Now there's a killer to find in Savio case

As authorities now have classified the 2004 death of Kathleen Savio a homicide and not an accidental drowning, the question is whether investigators are any closer to finding her killer.

The Will County state's attorney's office and the Illinois State Police have not named a suspect in the death of the third wife of former police officer Drew Peterson. Authorities took a second look at Savio's death only after Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy, vanished last fall.

Savio, 40, was found dead in her bathtub shortly before her divorce settlement with Peterson was finalized.

Savio's sister told a coroner's inquest shortly after Savio's death that Savio feared her husband. Susan Savio told the six-person coroner's jury that her sister told family members, "If she would die, it may look like an accident, but it wasn't."

Peterson has denied any involvement in either Savio's death or Stacy Peterson's disappearance. He has readily said he had been inside Savio's home, which was down the street from his own -- including the day her body was found.

On that day, after sending a friend into the house because he said he was worried that he hadn't heard from Savio for a few days, he rushed to the bathroom where her body was and took her pulse, according to the friend.

So the question of who can be charged may be a lot easier to answer if some physical evidence -- strands of hair perhaps on Savio's body that are not her own -- points to someone other than Peterson.

The second report on Kathleen Savio's March 2004 death included photos from the scene and reports from the initial investigation, along with results from microscopic examinations and toxicological tests, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow said Thursday.

"We have been investigating this as a murder since reopening the case in November of last year," Glasgow said. "We now have a scientific basis to formally and publicly classify it as such."

Dr. Larry W. Blum, the forensic pathologist who performed Savio's autopsy, said tissues were collected during the first autopsy on March 2, 2004, a second autopsy on Nov. 13, 2007, and a third autopsy performed by nationally known pathologist Dr. Michael Baden at the request of Savio's family on Nov. 16, 2007.

"It is my opinion based on my education, training, experience and personal observations, and to a reasonable degree of medical and scientific certainty, compelling evidence exists to support the conclusions that the cause of death of Kathleen S. Savio was drowning and further, that the manner of death was homicide," Blum said in a portion of the autopsy report released by the state's attorney's office.

A special grand jury convened in November 2007 is investigating both Savio's death and Stacy Peterson's disappearance.