"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..." "MAN:" "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." "Uh..." "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..." "I'm a very detective-like person." "I like to know details, and until I know the details around things, it's hard to figure things out." "I would like to know why my sister and Steven Hayes weren't stopped at the bank?" "Why she wasn't held at the bank?" "There were some police officers that, off the record, said to people in the town that they heard the girls screaming in the end." "Did they try to enter or did they not try to enter?" "And why weren't there policemen looking in the windows?" "My sister had no blinds on her windows." "I just want the facts." "And nobody has told us what really happened." "And today, a state prosecutor said he'll seek the death penalty for Komisarjevsky and Hayes." "Today, the state charged the men with six counts each of capital felony murder." "I was driving back from the Adirondacks with my wife, coming through the Berkshires." "Not a care in the world." "And I get a cell phone call." "Probably why I turned pale was because, you know, I had a sense as a lawyer where this was headed right from the beginning." "You know, capital case, death penalty case, high profile." "And in my own head, I knew right away that that case was coming in to this office and that I'd be involved." "Steven Hayes and Mr. Komisarjevsky were coming into Meriden court for arraignment." "Right from the first time that we met," "Steven Hayes was suicidal, depressed." "Just doesn't really understand how this all happened." "His record is lengthy." "He's got all these burglaries." "Most involve car burglaries." "In this state, burglary includes the break-in of a car." "And they were all daytime." "He'd sit and watch." "People would park their cars." "They'd go walking on a trail." "Break into their car and take a laptop or a radio or a phone." "So you were not dealing with someone who had the kind of classic history of violence and all of a sudden stepped into the big time in terms of the next level of violence." "You just didn't have it." "There was no reason that anyone would ever look at that history and think," ""Well, this guy's gonna do something really bad one day."" "The first time that I found out about my dad." "I was probably about five years old." "He would, like, take me to the movies and he really tried to be that father figure to me, but for whatever reason, he just couldn't stay out of trouble and so when he went back to jail," "like, he would write to me and I would write back and that was our way of communicating." ""Dear Alicia, hello, honey, and how are you doing?" ""I haven't heard from you in a while" ""and neither has Grandma." ""I want so bad never to hurt you again" ""and I feel like I am because I'm still here." ""Every day, I wake up wondering if today will be the day" ""that my name is called."" ""The stress is almost unbearable..."" "When I first found out about the incident," "I just came back from the police academy." "And my mind was just like..." "I told him to call me if something was wrong." "I needed to talk to him." "I needed to get answers from him." "What made him get together with this one guy and do what they did?" "Whose idea was it?" "Was it just one or was it both or did it just happen?" "It's just like, there's no easy answer, and I might not like the answer I get, but it's all..." "It's all just, "Why?"" "The details of 26-year-old Joshua Komisarjevsky's past are more in-depth, and some say even more disturbing." "His rap sheet reveals a..." "We were right in the kitchen here and we got a call from my brother Ben, and he said, "I think Josh has been involved"" ""in this home invasion."" "And I said to him, I said, "Home invasion?"" ""This was a murder."" ""And Josh was involved?"" "So you see the name spelled out, the Komisarjevsky name, and you sit there and you hold your head in your hands and you can't believe it." "And you want to cry." "This young man's a monster, and that is not the way that we as members of this family behave." "We spent all of our time in Cheshire and we lived in a home that was a home of arts and letters." "This is my aunt Vera Komisarjevsky, one of the foremost actresses in the Russian stage, and there's a theater in St. Petersburg that's named after her." "And this is my father" "Theodore Komisarjevsky, theater director, architect, costume designer." "When we drove up to Cheshire, my brother's house was just swarmed with media knocking on the door, trying to get statements from them." "I think it's hard for anybody to be able to deal with that kind of a situation, but probably more so for them because they were individuals who basically had withdrawn from many aspects of public life." "They ultimately posted a notice on the outside of their door, but that was it." "And from that time on, they've had nothing to say." "It was so disappointing, because I knew I was the last person, therapeutically, that met with Josh and could really paint a picture of him in a different light." "And I knew that the media and most people's opinion of him would go against what I saw and what I knew." "Josh just wanted to do better things with his life." "Staying clean, reconnecting with his family, and possibly going forward with an education, to become an architect." "I saw someone who created some beautiful designs." "These sketches." "I mean, this kid was amazing." "This is something that's unnatural." "This is pure talent." "He had to have practiced this and worked on this for years." "But when we talk about the..." "Just the pure evil." "How am I gonna go in there and tell them that this was a good kid, and that I was really close to him, after what he did?" "Joshua was a little, skinny, frail kid." "I saw him behind the bars." "He had on his, uh, cream-colored jail uniform." "He was slight." "He was polite." "He's adopted." "He went from regular school special ed to home school." "This whole package didn't make sense to me." "Burglary, burglary, burglary, burglary, and burglary." "Genius that he is, and he is a genius in some respects, with a photographic memory and attention to detail that no normal mind could possibly retain, he told them every burglary he did." "He knew every item he took, passports, what dumpsters he threw it in." "Joshua could get into a third floor, steal things, know which denominations of bills he took, a year later, two years later." "Tell you where each wallet was, what kind of pants they were taken from, where the pants were on the floor, or on the bedpost, in the closet." "Stay there for hours, not get caught." "Joshua used relatively sophisticated equipment for a burglar." "Night vision goggles, latex gloves." "After he robbed the house, he would stay there, on occasion, and listen to the people breathing, and go from room to room, listening to the occupants breathing, for no apparent purpose." "Um..." "That was the frightening part of it." "He'd rob state troopers' houses, which takes some guts." ""And I said,"Judge, he needs to be watched." ""This kid is sick." ""You're never gonna see him again" ""or he's gonna be the worst criminal to pass through these doors," ""because that's the kind of a mind he's got."" "There was no obvious flag here..." ""No obvious flag," the new chairman of the Board of Pardons and Paroles says that the two suspects in the brutal." "Cheshire home invasion and triple murder were capable of doing what they allegedly did." "There's no evidence that we've seen yet that they were recently..." "Uh, failed any drug tests." "They were both employed." "They were both living in what appeared to be stable households." "Komisarjevsky was arrested for 18 home invasions, and the warning bells in there should have been ringing very loudly." "Under a ten-year-old law, the prosecutors are supposed to order a transcript of the sentencing preceding and send that along to the parole board." "I mean, I used to be a prosecutor." "I helped write this law I'm talking about." "Because I knew that it's at the sentencing that you really find out everything you need to know about this offender and the crime." "The problem is, none of this ever got to the Department of Corrections." "None