Continued from page 3

Under Suspicion

By Alex Tresniowski and Nicole Weisensee Egan

Originally posted Wednesday November 21, 2007 05:00 PM EST

First wife Carol Brown

Michael Baden, the prominent forensic pathologist obtained by Savio's family to perform its own autopsy on Nov. 16, says her death was clearly not accidental. "Kathleen had a bloody head, a bleeding laceration on the top of the head and about 10 other bluntforce bruises on the body," says Baden. "This was a woman who was beaten up and drowned. That's a homicide." Peterson shrugs off Baden's conclusions. "He was giving statements before he even examined the body," he says.

Like Kathleen, Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy, "had a tragic and poor beginning," he says. "I had this uncontrollable need to protect her." When Stacy was young, two of her siblings died suddenly, one in a fire and another of SIDS; when she was in her early teens, her mother – who had walked out on the family before – disappeared for good. "I always knew why she married Drew: she needed security," says her longtime friend Cheryl Weiser. "She may have loved him, but she also needed someone to take care of her."

At first, says Peterson, he pampered his young wife. "If Stacy wanted anything, she got it," he claims. "Breast implants, a tummy tuck, Lasik, braces, hair removal, everything." Their relationship changed, he says, after Stacy's sister Tina died of cancer in 2006. Stacy started taking "moodaltering medication," he says, "and began having big mood swings. It became an emotional roller coaster. She'd be snapping at the kids one minute and loving them the next, just like with me." Stacy's sister Cassandra Cales, 22, says Stacy was taking antidepressants, but that "she was on the drugs because of him and the way he treated her. She was trying to stay together for the kids. She didn't want what happened to us, with our mom, to happen to those kids."

Friends and relatives interviewed by PEOPLE say Stacy had told Peterson that she wanted a divorce. On top of caring for her two children, she was attending nursing classes two days a week because "she was planning to leave Drew," says her friend Cheryl. "She said, 'I need to take care of myself.' "Peterson insists Stacy's demands to divorce him weren't genuine, and he even says she would only talk about divorce when she was premenstrual. "That was a reality," he says. "If she was PMSing, hungry or tired, her emotions were high."