What Happened to Missing Mom Stacy Peterson? A Look Back at Her Devastating Case

It was a case that captivated and horrified the nation. On Oct. 29, 2007, Stacy Peterson, a 23-year-old mother of two, vanished without a trace. Her husband of four years, police officer Drew Peterson, suggested she’d run off with another man — but her family insisted she would never leave her kids, son Anthony, then 4, and daughter Lacy, then 2. Within two weeks, police named Drew as a suspect. And in another shocking twist, they also reopened an investigation into the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, just four years earlier.

Nearly two decades later, Drew is in prison for Kathleen’s murder — and a new micro-drama series has sparked renewed interest in the search for Stacy, who has never been found. But the answers are out there. Drew’s ex-girlfriends and even his lawyer have hinted that he knows more than he’s saying. “I know everything about both of his wives — everything,” his former attorney, Joel Brodsky, admitted to WGN 9 News in 2022. “I feel bad about Drew still not taking responsibility and Stacy still being missing.” (Brodsky was then slapped with a gag order.)

A History of Violence

Stacy began seeing Drew when she was just 17 — and he was still married to Kathleen, who divorced him after she learned of their affair in 2001. During their bitter court battle in 2002, the 40-year-old took out a protective order on her ex-husband, telling a judge “he wants me dead. And if he has to, he will burn down the house to shut me up,” NBC News reported, citing court documents. Cops were called to their home 18 times, and prosecutors later revealed that their young son, Kristopher, had asked Santa to tell his dad to leave his mom alone.

Not long after, Kathleen’s nude body was found in a dry bathtub in her Bolingbrook, Illinois, home. She had a bloody blunt force laceration on the back of her head and fresh abrasions and bruises all over her body. But her death had nevertheless been ruled an accidental drowning — until Stacy went missing. Kathleen’s body was exhumed, and a second autopsy was conducted. This time, the medical examiner concluded she had been through a struggle before she drowned.

The Bolingbrook police sergeant was arrested for her murder, and during his 2012 trial, Stacy’s pastor testified that she told him Drew, who she’d wed just five months before the murder, had confessed to the crime and asked her to lie about it. 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 News, 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.

Cold Case

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. His stepbrother reportedly told a friend that he fears he may have inadvertently helped Drew dispose of the body, while Drew’s ex-girlfriend Nicole Speakman said in a 2021 interview on Lifetime’s Cellmate Secrets series, per the Chicago Tribune, that she got “goosebumps” when he referred to Stacy in the past tense. That same year, his ex-fiancée Christina Raines, who was a friend of Stacy’s, claimed he “got rid” of his fourth wife after confessing to Kathleen’s murder, according to the report. But he has never been charged because Stacy’s body was never found.

Drew has long maintained his innocence. “I’m not wanting my children to believe that I killed their mothers,” he told NewsNation in 2024, adding that he did not want his six kids “to think that about me.”

Many of them do. His son Stephen — a former cop who raised Kathleen’s sons Thomas and Kris, along with Anthony and Lacy, after his father went to prison — has said he believes his dad “probably” killed both wives. “I don’t want to come out and say he did it… But, I’m sure he did it,” Stephen admitted in an interview on the Lifetime cable network show Monster in My Family, according to NBC Chicago.

Stacy’s sister, Cales, never gave up on the search. “As long as he’s locked up, it’s fine by me,” she tells Star. In 2024, she launched a GoFundMe to help pay for the equipment and divers to retrieve her sister’s body, which she believes he dumped in a Chicago canal. “All I care about is giving my sister a proper burial,” Cales adds, “which I still care about to this day.”

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The National Enquirer is affiliated with Star.