Minister: Stacy Said Drew Peterson Told Her To Lie To Police
UPDATED 08/23/12 - 5:25 p.m.
JOLIET,Ill. (CBS) -- The pastor to Drew Peterson's fourth wife testified Thursday that Stacy told him Drew asked her to lie to the police the day after Kathleen Savio's death.
Stacy Peterson's pastor, Rev. Neil Schori, testified Stacy Peterson appeared frightened, and was crying as she spoke to him at a suburban coffee shop in 2007, more than three years after Savio's death.
"She said that she lied on Drew's behalf to police," Schori testified.
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Schori said he met Stacy at a Starbucks in Bolingbrook on Aug. 31, 2007, and she "appeared to be nervous, tentative."
He said the two talked for about two hours, and "She withdrew physically into herself, I recall, pulling her leg up and hugging it. She silently cried, she had tears streaming down her cheeks."
Schori said Stacy told him about a night when she and Drew had gone to bed together at the same time, but she woke up in the middle of the night and Drew was gone. He said she searched the house and called Drew, but could not find him. The next morning, she saw him standing near the washer and dryer, dressed in all black, and carrying a bag.
Stacy told him Drew "took all his clothes off, and he took the contents of the bag and put all of that in the washer."
When Drew walked away, Stacy looked in the washer and saw woman's clothing inside that did not belong to her, Schori recalled Stacy telling him.
Later, Drew told her the police would be coming to sit down and interview her.
"He told her what to say to the police," Schori testified. "She said she lied on his behalf to the police."
Schori said Stacy told him it took hours for Drew to tell her what to say to the police.
Two months after that conversation with Schori, Stacy Peterson would go missing and hasn't been seen since. Her disappearance prompted a new investigation into Savio's death, leading to the murder charges against Drew Peterson.
Peterson is on trial in the alleged murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
Savio's body was found in a dry bathtub in 2004. Her death was originally ruled an accidental drowning, but was reclassified as a homicide following a new autopsy when Stacy Peterson disappeared in 2007.
Later Thursday, prosecutors told the judge they should be ready to rest their case by Friday morning. Defense attorneys said they will take at least a day-and-a-half to present their case, so the jury could begin deliberations as early as next week.
Before Schori took the stand Thursday, a spectator was tossed from the courtroom, after a sheriff's deputy caught him mouthing "f**k you" to Drew Peterson.
WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports the spectator, Cincinnati restauranteur Jeff Ruby, has been in court throughout the Peterson's murder trial as a self-described victims' advocate.
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When the judge and jury were out of the room, Ruby apparently made eye contact with Peterson and mouthed "f**k you" to him. A Will County sheriff's deputy saw it, and ejected Ruby on the spot.
Outside court, Ruby said Peterson had been staring him down in the courtroom.
"I'm not going to be intimidated by this lowlife," he said. "The look keeps getting dirtier at me, so I just kept looking at him, and then I thought about going over there and giving him a mouthful of missing teeth. I really thought about just knocking him out.
"Because, if you can't take care of things legally – and he's never been taken care of legally, he's like O.J. Simpson – you take care of it physically, where I come from: Jersey."
Ruby has gained notoriety during the trial for taking out ads in a local newspaper in which he compared Peterson's lawyers to the Three Stooges.