of this ever got to the parole board." "So, from the point of view of the Department of Corrections, they got a first time ever incarcerated inmate." "Young, white, bright, home schooled, remorseful, never identified as a person with high mental health needs because he didn't come across as that type of person." "He was a real manipulator." "The typical sentence for burglary is a maximum of ten years in prison for each offense." "Komisarjevsky could have still been locked up for two lifetimes." "It was possible." "It didn't happen." "I went to Bank of America to open a new account and Mrs. Petit was at the counter." "All I saw was white blond hair and a white piece of paper." "The teller handing it to the manager and the manager really just running right behind me to her office." "And she just left." "It's very delicate." "Three lives were taken that should not have been." "Things happened in a manner that..." "And I'm not saying the police..." "Because when you have a hostage situation, you wait until..." "You have to assess." "But she was screaming for her life." "He's in the basement." "Conscious." "Bound by the ankles." "Daughter loose upstairs." "She was a very strong girl." "How did it happen?" "Cheshire Police." "No one is talking." "No one." "Lieutenant, good morning, sir." "Good morning, Dan." "First of all, uh, the Cheshire Police Department in their response to this initial call was absolutely outstanding." "Uh, they did a stellar job." "Uh, the Chief and all those personnel in Cheshire PD deserve a lot of praise and credit..." "People are asking about a timeline, you know, when did this occur, when did that occur?" "We don't detail that information." "That's..." "That's..." "That's not something that really the public really needs to be concerned about at this point in time and it has more of an impact on the case itself." "Um, you know, the type of injury, the scene that one may try to envision in their mind, we're not gonna detail that." "We're not gonna discuss, um, you know, how someone died..." "Over and above manner and cause, which, we'll give manner and cause of death, but we're not gonna get into great graphic detailed description." "Um, you know, we're not gonna talk about assaults." "We're not gonna talk about weapons." "Say what we don't know." "What happened?" "And the next the ensuing half-hour." "Yeah." "Between the time Hayes and Hawke-Petit returned home?" " Mmm-hmm." " And the time..." "I don't want to say, "The first Cheshire police." MAN 1:" "No." "They were arrested coming out of the house?" "Time they were arrested." "Yeah." ""That may only be answered at trial."" "If you can answer some of the questions, go ahead and do that." "Yup." "And then, uh..." "There's so little information and there's so many rumors and innuendo circulating." "People are clamoring to find out what happened." "The Day possibly proposed that William Petit was somehow involved." "Speculation." "The sooner, I think, we get all the information, the sooner folks can really start healing, because the unknown is just as frightening as what happened, in a way." "You have all these people saying all this stuff, you know?" "Just tell us what happened, and, uh, then we can deal with it." "It's almost like not knowing is..." "Kind of keeps that wound open, you know?" "I don't know." "It's gonna be a while 'till we see trial, so..." "It's starting to pan out that the state's claim is pretty strong." "Overwhelmingly strong." "And that what's at stake at this case is life or death." "You have the gasoline aspect of it." "You know, the sexual assault." "Horrible crime scene photos." "You have the right defendant." "You have the right perpetrator." "What do we do?" "Isn't this the case that death is warranted?" "And, um..." "And I can't accept that." "Once you allow the death penalty to go forward, then the next case comes along, and it's okay for the next case because that crime was horrifying, and what if that's a mistake?" "What if that's an innocent guy?" "And this notion that, if you execute somebody, you know, you'll save money." "You know, that's the furthest thing from the truth." "You know, we have pretty much a blank check." "So, I'm reminding everybody, listen," "Steven Hayes is ready to plead guilty to all of these charges and take a sentence of life without the possibility of release." "It'll be over now." "You know?" "There'd be..." "The case would be done, there wouldn't be any appeals, we'd stop spending all this money, um, we would not have to traumatize everybody with the facts of this case." "As a United Methodist minister," "I am a minister of a church at large that is opposed to capital punishment." "That has put me between a rock and a hard place." "We certainly don't, um, approve of torture of people, uh, but we feel that there has to be some justice in how people are dealt with when they are so inhumane in their treatment of others." "You know, it just makes me want to cry." "Jennifer, Hayley, and Michaela, they were kind and they were sweet." "They looked out for other people, they cared about other people, and, uh, spent their time helping people, so for them to suffer, you know, horrific..." "Horrific deaths seems incredibly unjust." "I mean, it would seem incredibly unjust for anybody, but obviously they were the three people that I knew and loved the best in the world, and it just..." "The contra..." "The contra..." "The opposition of the..." "Just absolute evil that attacked us versus the goodness that they represented is..." "Is just worlds apart." "A benign visit to the grocery store to get milk, bread, toilet paper." "Oh, and People magazine, because a family that my brother killed is on the front cover." "And my brother's picture is in it." "He raped a woman." "He choked her to death." "He poured gasoline on two little girls and he set them on fire." "How does a person do that?" "They paroled him in November..." "He peed funny, and so they threw him back, and they paroled him five months later." "I..." "Personally, they're fucking stupid 'cause they don't get it." "You don't care enough about the people in your society to put these type of people back out on the street." "And I want to say that..." "It's really tough for me to say because one of those people is my brother." "Steven at birth, or soon thereafter." "Steven around three." "Steven around five." "Matthew around one, Matthew around three." "Then we get into these." "Steven, Matthew, Brian." "Where I got the blond hair, I have no idea." "Dad." "That's where you got it." "You, Kathryn, and..." "And, uh, Steven all had the light hair." "Who is Steve?" "He's manipulating, he's, uh, deceptive," "and he's my brother." "God, look at that." "And I remember that." "See, look at where his hands are." "I remember that day." "He was pinching me, he was grabbing me." "I mean, look, I'm about to frickin' burst out in tears here." "He's just laughing his little ass off." "Yeah." "Fuckin' noodge." "Deceiving." "Always." "Manipulator." ""Mom, it's not me, it's Matt." Yeah." "Mom and her three boys." "And that's probably the first Christmas since 1979 that all three of us were in the same room for Christmas." "Only to go back to jail again." "Mmm-hmm." "You know, this is the evolution of Steven in prison life." "Monday, when I saw it on the news, all's I heard was that there was the home invasion and whatnot, and it seemed like something Steve would do." "But if he'd never..." "With the smashing of the police cars and the breaking and entering and stuff like that." "But the killing, the raping, and the burning." "That could've been Josh." "I don't know who was the mastermind." "Well, obviously, neither one of them, because they got caught, and they did something..." "Well, being a mastermind doesn't mean that you don't get caught." "Honestly, you know, it is," "It is the equivalent of the perfect storm." "If he wasn't smoking drugs, then, you know," "I say flip the switch and fuck the trial." "Flip the switch." "I hope it doesn't even go that far." "As nasty as it sounds," "I hope somebody puts a bullet in his head." "That's not gonna happen." "Outside the courtroom." "He's in solitary confinement." "Yeah, well..." "They will..." "They will keep him away from every God-living soul." "When he's on his way