Chris's Crime Forum

He may be a key witness in the investigation of Stacy Peterson. On the night she disappeared, Tom Morphey claimed he helped Drew Peterson move a barrel into the former Bolingbrook police sergeant's truck. The next day, Tom tried to kill himself, but survived. Tom isn't talking to the media. But his brother John is - only with CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli.

Tom Morphey is the man who says he helped Drew Peterson carry a barrel from his upstairs bedroom into a truck. A barrel that investigators believe contained the body of Stacy Peterson. Tom Morphey has been ordered not to talk by investigators so his brother John is speaking for him.

Puccinelli: "What did your brother tell you about that night and what he did?

John Morphey: "He thought he helped dispose of Stacy's dead body in a blue barrel."

That was on October 28, 2007 - the last day Stacy Peterson was seen alive.

Puccinelli: "What made him think Stacy was inside that barrel?

John Morphey: "He said he just knew."

John Morphey says his brother has no idea where Drew Peterson drove with the barrel.

Puccinelli: "Does your brother think Drew murdered Stacy.

John Morphey: "He doesn't think - he knows."

Drew Peterson has been charged with no crime and says he's innocent. But John Morphey says his brother believes Peterson thought about killing his wife and then did just that.

Puccinelli: "Sources say that Drew had a conversation with your brother where he said Stacy was becoming a problem that he needed to take care of. Did your brother say he had a conversation that went like that?

John Morphey: "Yes."

Puccinelli: "Can you tell me anything more about it?"

John Morphey: "I wish I could."

Sources say it was in a Bolingbrook park where a so-called problem conversation took place.

Hours before Tom Morphey says he helped Peterson load the barrel into his truck, John Morphey says his brother was asked by Peterson to hold his cell phone and wait for him in the park. He was instructed not to answer the phone. After waiting a while, the phone rang two separate times indicating Stacy was calling. John Morphey says his brother believes Drew Peterson actually made those calls.

Puccinelli: "Does he think Drew made those calls to cover his tracks?

John Morphey: "I don't know the answer to that question."

Puccinelli: "Is it a question you don't know the answer of or is it a question you can't answer?"

John Morphey: "I can't answer it."

John Morphey says his brother would never have wittingly done anything to harm Stacy. Now he says his brother will do anything to see to it that Drew Peterson is convicted and never released from prison.

Drew Peterson says there is no blue barrel and that Tom Morphey is making the whole story up. Peterson says Morphey has mental and substance abuse issues and wants to make himself into a hero.

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/drew.peter ... 42277.html

'Love Me ... Enough to Kill for Me?' Stepbrother Says Peterson Asked

Drew Peterson's stepbrother says in his first network television interview that conversations with Peterson made him highly suspicious Peterson was planning on killing someone.

"He said, 'How much do you love me?,'" the stepbrother, Thomas Morphey, told ABC News' "Good Morning America." "I said, 'I do.' And he said, 'Enough to kill for me?'"

Morphey, who has spoken to authorities about his experiences, remembers that conversation as having occurred the day before Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared. He also told "GMA" of other conversations he recalled with his stepbrother that convinced him Peterson was up to no good.

Watch the full interview Monday morning on "Good Morning America."

Morphey told "GMA" that, at one point, his stepbrother mentioned a storage locker.

"I knew it wasn't, it wasn't good," Morphey said. "He was planning on killing somebody."

Morphey said his suspicions also were raised as he helped Peterson move a blue barrel, and he said Peterson told him, "This never happened."

The talk and other details he discussed with "GMA" led him to believe that he and Peterson were disposing of Stacy Peterson's body, Morphey said.

"You know, at that point, I was just, 'My God, what's goin' on?,'" Morphey added.

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A Joliet woman said State Police paid her a visit while she was doing time in the Dwight Correctional Center and grilled her about what she knows of Stacy Peterson's disappearance.

The woman, 31-year-old Jamie Katro, did not tell them much during the two-hour interview.

"No -- uh, uh, nothing," Katro said of what she told troopers when they questioned her in late February. "To me, that's what they're getting paid for. Let them do their job."

But Katro said she has heard a few things about what may have happened to Peterson, who vanished in October 2007 and has been the subject of a massive and lengthy police investigation.

"Like she's not at the bottom of a lake," Katro said. "I heard they ran her through a funeral home and cremated her, her ashes."

Katro said she has never met Peterson or her husband, Drew Peterson, who is the only suspect named in the case, and that her knowledge of the matter is at best secondhand.

"A lot of it's just hearsay, from what I hear," she said.

Katro was released from prison last month. She was doing time for drug and obstructing justice convictions when the State Police showed up.

She said she believed her mail was monitored and some of her correspondence raised red flags. Katro specifically believes a Christmas card sent by Anthony "Bindy" Rock, a convicted cop killer reputed to have ties to organized crime, got the State Police interested enough to visit her in Dwight.

"What got them really interested was Bindy wrote his daughter was mad at him because she thought he had something to do with the ... Peterson murder," she said.

Rock has links to Drew Peterson. In fact, Rock was a central figure in an unsanctioned undercover investigation Peterson undertook while he was on loan from the Bolingbrook Police Department to the Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad in 1985. That investigation led to Peterson's indictment on charges of official misconduct and failure to report a bribe.

When asked about Katro and her questioning by the State Police, Rock declined comment.

Likewise, State Police Sgt. Juan Valenzuela said he was precluded from commenting about ongoing investigations and witness interviews. He would not confirm or deny whether Katro was interviewed.

Katro said she was reluctant to sit down with police. And even though she may hear some things, she says she has learned not to ask too many questions.

