder), but now finally we’re getting some confirmation and it will be investigated the way it should have been,” she said. “I think they should really investigate the people who blew it the first time.”

On March 1, 2004, Savio, 40, was found face down in the dry bathtub of her Bolingbrook home just weeks before her divorce settlement with Peterson was to be finalized. Her hair was soaked with blood from a gash on the back of her head, and a subsequent autopsy cataloged numerous bruises on her body.

The forensic pathologist who performed the original autopsy determined the cause of death was drowning and speculated she may have slipped in the tub and hit her head, causing her injuries.

In May 2004, an Illinois State Police special agent testified before a coroner’s jury that there was no evidence of foul play, and said investigators also believed her head wound was the result of a fall.

But Savio’s family disputed that version of events from the beginning. They kept medical records and other documents detailing Savio’s allegations of abuse and her frustration at the inaction of authorities.

Her sister, Susan Doman, told the coroner’s jury that Savio had warned her that if she died it may only look like an accident.

“(She) was just terrified of him,” Doman testified.