After his marriage to Carol ended in 1980, Peterson was briefly engaged to 20-year-old Kyle Piry and then married 23-year-old single mom Victoria Rutkiewicz in 1982. His former stepdaughter, Lisa, told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren in November 2007 (appearing only in silhouette, her last name withheld) that Peterson had been abusive toward both her and her mother during their nine-year marriage, and was a cheater. (Peterson denied her allegations of physical abuse.)
Drew and Victoria divorced in 1992 and married 28-year-old Kathleen Savio that same year. Drew was 38.
Piry, who met Peterson when he was on the job investigating a crime at the gas station where she worked, told Today‘s Meredith Viera in 2007 that she was never afraid of him when she was with him, “probably naively.” She recalled, “He was attractive. He was funny. He had a good wit about him. He was complimentary and that sort of thing. He was charming.”
But, she did recognize some of the behavior—jealous, possessive, abusive—she’d heard about in accounts of his second, third and fourth marriages. “It seemed like it started with me,” Piry said. “I heard his first wife said there was no abuse of any sort—and maybe snowballed—with each woman got a little worse.”
Ultimately she broke off their engagement after four months, Piry said, because “there were too many things that just made me really uncomfortable.” After that, he continued to stalk and harass her, even pulling her over to write bogus traffic tickets, she alleged. Piry said in multiple interviews that she called the police on him after he pushed her when she returned to his house to pick up some of her possessions, but officers on the force who were friendly with Peterson encouraged her not to press charges. They “swept it away,” she told ABC News.