Sitting down with Drew Peterson
Posted: Friday, December 21, 2007 9:28 AM by Dateline Editor
Filed Under:
Crime, Newsmakers, Behind The Scenes
by Hoda Kotb, Dateline correspondent
You never know quite what to expect when you sit down to do an interview. So when Drew Peterson took a chair opposite me, I'll be honest: I wasn't sure what was coming.
I knew his backstory well. My producer Sue Simpson had provided me with information, news articles, police reports, autopsy reports.
His life did seem complicated -- when it came to women. This was a police officer with almost 30 years on the Bolingbrook Police Force. He'd been married four times. His first three marriages ended in divorce; after he split from his third wife, she was found dead in her bathtub and his fourth wife, Stacy, was now missing.
I wondered if he was the unluckiest man on earth, with two of his four wives either missing or dead, or if there was more to the story. What would he tell me?
Drew Peterson walked into the room. He had just finished an interview with Matt Lauer on the TODAY Show and was ready to sit in the chair opposite me.
He seemed calm. Collected. I'd watched Matt's interview with him and he hadn't shown any emotion then although he gave lots of information. I was expecting something similar. Our camera crews and soundmen were all set up and ready to roll.
In the beginning, we talked about the media and how loud it was in front of his house in Bolingbrook, Illinois. He told me he was tired of the generators from the TV live trucks going non-stop; he hoped this interview would put an end to the media chase.
He talked about Stacy: how they fell in love, the courtship, his proposals and their kids.
He also talked about the 30-year age gap, saying he had talked it over with Stacy, adding that it was "exciting" to have a young, beautiful woman interested in him.
Some of the things he said stood out including his description of how he pampered Stacy. He got her, in his words, " a boob job. She wanted a tummy tuck, she got that. She wanted braces, lasik surgery, hair removal ... anything. ... we did all these repairs on her."
Then at one point in the interview he seemed overcome by emotion. He actually got up, left the interview area and said "I'm sorry. I need a minute." He stood off-camera for a bit, composed himself and sat back down.
I wasn't clear what brought that emotional wave on, so I asked him. He said, "Different things touch me off." And I when pressed him, he indicated that he'd been remembering Stacy's emotion at the time of her sister's death. "Because it hit her very hard," he said.
He also told me that people didn't understand him: that he was a guy with a good sense of humor, a man who had tried to live an honorable life and worked hard to provide for his family, a man who was now being unfairly portrayed by the media.
Near the end of the interview, I asked him if he had anything to do with the disappearance of his fourth wife Stacy or the death of his third wife Kathy. He answered "no" to both questions.
Then Drew Peterson left the room and I was left with my original thought: you just never know what to expect when you sit down to do an interview.
Click here 'Deadly Suspicion,' the full Dateline NBC story about the case, including photos, a timeline, audio and documents.
