Two wives dead or gone — the 38-year gap between her bath and the truth

🚨 THE LOCKED DOOR AND THE THREE-YEAR ECHO

The bathroom door was locked from the inside when Kathleen Savio, third wife of Bolingbrook police sergeant Drew Peterson, was found dead in her bathtub on October 29, 2004.

The initial investigation ruled it an accidental drowning.

The case closed. It stayed closed for more than two years.

Almost exactly three years later, on October 28, 2007, Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared.

She was 23 years old. Police found the circumstances suspicious.

The disappearance forced a second look at the first death. Authorities reopened the Savio case, and her body was exhumed in November 2007.

A second autopsy determined her death was a homicide, caused by drowning, with evidence of blunt force trauma.

So there is the locked door. There is the missing wife. There is the three-year echo between them.

A theory circulating online links both events to one man. That theory is not a fact established by the record. The documented case against Drew Peterson involves only Kathleen Savio's death.

That he was involved in Stacy Peterson's disappearance remains a theory. No body has been recovered. No charges have been filed in her case.

What the record does establish begins with that bathtub on a Friday morning in October 2004. What it establishes next depends on how long the silence lasted — and what finally broke it.

OCTOBER 29, 2004 — THE BATH

She was on the ground floor of a locked house.

Kathleen Savio, third wife of Bolingbrook police sergeant Drew Peterson, was found dead in her bathtub on the morning of October 29, 2004.

Her home was locked from the inside.

The bathtub was full.

A small cut marked her head, and the setting suggested a fall.

The initial investigation concluded accidental drowning.

That conclusion rested on the cut, the water, and the closed door.

The exact circumstances of that cut were not established in the initial investigation.

It was enough to close the case.

Savio and Peterson had divorced in 2003.

A financial settlement was still pending at the time of her death.

No specific weapon was identified in court.

The death was by drowning.

The water was the weapon, or the water was the scene.

The record does not say which.

It says she was found in the tub, that the door was locked, that the cut was small.

It says the investigation stopped there.

A bath turned fatal.

A death ruled an accident.

A file closed.

The ordinary horror is that it stayed closed for two years.

Not because the evidence was conclusive.

Because nothing pushed it further.

She was 40 years old.

She was a mother.

She was found in her own bathroom on a Friday.

The door was locked from the inside.

That was enough.

THE CLOSED CASE — TWO YEARS OF SILENCE

The case remained closed for more than two years.

Two years of silence, two years of a file sitting untouched.

Savio had told friends and family she feared Peterson would kill her and make it look like an accident.

Those statements were later documented.

They were documented after her body was exhumed, after a second autopsy, after a fourth wife vanished.

In 2004, the small cut on her head and the bathtub setting were enough.

The door was locked from the inside.

That was still enough.

No charges were filed.

No further investigation was conducted during that period.

Peterson continued as a sergeant with the Bolingbrook Police Department.

He wore the badge, carried the authority, lived the ordinary days.

What Peterson did or didn't do during those two years is not in the record.

The record holds only what was examined, what was ruled, what was closed.

She told people she was afraid.

They heard her.

The system accepted the surface and ignored the fear she voiced.

Not because the fear was hidden.

But because a locked door and a small cut answered every question asked.

Two years of silence.

Then Stacy Peterson disappeared, and the silence broke.

OCTOBER 28, 2007 — STACY DISAPPEARS

October 28, 2007, and Stacy Peterson is gone.

She was 23 years old, the fourth wife of Drew Peterson.

She was last seen that day, and police found the circumstances suspicious.

Almost exactly three years after Kathleen Savio was found in her bathtub.

The gap is not a coincidence the record proves.

It is a gap the record leaves open.

Stacy has never been found.

She is presumed dead, but no body has been recovered.

No charges have been filed in her case.

What happened to Stacy Peterson is not established.

Not because no one looked.

Because the looking turned elsewhere.

Her disappearance forced a look back.

A locked door and a small cut no longer answered every question.

The silence broke, and the exhumation followed.

But that is the next section.

For now, the question is the date.

Three years, one day apart.

Two wives, one dead and one gone.

The record documents the disappearance.

The record does not document what happened after.

NOVEMBER 2007 — THE EXHUMATION

Two wives, one dead and one gone.

The disappearance opened the old file.