into the courtroom, he has to get out somewhere." "They're not gonna risk his life, because the state wants to kill him." "They're not gonna give that privilege up to anybody else." "You know, I think that it should be the death penalty." "Both my daughters, Clarice and Caroline, had a relationship with Joshua." "And I believe that he picked my daughters out due to the fact that they looked like they're very young." "When Josh wanted to marry Caroline, we had a phone conversation." "I don't know if Josh was asking for my blessing, but in that phone conversation," "I said, "Joshua, I have two major concerns."" ""One is, I think you're a career criminal."" "And then the second thing I shared with him is that's he was a pedophile." "And in both of those, he..." "He never really changed his voice." "Um, all I remember him saying is," ""I'm sorry you feel that way."" ""Dear Caroline, good evening, sweetheart." ""When I wake every morning, the sun is just starting to rise." ""Its light dances across your picture," ""radiating your beautiful eyes and pretty smile." ""It's the best part of the day." ""A calming mix of hope, beauty, and tranquility." ""Take care, Caroline." "Smile." "Someone's thinking of you." ""Strength and honor, sincerely, Joshua."" ""P.S. Miss you."" "We called Joshua the hopeless romantic." "That was the biggest side I loved about him, because, how many guys are out there that are romantic?" "You know?" "Not very many." "And he was super romantic, and that's the way I am." "I'm super romantic." "When I went to Cheshire, we would go around the neighborhoods, the rich neighborhoods, and he'd look at all these houses and be like, "Man, you know, I want to live in" ""something that nice and that gorgeous."" "He wanted to have a family." "He was like, "I want a family." ""You know, a good family."" ""I don't want something that's broken."" ""If I were home, I would have sent flowers" ""and some sort of creative surprise" ""with this little note of admiration." ""Actually, if I were home," ""I would have shown up in person"" ""and, well, who knows."" "Me and Joshua did have a very sexually active relationship and he did like to tie me up and, of course, you know, I was the submissive one, and sometimes I was the dominant one." "But most of the time, I was submissive." "Joshua always asked me, you know, "Is this too tight?"" ""Are you okay?"" "Joshua always was concerned." "Joshua was definitely a soul mate and that's what killed me the most." "I saw Steve and Josh together every day." "Every day." "They were always talking." "Um, because Steve was..." "Steve was very, very versed in recovery." "Um, Steve knew the NA book back and front." "His nickname was "Mr. NA."" "And I think Josh kind of absorbed a lot of it and was able to get that knowledge from Steve." ""For this addict, drugs are not my main problem." ""I am my main problem." "My self-destructive attitude and behavior." ""What I like about getting high is to escape my feelings." ""I've self-medicated so much."" ""I don't know how to feel anymore."" "This is his own words." "He's writing this." ""...unresolved anger controls me, it haunts me day and night." ""Sometimes to the point of obsession,"" ""even scary fantasy."" "You know, one of the comments that Steven had shared with me was he didn't know what was gonna happen but something big had to happen because he had to get away from my mother's house." "May to July, uh, in a one-bedroom apartment, my mother in the bedroom, Steven on the couch, me on the floor." "You know, I didn't ever want to be home." "I just didn't, so I'd stay out until" "I had to come home to go to sleep, because I couldn't stand to be in the same room with him." "And then I'd be lying, making believe I'm sleeping in the morning while he's having coffee with my mom just runnin' all his bullshit out of his mouth about how he's gonna take care of her" "and he's gonna be making all this money." "He's going to reshift and reshape my mother's life and get them a bigger place, and, you know, it's gonna be Steven taking care of Mom and..." "On a scale from here to here, there was that much of me that actually believed it was gonna happen." "We got into a very physical confrontation one night, and he broke three of my ribs, and gave me a black eye." "And, you know, I probably should have had him arrested then because that would have been violation of probation." "Then he would've went to jail and none of this would've ever happened." "Things were already falling apart." "The lies that Steven had been telling for the last two months were coming back." "My mother was finding out about it." "She was getting ready to boot him out." ""I don't care what you have to do." ""You need a halfway house." "I don't care."" ""Get out of my house."" "So that was Friday." "I don't know the specifics of what happened" "Saturday and/or Sunday, but, you know, things were definitely ramping up to something." "A day or two before the crime occurs," "Steven saw that his life was once again going downhill, and he says that he locks himself in a hotel room" "with crack cocaine and heroin and goes on this drug binge with a desire and hope that he would kill himself." "He leaves the hotel room feeling like he's failed at this suicide attempt, leaving him, in his view, more desperate." "He shows up at an AA meeting in Hartford, and there's Joshua." "And Joshua started talking to him about ways to make some real money." "The last contact I had with him before the crime, I think, was" "Sunday night?" "We said our usual good night's and "I love you" and then the next morning," "I tried to get a hold of Joshua." "Me and my mom were walking to the car and I looked at my mom, I go," ""Mom, something's wrong."" "I was like, "Joshua's not answering his phone." ""I think something happened."" "I was like, "Something definitely is wrong."" "Ms. Komisarjevsky did call me on..." "I'm pretty sure it was Monday, and she told me that" "Joshua went out late that night and he was wearing dark clothings, like his hoodie." "And Ms. Komisarjevsky told me that he only does that when he's going out to rob houses." "The lights that the candles make" "I think can help to radiate the, uh..." "Uh, the love that's needed." "Well, they're gonna ring the bells at the churches for three minutes." "Uh, one minute for each of the Petit women." "You'll remember that last summer, at what police describe as a random home invasion." "And, of course, the darkness that happened on that day will never be forgotten." "But perhaps for the first time tonight, there is a glimmer of hope that perhaps some good could come from this evil." "Now, the money raised here will stay in Connecticut and go to the foundation that was founded by Dr. Petit in the names of his daughters." "Michaela Miracle and Hayley's Hope and..." " Good morning, everyone." " Good morning." "This is a hearing in a..." "A continued hearing in a matter of a complaint brought by Colin Poitras and the Hartford Courant against Chief of Fire Department, town of Cheshire..." "We applied through the town of Cheshire for more material right after the crime took place." "We finally got new information yesterday." "A complete transcript from the time of the initial call from the bank official regarding Mrs. Petit being at the bank saying she might be held hostage to the time the two suspects were arrested outside the Petit household." "And our review of this document, which is heavily edited to protect potential witnesses, the town has told us, raises the possibility that officers on alert could have maybe stopped this car with the suspect and Mrs. Petit" "as they were coming home from the bank." "Um, perhaps could've beat them back to the house." "Could've separated the two suspects at that time and maybe things would've had a different outcome." "And what's still out there is no one knows what the initial 911 call said." "What the bank official said to police when she called." "What were they told?" "Was it clear?" "Did they know they have a hostage crisis?" "There's always more information that is yearned for, um, either in a journalistic sense," "a due diligence reporting sense, and sadly, in a salacious sense." "So, it is hard to say, "No, I don't have anything to tell you right now."" "Over