One of the most popular crimes happened in recent memory, the Petit family was destroyed during an unimaginable night of evil that left people across the America gasping in horror. Three years later, Oprah visits Dr. William Petit at his parents' Connecticut home to talk to him about the tragic loss of his family and the strength he found to move forward.
Dr. Petit had been married to his wife, Jennifer, a nurse, for 22 years. Their 17-year-old daughter Hayley was captain of her high school basketball team and headed to Dartmouth College in the fall. Eleven-year-old Michaela loved to cook and was just starting to come into her own.
On a Sunday morning in July 2007, the close-knit Petit family attended church services in their Connecticut suburb like they usually did. The beautiful weather and typical summer day gave no premonition of the terror about to take place.
According to police, a convicted felon who was out on parole randomly spotted Jennifer and Michaela at a neighborhood convenience store. After following them home, 44-year-old Steven Hayes and 26-year-old Joshua Komisarjevsky allegedly plotted out a horrific home invasion.
Michaela cooked Sunday dinner for her family that night, and Dr. Petit fell asleep reading the paper while the girls watched television and headed off to bed.
At 3 a.m., the two armed intruders broke in. Dr. Petit was the first victim, bludgeoned with a baseball bat and tied unconscious to a pole in the basement. Jennifer, Hayley and Michaela were bound to their beds and tortured throughout the night.
At daybreak, Jennifer was forced to go to a bank and withdraw money for her kidnappers. She slipped a note to the bank teller explaining her family's hostage situation and withdrew $15,000, desperately hoping it would save her family's lives.
Instead, the unthinkable happened. Michaela was allegedly sexually assaulted while tied to her childhood bed. Just minutes after returning from the bank with the money, Jennifer was raped and strangled to death. Her body and the house were doused with gasoline.
Meanwhile, Dr. Petit woke up in the basement. With his feet still bound, he hopped up the stairs and crawled across the yard to a neighbor's house to get help—but it was too late. The Petits' home quickly went up in flames. Hayley managed to free herself from her restraints but died at the top of the stairs from smoke inhalation. Michaela died still bound to her bed. Their mother's body was burned beyond recognition.
"I went to sleep one night in a nice home with a loving family and basically awakened in an emergency room naked on a gurney with no clothes, no family, no home," Dr. Petit says. "Everything was gone."
According to police, just minutes after the house set on fire, Hayes and Komisarjevsky stole the family's minivan and crashed head-on into a police roadblock while trying to flee the gruesome scene.
Although it was extremely difficult, Dr. Petit was present every day of Steven Hayes' trial. "I was the only face left in our family, so I needed to be there," he says. Dr. Petit says he left the room during the medical examiner's reports. "Too much to hear. I cried," he says.
More than three years after the murders, Hayes was convicted on all counts except arson and sentenced to death. After the verdict was given, Dr. Petit spoke from outside the courthouse. "This is a verdict for justice," he said. "I think the defendant faces far more serious punishment from the Lord than he can ever face from mankind."
Jury selection for the trial of Hayes' alleged co-conspirator, Komisarjevsky, is expected to begin in February 2011. Kominsarjevsky has pled not guilty to all charges.
Although the media has been fixated on how the Petit women died, Dr. Petit wants the world to remember how they lived. Jennifer Hawke met Dr. Petit in 1981 when he was a doctor and she was a pediatric nurse at the same hospital. They married four years later and had two daughters. Jennifer suffered from multiple sclerosis, but those who knew her say she never complained.
Family and friends say Jennifer loved being a mother and raising her girls and was also a second mom to students at the boarding school where she worked. "The boarding school life, there are a lot of kids from far away," Dr. Petit says. "So she spent a lot of time with the kids—part nurse and part mother."
Dr. Petit has not returned to his medical practice since losing his family, but he thinks Jennifer would want him to. "She'd probably want me to go back to medicine," he says. "Wives are prejudiced. She said I was the smartest guy she ever knew."
Jennifer and Dr. Petit's oldest daughter, Hayley, excelled in school and served as co-captain of both her high school basketball and rowing teams. She was an "A" student and was headed to prestigious Dartmouth College with dreams of becoming a doctor like her father. Hayley wrote her college admissions essay about her dad, who gave her her first doctor's bag at the age of 4.
Hayley was a caring big sister and a natural leader. She started Hayley's Hope, an organization to raise money for multiple sclerosis in hopes of saving her mom.
In Dr. Petit's impact statement, he said one of the things he will regret most is that Hayley didn't live to have a one true love. Hayley was not dating, but Dr. Petit says he knows there was one boy who was very special to her. "He's a wonderful kid," he says. "He's a varsity basketball player, and I think she loved him."
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