Police search pond for missing woman

Even as police classified the disappearance of the wife of a Bolingbrook police sergeant as a missing person investigation, they sent divers into a retention pond and led cadaver dogs in and around the couple's home Friday.

Illinois State Police Capt. Ken Kaupas said investigators also were searching two vehicles taken Thursday from the home of Drew and Stacy Peterson. Kaupas would not say what other items were taken.

Investigators hoped to shed light on the whereabouts of the woman whose disappearance has brought renewed attention on the drowning death of Peterson's ex-wife in 2004.

"We are just following up on leads," Kaupas said of the search for Stacy Peterson. He said investigators had not found any evidence of wrongdoing and that Drew Peterson, a longtime Bolingbrook police officer, is cooperating with authorities.

But Kaupas also said he knew of no other instance in which Stacy Peterson had simply left home for days, and family members who tried to remain hopeful that she was safe said she never would have willingly left her two small children.

"Never have, never will, never would of," said her younger sister, Cassandra Cales.

Stacy Peterson, 23, was reported missing Sunday after she failed to show up at a relative's house. Drew Peterson, 53, has said his wife talked to him on the phone later that night and told him she had left voluntarily. He also has said he believed his wife, who he said was depressed over her sister's death last year, had left him for another man.

Relatives of Stacy Peterson say at the time she disappeared, Peterson was afraid of her husband and was making plans to divorce him.

"She told me Friday night she feared for her life," Cales said. Cales also said her sister had planned to meet with a divorce attorney Monday.

Meanwhile, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow has started reading through old files in the death of Peterson's ex-wife Kathleen Savio "in light of recent developments," spokesman Charles Pelkie has said. Glasgow, who wasn't in office when Savio was found dead in her bathtub, said earlier this week that "there are some unusual circumstances in the 2004 case."

Cales, who said her sister was not having an affair as Drew Peterson suggested, said he was so suspicious and so wanted to control his wife that he did not want her spending time with her family.

"My other sister was on her deathbed, and he wanted her (Stacy) home," Cales said.

Cales said she hoped the search would turn up some information about her sister's whereabouts. She said she had heard one of the things police were looking for was a journal that her sister kept and that the journal, in which she said her sister apparently documented her marital troubles, might offer some clues.