Madonna Badger: 'I Couldn't Get In the Window' to Save Family'

NBC- In an exclusive interview with TODAY’s Matt Lauer that aired Thursday, Madonna Badger spoke out for the first time about the night she lost her family in a Connecticut house fire on Christmas.


The blaze, which officials believe started from embers that her boyfriend, Michael Borcina, had placed in a paper bag, engulfed her $1.7 million Victorian home in Stamford, Conn., claiming the lives of 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah and 9-year-old Lily, as well as Badger’s parents.

When Badger awoke in bed the night of the fire, choking from the smoke, she did not hear an alarm.

“It was silent,’’ she said. “It was the scariest silence.’’



She climbed out the window. She recalled in harrowing detail her efforts to get back into the house. On her knees on the front porch looking through the windows, she realized she had a decision to make: "The windows were my mom and dad's windows. So I had to decide, 'Do I go in and save them? Or do I go save my children?' And so I ran the other way to save my children."


But scaffolding that had been set up for renovations prevented her from entering.


"I scrambled up the scaffolding to get to Grace's window. And I opened that window and the smoke that hit me, it was just the blackest, like an ocean. There was twirling and there was embers and all kinds of stuff in it. And I kept trying to hold my breath and put my head in...And I couldn't get in."



She saw her boyfriend Borcina fall out the back bedroom window as fire trucks arrived. His eyes, she said, had been burned shut. Still, he shouted to the girls through the windows to jump to him.


Badger never got a glimpse of her girls.




"It was the blackest smoke I've ever seen," she told Lauer. "If I could have seen them, I would have gone in. I mean, it's impossible to describe how it is that you can't go in and save your own children. But I couldn't get through that smoke. I couldn't."


Ten days after the fire, Badger spoke at her daughters' funeral.

Lauer asked what many wondered: How did she find the strength to eulogize her children, so soon after their deaths?

"I don't know," she replied. "I don't know. I think it was all God's grace. I have no idea."

Drew Peterson: I'll 'Probably Be Found Innocent'

In a phone interview from the Will County Jail in Joliet, Ill., recorded Thursday and broadcast Friday, Drew Peterson told TODAY’s Matt Lauer that he’ll “probably be found innocent” of the 2004 murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.

The 55-year-old former Bolingbrook, Ill., police sergeant was also harshly critical of the grand jury system that indicted him.

Police have been investigating both Savio’s death and Stacey Peterson’s disappearance for some 18 months. Lauer asked Peterson if he had any thoughts on why he the indictment was handed down when it was.

“I believe that was the last day of the grand jury and I believe they had to do something. The state's attorney, I believe, was under a lot of pressure from both the media and the Savio family to do something,” he replied.

“Do you have idea what the state's evidence is against you?” Lauer asked.

“No idea. And the grand jury system seriously needs to be revised,” he replied. “I truly believe that if they wanted to they could have indicted you for this incident. What you have is a bunch of lay people that are in there and they have been sitting there for 18 months, and they are uneducated on the points of law, rules of evidence and things like that.”

Lauer asked Peterson if he has any evidence to prove his innocence.

“There’s all kinds of evidence available. We’ll get discovery and we’ll basically piece-by-piece take apart their case,” Peterson replied, adding that he could not elaborate on what that evidence is.

Peterson was arrested after a traffic stop on May 7 after being indicted at the end of the local grand jury’s 18-month term. He is being held on $20 million bail, a sum that his attorney, Joel Brodsky, has called exorbitant and is trying to get reduced.

Peterson told Lauer he expected that he would be arrested when he was.

“I wasn't really that surprised. The news crews were outside which indicated to me that they were getting ready for something,” he said. “So I was trying to get to the bank to make a deposit so my family would have some money in the bank account. And all of a sudden I was swooped down on.”

After his arrest, Peterson quipped to reporters, “I guess I should have returned those library books.” Later, while being transferred in handcuffs and his orange jail clothes, he asked reporters what he thought of his “bling” and his “spiffy” clothes.

In an appearance on TODAY after Peterson’s arrest, Brodsky had explained Peterson’s flippant remarks as his wisecracking way of dealing with stress. Lauer asked Peterson, “Do you understand how it can tend to make you a very unsympathetic character in the eyes of the public?”

“Well, there is no book written on how I'm supposed to act,” Peterson replied. “Would it be better if I hid my head down and tried to hide my face and hunched over and tears in my eyes? I mean, no, that's just not me.”

[rest of semi-lengthy article here]