The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Haunting memories remain
A decade after Cheshire slayings, healing now underway
CHESHIRE » It is inevitable that a decade after the July 23, 2007, home invasion at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive resulted in murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters that many changes have occurred.
Some of the neighbors who witnessed the day’s tragic events have moved on to other places. Most of the police officers who responded to the home that day have either retired or moved on to other jobs.
Even the sole survivor of the home invasion, Dr. William Petit, has in some ways moved on as much as he can. He has remarried, has a son and is now serving as a state representative. Petit is also active in the non-profit Petit Family Foundation that he created in memory of his late wife and daughters, Hayley and Michaela.
But even a decade’s worth of distance can’t erase the haunting memories of that day, say neighbors, friends and first responders.
Harriet Linder and her husband, Gil, live in the Deacon wood subdivision, on a side street not far from where the Petit home once sat. Gil Linder is a former board member of the neighborhood’s homeowners association and currently serves on the town Planning and Zoning Commission.
The Linders went to the Bank of America branch that morning before heading to the Westfarms shopping mall. They saw police at the branch, but didn’t know that only a short time before, Jennifer Hawke-Petit had been in the branch withdrawing money that she hoped would convince her captors, Steven
Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, to spare the lives of her family.
The Linders didn’t find out about the murders until later in the day when their then 16-year-old son Jeremy called from his job at a local summer camp.
“He was crying hysterically, out of his mind, because he hadn’t been able to reach us on the phone,” Harriet Linder said. “Someone where he worked had said that somebody was going around our neighborhood killing people. He was terrified that we were dead or something.”
Later that evening, the minister at church the Petit’s attended, Stephen Volpe, held a vigil for the Petits near the smoldering ruins of the home.
“All you could smell was of burned wood from the home,” Harriet Linder said.
Harriet Linder has a bulletin board in her home that serves as a reminder of the terrible events of that day. Part of the space on it is reserved for a thank you card for a donation the family made to The Petit Family Foundation, along with a pin designed by another Deaconwood resident, Tamara Epstein.
It is simple design with a powerful message. A safety pin has a loop of metal through the bottom and attached to the metal loop are three faux pearls, one for each of the Petit woman.
Epstein distributed the pins to neighbors in a show of solidarity with the family. She and her husband, Bob, and their two boys, Ben and Daniel, had moved to Deaconwood two years before the murders occurred.
Their Sorghum Mill Drive home sits less than a quarter mile south of where the Petit’s lived and is not far from the Linder’s house.
Tamara Epstein was in Cape Cod the day of the murders, but the day’s events hit a little closer to home for Bob Epstein, who had stayed home to work.
“He has always felt bad because he drives by there on his way to work,” Tamara Epstein said of her husband. “He went by at the time of the morning when all this horrible stuff was probably going on inside the home. He had no idea no idea what was going on of course, but he still felt really bad.”
When Bob Epstein arrived home that evening, police asked to see his driver’s license before they let him drive the rest of the way to his house.
For her part, Tamara Epstein was worried about something that she knew wasn’t logical to be afraid of, but it still spooked her anyway.
“What freaked me out for a while was that our house is almost identical to theirs, the same look, the same layout, everything,” Epstein said. “For a while, I would sit around and think, ‘What if there were other people around doing the same thing’ or that maybe they (Hayes and Komisarjevsky) meant to do that to our house and went to the Petit’s house by mistake.”
This was long before the details of what happened leading up to the trial became common knowledge as a result of the daily news reports that came out of New Haven Superior Court as first Hayes and then Komisarjevsky were tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The Connecticut legislature subsequently abolished the death penalty and now both men are serving life sentences.
The fears of the parents trickled down to their children. Harriet Linder and Tamara Epstein say their children were haunted by the deaths of the Petit daughters, even though neither family knew the Petits very well.
Tamara Epstein said not long after the murders, she went into her Ben’s bedroom to kiss her oldest son good night. One of the prominent keepsakes that decorated the then 14-yearold’s room was a sword that Tamara’s father, a Navy veteran, had given his grandson.
“When I came into his room to his him good night, he had that sword right next to him,” she said .
