Confession Reveals Brutal Details In CT Triple Murder

Steven Hayes

It was another harrowing day of testimonies in the trial of Steven Hayes, one of the two men accused of perpetrating a brutal home invasion and murder of a family in Connecticut. A State Police detective who interviewed Hayes shortly after the brutal murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters Michaela and Hayley gave a riveting and shocking account of Hayes confession and description of the events: "There was a strong odor of gasoline emanating from [his] body."

According to the detective, Anthony Buglione, Hayes was out of money and about to get kicked out of his mother's home when he and an ex-con friend, Joshua Komisarjevsky, formulated their noxious plan. Originally, they only planned to rob the Petit family, put them in a car and set fire to the house to destroy evidence. The cop described Hayes' tone during the interview: "There was no emotion. He was pretty much as I described it—flat. Very quiet."

Hayes alleged that Komisarjevsky first raped 11-year-old Michaela while he wasn't there, then pressured him into matching him during a tense confrontation in which Komisarjevsky said that Hayes “was not doing any of the dirty work.” Hayes told the detective that Komisarjevsky said Hayes “would have to have sex with the mother to square things up between them." He said that he complied, although he was nervous because Komisarjevsky "was walking in and out of the room with a baseball bat,” the same baseball bat which he used to beat Dr. William A. Petit Jr. earlier.

Hayes and Komisarjevsky are accused of murder, sexual assault, burglary, kidnapping and arson; Hayes is charged with strangling Hawke-Petit, which he didn't admit to the detective. But he did repeat twice: “Things got out of control.” Later in the day, jurors were shown video of Hayes driving to buy ten dollars of gas at a nearby gas station in the Petit's SUV, which was used to burn the house down. Jurors also learned today through forensic testimony that Komisarjevsky took four dark, underexposed, "pornographic" photographs of Michaela, the girl he raped.

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By Ben Yakas in News on September 23, 2010 3:09 PM

Comments [rss]

jen

Hopefully they are murdered in prison before wasting tax payers' money while serving their triple life sentences in prison.

billyjack44

Where are all the effing bleeding heart death penalty opponents? What, this particular case a tad too ugly to defend? Please, tell me why they should be spared. I'm waiting.

John L

I'll give 138 reasons. That's the number of death row inmates that have been exonerated due to DNA evidence. Meaning that's 138 innocent people we would have mistakenly murdered in the name of justice.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

I too was in favor of the death penalty until I saw how many people were found innocent post-conviction and when I learned that it actually costs more execute someone than to just let them rot in prison.

rasputinsghost

The best way to punish murderers is to become murderers ourselves. I like your style, friend.

pmalik

I don't see how there can be any argument for not exterminating the two individuals. This wasn't a heat of the moment robbery going wrong - they had full control of the situation and chose to go down that route.

Can't imagine what the Doctor is going through.

John L

MONSTERS.

Not even worthy of a prison cell.

maz

his face is creepy

PTG in nyc

First I'm jealous of China because their authoritarian regime can build magnificent infrastructure in less than a year.

Now I'm jealous of them because in America we have to bother with a lengthy, deliberate trial for two people that deserve to be tortured to death on the spot.

Rocknrope

This has to be the most horrific crime to happen in the tristate area in at least a decade, and it seems like there was surprisingly little coverage of it. I mean, it rivals the In Cold Blood murders.

theevilone

There is really good coverage in the Hartford papers and the local news channels and papers all have reporters tweeting from the courtroom. It's fascinating/horrifying to read the live coverage. But you are right, I was surprised by how little info there is the NY papers considering how much they covered it when it happened.

Jen Chung

I suspect the issue with covering the story for the NY papers is that with a trial, things are sort of slow-moving—and the details are graphic, so that definitely interests people—while the CT papers can cover the trial's psychological impact on the local community a little better. The trial is featured pretty prominently in this week's new People magazine.