JOLIET – Drew Peterson’s third wife told a friend a year before she was found dead in her bathtub that the former police officer once broke into her home, grabbed her by the throat, pinned her down and asked a threatening question, the friend testified Thursday.

“She said that her husband said, “‘Why don’t you just die?’ ” Mary Parks told jurors, her voice quivering as she delivered more of the hearsay evidence that’s at the heart of the state’s case.

Peterson, an ex-Bolingbrook police sergeant, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the 2004 death of his third wife, 40-year-old Kathleen Savio, who once studied nursing with Parks.