Search for former officer's wife goes on as grand jury convened

The man who says he found Kathleen Savio dead in her bathtub three years ago says he's now been called by a grand jury convened to review her death while her ex-husband is investigated as a suspect in his current wife's disappearance.

Steve Carcerano, a friend of Savio's ex-husband Drew Peterson, spent hours at the Will County courthouse after he said he was called by the grand jury, but said he did not get to testify Wednesday and was told to return at a later date.

Illinois State Police have said Drew Peterson's brother, Paul, also was subpoenaed by a grand jury, though the Will County State's Attorney's office had declined to confirm the jury is convened to hear evidence in the Savio case.

The courthouse appearances come as investigators await results of second autopsy performed after Savio's body was exhumed this week at the request by State's Attorney James Glasgow, who has said after examining evidence he believes her death was a homicide staged to look like an accident.

Drew Peterson, 53, who resigned this week as a Bolingbrook police sergeant, has not been named a suspect in Savio's death. But he is a suspect in the disappearance of his 23-year-old current wife, Stacy, who was last seen Oct. 28 and whose case authorities have called a possible homicide investigation.

It was only after Stacy Peterson was reported missing that prosecutors starting reinvestigating Savio's death.

Drew Peterson has denied any involvement in either case and said he believes Stacy Peterson left him for another man and is alive.

Vicki Connolly, Peterson's second wife, told the Chicago Tribune that during their marriage an increasingly controlling Peterson hit her and told her he could kill her and make it look like an accident.

Connolly told the Tribune she did not believe Peterson would ever kill her, but she confided in Bolingbrook police officers who she considered friends.

"So they would know he said these things to me," Connolly told the Tribune for a story posted Thursday on its Web site.

Before the grand jury, Carcerano would be able to talk about exactly what transpired the March 2004 day Savio's body was found. In a Wednesday interview on NBC's "Today," Drew Peterson said he had gone to Savio's house to check on her because he had not heard from her for a few days.

Peterson said he and a friend and neighbor called a locksmith, who opened the door, and the friend went in the house. Carcerano says he discovered Savio's body.

Peterson said that he remained outside because "Kathy was always accusing me of things, like she didn't want me in the house ever because she was afraid I might steal something."

Documents released by Savio's family show she had accused Peterson of once stealing her car while she was in church with one of her children. She also, according to one letter the family said was sent to the Will County State's Attorney's office in November 2002, accused Peterson of beating her a number of times so severely she "ended up in the emergency room."

And, according to the letter, she described one incident in which she believed he would kill her: "He pulled out his knife, that he kept around his leg and brought it to my neck."

Charles Pelkie, a spokesman for the Will County State's Attorney's Office, said it remains unclear if that letter ever came to the office. He said it was not in the files Glasgow read when he began reinvestigating Savio's drowning.

But many allegations in the letter are consistent with those Savio made in an order of protection filed against Drew Peterson in 2002, as well as accounts given by her family members.

"He wants me dead and if he has to he will burn the house down just to shut me up," she wrote. She also wrote that not only had Peterson knocked her into walls, ripped a necklace off her and "left marks on my body all the time," he had come at her with a poker, threatened to steal her children and broke through a dead bolt she'd put on her door.

Further, in the same letter she describes an incident with a woman she describes as Drew Peterson's 17-year-old girlfriend -- a reference, Savio's family says, to Stacy Peterson.

In the letter, she says she was thrown to the ground, held by her husband and arrested during a confrontation in front of her home with the girlfriend.

In fact, Glasgow, who was not state's attorney at the time, has said that twice in 2002, Drew Peterson convinced the state's attorney's office to file domestic battery charges against Savio. She was acquitted and apparently had the arrests expunged from her record, but her family says the incident described in the letter led to the charges.

Attorney Fred Morelli, who once represented Peterson in a civil matter, said he never heard the knife claims about his former client.

"That's the first I've heard of that," Morelli said. "That's crazy. ... (Peterson) was a very pleasant, personable fellow. Other than that, I don't know."

Meanwhile, volunteers resumed their search for Stacy Peterson on Thursday -- an effort a close friend of the woman's family said is being aided by police. Pamela Bosco said police now are directing the volunteers to look into specific places in the Bolingbrook area.

At the same time, efforts to contact Peterson's first two wives have yielded mixed results.

On Wednesday, the husband of Peterson's first wife told WGN-TV his wife hasn't talked to Peterson in more than ten years. But he said his wife never has mentioned Peterson being violent or threatening.

"She didn't have any of that kind of problem with him that long ago," said Dave Brown, of Villa Park. "There's nothing that we can add. It's up to the courts. This is America, people are innocent until they're proven guilty."

There was no answer when an Associated Press reporter knocked on the door of Brown's home Thursday afternoon.

Public records indicate that a Victoria L. Connolly of Paxton, Ill., which is about 30 miles north of Champaign, is one of Peterson's former wives. A woman who answered the door at the address Thursday morning said she was not Connolly and that Connolly does not live there. She did not identify herself.