Spurred by the most recent national TV appearance in which Drew Peterson sought to discredit a stepbrother who said he and Peterson moved a large container the night Peterson’s wife vanished, the man’s brother said the public needs to know what’s really happening.
Tom Morphey, Peterson’s stepbrother, has put his life on hold, spending nearly six months in seclusion, as he tries to help authorities investigating the disappearance of the former Bolingbrook police sergeant’s wife, said his brother John.
“Tom’s not a whack job,” John Morphey said in his first public interview. “It just kills me to see and hear this stuff about him. Drew says [Tom’s] a liar, but Tom was coming forward with his story to me and to other people before Stacy was even reported missing.”
Tom Morphey, 40, has been in protective custody. His brother, 41, said Drew Peterson enlisted Tom’s help to remove a large blue container from the Peterson home Oct. 28, the night Stacy, then 23, vanished.
Authorities have called her disappearance a possible homicide and Peterson a suspect. But Peterson, 54, who has not been charged, says his wife left for another man. Peterson has downplayed Tom Morphey’s account, saying he has a drinking problem and struggles with mental illness.
“I really don’t want to bad-mouth Tommy,” he said Friday night in an interview with CNN’s Larry King. “He has some serious emotional issues. He was losing his house, losing his wife. He had a drinking problem. He had a suicidal problem. So I really — and he is a family member — so I really don’t want to bad-mouth him here.”
John Morphey said his brother told him substantially the same story that he told his friend and neighbor, Walter Martineck, who went public with his account in December.
John Morphey said his brother told him that he met Drew at a coffee shop near Peterson’s home on the night of Oct. 28. They talked awhile, then Peterson drove Tom Morphey to a nearby park and left him with a cell phone and instructions not to answer if it rang, his brother said. Peterson drove off. After awhile, the phone rang, and the name “Stacy” appeared on the caller ID, Morphey said.
“I believe he set my brother up with that phone call,” John Morphey said.
When Peterson returned, the two men reportedly went to his house and moved the container from the home to the back of Peterson’s 2005 GMC Yukon. John Morphey said his brother told him Peterson seemed very nervous as he drove him back to his home, a few minutes away in Bolingbrook.
The following evening, Tom attempted suicide, John Morphey said.
“I was on the phone that night when my brother swallowed those pills,” he said. “He told me, ‘That’s it, I’m done. I’m taking a bunch of pills. [Peterson] is going to get me anyway.’
“He said that he thought he may have inadvertently helped dispose of Stacy’s body,” John Morphey said. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
John Morphey said he quickly hung up the phone and called 911, and paramedics took his brother to a hospital for treatment.
Morphey noted that for almost six months he has not spoken about Peterson or his brother, but after testifying for two hours Thursday before a special grand jury investigating Stacy’s disappearance — and after seeing Peterson’s CNN interview — he wanted to counter what he said is an inaccurate portrait of his brother.
Morphey acknowledged his brother struggled with alcoholism and manic depression but said he quit drinking after completing a six-month rehabilitation program in the mid-1990s and began taking medicine for depression.
“He became this totally different person. He became a different Tom, a Tom I’m proud of,” John Morphey said. “He has a past, like anybody, but for the past 10 years or so, he’s been a responsible citizen, taking care of [his longtime girlfriend’s] three boys, showing them right from wrong.”
John Morphey said he believes Peterson reached out to Tom for help because he has always been too trusting and loyal. “He doesn’t say no to people, even when he should,” John Morphey said. “He’s loyal to a fault. Put it this way: His sophomore year of high school, he was playing football [at Hinsdale South High School] and one of the guys on his team picked up the ball and ran the wrong way. Tom blocked for him.”
For his part, John Morphey said he supports the search efforts led by Stacy Peterson’s sister, Cassandra Cales, and Roy Taylor, the son of Drew Peterson’s neighbor.
“Cassandra and Roy are heroes,” he said. “I’m behind them 100 percent.”
He recently let searchers use a boat he and Tom, both avid fishermen, restored together. Embedded in the varnish is a picture of John and his brother as young kids, holding up fish they’d caught.
“We are very happy that we have his support in finding Stacy,” said Pam Bosco, a spokeswoman for Stacy Peterson’s relatives. “I think it makes a big statement on the case, and backs up what we’ve been saying all along.”
Peterson’s neighbor, Sharon Bychowski, said John Morphey called several weeks ago.
“He said, ‘I would like to offer you my boat.’ It’s been used pretty much every day this week,” she said.
Morphey said he believes his brother will be “thrilled” to know the boat is being used to help find Stacy.
“The boat’s a lot like my brother. When we got it, people didn’t think it could ever amount to anything, and now it’s being used for such an honorable purpose as this.”
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mwalberg@tribune.com
