Unimaginable Tragedy in Connecticut

Excerpt - Read more at courant.com:

A judge getting ready to send Joshua Komisarjevsky to prison in 2002 called him a “cold, calculating predator.”

Equipped with night-vision goggles and armed with a knife, he would slash his way through screens into houses around his hometown of Cheshire, stealing mostly electronic equipment and petty cash to pay for a drug habit.

Steven Hayes had a record more noteworthy for its length than the severity of the crimes - decades of larcenies, burglaries and check forgeries. Hayes committed most of his crimes in the northwest corner, near his home in Winsted - far from Sorghum Mill Drive in Cheshire, where the horrific events that landed him back in court played out early Monday.

Although it is still unclear why they chose the home of Dr. William Petit Jr., one thing is certain, police say: The “calculating predator” and the career criminal descended to a level of violence that is almost unfathomable.

When the ordeal was over, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her daughters, Hayley Petit, 18, and Michaela Petit, 11, were dead. The girls, sources said, were tied to their beds and raped, then left to burn after gasoline was poured around their beds and ignited.

Late Tuesday, the state medical examiner’s office said Hawke-Petit was strangled and her daughters died of smoke inhalation. Their deaths were ruled homicides.

William Petit was beaten almost beyond recognition with a baseball bat, tied up in the basement and left for dead, only to make his way out of the house and to a neighbor before his home exploded into flames.

One of the victims, 17-year-old Hayley Petit, was a top honors student, who had received an early acceptance to Dartmouth, among other top honors.