Drew Peterson’s Life Before He Murdered One Wife and Another Disappeared: See the Photos

It was a case that captivated the nation. On October 29, 2007, Drew Peterson‘s fourth wife, Stacy, a 23-year-old mother of two, vanished without a trace. Within two weeks, police named the Bolingbrook, Illinois, police sergeant as a suspect. And in a shocking twist, they also reopened an investigation into the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, just four years earlier.

“Before my father was Drew Peterson, the national headline, he was my father,” his son Stephen said on A&E’s Monster in My Family in 2024. “He was a good guy. He was great to us. He took care of his kids. He was always there for us.”

Stephen’s mother was Drew’s first wife, high school sweetheart Carol Brown. They also shared son Eric, but divorced after six years of marriage in 1980, after she found out he was cheating with Vicki Connelly, who would become his second wife in 1982, according to A&E.

They divorced 10 years later, after he was unfaithful with Savio, whom he wed just a few months later.

“She’d fight at a snap of a finger. She was a very, what’s the word? Well, she was very Italian,” Drew said with a chuckle during an interview with former News Nation anchor Ashleigh Banfield in 2024. “She was very boisterous. Very combative. Had to be her way or no way. And I didn’t really put up with that.”

The pair wed in 1992 and had two sons, Thomas and Kristopher, but their marriage was so volatile that cops were called to their home 18 times to handle domestic disputes, according to Fox News.

Then, in 2001, Kathleen allegedly got a letter accusing Drew of having an affair with 17-year-old Stacy, a front desk clerk at a Bolingbrook hotel, the Chicago Tribune reported.

During their bitter divorce battle in 2001, Kathleen took out a protective order on him, telling a judge “he wants me dead. And if he has to, he will burn down the house to shut me up,” per NBC.

Drew and Stacy wed in October 2003. Kathleen was found dead in her bathtub five months later.  “He was really torn up by it,” Thomas said on the Dr. Oz Show in 2024.

“It never occurred to me, whatsoever, that he had anything to do with it,” Thomas added. “At at the time.”

Stacy, who welcomed son Anthony and daughter Lacy with Drew, adopted Thomas and Kristopher as her own.

“She was loving, caring, she was fun, she always took us out to do things, she was always there for us,” Thomas said. “She really gave her all to the family.”

When she disappeared in October 2007, Drew told his kids and cops that Stacy, who had been going through a tough time after her sister died of cancer, had run off with another man.

“I’m not trying to be funny, but Stacy would ask me for divorce after her sister died on a regular basis,” Peterson told Today. “It was based on her menstrual cycle.”

Stacy had also told friends she wanted to leave him, but because she feared for her life. During Drew’s 2012 trial for Kathleen’s murder, Stacy’s pastor testified that his fourth wife told him Drew had asked her to lie about his whereabouts on the night of the murder, per NBC.

Stacy also told multiple friends and family members that she feared for her life. “She said, ‘If I disappear, Sharon. It’s not an accident. He killed me,'” her neighbor, Sharon Bychowski testified, per NBC, adding that when she encouraged the young mother to put her fears in writing, Stacy responded, “It doesn’t matter. I’m already dead.”

She made a similar warning to her sister, Cassandra Cales, just before she disappeared. Her family insisted she would never leave her kids — Anthony was 4 and Lacy was just 2 at the time.

A massive search ensued.

Meanwhile, Drew was dating again. He became engaged to 24-year-old Christina Raines, who was a friend of Stacy’s, while also dating another young woman named Nicole Speakman.

Speakman said on a 2021 episode of Lifetime’s Cellmate Secrets that she got “goosebumps” when Drew referred to Stacy in the past tense, per the Chicago Tribune.

Raines claimed the same episode that Drew confessed to Stacy that he had murdered Kathleen and then “he got rid of her.”

But he has never been charged because Stacy’s body was never found.

Cales, who believes he dumped her sister’s body in a Chicago canal, launched a GoFundMe in 2024 to raise funds to help retrieve it.

“As long as he’s locked up, it’s fine by me,” Cales tells the National Enquirer.

“I’m never going to give up the search for my sister,” adds Cales, who has become an advocate holding monthly meetings with other families with missing loved ones. “All I care about is giving my sister a proper burial which I still care about to this day.”

Drew — who is serving 38 years in prison after being convicted of Kathleen’s murder, plus another 40 years after being convicted in a murder-for-hire plot against the prosecutor — remains the prime suspect in Stacy’s murder.

The chilling case is now the subject of the first season of the new anthology micro-drama series from GammaTime, National Enquirer Presents: The Drew Peterson Story premieres on April 8. Download GammaTime from the App Store or Google Play Store now.