and over again." "Upon arrival at the victims' residence, the first officer observed the private residence fully engulfed in flame." "Yeah, it worked out so officers arrived on scene just as the suspects were leaving the residence." "I get really tired of the stories that say," ""Oh, by the time the police showed up, the house was already in flames."" "And that's not true at all." "When Billy came out of the house, he was pretty sure that he saw men in the woods hiding behind trees, and we think those were all the police officers." "And he was calling out to a neighbor while hopping across the yard, tied and badly beaten." "That should have raised the police eyebrows to say," ""What are they doing in there?"" ""We need to get in there and find out."" "That's why I wrote letters to the police." "I felt like, and I expressed in my letter that..." "That their..." "Their goal was to catch the men, whoever were guilty, and above and beyond the saving of lives." "And I felt their priorities were very much askew." "Why didn't they just have a bullhorn or something saying, you know," ""This house is surrounded." ""You're not going to get out of this alive,"" ""so come on out?"" "Why didn't you just go to the door and break a window or something and go into that house?" "You know, my..." "My whole inner person said," ""These were precious people."" ""Why didn't you enter the house?"" "We've asked a lot of questions, written a lot of letters." "But they have not sat with me and they have not sat with my parents to tell us what happened and what unfolded and why and how." "I believe that truly they think they did something wrong." "I've heard all kinds of things, that it was a small town and they hadn't had the experience in the past." "I think they were afraid." "I just can't say enough good things about how proud I am of the extraordinary effort of our police officers and our firefighters." "Um, they're extremely well trained, they're a great group of professionals, and I think today exemplified, um, the finest of what the police and fire are all about in this community." "And I can't thank them enough because without their great work, uh, this could've been a far worse tragedy." "Uh, we were very, very fortunate..." "I was just literally shocked when I heard him say that and that there were no further casualties or something." "And I thought, you know," ""How bad does it have to be?"" "I mean, I thought it was awful, and he was commending them on what a great job they had done, and I..." "I was sorry, but I didn't feel they did a great job." "I mean, if they had done a great job, nobody would have died." "As you look through this dispatch, you can't help but walk away thinking, you know, that there's another tragedy within the tragedy that occurred to the Petit family here." "9:21:28, initial call comes in to the police department 911." "And this is the call that was actually from the bank manager." "I will watch and see what kind of car she gets in." "I'm in my office with the door..." "With the lights off." "My teller said that she saw the driver." "He had a black hood over..." "A hoodie and a baseball cap on." "I'm gonna keep you on hold for another couple minutes, all right?" " Okay." "Some police officers were actually at the scene within seconds or minutes of when Steven Hayes and Jennifer Petit get back to the house." "They had the phone number of the house early on." "Nobody made a call." "Um, nobody knocked on the door." "9:56." "Two suspects are moving into Chrysler." "9:57." "There is a fire also at the scene." "Initial call comes in at 9:21." "This is over a half an hour later." "They were actually at the scene for 30 minutes." "The strangulation of Jennifer Petit occurred." "The rape of Jennifer Petit occurred." "The pouring of gasoline occurred throughout the house and the actual setting on fire of the house." "All of this is taking place while the police are watching the house setting up their perimeter." "It's really outrageous." "Filling in for Ed Flynn today, on Talk of the Town." "We're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to be joined by Dr. William Petit from the Petit Family Foundation, so stay with us." "Yeah. 1984." "We go directly to you." "On nine..." "Okay." "Eight, seven..." "Dr. Petit is here, and as many of you recall, you know, it wasn't that long ago that, you know, you suffered a tragedy, losing your wife and your two daughters in a home invasion." "Talk a little bit, if you will, Dr. Petit, about the mission." "About the mission of the Petit Family Foundation." "It's essentially to help out people with, uh, chronic illnesses, which was a nod to Hayley, who was accepted at Dartmouth and wanted to major in biology and considered medicine or other careers." "And to help people affected by violence in their life, which there's obviously, uh, far too much of, as evidenced by the shootings in Oakland and the shootings in Pittsburgh." "There are few things that make me mad as hell, and one is when I heard that the legislature was even talking about, even considering abolishing the death penalty here in Connecticut." "And I'm beginning to wonder, do I have anything in common with this state anymore?" "I mean, what the heck?" "One of the studies that has been done, and it does get brought up by people..." "Study, study, study." "Well, this study actually has some very good statistics, which are, most violent criminals who commit the most heinous of crimes don't see the death penalty as a deterrent because their sociopathic activities don't take into account consequences." "How do you feel about that, Dr. Petit?" "Death penalty's clearly a deterrent, because the person that has committed the violent crime can no longer commit it again, so that person is removed from society, and I think they've forfeited their right to live in a civilized society, and, uh..." "The taking of a life, the opponents like to say it's, uh, murder by the government, but that's a semantic issue, because murder is the unlawful taking." "We have laws set down for certain reasons, and certainly the defense attorneys spend lots of time and lots of our money using the law to their benefit, and, uh, the law says that for certain crimes," "there's an ultimate penalty, and society's believed in that for thousands of years." "And that fight will continue, and I know that is, uh, one of the things you're gonna fight passionately, to make sure that those laws stay in place, and, uh..." "And no better spokesman than you, Dr. Petit, for why these laws are here." "State lawmakers are considering a bill that would change the death penalty law, and Dr. William Petit gave his opinion on the same day of a hearing for one of the men..." "Death penalty opponents speak of the inviolable sanctity of life." "They love slogans such as "Do not kill in our name" and the like." "Thus, I assume that death penalty opponents value the lives of murderers more than their victims." "Specifically, to me, as a victim..." "You know, if you're for the death penalty, this is the poster child, no question about it." "If you're against the death penalty, like I am, this guy is the poster child for the death penalty." "I mean, him and Saddam Hussein, right?" "Kind of hard to argue the case." "But it's not a philosophical debate anymore." "This is reality." "And the ordeal you have to go through, once it's a death penalty case, is considerable." "It's a guaranteed multiple-years ordeal in terms of just the trial, and after the conviction, scores of years of appeals and frustration." "And all this time, the focus is on the murderers." "They become mini-celebrities." "You have to go into gruesome detail about what happened, because the prosecutors must prove that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors, and the aggravating factor is unusually cruel and heinous." "In other words, you have to prove that compared to other triple murders, this one is much worse." "Once this gets under way, people are not gonna like what they see, and it's just starting to get under way now." "And so I guess I'd say to Dr. Petit, you know," "I don't know who's giving you advice, but I think if anyone's implying to you that there's a realistic hope that these guys would ever actually be executed, I think they're