Stacy Peterson, One Year Later

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Oct 28, 2008 3:40PM

It's been one year since the disappearance of Bolingbrook's Stacy Peterson and her estranged husband, Drew Peterson, took to The Today Show to maintain his innocence and to ask Stacy to, "Show yourself. Put an end to this nightmare." Of course, he doesn't expect her to reappear, as he told the AP: “If I was a little girl and the focus of all this media attention, I wouldn't be coming back. Why would a little girl come back to that?” While Drew makes media appearances, Stacy's family will be marking the anniversary with a candlelight vigil. After Stacy's disappearance, police went back and, after further investigation, reclassified the death of Kathleen Savio, Peterson's third wife, from accidental drowning to murder, adding to the intense scrutiny on Peterson. Will County State's Atty. James Glasgow announced last week that he expected, "a resolution in at least one of these investigations in the near future," a charge Peterson and his lawyer have dismissed as a mere play for votes in next week's election.

In the year since Stacy's disappearance, D-Pete has become such a surreal public figure that if it weren't for, you know, the dead third wife and missing fourth wife, he'd be one of the most comic figures we've ever seen. There was the gun case in which John Travolta factored, a feud with friends that ultimately resulted in fisticuffs at a barber shop, and his relationship with the world's most unconcerned 22-year-old. We even compared him to R. Kelly. Now, we understand the whole "innocent until proven guilty" issue, but Drew's behavior smacks of O.J.'s search for "the real killers" from the golf course. True, no charges have been brought against Drew after a whole year, but the fact that Peterson is a former police officer and surely has some old buddies in the department looking out for him gives us pause. Either way, something ain't right and this case, unfortunately, isn't going away anytime soon.