Prosecution calls last witness
Drew Peterson avoided a faceto-face courtroom confrontation Friday with the sister of his missing wife as Will County prosecutors called their final witness in the former Bolingbrook cop’s murder trial.
Prosecutors are expected to rest their case Monday after offering to jurors several documents, including transcripts of two TV interviews Peterson gave before his 2009 arrest.
Defense attorneys said they then will ask Judge Edward Burmila to toss out the murder charges against Peterson, 58, because prosecutors failed during their four weeks of testimony to prove that he drowned Kathleen Savio in 2004.
That’s a long shot, but defense attorneys — who have consistently belittled the circumstantial case presented by prosecutors — said Burmila could order a directed verdict that would acquit Peterson before he calls a witness.
Prosecutors simply haven’t proved he had any role in the death of his third wife — or even shown exactly how the 40-year-old Bolingbrook woman drowned in her bathtub, they said.
“What happened? Today, we still don’t know,” defense attorney Joel Brodsky said.
State’s Attorney James Glasgow wouldn’t directly address the issue, though he has argued during the trial that Peterson killed Savio to end their heated divorce battle over financial assets, then tried to make her death look like an accident.
Outside court on Friday, Glasgow said only that he’s pleased prosecutors have essentially completed their portion of the trial.
“It’s good to come to the end of our case. We look forward to proceeding next week,” Glasgow said.
Neither of the two most dramatic witnesses initially expected to testify Friday ended up taking the witness stand.
They included Cassandra Cales — the sister of Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy — who was expected to simply confirm her missing sibling’s cellphone number.
Peterson’s attorneys agreed to accept a written statement in place of her testimony, which would have required her to sit across the Joliet courtroom from the man who has been named a suspect in Stacy’s 2007 disappearance, but has never been charged.
Going on the witness stand would have been frustrating because she would have been kept from saying what she really wants to say to Peterson, Cales said later outside the courtroom. But she would have held her tongue to help prosecutors win a conviction against Peterson for Savio’s death. “My turn’s coming, for Stacy. No doubt,” Cales said. “I’m ready for [any verdict], but a conviction is coming.”
Savio’s divorce attorney, Harry Smith, also was expected to testify about a letter Savio wrote to prosecutors in 2002 after she claimed Peterson threatened her with a knife in her home.
Burmila agreed to admit her written statement without requiring Smith to testify, though defense attorneys have said they may attempt to question him during their case about his work in representing Savio during her divorce from Peterson.