It is a case that began as a local news story and quickly ballooned into a national one. In the past year, two books have been published, husband Drew Peterson has been the cover story of national tabloid magazines and the subject of several cable news shows.
At the same time, investigators have been working behind the scenes to solve the case. Only 23 years old, a mother of two and the wife of a cop, one year ago, Stacy Peterson was known only to her friends and family. Now, her name and picture is recognizable nationwide.
Sister Cassandra Cales, who first reported Stacy Peterson missing on October 28 after Cales says Stacy Peterson didn't return her phone calls all day and night.
"I knew he did something to her," Cales said. "She told me that she feared for her life."
The next day, Stacy Peterson's close friend and next door neighbor Sharon Bychowski talked with Drew Peterson.
"Nothing seems to make any sense because when Drew called me over on the Monday morning to tell me Stacy had left him and the children were still upstairs, I immediately got a sick, icky feeling in my stomach," Bychowski said.
Sick because those who knew Stacy Peterson best would say she would never leave her 4-year-old son Anthony and 2-year-old daughter, Lacy. A few days later, police searched the Peterson home.
While the search for Stacy Peterson would become a daily event, the media - local and national - would descend upon the Peterson home after it was learned the third wife of the Bolingbrook cop, Kathleen Savio, mysteriously died in a bathtub three years earlier. Her body was exhumed and the cause of death was reclassified as a homicide.
After hiding behind bandanas, Drew Peterson broke his silence on national television.
"I can look right in your eye and say I had nothing to do with those incidences," he said.
Following that interview, it was hard to keep peterson away from the cameras...posing for people magazine even turning the camera on the media...while the media circus has toned down...the familes of stacy peterson and kathleen savio are focused on justice...
"If it takes another year or two, that's fine. But there has to be some kind of justice done somewhere," said Charles Doman, Savio's nephew.
"I want my sister home. I want to know what happened to her," Cales said.
In light of the one-year anniversary, last week, Will County State's Attorney James Glaskow released a written statement saying the investigations into Stacy Peterson's disappearance and Kathleen Savio's murder have been highly productive. Glaskow says he expects a resolution in one of the cases in the near future. Both families are hopeful, yet they want to make sure the cases are solid before any charges are announced.
On Tuesday, the anniversary of Peterson's disappearance will be marked much the same way it began: Her family members will hold a candlelight vigil and her husband will be in New York -- again -- telling a national television audience he had nothing to do with her disappearance.
"I've been always trying to get my story out," Drew Peterson said in a telephone interview from his New York hotel, where he and his attorney, Joel Brodsky, were staying before his appearance on the "Today" show.
From the beginning, the case has played out like a made-for-TV movie.
The mysterious disappearance of the young, attractive woman -- the 23-year-old fourth wife of a police officer 30 years her senior -- drew a small army of television trucks that camped for weeks outside the Bolingbrook house where the couple had lived with their two young children and two of Drew Peterson's children from a previous marriage.
Authorities quickly called Peterson a suspect in his wife's disappearance and said it was a possible homicide.
The media storm grew as police and volunteers searched frantically for Stacy Peterson and Savio's family told stories of alleged abuse of Savio by Drew Peterson. He went on TV time and again to profess his innocence.
But it's been months since there has been any news about Peterson's disappearance, and authorities have said little about the investigation into Savio's death.
In a statement to mark the one-year anniversary, Glasgow called the investigations "highly productive."
Peterson, 54, has continued to make headlines on a regular basis. He faces weapons charges and his court appearances attract a media crowd.
Recently, he again took to the airwaves, after a book on which he cooperated was published. Author Derek Armstrong wrote in "Drew Peterson Exposed" that a polygraph he had Peterson take showed the former police officer was "deceptive" in a few of his answers.
Peterson said he did not know why he was found to be "deceptive" to questions that asked about the last time he saw his wife, whether she told him she was leaving and whether he knows where she is.
But he and Brodsky maintain that he showed no deception when he answered that he did not harm either Stacy Peterson or Savio.
"If it is negative, it is big headlines (but) if something positive pops up, it's played down," Peterson said.
If he's asked on television, he also will also reiterate what he's said all along: His wife left him for another man and is alive.
But he may also say what he told The Associated Press on Monday: that he doesn't think she will ever come forward.
"If I was a little girl and the focus of all this media attention, I wouldn't be coming back," he said. "Why would a little girl come back to that?"
Brodsky, who has said he believes Stacy Peterson left willingly, says he wonders if something's happened to her since.
"The longer it goes on, the more possible that some harm came to her," he said. "Maybe she fell in with bad people ... I'm not saying it happened, but it certainly starts creeping into your thoughts as a possibility."
For Savio's family, the big concern is that authorities will lose interest in Kathleen Savio, just as they believed happened when her death was quickly ruled an accident back in 2004.
That's why Savio's family members are taking part in the vigil, Doman said.
"We are going from my Aunt Kitty's (Savio's) house to Stacy's house to kind of keep it out there because things have really been dwindling," he said.
But there also are signs that at least some friends and family of Stacy Peterson just want the anniversary to come and go.
Pamela Bosco, a longtime family friend who has been acting as an unofficial family spokeswoman, said some decided that taking part in Tuesday night's vigil would be too difficult, particularly for Stacy Peterson's sister, Cassandra Cales.
"This one-year, it really hits home," she said. "I think we'd rather do something in private. We can let our tears go then."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
