Police: Peterson may have asked truckers to transport package

Authorities searching for a missing police officer's wife are asking the public for help and said Sunday they hope truck drivers may hold clues about the latest twist in the investigation of the disappearance of 23-year-old Stacy Peterson.

Illinois State Police said two truck drivers were approached by a man believed to be Drew Peterson, who asked them to take a package to an undisclosed location hours after the former police officer's wife was last seen.

ISP spokesman Trooper Mark Dorencz said Sunday the truckers declined to take the package.

Investigators won't say if anyone else has come forward with similar information about the reported encounter at a Bolingbrook truck stop around 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 29. They also won't say whether they've expanded their search outside of Illinois.

Workers who answered the telephone at the truck stop declined to comment Sunday.

On Saturday, state police said two men - one said to be Peterson and another man in his 50s with salt-and-pepper hair and a stocky build - asked drivers to transport the package to an undisclosed location.

Investigators said in a statement that the two truck drivers were told the men would pick up the package after it was transported and "continue transporting it to a location not accessible by semi-trailers," the statement said.

The statement did not provide details, including what might have been inside.

Peterson's attorney, Joel Brodsky, denied the incident ever occurred.

"It is our belief that anyone who logically examines the scenario that is being suggested by the Illinois State Police will reject it out of hand being nonsensical," he said in a statement late Saturday.

A nonprofit group helping to search for Stacy Peterson has said searchers were asked by police to look for a blue plastic barrel.

Last week, several media outlets, citing sources close to the investigation, reported Drew Peterson's stepbrother tried to commit suicide after helping Drew Peterson remove a large rectangular plastic container from his home the night Stacy Peterson disappeared.

A friend of Thomas Morphey, Peterson's stepbrother, said Morphey told him he feared he had helped Peterson dispose of his wife's body.

Brodsky has said there was no container and that Morphey was not credible because he had psychological problems.

Peterson, 53, a former Bolingbrook police officer, has been named a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, and authorities have called the case a possible homicide. Peterson has denied any involvement in the case, saying Stacy Peterson she ran off with another man.

Authorities also are investigating the death of Drew Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio, who was found dead in a bathtub in 2004. At the time, a coroner's jury called Savio's death an accidental drowning, but investigators now say they believe her death was a homicide staged to look like an accident.

They're awaiting results of a second autopsy after exhuming her body last month.

Peterson has not been named a suspect in Savio's death.