Drew Peterson — the brash, cocky former Bolingbrook cop who became a tabloid sensation when his fourth wife vanished five years ago — was convicted of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The Will County jury that heard five weeks of stop-and-start testimony deliberated for only 14 hours over two days before finding Peterson guilty of drowning Savio in her bathtub in 2004.
The silver-haired Peterson — whose tangled marital history became a made-for-cable TV movie — appeared stone-faced in the courtroom, hands crossed in front of him, as he was convicted of murdering his 40-year-old ex-wife, with whom he has two now-teenage sons.

Anna and Sue Doman, Savio’s sisters, hugged each other and started crying as the verdict was read.
“We got the bastard,” Savio’s brother-in-law, Mitch Doman, said as he left the courtroom.

Cassandra Cales, the sister of Drew Peterson’s fourth wife Stacy Peterson, and family spokeswoman Pam Bosco sat calmly when the verdict was read.
Drew Peterson “will never be able to hurt another woman again,” Bosco said outside the courtroom.
She added: “I always believed in the system. I never saw this man getting back on the street.”
She believes the verdict is partial justice for Stacy Peterson because statements she made before she vanished were heard in the courtroom through testimony of witnesses at the trial.

“She made sure he’d never get back on the street,” Bosco said.
The 58-year-old Peterson faces up to 60 years in prison when he is sentenced Nov. 26.
Earlier Thursday, the seven-man, five-woman jury asked the judge in a note: What does unanimous mean?
Their note to Judge Edward Burmila came after about 13 hours of deliberations. After a brief objection by the prosecution, who did not want the judge to respond at all, Burmila wrote that unanimous means that the verdict has to be agreed upon by all 12 jurors. Read more…