It was 19 years ago this week when Stacy Peterson disappeared from her home in suburban Bolingbrook, leaving behind a mystery that remains unsolved.
In the months before she vanished, Stacy had been confiding in her pastor about life with her husband, Drew Peterson.
At first, Stacy was another young mother at church. Neil Schori was the counseling pastor.
“I would see Stacy carry her baby in, while my wife carried our baby in,” Schori said.
Stacy Peterson vanished from her suburban Bolingbrook home 19 years ago. Her husband, Drew Peterson, maintains she left with another man. Drew Peterson was convicted in the murder of his second wife, Kathleen Savio.One Sunday, Stacy asked to talk about what she called “regular marriage issues.” When they met – Schori said Stacy told him all about life with her husband – Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson.
He remembers her describing what would happen if, for instance, an errand took longer than expected.
“I went, okay, ‘Well what do you mean by he might call you a lot of times?’ And she said something like 40 or 50 times, he’d call her, in a row. 40 or 50 times,” Schori recalled.
He remembers being concerned.
But Stacy saw it differently.
“I just went, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s serious,’ and she goes, ‘Yeah, it really is okay though, it’s because he loves me so much,'” he recalled.
A while later – Schori sat down with Stacy and Drew together at a coffee shop.
“When I would ask Stacy a question, she’d give this quick glance over to Drew, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. She’s having to get his approval,'” he said.
Then, two months before Stacy disappeared, he remembered meeting Stacy again — this time without Drew.
He remembered her crying — before she told him something she never had before.
“She just goes, ‘Neil, he did it,’ just like that, no context. And then she said, Drew killed Kathleen and made it look like an accident. And I say, ‘Who’s Kathleen?'”
One Sunday, Stacy Peterson asked to talk with pastor Neil Schori about what she described as “regular marriage issues.” When they met, Schori said Stacy opened up about life with her husband, Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson.Kathleen Savio, Drew’s third wife, was found dead in her bathtub in 2004. At the time, her death was ruled an accident.
Schori said Stacy then told him about what happened the night before Savio was found dead.
Here’s how he remembered her describing it:
“And she said, ‘Hours later I heard the garage door, and I heard him come in into the laundry room area,’ and she said, ‘I walked in, and he’s wearing all black, head to toe, black hat, black shirt, black pants, black socks, black shoes, and he’s carrying a duffel bag…and then he takes off all of his clothes and puts them in the washer and then dump the contents of the duffel bag into the washer and then walked out of the room.’ And she said, ‘I walked to the washing machine and on top of his black clothes were women’s clothes that weren’t mine,’ and she said, ‘Suddenly, I had this horrible feeling, I think I know what he did.'”
Schori said he didn’t know what to do with what he had just heard.
“She said, ‘I don’t want you to do anything, I just want you to know,'” the pastor recalled.
I just can’t believe that this is still, the door isn’t closed. That Stacy’s family still, they haven’t gotten to bring her home.
Neil SchoriTwo months later — a church coworker called.
“I ran up the stairs of my townhouse in Plainfield. I grabbed my wife and I said, ‘Mary just called and said that Stacy’s missing, and it’s on the front page of the Chicago Tribune.’ And we both just sobbed together, just hugged each other and cried.”
Schori went to the police — and eventually testified about what Stacy had told him.
After her disappearance, the investigation into Kathleen Savio’s death was reopened.
Her body was exhumed, and her death, originally ruled an accident, was reclassified as a homicide. In September 2012, Drew Peterson was convicted of Savio’s murder. He was sentenced to 38 years in prison.
Peterson has denied any involvement in Stacy’s disappearance, saying she left with another man.
He has never been charged in the case.
But Neil Schori kept coming back to another question: what had he missed?
“Because the reality is, I was the pastor who was ignorant,” he said. “I don’t say that in a mean way. I just didn’t know. Even though I have a master’s degree in counseling, I didn’t have one class, even one seminar to recognize abuse.”
Today, he trains other pastors through Called to Peace Ministries, and part of that training focuses on coercive control.
“So coercive control, it’s simply a pattern of behaviors designed to control and diminish another person,” he said. “So your world always gets smaller when you’re with a coercive controller. It can mean controlling where a spouse goes…taking away the car keys…or restricting access to money.”
And sometimes – nothing has to be said at all.
“So if he can control her with a glance, he never has to do anything else,” Schori said.
For Neil Schori, it’s work that began with a young mother who trusted him and a conversation he hasn’t forgotten 19 years later.
“I just can’t believe that this is still, the door isn’t closed,” he said. “That Stacy’s family still, they haven’t gotten to bring her home.”
“Do you think we’ll ever know what happened to Stacy?” NBC Chicago’s Stefan Holt asked.
“For a long time, I have believed there’s one way that we’ll know, and it’s not going to be because Drew change,” he said. “Now, I hope he does. I hope that he really feels bad one day and changes. I would love to see that.”
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