Stacey Peterson: Victim of “divorce substitute”

About 60 volunteers spread out Saturday morning along a jogging trail and a large wooded area around Route 53 and Royce Road in Bolingbrook. They also blanketed area stores with fliers. Peterson’s husband, Bolingbrook Police Sgt. Drew Peterson, left his home Saturday morning and did not join in the search effort.

Stacy Peterson’s sister, Cassandra Cales, did participate but told NBC5 she believes her sister is dead.

“No, she’s not alive,” Cales said, echoing the fears of many searchers.

The search will resume at 9 a.m. today, with volunteers asked to meet at Peterson’s Bolingbrook house on Pheasant Chase Court. Employees from a professional search company from Texas are expected to volunteer as well beginning today, said one search coordinator, Roy Taylor, whose mother is a close friend of Stacy Peterson’s.

Illinois State Police have expressed interest in a barrel once at the Peterson home. Searchers focused on that but came up empty Saturday.

One searcher, Mike Cepuran, who said he knew Stacy Peterson since she was a little girl, paddled a kayak as part of the search along the DuPage River. Cepuran found a barrel — but it was empty.

Police divers have searched a nearby pond, and investigators also have examined a micro-light airplane owned by Drew Peterson.

Friends and family called Stacy Peterson “a good person” who would never leave her two children. Worried relatives reported Stacy Peterson missing on Monday.

‘Keep me in your prayers’

On Oct. 17, she e-mailed a family friend, expressing concern over her deteriorating relationship with her husband. The e-mail was provided by the friend, Steve Cesare, to the Naperville Sun.

“i have been arguing quite a bit w/my husband,” Stacy Peterson wrote.

“as i mature with age i am finding that the relationship i am in is controlling, manipulative and some what abusive,” she wrote in the e-mail dated Oct. 17. “. . . tomorrow is our 4 year anniversary and I am not as excited as the years that have past.

“. . . if you could keep me in your prayers i could use some wisdom, protection, and strength.”

Stacy Peterson is the fourth wife of Drew Peterson. His third wife, Kathleen Savio, was found dead in an empty bathtub in her Bolingbrook home in 2004. The death was ruled accidental.

Drew Peterson and Savio were divorced at the time. Their two sons inherited the $1 million life insurance policy Peterson held on his ex-wife, court records indicate.

Source: CS