The night of terror continued for Dr. William Petit as he attended the trial of Steven Hayes, one of the defendants accused of killing his wife and two daughters. The two defendants, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, have asked for separate trials. So, Dr. Petit will have to go through the trauma of testifying again for Komisarjevsky. Steven Hayes was found guilty of 16 out of the 17 charges leveled against him.
Both the defendants have a history of substance abuse and burglaries. Both of them had attended common AA and NA meetings, and thus struck up a friendship. This led to the eventual planning of the terror unleashed in Dr. Petit’s house in the Connecticut suburb of Cheshire on July 23, 2007. They had come across Hawke-Petit, 17-year-old Hayley Petit and 11-year-old Michaela Petit at a grocery store.
The duo entered the Petit house around 3am on the 22nd, bound up Dr. Petit and dragged him to the basement before searching the house. They forced Mrs. Petit to go to the bank and withdraw money. She was later found inside the house strangled and raped. Both the girls were tied to their beds upstairs and their heads covered will pillowcases. 11-year-old Michaela was sexually assaulted. The defendants then set the house on fire using gasoline and fled the scene. They were picked up by the police in the family’s SUV when they smashed the car into the police blockade. The girls had died of smoke inhalation. Dr. Petit managed to escape from the basement and alert a neighbor.
Dr. Petit managed to hide the obvious emotional stress he was under while testifying at the court. He did say that he felt each visit to the court left him nauseated. The memories of his family are what kept him going as he struggled to keep focused on the positive and not the negative. Photographs of the charred remains of the victims left the jury in tears. The visibly stunned jury had acquitted the defendant only on the arson charges.
