The Cheshire Murders

Cheshire Emergency.

My name is Mary Lyons,

I'm the banking center manager.

We have a lady who is in our bank right now

who says that her husband and children

are being held at their house.

The people are in a car outside the bank.

She is getting $15,000 to bring out to them.

That if the police are told, they will kill the children and the husband.

Her name is Jennifer Petit.

P-e-t-i-t.

Okay. Is she still in the bank?

Yes, she is.

Okay. She's being held...

- Her husband... - Husband and family is being held?

- Yes. - At their house?

Yes. They're tied up.

She said they drove her here.

I'm trying to look and see where she's gone.

She went outside, but I don't...

Oh, wait, I see her walking now.

She is petrified.

Again, facts like that I can't comment on. Okay.

And a male survivor.

Upon arrival at the victims' residence,

the first officer observed two male subjects

exit private residence and also observed

the private residence fully engulfed in flame.

The suspect vehicle rammed the Cheshire police officer's car

and continued on Sorghum Mill Road.

Tonight, police removed the body of one of the victims

after a home invasion leaves a mother and her two daughters dead.

The suspects,

26-year-old Joshua Komisarjevsky of Cheshire

and 44-year-old Steven Hayes of Winsted

were caught while trying to escape in the Petits' car.

Now, the only question remains that why

did this happen to the Petit family?

There's not one word that I can use to describe our town,

but it's a phenomenal town.

It's known as the bedding capital of Connecticut,

for bedding plants.

It was historically a farming community. A lot of family farms...

And, as the state of Connecticut grew,

as the cities surrounding the town of Cheshire grew,

it ultimately became a bedroom community,

which I think is the, uh, probably the way most people think of Cheshire.

Returning now to tonight's top story.

A mother and her two daughters are dead,

their father severely injured, after a home invasion

stunned the town of Cheshire.

The suspects apparently set the house on fire

as well as some of the victims.

Jennifer Petit, her cause of death

has been asphyxiation from strangulation.

Her daughters Hayley and Michaela died from smoke inhalation.

I got a phone call here on Monday afternoon

from Billy's sister,

and I said, "Hannah, it's about the girls, isn't it?"

And she said, "These two men came in

"at what they think was 3:00 in the morning

"and they beat Billy really badly with a baseball bat

"and his head's all split apart,

"and then they proceeded to do

"all these awful things to the girls,

"and they tied them to their beds."

"About 9:00, Jen was made to go to the bank

"and withdraw money

"and then when she came back from the bank,

"they set the house on fire and killed them all

"so that they could try to cover up their tracks, I guess,"

"but they got the two guys."

And all I could think was, "Who cares if they got the two guys?

"We don't have our loved ones anymore,"

"and that's all we had."

Wild Lingonberry. Have you ever had that?

Lingonberry?

It's from England, somewhere.

The hardest thing I think I've ever had to do in my life

was to tell my parents that one of their other children,

their only other child, was dead,

and their two grandchildren, two of their four.

She quickly told us that the home was set on fire,

but Bill escaped.

We went to the hospital and got to see Bill for the first time.

He was badly beaten

and he tried to apologize to us for not saving our daughter

and our grandchildren.

And we had to convince him that

he was in no condition to be able to save anyone

and we were grateful...

That he was alive. That he was alive.

This is the last sort of picture that we had together.

My sister... She was beautiful.

And she was usually, like, the lead in the plays at school.

She was on the homecoming court.

She was captain of the Trojanette team.

So she really was kind of like a winner person.

Bill was a committed, dedicated doctor.

Would leave at, uh, 7:00 in the morning

and not be back home until maybe 9:00, 9:30.

When Jen was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis,

Hayley really wanted to raise money because

she felt like if she didn't do anything, it was possible that her mother could die.

Hayley was able to raise a little over $50,000

being a spokesperson for the MS Society here in Connecticut,

receiving awards for that, although you'd never know it.

I hardly knew about Hayley helping with MS,

and that was just because she was just so quiet about everything.

She could have bragged about everything she did,

I mean, she was a straight "A" student.

I think about her all the time.

It's hard not to think about her.

You'll find just something to relate to her about.

Michaela sometimes shied away from adults,

but if she saw somebody was having a difficult time,

she went to them and tried to help with whatever she could.

Their lives were just centered around

a sense of sociability, uh, justice.

And if I didn't smile about it, I'd have to cry.

Apparently, these two losers followed.

Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her 11-year-old daughter

to the Stop and Shop on Sunday night.

They followed them.

And the first Cheshire police officer to arrive at the scene

heard at least one of the girls screaming from inside the house.

Those animals, what they did

to those poor people of Cheshire,

I can't even believe that they're gonna give them a trial.

What kind of laws do we have in this state

where they don't just execute those animals?

Well, Tony, the reaction by the public certainly

is for that, but it is...

To destroy a family the way those two did...

Heinous.

My verdict? Fry 'em.

Hang 'em.

Do whatever you gotta do.

Make sure they ain't gonna walk this earth again.

Can we switch?

Yup.

You need more? Yeah. I'm gonna need more.

I don't think evil like this has happened since In Cold Blood.

I really don't. Not that I know of.

And we went from being a quiet, peaceful town in New England to, overnight,

people installing alarm systems and panic buttons and panic rooms.

People in town refer to it as Cheshire's 9/11.

You know, life was one way and then it's another.

God has promised to be with us through thick and through thin.

All other ground is indeed sinking sand.

Well, first of all, uh...

Thank you.

For all coming out today to honor the memory of the girls.

I'd really like to say thank you to

people from all over the state of Connecticut and all over the country.

We've been

surrounded with love and cards and flowers and prayer

from east to west and north to south.

I met Jen at, uh, Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Before med.

She was a new nurse

and I was the know-it-all

third-year medical student.

I was trying to correct Jen on how to take blood pressure

the correct way.

Since I had about 3 minutes of experience at that point.

But it became clear pretty quickly that, uh,

she knew more about pediatrics and how to care for kids

than I had ever known.

One of the nice things...

Billy had never smelled smoke.

He had never seen a fire.

He had said that the only thing he ever heard

of my sister was her, like, pleading nicely with these two men,

"Can you please let me get my purse,"

"or they'll know that something is up at the bank."

He had his legs tied together and he hopped up the outside basement steps.

And he said, "But sometimes I wish.

"I would've just gone to the inside

"because then maybe, even if I had died in there,"

"I could've done something."

And I said, "No, Billy. You couldn't have done anything."

"Attached to a pole with your hands and feet tied

"in the basement with about 6 to 8, 3 to 4 inch"

"openings in your skull?"

And we knew that the police did not help my brother-in-law out of the house.

So the chances that he lived, surviving the blood loss,

are just miraculous in my mind.

Joining me on the phone right now is.

Lieutenant Jay Markella, the Public Information Officer

for the Cheshire Police Department.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Very little detail coming out about exactly what happened.

Was it when police showed up that they found the house on fire

and caught these suspects?

Because they were caught leaving the burning house.

Yeah. It worked out so officers arrived on scene

just as the suspects were leaving the residence.

Okay. I don't know how far we should go back, but...