Savio estate: 'They just don’t want us pawing around'

JOLIET — A judge shouldn’t stall the proceedings in Kathleen Savio’s newly reopened probate case, according to a motion filed Wednesday morning in Will County.

There’s simply no reason, Larry Varsek argued.

“They just don’t want us pawing around to find out what happened here,” he said.

He was talking about Joel Brodsky of Chicago and Andrew Abood of East Lansing, Mich., the lawyers representing Drew Peterson, Savio’s former husband, and James B. Carroll, Peterson’s uncle, a Westchester resident and the executor of the dead woman’s estate.

The Joliet-based Varsek, a local lawyer, is representing Savio’s family as they consider the possibility of filing a wrongful death lawsuit.

On March 1, 2004, Savio, 40, was found dead in a dry bathtub at her Bolingbrook home. Water was found in her sinuses, there was a cut on the back of her head and her hair was drenched in blood. At the inquest, a coroner’s jury decided that she died accidentally.

But things changed three years later. In October, the 54-year-old Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, 24, vanished. That prompted authorities to take another look at the mysterious bathtub death.

Savio’s body was exhumed, there were new autopsies, and experts eventually decided that the coroner’s jury was wrong. Savio actually was the victim of a homicide.

Meanwhile, Stacy hasn’t been seen since. Although Peterson maintains that she ran off with another man, others disagree. As police, family and friends scoured Northern Illinois while trying to find the young mother of two, the accompanying media circus has made Peterson a household name.

And the former Bolingbrook police officer has become something else, too: a suspect in a case that might involve murder.

In February, some members of Savio’s family asked a judge to reopen her then-closed estate so they could investigate the possibility of a wrongful death lawsuit. They also wanted to remove Carroll as executor.

They got their wish in April. Will County Judge Carmen Goodman chose Henry J. Savio and Anna Doman — Savio’s father and sister — as new executors and threw out Carroll. The judge also ordered the case reopened.

Brodsky then asked a higher court to overturn the decision. He also asked Goodman to stop the court proceedings in the newly reopened probate case until the 3rd District Appellate Court made a decision. The judge will hold a hearing on the issue at 10 a.m. July 17.

As Goodman mulls the possibility of stopping the proceedings, she’ll be guided by case law, Varsek said. And she’ll take a good look at Carroll, the executor, as she makes her decision, he predicted. Under the case law, the judge must decide if opening the estate will cause any prejudice — meaning problems — for Carroll.

“It is not as if he is going to lose anything there,” Varsek explained. “There is no hardship for Mr. Carroll if we proceed to administer the estate.”

When Brodsky asked the judge to stop the proceedings, he mentioned prejudice but wasn’t specific and didn’t explain, Varsek said. But that’s not the real reason behind the Chicago lawyer’s motion. Brodsky wants to delay the proceedings and a wrongful death lawsuit because he trying to  help Peterson, his now-infamous client, Varsek implied.

“Drew Peterson doesn’t matter in this,” he said. “What happens in the estate of Kathleen Savio is not the affair of Drew Peterson.”