Dec 26, 2007 10:22 pm US/Central
Home Videos Show Peterson Before Disappearance
Footage Given Exclusively To CBS 2 News, Family Hopes It Will Help Them Find Stacy Peterson
BOLINGBROOK, Ill. (CBS) ―
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Home video shared exclusively with CBS 2 shows missing Bolingbrook mother Stacy Peterson at her grandfather's 80th birthday party in 2004.
CBS
In a CBS 2 exclusive, the public is for the first time seeing video images of Drew and Stacy Peterson in happier times, before the Bolingbrook mother disappeared two months ago. As CBS 2 West Suburban Bureau Chief Mike Puccinelli reports, the video shows the couple during family celebrations.
The video shows Stacy Cales just days before her 19th birthday and more than a year before she became Stacy Peterson. The video was shot in California where she and Drew Peterson traveled to watch her aunt renew her marital vows.
"You guys are awesome … all around awesome and great people. You're an inspiration on how I want to raise my family and I wish you all the luck and thank you for everything," Stacy Peterson says in the home video.
The words were addressed to Candace Aikin and her husband. Aikin remembers the day as a happier time for the soon-to-be-married couple.
"They were excited and in love," Aikin said. "They were going to have their first baby."
They would go on to have two children together. But by the time Aikin visited the family just weeks before her niece disappeared, she says happiness had turned to fear and loathing.
"They were just fighting and she was talking about a divorce with him because she really wanted out," Aikin said.
In footage taken a little more than a year later in her Bolingbrook home in March 2004, Stacy and Drew Peterson are playing host to her grandfather's 80th birthday celebration. Family members say Stacy loved to throw parties for her loved ones.
It's easy to understand how hard it was for Stacy Peterson's family to try and celebrate a first Christmas without her when most of the family just felt like crying.
Stacy Peterson's stepsister Kerry Simmons said, "Now that Christmas is actually gone from yesterday, we're not going to get to see her afterwards and that's hard."
Peterson hasn't been seen since Oct. 28 when her husband says she left him for another man. Her family says that's not true and they hope the images of the doting young mom will show the world that the 23-year-old mother would never willingly leave her children.
Stacy Peterson was someone who would open up the home she shared with Drew Peterson to host family celebrations. She was also someone quick to make a joke as she does when she turns the camera on herself to playfully tease her grandfather for taking too long to open his gifts.
Nearly two months after Peterson disappeared; the rare images take on a newfound importance for a family in pain. A family looking for answers where right now there are none to be found.
"Usually when you're looking at a video of somebody, you can call and say hey ... I just watched this, or I just thought about you because I saw your in the video. Let's get together this week," Simmons said. "And right now we don't have that option. We don't know where she is and I don't know if we're going to find her. And that makes it very hard, the not knowing."
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