Speaking matter-of-factly and laughing occasionally, a Connecticut man told police in a recorded confession played for jurors yesterday how he and another man terrorized a family during a home invasion that left a woman and her two daughters dead.
Joshua Komisarjevsky mostly sounds subdued and calls the crime a “home invasion gone terribly wrong.” He details how he beat a sleeping Dr. William Petit with a bat, tied him up with his family, and molested his 11-year-old daughter, Michaela.
But Komisarjevsky blamed his co-defendant, Steven Hayes, for turning a home robbery into a triple murder by strangling Petit’s wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and dousing the Cheshire house with gas and setting it on fire. Michaela and her 17-year-old sister, Hayley, died of smoke inhalation.
He said Hayes was worried about leaving behind DNA evidence.
As the tape played, Petit sat hunched in the front row staring at the floor, and his sister put her arm around him.
Hayes was convicted last year of killing the girls and raping and strangling Hawke-Petit after taking her to a bank to withdraw money. Hayes, who blamed Komisarjevsky for escalating the violence, is on death row. Komisarjevsky faces a possible death sentence, if convicted.
He said Dr. Petit let out “this unearthly scream” and looked confused.
He laughs at a few points, such as when he’s describing Hayes going out to get gas and struggling to find a gas station.
Earlier in the day, jurors got their first look at graphic photos of the victims. Most of the panelists gazed downward.
Komisarjevsky, however, looked at the jurors as they viewed the photos.
One juror, a woman, stared back.