Ex-Savio co-workers tell of Drew Peterson threats
Ex-Bolingbrook police sergeant somberly listens to testimony in hearsay hearing
By Stacy St. Clair, Steve Schmadeke and Erika Slife, Tribune reporters
January 19, 2010
Looking and acting nothing like the courthouse jester who cracked jokes at his arraignment eight months ago, a somber Drew Peterson listened Tuesday as prosecutors called witnesses intended to help his ex-wife testify from the grave.
The day’s most chilling testimony came from two former co-workers who recounted statements Kathleen Savio allegedly made about Peterson’s sadistic behavior months before her March 2004 death.
One colleague said Savio, with a bruised arm, detailed a home invasion in which Peterson held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her right there, but it “would be too bloody.” Another told the judge that Peterson stalked Savio at the office, sitting in the parking lot for hours and waiting for her to leave.
Neither called the police to share their concerns before — or immediately after — Savio’s death because they said she told them that the Bolingbrook Police Department protected Peterson, a decorated sergeant with three decades on the job.
“Kathleen said it wouldn’t help,” said Lisa Mordente, owner of the Romeoville sign company where Savio was a saleswoman.Peterson, 56, gave no visible reaction to the testimony, though he often jotted notes on a yellow legal pad and conferred with attorneys. Wearing an ill-fitting red polo shirt, khaki pants and glasses, he occasionally looked into the gallery and gave small smirks to reporters. He has gained about 20 pounds in segregation at the Will County Jail, his attorneys said.
Peterson has been in custody since he was charged in May with Savio’s murder. She had drowned and was found in an empty bathtub in her Bolingbrook home March 1, 2004.
Officials initially ruled her death an accident, but after Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy, disappeared in October 2007, authorities reopened Savio’s case and determined she had been killed. He has not been charged in Stacy Peterson’s disappearance.
At his arraignment in May, Peterson joked and hammed it up for the news media. On Tuesday, a grayer and more subdued Peterson sat at the defense table with his back to his gallery for the majority of the proceeding.
He largely ignored the media and spectators, offering only a quick laugh to one reporter’s observation that his shirt barely covered his abdomen.
His attorney Joel Brodsky, however, continued his irreverent approach to the murder case as he handed out pens with his name emblazoned on them to some media members.
“If anybody else is good to me, then they get a pen,” he said as he dangled a large bag of Brodsky ballpoints before the courtroom gallery.
None of Peterson’s family or friends attended the hearing, the first day of testimony in a monthlong proceeding to determine whether hearsay statements should be allowed into evidence if the case goes to trial. Prosecutors are expected to call about 60 witnesses to testify regarding 15 separate statements allegedly made by Savio and Stacy Peterson.
Prosecutors have built their case around those statements, which they say give Savio a voice from the grave. The hearing is being held under a new Illinois statute, referred to as Drew’s Law, that allows certain types of hearsay at trial.
“And while we’re going to get a good look at what the state’s case is, you’re not going to see all of the defense’s case because we don’t have to,” Brodsky said on his way into the courthouse. “I don’t want to show them all our hand, but they have to show me a good deal of theirs.”
Peterson’s defense team has a standing objection to the hearsay evidence and is expected to appeal if Will County Judge Steven White deems any of it admissible. They also plan to question the credibility and motivation of the witnesses called by the state. On Tuesday, nine people testified on the prosecution’s behalf.
Among the statements in question is the testimony from Issam Karam, who worked with Savio at the Romeoville sign company in late 2003. He told the court that during a visit to her office, she told him that Peterson recently had broken into her home, tackled her on the stairs and held a knife to her throat as he threatened to kill her.
“He told her that nothing she could do would make her safe. She could not run or hide,” Karam said. “He said he could kill her right there and then, but he wouldn’t because it would be too bloody.”
Karam testified that Savio showed him a bruise on her arm and told him it came from the attack. As she recounted the incident, she cried, he said.
“She truly felt her life was in danger,” Karam said.
The defense tried to paint Karam as an attention seeker who came forward only after Stacy Peterson’s disappearance made national headlines. Karam said he didn’t go to the police immediately after Savio’s death because he assumed other people knew about the incident and because her death was later ruled an accident.
He planned to write an anonymous letter about Savio’s allegations to the media after Stacy Peterson’s disappearance in 2007, Karam said, but Illinois State Police contacted him before he mailed the note.
“I felt as a human being that I needed to tell people what Kathleen told me,” he said.
Mordente, Savio’s former boss, testified that a man stalked Savio at the office in late 2003. A white male would sit outside the building in a car — at least once in a Bolingbrook squad car, other times an unmarked vehicle — and wait for Savio to leave.
On one occasion, Savio approached the car and spoke with the man in the driver’s seat. When she returned to the office, she tearfully told her boss that the man was her ex-husband, Mordente testified.
“Her hands were shaking,” she said. “She was a mess.”An uncle of Stacy Peterson’s testified he overheard Peterson say “let them prove it” when Peterson’s friends suggested it “looked bad” for him to have his ex-wife die at such a convenient time in their tumultuous custody and property battle.
“Our family gave Drew the benefit of the doubt,” Kyle Toutges testified. “We were told Kathleen was crazy and on drugs and needed to be in a home.”
Other testimony focused on a cup of coffee bought at a Bolingbrook Starbucks at 8:44 p.m. Oct. 28, 2007, the day Stacy Peterson disappeared. Prosecutors intend to use videotapes and cash register data from the purchase to bolster Drew Peterson’s stepbrother’s allegation that the two men were together on the night she disappeared.
Thomas Morphey has told police that Peterson used him to concoct a fake alibi for that day. The defense team dismisses the allegation as lies from a man with a long history of mental illness and multiple suicide attempts.
Prosecutors also quizzed a cell phone company representative over records detailing cell phone calls made on the day she vanished. And a police lieutenant testified that Peterson punched him in the head after a round of locker room horseplay at the Police Department.
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