West Suburban Bureau

JOLIET, Ill. (CBS) ― After a winter hiatus, more than 50 volunteers on Saturday who showed up in Joliet resumed their ground search for a suburban Chicago mother who went missing last fall, as CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports. 

The searchers were briefed on what to expect during the search.

"When we get to the trees, we're going to swing the line back over and come back," said an organizer. 

Minutes later they started walking the fields in search of Stacy Peterson.
 
Illinois State Police offered guidance about where to search, said Pamela Bosco, a friend of Stacy Peterson. On Saturday, searchers also combed a wooded area 15 miles southwest of Bolingbrook.

"We don't know yet where she is," Bosco said. "But we know where she's not."

Mary Boersma drove in from St. John, Ind. She never knew the Bolingbrook mom, but has been communicating with her loved ones on the Find Stacy Peterson Website forum. Boersma says it's tough looking for a young mother who she believes was murdered.

"It's very hard, Boersma said. "But the forum is a wonderful thing—kind of like a group support and we're there for the family and that's why we're here today."

Stacy's sister Cassandra Cales says it's that kind of support that has sustained her for the past five months.

"It's amazing, it truly touches my heart," she said. "If it was their loved one—daughter, sister, neice, I'd be out there helping them It's just a great feeling having everyone out there to help."

Cales doesn't expect Drew Peterson to help because she's more convinced than ever that the man who posed with his children earlier this week, knows exactly where the mother of those children is. Cales believes her sister is where the former Bolingbrook police sergeant put her.

"Absolutely," Cales said. "Like I said, there is no perfect crime and we're going to find her."

To increase their chances the searches are going to be more coordinated than ever. All volunteers will watch a multimedia presentation and be given identification numbers before they're sent out to try and bring home the missing mother of two.

Also, search leaders plan to consult with police to make sure they're focusing on areas of interest to law enforcement.

The search is set to continue on Sunday and then every following weekend, as long as enough funds are available to cover fuel and other expenses, organizers said.

"As long as it takes -- that's our new motto," said one search organizer, Roy Taylor. "We will find Stacy."

Investigators are treating the case as a possible homicide, and they have named Stacy Peterson's 54-year-old husband as a suspect.

Authorities are also trying to determine if Drew Peterson had any role in the 2004 death of his ex-wife, Kathleen Savio.

Drew Peterson, who hasn't been charged and denies any wrongdoing in both cases, has said Stacy left him for another man.

One searcher, Roy Byrd, said many of the volunteers were motivated to turn out Saturday by what they perceive as Peterson's sometimes arrogant, flippant attitude about the disappearance.

"There seems to be a payback factor," he said. "He's treating this very cavalierly."

A message left for Drew Peterson's attorney Saturday evening was not returned.

It's the first ground search for Peterson since last fall, where they searched for weeks in rivers, meadows, ponds and parks around Bolingbrook and the southwest suburbs with no results.

Stacy Peterson's friend Ashley Keyhoe said, "We don't think that she would've just gotten up and left and we're trying to find her."

In an Associated Press interview earlier this week, her husband, Drew Peterson, said he believes all of those searches are a waste of time because his wife left voluntarily.

"I have no belief that she's there. She's off with somebody on some beach living life at some home anonymously," Drew Peterson said Monday. He has been named by police as a suspect in his wife's disappearance, but he hasn't been charged with any crimes.

Drew Peterson says he feels like he's being harassed by his wife's friends and relatives, who have plastered his neighborhood with signs and flyers that bear his wife's picture and the question "Where Is Stacy?"

"I'm very angry, very angry," he said.

But those posters make no mention of Drew Peterson.

CBS 2's Rafael Romo and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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