Break in Stacy Peterson Case? Police Search Rural Illinois for Remains

June 5, 2010 — -- Illinois State Police spent today digging at a remote site in central Illinois, searching for the remains of Stacy Peterson, the fourth wife of former police Sgt. Drew Peterson, who is a suspect in her disappearance.

At least two dozen law enforcement officers, led by a forensic anthropologist, spent the day on a muddy and wooded area outside of Peoria, Ill. They focused on a 10-foot-square site that they dug by hand, but ended the search just before 6 p.m., apparently without finding any remains.

"We are pursuing some other avenues in reference to this lead and we will be back in this area," said State Police Master Sgt. Tom Burek. He did not say when police might return.

Stacy Peterson vanished from the Chicago suburbs in October 2007, shortly after consulting with a divorce attorney. Her husband, formerly a police officer in Bolingbrook, Ill., has been the only suspect named by the authorities.

The case took a sensational turn when detectives searching for Peterson's fourth wife ordered an autopsy on the body of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, whose drowning death in a bathtub in 2004 initially had been considered an accident.

When the autopsy determined Savino had been killed, Drew Peterson was charged in her death. He is scheduled to go on trial on a first degree murder charge July 8 and is being held in isolation at the Will County Jail.

Officials would not immediately reveal what led them to search the wooded location today in Peoria County, about 140 miles southwest of Chicago.

But investigators had arrived on the property Friday with a very specific location in mind, said Dave Khazzam, a friend of the property owner, businessman Dave Alwan, who did not know Drew Peterson, is not a suspect and is cooperating with police.