Unanswered Cries

Before she died in 2004, Kathleen Savio, the third wife of former Bolingbrook police sergeant Drew Peterson, repeatedly warned authorities she would be killed. Now her death has been reclassified a homicide. Why wasn't there a stronger response to her pleas for help?

By David Murray

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Kathleen Savio was the youngest of four children of a heating and air conditioning installer named Henry Savio and his wife, Mary, who brought their kids up near Leavitt and Taylor streets in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood. They divorced when Kitty, as she was known within the family, was two. Later, the mother remarried and moved the family to Melrose Park. Kitty dropped out of high school, moved into her own apartment at 17, got a GED and later an associate's degree in marketing at Triton College. The stepfather didn't work regularly and Henry Savio didn't pay child support, Anna remembers, so under the "tough" circumstances, the kids moved out early.

"It was very important for her to accomplish things," Sue says, listing Kitty's ambitions in order: She wanted a career, she wanted a home, and she wanted kids. Anna agrees: "She wanted everything right. She wanted to fall in love, that Ozzie and Harriet family. That's why she didn't get married until she was almost 30."

Kathy worked in an accounting job. Shortly after ending a five-year relationship with an accountant from Bridgeview because, according to Sue, he didn't want to get married, she agreed to a blind date with a police officer from Bolingbrook. She would soon find out that Drew Peterson was in a crumbling marriage to a second wife, but any qualms she had were overwhelmed by other feelings. "She was crazy about him," says Anna. He also owned a house, and Sue remembers Kathy almost boasting one day about having found so prosperous a prospective partner: "He wants me to come over to help him buy a washer!"

Within six months of their first date, he divorced his wife and proposed to Kathy. She was somewhat troubled by the fact that after their dates he would regularly call and demand that she tell him she loved him. But she later admitted to a friend that she was attracted to Drew's "bad boy" narcotics cop persona. She accepted, and they were married in 1992. She was 29.

In some ways, Kathy Peterson had everything Kitty Savio had wanted: Two boys were born, Tommy and Kris; she and Drew owned a tavern, called Suds Pub, in Montgomery, Illinois, and Kathy kept the books. They lived in a thriving Chicago suburb, and they thrived themselves, taking occasional vacations—including one trip to Hawaii—that exceeded the surly bonds of her working-class upbringing.

But the marriage was fiery. During one altercation with Drew in 1993, she hit her head on the dining-room table, according to a Bolingbrook Medical Center report. Her sisters think Drew physically abused her, though they say Kathy didn't want to talk about it. "But we saw the bruises," says Anna. (Through his attorney, Joel Brodsky, Drew denies there was any physical abuse in the relationship.)

People who knew her outside the context of her marriage described her as charming and likable, but the divorce battle with Drew—they argued over custody of the children, proceeds from the sale of the bar, and other issues—apparently ignited her emotions. One friend described Kathy during that period as alternately panic-stricken, tense, and lonely, "like a trapped animal." Harry Smith, the Wheaton-based divorce attorney who saw her through her split with Drew, said Kathy was "excitable and anxious" about matters involving Drew, but he added that exaggerated emotionality is not uncommon among parties in divorce cases.

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Bolingbrook didn't exist when Kathy Savio was born in 1963. The oldest subdivision in the town dates to 1964, and in 1970, only about 7,000 people lived in the just-incorporated village due south of Naperville. Now Bolingbrook's population pushes 80,000 and, until the recent housing slowdown, it was one of the fastest-growing suburbs in Will County, which is one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States.

But inside Bolingbrook's Town Center—a brick complex that houses all village government functions and an amphitheatre—things haven't changed all that much. In many ways, the culture of the place recalls the days when Bolingbrook was a small town, when most of this land was still planted in corn, when Drew Peterson was a young star on the little suburban police force, and a feisty school administrator named Roger Claar was working his way from village trustee to become the town's hard-charging Republican mayor. (See "Reporter," Chicago, October 2007.)

So in 2001, when Mayor Claar got wind that Peterson, the police sergeant he had known for two decades, was involved with a young staffer named Stacy Cales in the village clerk's office, Claar saw it as something to deal with directly. In a recent interview, Drew Peterson told Chicago that Claar called him over to his house and angrily demanded, "Where the fuck is your head?" Claar warned him he'd never make lieutenant if he kept it up with Stacy. Nonetheless, Drew said, Claar seemed amused by the sergeant's romantic escapade and told him, "Hey, all right, Drew!"

Through his spokesman, Bolingbrook village attorney Jim Boan, Claar acknowledged having had a conversation with Drew and asking him, what was he thinking when he chose to pursue a relationship with a woman that much younger than himself? But Claar said he didn't remember the meeting taking place at his house and insisted he never condoned Drew's relationship with Stacy Cales. Claar also said that he knew Kathy, but that she never contacted him "to express any concerns or complaints about the police department."

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