Drew Peterson Indicted In Wife's Murder

Former police sergeant Drew Peterson, long suspected in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, was charged Thursday with murdering his third wife, whose 2004 death had been deemed accidental before authorities revisited it once Stacy Peterson vanished.

Authorities said at a Thursday night press conference that Peterson is being held on $20 million bond and faces two counts of murder in his third wife's death.

Joel Brodsky, Peterson's attorney, said his client would plead not guilty to the charges during an appearance on CBS' The Early Show Friday.

Illinois State Police Captain Carl Dobrich said the 55-year-old Bolingbrook, Ill. man was processed and transferred to the Will County Adult Detention Facility in Joliet.

Dobrich said officials have tracked more than 1,100 leads in Savio's death and the disappearance of Stacy Peterson, Drew Peterson's missing fourth wife.

The body of Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio, was found in an empty bathtub. Her death originally was ruled an accidental drowning, but authorities later said it was a homicide staged to look like an accident.

Peterson was arrested Thursday evening during a traffic stop in Bolingbrook, said Chuck Pelkie, spokesman for Will County state's attorney.

Savio's family has long voiced suspicions about the circumstances surrounding her death, especially after the October 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson, then 23.

Peterson, 55, is a suspect in the disappearance but has not been charged in that case. He has repeatedly said he thinks Stacy Peterson ran off with another man.

Savio's 73-year-old father, Henry, said Thursday that an arrest should have been made long ago.

"I always wondered" about her death, he said. "I was never pleased with the (coroner's finding of suicide) from the beginning."

In more than a year and a half since Stacy Peterson's disappearance, Drew Peterson has been under a media microscope, and at times he has seemed to relish the attention.

This week Selig said Peterson was interested in a job offer from a Nevada brothel that is the setting for the HBO reality show "Cathouse." An HBO spokeswoman said the network would sooner cancel the show than allow Peterson to appear on it.