Chaotic 4 hours left 3 dead

Unsealed affidavit shines light on 2017 murders in Griswold

The mayhem that took place at the Lindquist home in Griswold just before Christmas 2017 lasted about four hours, left three family members dead and prompted a massive and prolonged response from local, state and federal law agencies.

A recently unsealed arrest warrant affidavit in the case of Ruth Correa, 23, of Hartford, provides the crime’ grisly details: Murder, robbery, home invasion and arson, allegedly carried out between 12:46 and 5 a.m. on Dec. 20 by Correa and her 26-year-old brother, Sergio Correa.

Matthew Lindquist, 21, and his parents, 61-year-old Janet Lindquist and 56-year-old Kenneth Lindquist, died that morning. The family’s 4-yearold golden retriever, Skylar, also perished, according to an obituary.

Sergio Correa and Matthew Lindquist had been planning the burglary that state police say precipitated the violent events at 70 Kenwood Drive for at least a day. They exchanged more than 40 text messages between 9 a.m. and midnight on Tuesday, Dec. 19, according to the affidavit. Lindquist wanted drugs from Correa and was willing to help him steal guns from his parents to get them.

“What he did was he introduced the devil into his house that night,” state Rep. Kevin Skulczyck, R-Griswold, a former first selectman and current business owner in town, said during a news conference this past week at Griswold Town Hall.

Matthew Lindquist’s half-sister, Danielle T. Nichols, told detectives that Lindquist had gone to a INSIDE: A detailed timeline of the home invasion-triple murder. A6

rehabilitation program for narcotics around Halloween of 2017. It is unclear if that’s when Lindquist met Correa, who only recently had been released from prison following a 10-year sentence for violent crimes he committed as a 16-year-old.

Lindquist’s brother, Eric Lindquist, told the investigators he had spoken to his father the night before the crimes and learned the parents “were having problems with Matthew abusing illegal and prescribed narcotics again.” Matthew Lindquist referred to “super fire” and “white fire” in the text messages he exchanged with Correa and also was expecting to receive cash for the guns, according to the affidavit.

“If u pull up street from my house and give me a stack I’ll show u right where safe is,” he texted to Sergio Correa at 7:28 p.m. on Dec. 19. Ensuing texts indicate Correa took longer to arrive than anticipated and that Lindquist was feeling “sick as hell” by 11:20 p.m. Correa’s last text to Lindquist, sent at 12:46 a.m., indicates things were not going as planned.

“You made me come here for nothing,” the text says.

House burned down

The crimes took place five

days before Christmas in an upscale neighborhood where residents concoct elaborate holiday lighting displays that draw viewers from throughout the town. The neighborhood would have quieted down after midnight, when Sergio and Ruth Correa arrived in Sergio’s 2003 white Mitsubishi Galant with some of the tools they allegedly would use to kill the family members.

Ruth Correa told detectives that Sergio Correa attacked Matthew Lindquist with a machete he had in his car, attempted to bind and gag him with zip ties and duct tape, and that the siblings both stabbed Lindquist multiple times with a knife before leaving him in a wooded area. She said she armed herself with a golf club from the car going into the Lindquist home, having been told about the dog by Matthew Lindquist. She said she wasn’t sure whether the wooden bat that Sergio used to attack Kenneth and Janet Lindquist came from the car, too.

According to Ruth Correa, she and Sergio entered the home through the basement, found the safe locked and went upstairs. She said “the dad,” Kenneth Lindquist, woke up and went after her brother, and Sergio started beating him with the bat. She said the dog came after her and she hit it with the golf club. She said Janet Lindquist came out of a room and she took her into a room, asked for the keys to the safe and told her, “the reason why this was happening was because her son had set her up.”

Sergio Correa, having obtained the keys to the safe, got a gun and pointed it at Janet Lindquist and taunted her, the sister said. He tied a rope around her neck and choked her, and when Janet Lindquist went to grab her phone, he hit her in the back of the head four or five times with a bat. The siblings made several trips to the car with items stolen from the home.

Ruth Correa said she and her brother set the house on fire by pouring a “thick liquid” she found in the basement on the floors. She said her brother, whom she said loved to carry knives and burn things, lit an exercise ball on fire to start the blaze. She thought it was about 4 a.m. when they left with Matthew Lindquist’s car with stolen guns and other items. She said it was dark but she heard birds chirping.

A neighbor reported the fire at the Lindquist home at 5:12 a.m., prompting a response that began with state police from the Montville barracks and members of the Griswold Fire Department but quickly involved other fire departments due to the intensity of the fire.

The investigation that began at 5:12 a.m. on Dec. 20 eventually would involve two additional crime scenes. Within an hour, at 5:56 a.m., Glastonbury police would become involved when called to an apartment complex there for a burning car that turned out to be Matthew Lindquist’s gray Saturn. And on May 5, 2018, Matthew Lindquist’s remains were recovered in a wooded area near the family home.

The Griswold investigation extended in the hours, days and months that followed to include the state police Eastern District Major Crime Squad, state police Fire and Explosion Unit, New London state’s attorney’s office, FBI Cellular Analysis Survey Team, the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the state forensic laboratory.

The lead investigators are the state police Eastern District Major Crime Squad, a unit of six detectives with advanced and specialized training that is based in Tolland and travels to the scenes of homicides and other major crimes in 45 towns in eastern Connecticut.

Cellphone records key

The first 48 hours is a crucial time for investigators, said Sgt. Forrest Ruddy, supervisor of the squad, adding that it takes “more than what they do on TV” to properly investigate a crime.

“From start to finish, it’s hundreds of man hours,” Ruddy said.

In a phone interview Thursday, Ruddy said he couldn’t talk specifically about open cases, but described the procedures his squad follows. They work out of a van that serves as a mobile office and usually have to wait for a search warrant before entering a crime scene and documenting it with videotape, digital photos and sketch maps and seizing and packaging evidence.

The detectives conduct interviews and follow leads as they attempt to piece together what happened.

Cellphone records have become a key part of crime investigations and, in the Lindquist case, the state police “pinged” the cellphones of the Lindquists in the hours after the fire and later obtained, via court order, records that detailed the text messages

Matthew Lindquist exchanged with Sergio Correa in the hours before the crimes.

The case would come together quickly after a dog walker found Matthew Lindquist’s remains about 1,500 feet from the family home on May 5. Ruth Correa provided a lengthy confession during a May 11 interview, enabling detectives to tie together the details in a 17-page arrest warrant affidavit. She was charged a day later, and Sergio Correa was charged on June 4.

The case is in the court system, where it could be years before the defendants resolve it through a plea deal or trial.