Chicago Reader

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Drew Peterson story the Sun-Times wished into being

Posted by Michael Miner on Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 1:51 PM

The screaming headlines in Wednesday's Sun-Times were misleading at best.

Page one: "DREW'S PALS WORE WIRE." On page eight, where the story began, "DREW'S CHILLING 'I SHOULD HAVE HAD THAT B---- CREMATED.'"

The front page was nothing but headlines. "Two of Drew Peterson's closest friends," said the drop head, "recorded months of intimate conversations with him for the State Police."

Smaller headlines at the bottom of the front page announced: "On His Murdered Wife Kathleen: 'I should have had the bitch cremated.'" 

And,

"On the Investigation of Kathleen's Drowning: 'It was in a dry bathtub, what a bunch of idiots.'"

Wow! What else is on the tape? 

Apparently, not even the above.  Read the story. The dry bathtub line is something Peterson's pal Paula Stark says Peterson told her in 2004, when Kathleen Savio, his third wife, was found dead. The should-have-had-her-cremated line is something pal Len Wawczak says he remembers Peterson telling him when authorities decided early last November -- after Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared -- to exhume Savio's body. The story indicates that Wawczak and Stark (who are married) started wearing wires later in November.

As far as a reader can tell, reporter Joe Hosey didn't hear the tapes, didn't read a transcript of the tapes, and didn't even confirm there are tapes, those spurious quotations notwithstanding. A token of the Sun-Times's meretriciousness is that despite the paper's ostentatious claims that the story was a "Sun-Times Exclusive," Hosey's a reporter for Joliet's Herald News, a Sun-Times News Group daily that also carried the story

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"It was in a dry bathtub, what a bunch of idiots." If he did say this (and if he didn't kill her), why - as a police officer - didn't he work the system to get her death investigated more thoroughly? Sure, they were divorced, but she was the mother of his two small kids.

Posted by Danny on July 24, 2008 at 6:18 PM | Report this comment
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Danny - you are wrong. Drew and Kathleen were NOT divorced yet. They separated and then she met her untimely demise. Alas, Drew did not have to pay alimony or child support ... plus he collected on insurance policies on Kathleen that supposedly are being held in trust for their children.

Posted by Pam on July 24, 2008 at 9:11 PM | Report this comment
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"If he did say this (and if he didn't kill her), why - as a police officer - didn't he work the system to get her death investigated more thoroughly?" That question pretty much answers itself, doesn't it? The guy has condemned himself with his own asinine behavior. Unfortunately that cannot (rightly so) be used in court. I've always figured that a body would never be found, and that the cops would have to rely on Peterson's own boastful arrogance to convict him. I just hope these publicity-seeking numbskulls haven't screwed everything up.

Posted by Disputo on July 24, 2008 at 9:46 PM | Report this comment
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Lenny and Paula are frauds! I know them personally....I am pretty sure Drew is guilty, but these two are no saints. The are money hungry a-holes! Rich

Posted by Rich on July 25, 2008 at 3:53 AM | Report this comment
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I know who killed Stacey...A crackhead girl with blonde hair today told me everything. It was Mike! He admitted it to her + Dave. She is hiding out from the Cops, they want her to testify to the grand Jury in Drews case.

Posted by John on August 1, 2008 at 3:59 AM | Report this comment
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September 19, 2008 BY DAN ROZEK Staff Reporter/drozek@suntimes.com Drew Peterson's own words may be used against him. Investigators have amassed an "extensive" collection of secretly recorded conversations involving Peterson, a Will County judge disclosed at a hearing Thursday. It's the first independent verification that police investigating Peterson used electronic surveillance in an effort to collect evidence against the former Bolingbrook cop. In July, Len Wawczak and Paula Stark, former friends of Peterson, claimed they had secretly taped months of conversations with him for investigators probing the October 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, and the 2004 drowning death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Authorities haven't confirmed their claims, but on Thursday, Judge Richard Schoenstedt said investigators used court-approved electronic eavesdropping to compile tapes, CDs and DVDs focusing on Peterson. "It is extensive," Schoenstedt said of the material. He didn't disclose how the recordings were obtained.

Posted by Walter on September 30, 2008 at 2:39 PM | Report this comment

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