Drew's Attorney: No One Believes Stepbrother's Story

Brodsky says the story is made up by mentally ill drug addict

The attorney for Drew Peterson says that police and prosecutors don't believe the story told by Thomas Morphey, Peterson's brother-in-law.

If they did, Morphey already would have testified before the Will County grand jury, Brodsky told reporters Tuesday.

"If they found him credible, [Morphey] would have been one of the first witnesses they would have brought in and they would have based the entire investigation and the entire case on his testimony," Brodsky said at a news conference called to rebut Morphey's first public allegations against his stepbrother.

A Sun-Times suburban reporter got an exclusive interview with Morphey, who said he tried to kill himself after he learned of Stacy's disappearance -- because he thinks he helped dispose of her body.

Morphey survived the bottles of pills he swallowed, but said he now lives in hell, thanks to his stepbrother, Drew Peterson.

"There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I could take back the events of that day," Morphey told the Herald News.

Drew came out of his bedroom on Oct. 28, 2007, struggling with a large, blue barrel and asked him for help taking it downstairs, Morphey said, but he wasn't sure.

"I asked him, 'Shouldn't we have gloves on?' He said, 'No, don't worry about it,'" Morphey said.

Morphey said he's convinced Stacy was killed, and he thinks her body was in the blue barrel. He told his story to prosecutors and police shortly after her disappearance and his suicide attempt, and was offered an immunity deal to testify, according to the Herald report -- but no arrests have been made, and Morphey still hasn't testified before the grand jury that's looking into the Peterson case.

He said the span of time and apparent lack of progress since her disappearance convinced him he needed to go public with what he knew.

But Morphey's story doesn't stop there. On Oct. 27 -- the day before he claims he helped Peterson with the blue barrel -- he says Drew drove him to a park to talk about Stacy cheating on him.

Morphey said Drew told him "he had to take care of the problem" -- and Morphey assumed he was going to kill someone.

Then the conversation got strange, with Drew asking how much he loved him, and if it was "enough to kill for me," according to Morphey. He hesitated, and but said he could live with knowing about it, but not helping.

But according to Morphey's story, he may have done just that.

Morphey went on to detail a trip to a storage locker he said Drew wanted him to rent, but he couldn't because he didn't have his ID.

Then, the next day, Morphey said he met with Drew again, this time heading to a different park. He said Drew gave him a cell phone, telling him not to pick it up if it rang. Less than an hour later it did, Morphey said, and the caller ID read "Stacy's Cell."

"Really, all I could think when I saw 'Stacy' on the phone was he was killing her while I was standing there," he told the Herald.

Then Morphey said Drew returned to the park, picked him up and asked him to help move something at the house -- which turned out to be that blue barrel.

Despite promising Drew not to do so, he immediately told a friend what happened. Morphey also told one of his brothers, who called authorities. That's when Morphey swallowed the mass of pills, he said, in an effort to protect his girlfriend and her sons from Peterson.

He said he shared his story with the Herald reporter because of the inertia in the case, even though state police told him to stay quiet. Authorities have declined to talk about Morphey's story.

Drew Peterson's attorney, Joel Brodsky, told WBBM that Morphey is mentally ill, a drug addict and an alcoholic

"People in that situation, of that type of mental state, their minds don't work the same way yours and mine do," Brodsky said.

Morphey may be making up the whole story to win approval from his family because he's their black sheep, Brodsky said.

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