misleading you." "The one and only time we had an execution here, in my lifetime, in Connecticut, was this guy Michael Ross, and that was after 25 years of drama to get to that point, and the guy asked to be executed." "The reality is that you'll feel like you're making progress every day, but it's gonna go on forever." "It'll probably be two years before they even start selecting of the jury." "I'm getting pretty old." "I hope I live long enough so that I can attend the trial." "I want to see justice done." ""Attention Detective Fran Budwitz" ""of the Connecticut State Police." ""I give this statement to aid and assist those"" ""who now have the burden and huge responsibility of seeking justice."" ""My earliest memories of Steve go back to age four or five." ""Steve presented himself as the apple of everyone's eye." ""What many people did not see was the brother I knew." ""Being young and naive, I arrived home from school in seventh grade." ""Steven and his friends were using the oven to dry out some marijuana." ""He turned on the burner on the stove." ""He told me it was really cool and put my hand over it." ""'It's cool." "You won't get hurt.'" ""As soon as I put my hand over the burner," ""he pushed my hand onto the hot burner" ""and I had ring scars that lasted for months." ""To say there hasn't been a history of violence," ""well, this should, this should serve to say the predisposition was there." ""It was always there." ""Within two months of moving, Steve took my mother's car in the middle of the night." ""Upon calling the police, the relationship" ""with my mom, Steven, and the law enforcement officials began." ""Steven is not sick." ""Steven is cunning and calculating." ""Please exercise discretion." ""I will assist how I can." ""However, there is enough to hang him without any family involvement." ""Steven is alone." "He will answer to God," ""he will answer to the law, and my prayer is"" ""he will answer to himself, before fate hands him his final sentence."" "I don't know." "I'd like to be there from the beginning of each trial through the end of each one." "If there are things to look at that they had to endure," "I feel like it's part of my life to know what they lived through or died through, and I just feel like it's not to punish ourselves, it's just to know in the end and have that finality of..." ""Oh, this is how it looked." "This is what they say they did."" ""A thief in the night, I've come to steal" ""not jewels and money, but your personal safety, privacy, and security." ""I violate your inner asylum of intimacy." ""I piss on your optical illusion of peace and innocence." ""I feast on your animosity."" ""The Petit family passed through their fear" ""into the calm waters of abject terror," ""like mesmerized rabbits cornered by a springing predator." ""To see that fear, that emotional pain I feel every day" ""manifested on another's face validates that this pain in me is real." ""The shockwaves of my self's hopelessness" ""reverberated its bitterness through my rocked soul" ""at the realization that I crossed life's bridge of depravity." ""The awakening of my shadow, repressed within, reaching its zenith that morning" ""with rapturous control of Michaela."" ""Her age was insignificant."" "Come on, Shadow." "Come on, Rummy." "Inside." "Let's go." "Let's go." "Inside." "On the phone, Joshua denied raping the 11-year-old, but I knew Joshua raped that 11-year-old." "I just knew." "And he kept..." "Joshua kept telling me that he didn't and I didn't believe him." "I couldn't believe him." "Because I was raped in ninth grade, and..." "Hold on a minute." "Before I left, I told him about it." "I know he didn't know Michaela at the time, but I feel like maybe he was thinking of a Michaela while he was doing that stuff to me." "Punishment that would be good enough for him would be having done to him what he'd done to them." "Roll cue to video." "Sure." "One, two, three, four, five." "There are two suspects, but Steven Hayes goes on trial first." "He is in court today." "But he looks very different from his mug shot." "He's lost weight, he's in a regular striped shirt and pants." "No handcuffs on him in front of the jury." "And it is because this case has gotten so much publicity that picking an impartial jury could be difficult." "Sunny, you were inside the courtroom today." "What sort of state did Komisarjevsky appear to be in?" "He's much heavier now." "He sort of has a buzz cut." "Komisarjevsky is dressed in a suit and engaged in the process." "Now, if you're wondering how long this is all going to last, we're talking about several months." "This morning, the judge told the..." "From the courthouse, I don't think Cheshire's but about a 15 minute drive." "Everybody knew this case." "Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bombing cases were number two and three." "Komisarjevsky was number one." "Talking to almost 2,000 prospective jurors, everyone had made conclusions based on the publicity, and that conclusion was very clear." "Joshua Komisarjevsky was guilty." "75 % also expressed the opinion that Joshua should die." "I've never had a jury selection where people would jump out of their seats..." ""I'll kill him now."" "It's in the news, Internet." "How could you miss it?" "What did you think when you saw him?" "Um, I just think he's a murderer." ""Frustrating day, but two more jurors were selected." "That came in at 8:13 this morning." ""Still need four more jurors, six alternates, and two substitutes."" "So it's about 11:00, this morning, my time, Pacific time, and one of Steven's attorney's called." "They went in to check on him this morning and he was unresponsive." "Steven's lying in a coma induced by, you know, a medical team." "They're not sharing why." "You know, the attorney said that he could very well die." "And they're expected to be back in court tomorrow." "They can't proceed without him in the room." "Steven squirreled away nine or so doses of Thorazine and Klonopin." "And you might question how this could happen." "About a year before this, Steven Hayes had made a suicide attempt and one of the things they found in his cell was a suicide note." "I quote, "I am sorry." "All I want to do is die."" ""It is the only way to end the pain I go through" ""every day 24/7, and more important," ""the pain that trial will bring to others." ""Time to go to the last undiscovered country." ""Although I am not the monster that Josh is, I am one nevertheless." ""A coward, because I could not do what was right." ""Looking back on my life, I was nothing" ""but a self-centered asshole who cared only of himself." ""But the ironic facet to this is I have always had the ability to change."" ""But cowards don't change." "They become me."" "The judge actually toured Hayes' cell yesterday." "It's called a safe cell, which will protect him from harming himself." "He learned a lot." "He also wears something called Ferguson clothing, which an inmate wears if they're in jeopardy of killing themselves, because they can't tear up the clothes and use it as a noose." "Is it on?" "Yeah." "Good day." "Good morning." "How difficult, Dr. Petit, is it to sit in there and have them discuss Hayes' conditions in prison for two hours at a time, the lights being on?" "Uh, it's difficult." "Uh..." "Somehow, it was okay for the defendants to bind us and beat us and rape us and torture us and set the place on fire, but you can't be, can't be held in a cell with the lights on," "and somehow there's something wrong with that." "It's surreal." "The entire prosecution is geared to killing Steven Hayes, and so here he is trying to kill himself but we won't let him do that, because we want to extract our pound of flesh." "It's really a sick kind of process, in my opinion." "Tragedy in trial!" "Front page!" "Right now, both sides are inside this courtroom." "All eyes are on what's going to happen in these opening arguments." "The heavy, heavy security around Steven Hayes brought in by authorities on a convoy of vehicles..." "There's no cameras allowed in the courtroom, so you're not going to see what's actually going on in there, but tweeting is allowed." "A juror has been excused." "It's because she said she couldn't be fair, because she heard news reports of Steven Hayes' suicide