A neighbor of Drew Peterson told police he saw the husband of missing mom Stacy Peterson and an unidentified man loading a barrel "big enough to put someone in" into the former cops SUV, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Sources told the paper that police are searching for the second man after the neighbor described the barrel as blue with a volume of between 35 and 55 gallons, the paper reports.
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Drew Peterson has been named a suspect by authorities investigating his 23-year-old wife's disappearance.
On Thursday, his lawyer said Drew Peterson received an unsigned letter describing a supermarket sighting of his missing wife and turned it over to investigators.
But a close friend of Stacy Peterson's family said she doubts the letter is a legitimate tip.
Drew Peterson's attorney Joel Brodsky said his client received the letter Wednesday, and didn't open it until Thursday. He immediately called the Illinois State Police and his attorneys to notify them, Brodsky said.
But a close friend of Stacy Peterson's family said she doubts the letter is a legitimate tip.
The Chicago attorney said Peterson hopes the letter, which describes a sighting of a possibly pregnant Stacy Peterson in Peoria, will lead authorities to his wife.
Pamela Bosco, a close friend of Stacy Peterson's family, scoffed at the idea.
"We got a letter saying she was seen in Florida," Bosco said. "She's traveling an awful lot, isn't she?"
Bosco said the family has received "tons of letters," signed and unsigned, from psychics and others claiming to know Stacy Peterson's whereabouts.
"It doesn't mean anything," Bosco said. "It's up to police what they do with these tips."
Peterson's pension is in jeopardy after investigators discovered several crimes unrelated to the disappearance of the 53-year-old's young wife and mysterious drowning of his third wife, according to a report in Thursday's Chicago Tribune.
Illinois State Police Captain Carl Dobrich told the Tribune 64 officers are now assigned full-time to investigate the disappearance of Stacy Peterson and the death of third wife Kathleen Savio.
Dobrich said in the course of the investigation, detectives discovered evidence Drew Peterson may have violated Bolingbrook Police Department policies.
Dobrich would not describe the alleged violations, but told the Tribune they were serious enough to potentially trigger the loss of Drew Peterson's $6,000 monthly pension. Under state law, a police officer's pension may be denied or revoked only if the officer is convicted of a job-related felony.
Peterson submitted his resignation last week, but Police Chief Ray McGury refused to accept it, saying he wanted Peterson fired. Bolingbrook's Police and Fire Commission later accepted Peterson's resignation.
McGury didn't disclose specifics, but alleged Peterson committed "severe" violations of departmental policies.
State police have named Peterson a suspect in his fourth wife's disappearance, and Will County prosecutors have said the bathtub drowning of Savio, 40, in March 2004 appeared to be staged to conceal a homicide.
Tips are coming in from across the nation, and the cases are the agency's top investigative priority, Dobrich said.
A grand jury convened for the investigations met for the first time Wednesday and heard testimony from Scott Rossetto, 35, a friend of Stacy Peterson.
Police contacted Rossetto, a registered nurse from Shorewood, after finding phone records that connected him to Stacy Peterson. Rossetto's brother dated her briefly in 2001.
Rossetto told reporters after his testimony that he and the now-missing woman exchanged racy text messages that could have been misinterpreted by her husband before she disappeared more than three weeks ago.
Rossetto told reporters that he and Stacy were not having an affair. He said they traded flirtatious text messages and e-mails.
"Some of the messages were quite perverted and flirty in nature, but they were all meant in fun," Rossetto told the Chicago Sun-Times. "[Was I] Interested in dating? No. Flirting? Yes."
Brodsky released a written statement on Thursday describing the letter Drew Peterson said he received. It carried a Peoria, Ill., postmark and was dated Nov. 19. It detailed an encounter the writer had with Stacy Peterson on Nov. 12 at a Kroger grocery store, the attorney said in the statement.
Stacy Peterson wasn't alone and might have been trying to be noticed, the letter said. A man appeared to be with her. She was not shopping, but was standing in the dairy section looking at the letter writer.
She appeared to have "a little pudge," the letter writer wrote, asking if she was pregnant.
Brodsky declined to release the letter itself. "We don't want anything to impede the investigation" he told The Associated Press.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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