The emotions that Daniel Epstein held inside took a little longer to surface. He was 10 at the time murders occurred.
Two years later, Tamara Epstein recalled a warm evening when she opened all the windows in house to cool the home down.
“Daniel came running into the room sobbing, and saying, ‘You have to close the windows; I don’t want to die... ,’”
Harriet Linder tells a similar story.
“Ethan was terrified and for two years he slept with a lacrosse stick in his bed,” she said referring to her younger son.
A lasting anger
Public fury toward the two convicted killers still burns hot despite the passage of time. Some also still direct their anger at Cheshire town officials and police for not having saved the lives of the Petit women.
Town Manger Michael Milone said that every year on the anniversary of the killings, nasty emails, phone calls and letters are sent to Town Hall attacking the town’s handling of the murders.
“Some of it is pretty vile,” Milone said.
The number of hateful messages has declined significantly over the years, said Arnett Talbot, the town’s public information officer.
“But every time HBO runs it’s documentary on the case or every time there is a news story, it starts all over again,” Talbott said.
In the immediate aftermath of the murders, Fox News commentators portrayed the Cheshire police and the department’s Special Weapons and Tactics team as inept and indecisive for not having stormed the Petit house to rescue the Petit women before anything happened to them. But police chiefs across the state are uniformly unwilling to criticize or even discuss what their Cheshire counterparts did.
That includes Monroe Police Chief John Salvatore, who is immediate past president of the Connecticut Police Chief Association.
Salvatore said the use of SWAT teams by local law enforcement around the state is constantly evolving. But he said that it is difficult to train for every possible scenario.
“Every situation is different,” Salvatore said.
And deployment of the units by individual towns is infrequent in most communities, said Wallingford Police Chief William Wright.
The last time a SWAT team was used in Wallingford was last summer during a standoff with someone who eventually committed suicide, Wright said. Before that, it had been three years before a SWAT team was used in the town, he said.
Some communities have their own SWAT teams, while others are part of a regional unit. Cheshire and Wallingford combined their SWAT teams 18 months ago in an effort “to achieve greater efficiencies,” Wright said.
“It had nothing to do with what happened in Cheshire,” Wright said when asked if the merger was in response to the Petit murders. “Each department contributes eight officers to the team now. Its just more efficient in terms purchasing equipment.”
A family remembered
An elaborate flower garden sits on a small knoll overlooking the intersection of Sorghum Mill Drive and Hotchkiss Ridge in the Deaconwood subdivision. At the center of the garden is a bench where visitors can sit and collect their thoughts.
Visit at the right time and you may see butterflies flitting around amid the flowers and plants.
But as peaceful and contemplative as the whole scene is, it is difficult for some who pass the site daily not to have an entirely different scenario in their heads.
Epstein said in a strange way, the tragedy brought the neighborhood together.
“When we first moved in, there wasn’t the cohesion that there was afterwards,” she said. “One thing I think we all thought about was how will Bill Petit get through this and go on with the rest of his life?”
But cohesiveness that Epstein speaks of is changing with the passage of time as those who lived in the neighborhood at the time of the murders leave and are replaced by new families.
“I’ve actually met some people who are new to town who don’t know what happened here,” Tamara Epstein said. “How could you not know? It was all over the news, nationally and internationally.”
Harriet Linder has heard stories of home sales in the neighborhood that have fallen through because of the property’s proximity to the former Petit home.
Petit remarried in 2012 to Christine Paluf, a photographer who he met while she was volunteering for The Petit Family Foundation. The couple’s 2012 marriage and the birth of the couple’s first child, William Petit III, has encouraged friends and his former neighbors.
“For so many years, he never smiled,” Tamara Epstein said. “He just seemed so sad and broken. The fact he has been able to find love again (makes) people realize that if he can heal, so can the rest of us.”
But even with the discussion of healing, Epstein said the events of July 23, 2007 are never far from her mind.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it because I drive by that garden every day,” she said. “But I don’t see it as negative thing and I don’t think other neighbors do either. It’s really more of a positive, a place of beauty that these three beautiful women would have loved to come to, with new life growing every season as the plants grow.”