Rob Lowe as Drew Peterson in Untouchable (Credit: People Magazine)
Reporting Mike Puccinelli
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CHICAGO (CBS) – The new Drew Peterson movie debuting this weekend is being called poison, and the criticism has nothing to do with leading man Rob Lowe’s acting skills.
One person who will be watching “Untouchable” is the only surviving sister of Stacy Peterson, Cassandra Cales, who believes the former Bolingbrook cop murdered her sibling. But even though she plans to watch the movie, she strongly disapproves of it.
“I live it every day,” Cales tells CBS 2’s Mike Puccinelli. “And just to see it played on TV to entertain everybody, that’s going to hurt. And to see people profit from it is disgusting.”
Cales wants her sister to be portrayed accurately. She’s at least hopeful that the movie will generate new interest and possibly new leads more than four years after Stacy disappeared.
She says she’ll never stop looking.
“I won’t stop, and she will be found,” Cales says.
Drew Peterson’s defense attorney, Joel Brodsky, has already seen “Untouchable,” which airs Saturday evening on the Lifetime network.
“It’s a fairy tale,” Brodsky says.
Brodsky says even the name of the movie is wrong, considering Drew Peterson has been in the Will County Jail for nearly 1,000 days.
And he had this message for anyone interested in sitting in judgment of his client: “If you want to be on the jury that hears this case, don’t watch the movie. Don’t talk to anybody who’s watched the movie.”
CBS 2 legal analyst Irv Miller says typically media companies wait for a conviction before releasing a book or movie based on real life events.
And he says the release of the film will poison the jury pool and possibly give the defense attorneys grounds to ask that the trial be moved.
“I think it is more likely that he will be convicted of murder because the jurors will be biased. They will be prejudiced because of this movie,” Miller says.
Brodsky says if Peterson is eventually acquitted of murder charges, the movie company will almost immediately be sued for portraying him as a double murderer.
Drew Peterson is considered a suspect in his wife Stacy’s disappearance. He is being held on charges related to the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
