NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The trial of a Connecticut man charged with killing a woman and her two daughters during a gruesome home invasion opened yesterday with a defense attorney telling the jury that the evidence will “shake your very confidence in humanity” but blaming his alleged accomplice for the slayings.
Joshua Komisarjevsky, 31, also faces a possible death sentence if convicted. Steven Hayes was sentenced to death last year in the case.
Komisarjevsky did not intend to kill the three, said his attorney, Walter Bansley.
“The evidence you are about to hear will shake your very confidence in humanity,” Bansley said. “The deaths that occurred were senseless, unnecessary and tragic.”
Authorities say Komisarjevsky and Hayes, two paroled burglars, broke into the Cheshire home in July 2007, beat William Petit and tied up his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and the couple’s daughters, Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17.
The girls, who had pillowcases placed over their heads, died of smoke inhalation after the house was doused with gasoline and set on fire.
Petit was also tied up but escaped to a neighbor’s house to get help.
Thomas Wright, a Cheshire police officer, testified he found Petit with a large head injury in his neighbor’s driveway.
“His shirt was extremely bloody,” Wright said.
Petit told the officer that his family was still in the house. Wright said he then heard a commotion and saw the men fleeing in the family’s car, forcing two officers to dive out of the way.
Hayes forced Hawke-Petit to withdraw money from a bank before he raped and strangled her in the family’s home.
A bank teller, Mary Lyons, testified that the mom was amazingly calm when Hayes took her to the bank to withdraw money.
“To me, she was trying to get done what she was sent into the bank to get done, so she could return to her family,” she said.
Bansley admitted that it was Komisarjevsky who spotted Hawke-Petit and Michaela at a supermarket, followed them home and later returned to the house with Hayes to break in to get money. He admitted Komisarjevsky beat Petit with a baseball bat and tied up the family and that Komisarjevsky masturbated in Michaela’s presence.
But he said the evidence shows Hayes raped and strangled Hawke-Petit, poured gasoline around the house and lit the fire.