Whether Drew Peterson was sitting in his squad car watching her as she left the mall or calling her eight times while she got a haircut, Stacy Peterson was accustomed to being the main object of her husband’s attention, her family and friends say.
Ultimately, though, Drew Peterson had a need to control his wife that got to be too much, they said.
The portrait of Drew Peterson that has emerged from scores of interviews is mostly of a charming man who stops at nothing to win the hearts of the women he desires. In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Drew Peterson’s first wife, Carol Brown, described her ex-husband as a charming teenager and doting young husband who also could be controlling and, eventually, unfaithful.
In her living room in her west suburban home, Brown, 50, said Peterson never threatened her or abused her during their six-year marriage, from 1974 to 1980. In fact, she described a thoughtful husband who doted on her as she went through a miscarriage.
Peterson was by her side when she was bedridden in the weeks before, bringing her food and “always being very supportive of me,” she said. It would have been the couple’s first child, and Peterson was devastated, she said.
Brown was hesitant to point out negative characteristics in her ex-husband, but her current husband, David, who has known Peterson since they were kids, described him as “very controlling.”
In Peterson’s next three marriages, as each wore on, he became increasingly controlling and suspicious — even though he was the one who was already on to his next affair, said his second wife and relatives of other wives.