attempt." "This jury will end up making two decisions." "One will be the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and if they find him guilty, then they would have to decide if he should get the death penalty for the crime." "Going into the courtroom, Steven Hayes was, like, off to my left." "I look at him and I think," ""I still can't believe that you did this."" "I said as soon as I found out that my sister died," ""Just come into me, be a part of me."" "So I kept staring at him." "And sometimes I think, "Is that a part of her saying, like, 'Stare at him." ""'Don't take your eyes off of him."" ""'Like, he, he can't be trusted.'"" "I'd like to say a few things to these guys." "I'd like them to answer me the question, do they know what it is to be terrorized?" "After waiting more than three years, the Petit and Hawke families are ready for this process to finally begin." "And are hopeful in the end that justice will prevail, and we think of Jennifer, Hayley, and Michaela every second of every day." "It is a system, you know, and..." "People say it's the best system in the world, but it's a, it's a maddening system at best." "People spend a lot of time parsing words instead of really trying to get to what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil." "But it's the system we have, so we're hoping..." "We're hoping that the system we have will give us justice." "Today's date is July 23, 2007." "Statement's taking place at the Cheshire Police Department headquarters." "Joshua Komisarjevsky, do you know why you're here?" "Okay." "And you went to Stop and Shop in Cheshire?" "On the night of July 22, Josh and Steven were texting each other." "Steven texting Josh about "When are we gonna get going?"" "It was kind of like an excitement about going to burglarize this house." "He drives down to Cheshire." "He and Josh go to a bar." "And then they start looking for this house that Josh knows about from when they were shopping at Stop and Shop earlier." "It's always been my opinion that he was attracted by the young girl Michaela, rather than the money or the Mercedes." "Josh was born into a family with a history of mental problems." "Then he was adopted by a family that had no ability to cope with mental problems." "And so he was doomed by biology, and then he was doomed by fate." "When Josh was three years old, the family took into the home two foster children, a girl and a boy." "And Josh underwent really horrible and extensive sexual abuse at the hand of Scott." "I think it started off playing little sex games, having him pose naked, and then it proceeded to full-scale anal intercourse and to Josh's being burned with cigarettes." "Against the background of all of this," "Josh is at a church in which it is taught that there is evil in the world and probably the greatest abomination of all is homosexuality." "And so you've got a, what, a five-year-old, a six-year-old, a seven year old, listening to this and thinking to himself that I am fundamentally evil," "I have engaged in that kind of activity, and really not being able to tell anybody about it." "There's a theme that I saw in Steven's life of..." "Of betrayal." "Steven had been sexually abused as a child, which led him to become more emotionally disconnected from people." "The turning towards drugs and the desperate state of mind that he found himself in, all of this helped explain how Steven could've done what he had done." " You did?" " Yeah." "KK." "Obviously she told you her nickname or whatever is KK, or you made that up?" "I met Josh when I was 13." "Josh's parents started attending the church that we went to, the Evangelical Bible Church." "And we dated, we were in a relationship for about two years." "We started dating when I was 14 or 15 and then our relationship was ended by the church." "Throughout the whole course of our relationship, we were always trying to not have sex." "That was the goal." "It felt deeply, deeply sinful." "Our church community was our home school community." "And Josh's family and mine as well had a very specific idea of good and evil." "The devil was understood to be an entity that you could know, so if Josh had anxiety, it was the devil." "If he did something wrong, it was because he was being used as an agent of the devil." "Josh spoke some to me about the sexual abuse that had happened to him." "But there wasn't even a way for him to tell me without weeping." "Josh had terrible anxiety attacks." "His home was not ever safe for him." "The safe place was being away and hiding in the woods." "He was trespassing and sneaking around, spying on people, long before it was a criminal offense." "I think that he envied people and he would daydream about being them." "They find beer in the refrigerator and drink throughout the night." "Steven finds jars of quarters and coins." "They found a Bank of America book and they're waiting for the morning." "However, Steven worries that he's gonna leave DNA evidence in the house, and he starts..." "Obsessing." "And Josh tells him, "Fire destroys everything."" ""We'll get the people out and we'll burn the house down," ""we'll get them somewhere, and then we'll get the hell out of here."" "That's what Steven was thinking about." "Steven goes into the garage." "He finds containers and starts driving to find a gas station." "When Steven gets back with the gasoline," "Josh had changed the clothes of Michaela because of activity that he was involved with in terms of sexually abusing her." "And part of that occurred while Steven was out on the gas run, because we know that because of Josh's photographs that he took on his cell phone before the bank." "The first set of photographs, you know, showed Michaela." "There were leg shots and genital area shots, but they were clothed." "The last shots while they were at the bank were much more graphic." "Really awful, awful, awful photographs." "Those are the kinds of things you never forget." "They kind of become emblazoned in your mind." "It just shows the level of depravity of Joshua Komisarjevsky." "Joshua was committed, against the wishes of his parents, he was committed and spent, I think, two weeks at Elmcrest." "He was clearly in terrible shape and suicidal." "The records are very clear that Joshua wanted to try the medication, Joshua wanted the therapy, but the parents rejected it." "Not only did the parents reject it, but they immediately took him up to the Alton Bay Christian Center." "People would say that he was seeing demons and he believed that." "And would pray that they'd go away." "And people would gather around him and pray over him and lay hands on him and speak in tongues over him." "Exorcism?" "That was kind of a regular part of our lives when it came to dealing with anxiety." "He ended up breaking into my room at the discipleship house to come and see me." "He was essentially excommunicated for doing that." "His whole life, everything, was just gone." "Overnight." "There was no addressing that perhaps this was a desperate kid who actually didn't, wasn't wrestling with the devil but had experienced trauma and was losing his grip." "Some people called our office asking if we would, we would take Josh on, in spite of, some of his legal difficulties as a member of our tour." "I just gave Josh a little bit of responsibility and let him know that I expected him to be a leader, and he blossomed." "He just loved it." "We came to the end of that tour and it was a good tour." "I think it wasn't long after that that Josh joined the Reserves." "Then he was discharged." "And then that's when his troubles started again." "Morning rolls around." "They untie Mrs. Petit." "Steven takes her to the bank." "Mrs. Petit is in the bank." "It's taking longer than he thought." " You performed oral sex on KK?" " On KK." "Did you take pictures of her?" "Now, did you say you let her get dressed again?" "How, how is it she came upon being undressed?" "Because you originally said she was dressed." "No one disputes that he committed this crime." "Eventually, he tells the police officer that while Hayes is gone, he goes upstairs and sexually assaults KK." "At that point, the judge stops the tape." "He says, "A juror is having problems"" ""with this testimony, with this evidence,"" "and that he's gonna stop it