A friend of Kathleen Savio sobbed on the witness stand Wednesday as she was asked about a threat Drew Peterson allegedly made, saying he could kill Savio and “make it look like an accident.”
The testimony from Kristin Anderson could be important to the state’s case against Peterson, accused of killing Savio in 2004, but it was not clear until Wednesday whether the jury would ever hear it.
For two years, prosecutors had been battling to get Anderson’s testimony and other so-called hearsay statements admitted. Before the trial started last month, Judge Edward Burmila refused to issue a blanket ruling on the hearsay statements.
On Wednesday, Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, who has been largely silent in the courtroom since giving the opening statement, rose from his seat to give an impassioned plea to allow the hearsay statements, shouting and jabbing his finger in the air.
Burmila, who said he was not swayed by the “volume” of Glasgow’s argument, nonetheless then allowed Anderson’s testimony and said he would not be bound by prior rulings on hearsay statements, a decision prosecutors view as a potential turning point in what had been a rocky start to the trial.
Burmila said he will rule on the statements, including those thrown out by a prior judge, on a case-by-case basis.
“It’s an incredibly critical ruling,” Glasgow said before the judge’s decision.
Anderson, whose family lived in Savio’s basement for two months and moved out shortly before she was found dead, was then allowed to testify about an alleged break-in and death threat from Peterson.
Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant, is on trial for his third wife’s 2004 drowning and is the sole suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, three years later.
Before she testified about the alleged death threat, Anderson broke down on the stand, clutching her hands to her chest as Burmila dismissed jurors and allowed her to go to the hallway to collect herself.
When everyone returned, Anderson said she had a talk with Savio in Savio’s master bedroom about five months before Savio drowned in a bathtub.
She said Savio told her that “Drew had broken into her house dressed in a SWAT uniform, held a knife to her throat and told her, ‘I could kill you and make it look like an accident.'”
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Savio also showed her a knife she kept “between the mattresses” of her bed for protection, Anderson testified.
After Savio’s death, Anderson called state police three times — calls captured in phone records — and once told someone there about Peterson’s alleged threat, she told jurors.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Joseph Lopez, Anderson said she stayed in Savio’s home for weeks after learning of the threat and did not report it to police at the time.
Anderson left the courtroom in tears and declined to comment as left the Joliet courthouse.
Burmila’s hearsay ruling came after Glasgow argued loudly and then slumped into his seat looking deflated after harsh questioning from the judge. Glasgow said defense attorney Steve Greenberg, a rival who the county’s top prosecutor has accused of mispronouncing his last name, looked happy with how the debate was going.
“He was grinning at me like a Cheshire cat, but when the judge finished it looked like he had to go to the bathroom,” Glasgow said outside the courtroom. “You can quote me on that.”
Burmila at first chastised prosecutors for repeatedly having “danced around the issue” of whether he was bound by Judge Stephen White’s 2010 ruling on what hearsay statements jurors could hear.
“They have been of no help whatsoever in resolving this legal dilemma that is truly unique,” Burmila said. The situation likely will never recur in Illinois, Burmila said, because the appeals court found that the pretrial hearsay ruling was not needed.
White, who has retired, admitted only six of 14 statements that prosecutors argued would allow Savio to speak from beyond the grave. White made the rulings under a new law that Glasgow wrote, but an appeals court later found that the law, a lengthy pretrial hearing and the rulings were unnecessary.
An irritated Burmila said during a break in the trial last week that both sides were treating White’s ruling “as if he came down the mountain with tablets in his hands, and I’m only here to rubber stamp what Judge White did.”
But in the end Burmila ruled in the prosecutors’ favor.
Outside the courthouse, Glasgow praised the judge for his “historic ruling.”
“We’ll treasure this day,” he said.
Defense attorneys, who had sought for weeks before the trial to determine how White’s rulings would be handled, downplayed the significance.
“We knew it was coming. We were ready for it,” Lopez said. “The state’s attorneys have the edge all the time, and they got the edge and that’s it.”
Also Wednesday, a retired Illinois State Police investigator testified that Peterson sat inches away from his new wife, Stacy, and coached her when she was questioned after Savio’s body was found.
Peterson was allowed to sit in on the interview as a “professional courtesy,” retired Sgt. Patrick Collins testified.
Peterson sat with his hand on Stacy’s leg and his arm around her shoulders as she was questioned. When she hesitated after being asked what she made for breakfast the day before Savio’s body was found, Peterson intervened, Collins said.
“He leaned over to Stacy and said, ‘You remember what you cooked for breakfast, this is what we had,’ and he stated the items. He said bacon and maybe sausage and that was it.”
Collins also testified that his supervisor told him when he was sent to Savio’s Bolingbrook home that her death was an apparent accident.
The retired sergeant testified that former State Police crime scene investigator Robert Deel told him that Savio’s death appeared to be an accident and no evidence needed to be gathered.
“I asked Deel if there was any evidence that needed to be obtained,” Collins said. “He said, ‘No.'”
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