According to forensics experts, Illinois police botched the Drew Peterson murder investigation by treating the drowning death of his third wife Kathleen Savio in a bathtub as a “tragic accident”.
From the moment lead investigator Illinois State Police Sgt. Patrick Collins entered the crime scene he collected no forensics evidence – no fingerprints, no unfinished drinks, no clothing.
Even more disturbing, say experts, Sgt.Collins let the former police sergeant and now accused killer Peterson sit in on what may have been a vital interview.
"The incompetency that comes out is somewhat unbelievable," Richard Brzeczek, a former Chicago police superintendent told The Washington Post.
"It seems that, pretty fundamentally, what should have been done was not done."
Now, six years later as prosecutors and defense attorneys prepared to go to the Drew Peterson trial for murdering Kathleen Savio, it’s fairly clear that police blew the initial investigation, undermining prosecutors’ ability to prove their case.
Among Sgt. Collin’s “errors in judgment”: he never asked if Savio’s body had been moved, never tried to account for the corpse being bent forward in the tub, never interviewed relatives and, most heinous of all, didn’t seal the crime scene when he left — leaving the front door wide open meaning anyone could walk in and change the crime scene or remove crucial evidence.
And it’s this incompetence that may allow Peterson to walk.
Peterson, long a suspect in the disappearance of wife 4, Staci Peterson, has never been formerly charged in that case.