"I just don't want to know," she said. "Especially when you're dealing with those kind of people. When you know too much, sometimes those people disappear."

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Police Search Canal for Clues in Stacy Peterson Case

State police and the U.S. Coast Guard combed a canal adjacent to the Des Plaines River on Wednesday for clues into the disappearance of Stacy Peterson.

Divers searched a roughly one-mile portion of the Sanitary Drainage and Ship Canal between Romeoville and Lockport, concentrating in an area behind the Will County Power Plant. The canal runs parallel to the river.

While State police confirmed the search was related to the Peterson investigation, they wouldn't comment specifically on if divers were searching for evidence or Stacy herself.

"Whenever the investigation leads us to an area that investigators feel needs to be searched, it's done when it's feasible," said State Police Sgt. Tom Burek.

Since her disappearance in October of 2007, the focus of the investigation has been on her retired police officer husband, Drew. His attorney, Joel Brodsky, called Wednesday's search a waste of time.

"They did it all last summer," Brodsky said. They're doing it again, so I don't think it's of any significance."

But the spokeswoman of Stacy Peterson's family said that it's searches like these that give the family hope.

"I think what we can take from that is that they're still considering this a very important investigation, and that it's very active," said family spokeswoman Pam Bosco. "We believe she can be found yet, and so we want to put all our efforts into doing our searches. Yet we believe that eventually we will find Stacy."

Brodksy said that the search, coupled with an apparent leak of internal police documents about the day Stacy disappeared is an attempt to bait Drew Peterson into making a mistake. To Brodsky, that document is a detective's hour-by-hour timeline of what Drew Peterson was doing the day Stacy Peterson disappeared.

"I think that the state may be doing both of these things on the same day in order to provoke some sort of reaction from Drew," Brodsky said. "It's time for authorities to start pursuinig the possibility that Drew Peterson is telling the truth when he says Stacy ran away."

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Two years, Still no answers

A year ago, Drew Peterson went to New York City to appear on the "Today" show and plead with his missing wife to "Show yourself. Put an end to this nightmare."

The wife, Stacy, who is Peterson's fourth, has not shown herself. And Peterson's living nightmare has gotten worse, as he has been sleeping in the county jail for the past five months while he awaits his trial for allegedly killing his third wife.Today, the second anniversary of Stacy's disappearance, Peterson will not be appearing on any TV shows. He cannot even phone out from the jail for interviews because Judge Stephen White has restricted the disgraced former Bolingbrook cop's collect-calling privileges.
Charged with murder
Peterson, who is being held on a $20 million bond, is due to appear before White again Thursday for a hearing to check the status of his murder case.

Peterson will be on trial for allegedly drowning third wife Kathleen Savio, who turned up dead in a dry bathtub in March 2004. The state police insisted Savio's death was an accident for more than three years, but changed their tune after Peterson's next wife, Stacy, vanished two years ago today.

Within days of Stacy's disappearance, the state police decided she was the victim of a "potential homicide" and named Peterson their sole suspect. He is still the only suspect in Stacy's possible death but has not been charged with doing anything to her.
Records subpoenaed
Peterson's attorney, Joel Brodsky, recently subpoenaed any insurance claims made by Savio from the companies AssureCare of Illinois and AFLAC for medical treatment or pharmaceutical prescriptions from Jan. 1, 1997, to March 31, 2004, and for records and copies of prescriptions written by a Bolingbrook Walgreens from Jan. 1, 2001, to March 31, 2004.

Brodsky failed to return calls for comment on why he wants Savio's prescription information, but it is possible Savio had been taking medication.

During an inquest into Savio's death convened in May 2004, state police Special Agent Herbert Hardy testified that "there was indications that she took some type of antidepressant." At the same inquest, Savio's boyfriend, Steve Maniaci, testified that, "Yeah, she also took a little anti-anxiety, Xanax, a generic form of Xanax also."

But an autopsy performed March 1, 2004 -- the day Savio was found dead -- found no traces of drugs or alcohol in her system.
Sign of desperation
Savio's nephew, Charlie Doman, believes Brodsky's subpoenas are rooted in desperation.

"He's going to try everything he can, especially with everything that happened in (their last) court appearance," Doman said.

During that Oct. 2 hearing, Brodsky struck out in bids to have Peterson's trial moved out of Will County and to have a law allowing hearsay evidence declared unconstitutional.

"That's what you get for defending a murderer," Doman said.
Suing bank over loan
Besides going after Savio's prescription history, Peterson is suing JPMorgan Chase Bank for allegedly cutting him off from about $250,000 he wants to get at through a home equity loan.

Peterson was allegedly approved for the line of credit in 2005, but it was 'arbitrarily suspended' after Peterson's arrest, the lawsuit alleges.

Attorney Walter Maksym is representing Peterson in the federal lawsuit. Maksym said he took the case in part out of his opposition to the hearsay law prosecutors plan to use against Peterson in the murder trial.

"I think it's a terrible law that, regardless of Mr. Peterson, affects us all," Maksym said.

"It's very hard to fight a ghost," he said, adding, "The legislature was way out of bounds doing that."

In a statement released through Peterson's publicist, Glenn Selig, Maksym said, "Everyone is entitled to use their property in order to maintain a defense against the might of the state, that we are taxed to sustain."

"Mr. Peterson should be able to use his own money so that already overburdened and struggling taxpayers do not have to also pay for the enormous defense costs," he said. "We will hold Chase, the bank that is sitting on billions of our hard earned 'bailout' tax money, (responsible) for refusing to honor and reneging on their commitment for the benefit of us all."

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/cour ... 28.article