for the day and they will continue again tomorrow." "A very difficult day in court here." "We're good." "Thank you very much." "Komisarjevsky was calling my youngest niece "KK."" "Like, you know, who are you to be using that term and calling her this, like, term of endearment that we use?" "Okay, you show me that baseball bat again that you hit Billy with and I'll show you how it feels." "You want them to lose a daughter." "You want their house to burn down." "You want them to see how it feels." "And, and other times, you think, "Gosh, who am I?"" "Like, "This is wicked." "How could I wish this on anybody?"" "Steven is becoming anxious." "He calls Joshua." "Joshua tells him, "Everything's gonna be fine." "The plan is gonna work."" "After a period of time, Mrs. Petit comes out of the bank with money." "When they arrive back at the house," "Steven is under the belief that the crime is over." "Now they could leave." "But Joshua tells Steven that, "We have a problem."" "He had left DNA with one of the children and he had to kill them and their dad, and Dr. Petit had died from the injuries, and that now he had to get his hands dirty and kill Mrs. Petit." "I believe Steven." "But from the first time that Josh talked to the police, he tried to save himself by blaming Steven for all the horrific stuff that occurred." "Steven tells me that he felt betrayed by Josh, that he felt dragged into this horror of a crime, and he also felt, in a crazy way, betrayed by Mrs. Petit, because he looks out the window and he sees police cars." "And he realizes that Mrs. Petit must have informed bank officials." "He is triggered into this state of rage." "He strangles Jennifer Hawke-Petit, he pulls down her pants, pulls her legs up, and he vaginally rapes her after he strangles her." "Which is where the dad was." "Steven hears Josh telling him they have to leave." "Spread the gasoline and let's get out of here." "Why did you close the doors?" "I don't, I don't..." "You knew they were tied, but you closed the doors." "Empty bottles of..." "Of gasoline, so he went back up with another bottle?" "Okay." "All of these family members that have had to relive the horror of what happened inside of that home the night they were all tied up, has been heartbreaking to watch inside of the courtroom." "The images have been absolutely devastating of the crime scene..." "When it's all put out in front of you, it's very gruesome." "It's, it's insane to just hear and it's just affected the whole town and it's like the whole town is just reliving it all again, and it's not easy for all of us." "These are pictures of, like, the accelerant pattern that they showed." "How they went from, like, where Hayley's body was upstairs into her bedroom and onto her bed and then down the hall and into Michaela's bedroom and onto her bed." "And when they finally put the fire detective on the stand," "I saw Michaela was tied and she had gasoline dumped on her while she was alive and alert, and that at least Hayley, I know, was probably burning while she was breathing." "And that was just a really hard thing to learn, because I never really knew if the girls were alive when they were burning or not, and it kind of was made true to us that, that was the case with Hayley," "that she had walked while she was on fire, because she fell down and the front of her was more burned than the back of her." "I was crying and I just felt like." "I wanted to get out of that courtroom and scream and just say, you know," ""I can't believe what's going on in there."" "You know, I just..." "It's making me so angry, and I can't understand why somebody couldn't have ventilated that house for the girls while they were still alive, and I just..." "I want it to be so different." "We're finally seeing the defense giving tough questioning to the Cheshire police officers who initially responded to the call of that home invasion." "The officers said they followed protocol." "Doctor William Petit has always supported the actions of the Cheshire Police Department." "One captain testifying that the incident did not make sense at first, and he said," ""It still doesn't make sense today."" "Steven admitted to killing the mom." "He admitted to raping the mom." "He admitted to spreading gasoline," "I mean, so it's not like he was trying to get himself out from under in any way." "And yet Josh was getting this story out that Steven knew was false." "Joshua tried to minimize the sexual assault, not make it out to be a rape, that it was just contact and ejaculation, which is absurd given the scientific evidence that exists." "He tried to blame Steven solely for being the person who initiated the gasoline and lighting the gasoline when there's gasoline on both of their clothes." "Josh Komisarjevsky was the one who was suggesting that they go into a house where people were, and for Steven, this was a foolish thing, because he was obviously, with a guy who was uncontrollable." "And I think it haunts him, really haunts him, as to why he didn't walk away." "Steven's in an isolation cell 24 hours a day." "He has nightmares." "He has nightmares about his own kid burning." "This is the way his incarceration will last, forever." "So, you know, I don't know why we have to kill someone who's in a position like that." "It's like being buried alive." "We, the defense team, always believed that Joshua never had the intention to kill anybody." "After he bashed Dr. Petit's head several times, later on, he got a towel." "He wiped the blood away from Dr. Petit's head." "He then got two pillows, put them behind his back, and he got two cushions, and his explanation, which is in his confession, was that he did so because he thought Dr. Petit wasn't comfortable enough," "and he was concerned about his comfort." "Why didn't he simply walk in and undo the bindings?" "Dr. Leo Shea, a neuropsychologist, testified that Joshua was unable to make quick decisions in stressful situations." "What occurred with Michaela is absolutely unexplainable." "Such a horrendous crime committed on such a young girl." "People go to jail for a long time for crimes like that, but you don't get the death penalty." "When Joshua was apprehended, when he was pulled from the car, he was straight with the police." "When Steven Hayes was pulled from the car, he gave a phony name, and when asked, "Was there anybody in the house?", he said, "I don't know."" "When Joshua was pulled from the car, he gave his name and he said, "There's a woman inside,"" ""I believe she's dead, and upstairs there's two girls,"" "and he expressed to the police that there was some urgency to the situation, which was pretty obvious because at that time, the house was burning." "To me, these are things that are inconsistent with intending to kill somebody." "Oh, yeah." "Yeah." "Everybody came here safe, you know, just to support." "You know, the teachers, after Michaela died, said, uh..." "Whenever, uh..." "Whenever someone in the class..." "She said, "Dr. Petit, I just have to tell you that"" ""your daughter Michaela was always the one to"" ""go with the kid who was excluded,"" "and I thank you for standing up for justice and what is morally and ethically correct." "Thank you." "Dr. Petit is pretty much out there with his foundation, which is obviously a really good thing and should be supported, but we're in the middle of the state trying to get the death penalty." "So, as much as I have incredible sympathy for him," "I think his outspokenness in this case has really affected any ability to get a fair trial for either of these two defendants." "What happened, what was said during that conversation with Dr. Petit that made you just make a 180?" "Dr. Petit came in with his sister-in-law, Mrs. Chapman." "They said if the legislature this year votes to repeal the death penalty," "it'll make it harder for the jury to make the decision of the death penalty for this monster, this Komisarjevsky." "I can only imagine that one-on-one conversation." "You're sitting as close as probably we are now." "You have no idea." "I could not bring myself to cause this man any more stress." "He's a monster." "He is a monster." "And I said, "He's such a monster" ""they should hang him by his penis" ""out from a tree in main streets."" "I can't think of anything bad