Desperate hours

Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

CHESHIRE, Conn. - Evil arrived in Cheshire, Conn., along with the sweet summer corn.

"These are Charlie Manson-like crimes," says former police officer Bill Glass.

It broke right into 300 Sorghum Mill Drive and made itself at home for seven terrifying hours.

"This becomes from what was already a horror story to, you know, likely the worst crime that's ever been committed in Connecticut," says David Altimari.

They were as nice a family as you'd ever want to meet.

Cindy Renn (Mrs. Petit's sister): There is nobody on this earth who deserves what they had done to them...

They were four lives destroyed by totally random selection.

Clint Van Zandt: It was their own private holocaust that they had to have gone through.

No one predicted it could have been the two watchers, halfway house roomies.

The younger one was a local kid, a cat burglar who'd been in and out of trouble and in and out of his neighbor's houses for years.

Tim Totton: He said it was a rush, to be in someone's house while they're home. It was like a thrill to him.

Lt. Jay Markella, Cheshire P.D.: We do have three confirmed fatalities at this time. Two of them female, third I don't want to speculate right now.

A safe Yankee town
Cheshire sits in the heart of Connecticut.

A onetime market town for the old Yankee farmers who worshipped at the white-steepled Congregational Church.

Ron Gagliardi, town historian: there are a lot of farms in Cheshire still and many of them provide plants like flowers and small vegetables to other areas.

Local historian Ron Gagliardi says the town is known as the state's bedding capital -- as in bedding plants -- but it's more about all the beds in the subdivision homes that sprouted up from the '60s on.

Ron Gagliardi: Because of its proximity to New Haven and Hartford, it's become a bedroom community.

And a goodly number of the people you see on their morning commute and out on the town trails are professionals, doctors, lawyers, and business execs.

Gagliardi: It's really a safe, family oriented type of a town.

One of those families, one of the most admired in town, were the Petits. Family photos of the four radiate an all-American healthiness.

Deb Hereld: I think because both parents were medical professionals, helping people was literally a way of life.

Dr. Bill Petit is a well-regarded diabetes specialist known throughout the state, the subject of local TV interviews.

He met his wife Jennifer in his medical school days when she was working as a nurse.

That's what she did at the private Cheshire Academy in town. The sometimes lonely boarding students were said to look to her as both the nurse and a kind of proxy mom for TLC when needed. Marilyn Bartoli is a parent.

Marilyn Bartoli: I think people actually tried to be sick in order to be around her. She was that kind of woman.

Sadly, for all her good cheer -- she loved to play guitar and piano -- Jennifer Hawke-Petit, the caregiver, was herself chronically ill, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disorder of the nervous system, at about age 40. Her friend, Deb Hereld, remembers getting the news.

Deb Hereld: Very unusual, she sounded choked up. And she explained that she had just been diagnosed with M.S. But then it was like she kind of said, "I'm just-- I'm just having my little breakdown now, and then I'll just -- I'll be okay." And she was.

Hayley, the older of the Petits' two daughters, made her mother's illness a passion, raising a serious amount of money for M.S. research.

Burch Ford: And over the past few years, independently raised $54,000, which is just extraordinary.

Burch Ford is the head of the top-notch Miss Porter's School where Hayley was a standout student in a class of accomplished young girls. She just graduated in June.

Burch Ford: She performed so effectively in so many different kinds of ways.

Deb Hereld: She was the respected girl. She was the girl who the kids would go to if they really wanted to know what was right to do.

Hayley was an athlete, too. Co-captain of the basketball team as well as the crew. Digging oars in for the final sprint was called "giving it the Hayley ten."

She hoped to row for Dartmouth, where she'd be starting in the fall ... Her father's college.

And like the father she so admired -- even, as a kid, following him on his hospital rounds on Saturday morning -- she was going to be a doctor, a healer like both of her parents. College-bound, Hayley was turning the M.S. fundraising work over to her little sister, Michaela.

She was  11 years old. "K.K. Rosebud" was her father's nickname for her and she showed signs of growing up as tall as her sister. Michaela had inherited her mother's musical flair and on a recent Sunday had performed her first flute solo in church.

But it was her smile that she was best known for, a shy grin.

Deb Hereld: It was as though she had a really good secret. She wasn't quite ready to share it with you.

Michaela was a budding foodie and a vegetarian. She loved the Food Network and especially Rachael Ray.

On that Sunday evening in July, Michaela prepared one of her special meals for the family: pasta, with native tomatoes and her own homemade special sauce.

The meal ended a day that had started with the family at church, continued with an afternoon of Dr. Petit playing golf with his father, and the girls getting in a swim at the beach club.

Michaela and her mom got in the Chrysler Pacifica SUV somewhere between 7 and 7:30 that evening to pick up a few items at the Stop and Shop supermarket, things she still needed for her pasta.

As the striking blonde mother and her vibrant daughter headed to the car with their groceries, they didn't know that they were being watched. Appraised. Targeted.

The mother and daughter in the SUV never saw that a truck had pulled behind them as they headed back home to 300 Sorghum Mill drive.

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