PETERSON'S THIRD WIFE EXHUMED

AMIDST COMPLAINTS THAT POLICE AREN'T HELPING SEARCH FOR MISSING BOLINGBROOK WOMAN ...

BOLINGBROOK -- The body of the third wife of embattled police Sgt. Drew Peterson was pulled from its grave Tuesday as the mystery surrounding the disappearance of his fourth wife showed no signs of diminishing.

Kathleen Savio's exhumed body was taken from Queen of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Hillside and transported to the Will County Morgue. Her family was angered and distressed by news helicopters broadcasting the unearthing of Savio's casket on live television.

"That's just wrong," said the dead woman's nephew, Charlie Doman of Romeoville. "These people are just disgusting. That's very disrespectful."

State's Attorney James Glasgow secured an order to exhume Savio's body after Stacy Peterson, the woman who next married Drew Peterson, vanished 17 days ago, drawing fresh attention to the third wife's mysterious March 2004 death.

Savio was found dead after Peterson attempted to return their two sons from a weekend visitation. No one answered the locked door of her home and Peterson, who lived down the street from Savio with his new wife, the now missing Stacy, sought help from a neighbor.

The neighbor called a locksmith, and once entry was gained, went inside to find Savio's body in a waterless bathtub.

A coroner's jury ruled the death an accidental drowning. State police investigated the case but made no arrests. One state police investigator went so far as to testify during the coroner's inquest that Savio's injuries appeared consistent with an accidental fall and that, "There was nothing to lead us to believe that anything else occurred."

But Glasgow believes something else may indeed have occurred and he re-opened both the case and Savio's grave so a second autopsy could be conducted on her body.

An expert, board-certified forensic pathologist Dr. Larry Blum, will perform the autopsy on Savio's remains, said Coroner Patrick O'Neil. In addition to examining the body, Blum will review past toxicological tests, photographs, investigation reports and other evidence, the coroner said.

While the autopsy was performed Tuesday, volunteer searchers scoured scrubland and various bodies of water in the vicinity of the Petersons' Pheasant Chase Court home for any sign of 23-year-old Stacy Peterson. They came up empty, and family spokeswoman Pamela Bosco blames state police.

"It's getting frustrating based on the cooperation we're getting from police," said Bosco, the legal guardian of Stacy Peterson's half-sister, Cassandra Cales. Bosco estimated the volunteer searchers were enjoying "zero percent cooperation with the police."

"We are requesting better cooperation from the Illinois State Police," she said, later noting, "We have no idea what they are doing."

What one of them was doing was delivering a piece of paper to the Peterson home.

A plainclothes state trooper driving a gray Pontiac Grand Prix pulled into Peterson's driveway shortly before 3:30 p.m., went around the back, hopped a fence and delivered a paper through the back door.

Charles B. Pelkie, the spokesman for the state's attorney, said Peterson was not served with a subpoena or any other papers. Pelkie would not discuss the nature of the document delivered by the trooper or comment on whether anyone else in the home had been served.

The investigation into Stacy Peterson had been labeled a missing persons case by police for its first 13 days. State police Capt. Carl Dobrich changed course Friday and called it a "potential homicide" and identified Drew Peterson as a suspect in the case.

Drew Peterson, a 29-year veteran of the Bolingbrook Police Department who was suspended from his job without pay the same day Dobrich called him a suspect, answered the door to his home Tuesday but declined to answer any questions.

Bosco was not the only relative dissatisfied by her treatment from the authorities investigating what befell the last two of Drew Peterson's four wives. Doman said officials have not responded to his family's inquiries about his aunt's death, just as they failed to do when she died in 2004.

"We're back to what they were doing before," he said, "just with different people."

Bosco said volunteers would resume their search for Stacy Peterson today.

"I sense the family's frustration," she said. "We really do in the end want to find Stacy."

Contact Joe Hosey at (815) 729-6054 or jhosey@scn1.com