enough that should happen to that man." "I actually got to see Steve twice, well, the past two Sundays." "When I first saw him, I wanted to cry, because I haven't seen him in so long, but I just didn't want to cry under those circumstances." "You had all the guards standing right on top of you." "And you can't talk about the trial because, like, you know that the phones are pretty tapped." "I know that that family wants him to be dead and it all to be over with, but, like, my side of the family, we just want him to, like, take responsibility for what he did" "without the consequence of the death penalty." "That won't bring anyone back." "What happened, happened, and his death isn't gonna bring about much justice." "Steven Hayes walked into room 6A." "For the first time, he saw a familiar face." "It was his brother Matthew." "The first time that we believe a Hayes family member has been in court." "Prosecutor Michael Dearington said," ""These two beautiful girls and loving mother were killed"" ""because Steven Hayes wanted money."" "Defense attorney Thomas Ullmann argued that life without parole is the harshest punishment Steven Hayes could be given." "State's attorney, Gary Nicholson, did not mince words as he spoke to the jury in his closing arguments this morning, saying that Joshua Komisarjevsky is, quote," ""No shrinking violet."" ""He played a starring role in this crime."" "Nicholson hammered the point that Komisarjevsky was first in the house, the first to use violence, and had plenty of opportunity to leave the home." "He gave Steven Hayes directions back to the house, when Hayes went and bought gasoline..." "It's not fair, is it?" "No." "No." "Hmm." "You know, all I think of is the impact that our girls could've made upon the world." "And, of course, none of that will ever come forth from" "Joshua Komisarjevsky." "Mmm." "What's the jury weighing?" "Aggravating factors against mitigating factors." "The aggravating factors brought out by the prosecution." "The heinous nature of the crimes." "For the mitigating factors that the defense presented, they pointed to a very difficult early childhood of Joshua Komisarjevsky." "The defense said they turned to prayer instead." "They also pointed to a series of concussions when he was a boy, drug use in his teenage and early twenty years, all saying it mitigates what happens." "It means he didn't really know what was going on, couldn't make a decision to stop what was going on that night in July of 2007, and so his life should be spared." "No verdict today." "We do expect a verdict by the end of the week." "We're good." "You guys can reach, right?" "Oh, Lord, we gather around this table as family and friends." "We stand at a place in the trial where we wonder what will take place." "But we pray, oh, God, that we will be able to be strong enough to accept whatever the outcome may be," "that it would be your will that would be done." "For we ask it in the name of Christ." "Amen." "Amen." "This is all about death or life without parole." "Really, it does seem like the most kind, humane thing you could do for a person is to allow them to just die." "I thought of how much that challenges the jurors." "A lot of pressure has been placed upon their shoulders." "I'm glad I'm not in that room." "Yeah." "They'll never get those pictures out of their heads for the rest of their lives, you know?" "Yes, I know." "It's been very traumatic for everyone." "This is a case that has just rattled people, and a lot of people say that if there is a case that warrants the death penalty, this is it." "Wait a minute." "I want to read you something that we're, uh, we're getting some word on, and you might be able to explain it to us." "The jurors are standing." "The clerk is reading the verdict form." "Count four, no statutory mitigators." "Both aggravators are proven." "Uh, okay." "The defendant is sentenced to death, Sunny." "The jury returns." "Death penalty verdict." "Death for the monster who slaughtered the Connecticut doctor's family." "Tonight, a Connecticut jury has done something very rare." "A Connecticut jury has recommended death for Steven Hayes." "He's convicted of raping and murdering a mom," "Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and her two daughters, Hayley and Michaela..." "The verdict was devastating." "Steven wanted a death verdict and knew we did everything in our power to prevent that from happening, in spite of his own efforts to kill himself." "This case gets attention in Australia." "It got attention in Europe." "You know, this was Anytown, America, any-family America, and when you saw just how that was shattered in a few hours, I think that's powerful..." "Count five is death." "The second count, count five in the murder of Michaela Petit, is death, that he intentionally caused the death of a person under 16 years old." "All right, count 10 is death." "That's, he intentionally caused the death of Jennifer Hawke-Petit, the mother." "Okay, count 11 is death." "A couple of marshals came up behind Joshua in cuffs and really no reaction at all." "Given the public outrage for these horrendous crimes, that we just couldn't get a fair jury here and we still feel that way, and that's why we had filed a motion to change venue and believe it should have been..." "Should have been granted, so that'll be one of the main appellate issues." "I believe the death penalty is just barbaric and it puts us in line with countries like China, Yemen, Iraq, Iran." "I don't know what other purpose it serves other than simply revenge." "Walter Bansley III, thank you very much." "Denise, of course, yeah, we're gonna have continuing coverage here." "The death penalty has been given to Joshua Komisarjevsky." "We are satisfied that the defendant has been judged to be the murderer, the rapist, and criminal that he is." "And now he's been condemned to the ultimate penalty." "We certainly have been criticized over the years that this is vengeance and blood lust, but this is really about justice." "We want to go forward with the Petit Family Foundation and try to continue to create good out of evil and..." "The defense did what they thought they should do." "I thought a lot of it was particularly distasteful." "We saw picture after picture after picture, and every time one of those pictures went up, I thought," ""Charles Manson was a baby once."" ""I'm not sure that this is particularly relevant."" "I'd just like to thank our justice system as well as the jury members, listening to a lot of things that they would much rather not heard or seen." "I believe that without our defense attorneys, we could not have the outcome that we have, so we have to even be appreciative that there are defense attorneys that will take cases like this." "And I believe God's will has been done." "I don't really want to answer any questions." "I feel so sad that my answers would be..." "I don't know if any of the other defense attorneys on death row now." "There will be automatic appeals." "There will be appeals upon appeals." "This will go on for years and years and years, and..." "We offered to plead guilty to every charge in the information against us so long as death wasn't the result." "And so Joshua would've been sentenced to life without the possibility of release." "It would've happened, you know, three weeks after the crime had taken place." "Josh would've disappeared into the, into the great abyss of the penal system, and would never be heard from again." "But that wasn't a serious enough punishment for the state, and of course, the state was being goaded on by Dr. Petit." "And so we had to go through three years of Hayes and Joshua, and just forcing the people of Connecticut to relive that crime, day, after day, after day," "I think kind of coarsened the social fabric of Connecticut." "It would've been so much better just to throw those guys in jail and throw away the key, but..." "The most difficult thing that I had to do in my life was to bury my own child and two grandchildren." "I don't think there will ever be closure for our family." "Jennifer was too much of a giving, loving person, and I don't think that we will ever, ever, if we live another 100 years, would ever want to forget her." "So if closure brings forgetting," "I don't want that closure."