Desperate hours

As Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her 11-year-old daughter Michaela drove the few minutes back home from the supermarket on Sunday evening, they passed pleasant homes where their neighbors lived respectable lives.

Their route didn't take them by one of the prominent institutions of Cheshire -- a sobering reminder to a middle-class town that there were other ways to live a life -- the Cheshire correctional institution and the adjacent youth facility.

More than 1,300 of Connecticut's 18,000 inmates were housed there. Statewide, there were nearly 2,500 convicts on parole in 2007.

Authorities now believe one of those parolees was in a truck tailing the Petit family SUV as mother and daughter drove back from the Stop and Shop that July evening. By night's end, they say, there would be two men casing the Petit home -- two felons who knew the prison system drill very well.

One of them, Steven Hayes, 44, five-foot-seven, 170 pounds, was a career burglar who passed bad checks and stole stuff so he'd have money to buy crack cocaine, his drug of choice.

David Altimari is an investigative reporter for the Hartford Courant.

David Altimari: Hayes has a long criminal record going back to 1980 of mostly minor crimes, from forgery to larceny.
Dennis Murphy: So he's a petty thief? He's a break a window, grab what you can kind of guy?  
Altimari: Pretty much. He has no violent crimes in his history.

A coked-out smash and grab burglary in 2003 netted him five years back in prison.

But Hayes would only serve three and a half years of that sentence. In May 2007 the Connecticut board of pardons and paroles let him out of prison again. Even though six months before he'd violated the terms of his halfway house program by testing positive for drugs, the board paroled Hayes -- giving him one more chance at shaping up.

His mug shot taken last May shows a smiling Steven Hayes about to be released on parole.

By July, while Hayley Petit was attending graduation parties and hitting the beach with her mother who loved the sun, Hayes was working for a landscaping company and living with his mother in a rundown condo building.

He'd kept in touch with the man, 18 years his younger, sitting beside him as they drove the streets of Cheshire that night -- Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, five foot-nine, 130 pounds.

Murphy: And who's Komisarjevsky?
Altimari: He is a burglar. That was his trade.

Komisarjevsky had recently spent four and a half months with Hayes at two different halfway houses. He'd been released a month before Hayes, and had been on an electronic monitoring bracelet until only four days before this Sunday evening ride.

Altimari: Once Hayes got out of prison they got in contact with each other, so they clearly made some kind of bond while they were in that halfway house for that short period of time.

They were an odd duo. Younger and older. Tall and squat. But together, authorities believe, they'd hatched a plan.

At a certain point that July evening the two had locked onto the house on Sorghum Mill Drive that the pretty woman and her daughter had driven home to. It was a relatively modest four-bedroom colonial on a treed half-acre. It was by no means a McMansion that screamed money.

Altimari: Staked out the house a little bit, checked out the house a little bit, which was Komisarjevsky's m.o. in most of these cases and decided they were going to come back later that night.

It was a routine Komisarjevsky had down to a science. He had been a burglar since the age of 14, but with a different m.o than Hayes's smash-and-grab. He was a Cheshire local, a townie.

Unlike most burglars who prefer to break and enter a house in the day when the homeowners are most likely to be gone, Komisarjevsky worked at night, with the family asleep in their beds.

Altimari: He was a nighttime burglar. He seemed to be perfecting his craft. He had ordered night vision goggles to use. He wore latex gloves. He only went in at night. Didn't steal very much in most of the cases. Wallets, purses, VCR's, that kind of thing.

Komisarjevsky was a strange one to figure out. He wasn't in it just for the money. He'd worked for a tree service company, did a little construction, even got licensed in 2001 as an emergency medical technician. And what's more, he'd been raised since infancy as the adopted child of a Cheshire family with a colorful history.

His grandfather had been one of Russia's most prominent theatre directors in the early 1900s.

His grandmother, who's still alive, had been a glittering diva of modern dance.

Ron Gagliardi: She seemed very elegant, very statuesque even at the age that I met her which was probably 65 or so.

And Komisarjevsky's elegant grandmother married a Cheshire notable after the death of the first husband.

Gagliardi: The family owned approximately 50-60 acres in this area here of North Brooksvale.

That land was sold off in parcels over the years. Now only his grandmother's dance studio and Komisarjevsky's childhood home remain.

Komisarjevsky lived there with his father, an electrician, and his mother, both described as very religious. The house had seen better days.

Ron Gagliardi: I haven't seen many others in this sad shape.

The picture that emerges in court sentencing documents later is of a boy troubled for much of his life, learning disabled, a cunning mischief-maker on his way to worse in his teenage years.

Bill Glass (former cop): First heard of his name coming up in a couple of investigations in the early 1990s.

Bill Glass is a former Cheshire police officer. The Komisarjevsky kid's name was one that kept popping up in police reports.

Bill Glass: He was charged with a lot of thefts, larceny. He was charged with burglary.

When he was 14, Komisarjevksy admitted to cops that he'd set a local building ablaze.

Bill Glass: I believe he started a fire inside a gas station, a vacant building on south main street.

And the boy –- who, according to court transcripts had been sexually abused by a foster child taken in by his parents -- made his neighbors' lives a misery.

Bill Glass: He terrorized my older daughter's best friend from the time she was probably in seventh or eighth grade right through high school … He'd be peeking in her windows. We had several, two burglaries at their house. At the time, we didn't suspect him. But later on we did find out that he did do it. Several items taken from the house, not just monetary value, but lingerie items missing from the house

When Jennifer Norton was 16, she gave birth to Komisarjesvky's child. Jayda is now five years old and is being raised by Jennifer and her boyfriend Tim Totton.

Jennifer remembers that when she was pregnant, Joshua Komisarjevsky was both abusive and rarely around.

Jennifer Norton: He was always out … He told me stories about jobs that he had done or, you know, robbing houses.

There was a Halloween when they snapped a picture of themselves posing as Bonnie and Clyde.

He was doing coke and crystal meth when he was with her, Jennifer says. Here's a raffish Komisarjevksy with a joint tucked behind his ear. Court records say he'd been smoking marijuana since the age of 14.

Jennifer's current boyfriend says Komisarjevsky told him once about the kick he got planning and executing nighttime burglaries.

Tim Totton: He thought it was boring when nobody was home. He said it was too easy and there was no fun involved, you know?

Jennifer Norton: He loved the adrenaline rush and thrill of it. He had said -- "Robbing a house is better than any drug I've ever tried."

Starting in 2001 Komisarjevsky began a particularly intense spree of residential burglaries in his home and surrounding towns, a spree that left local police baffled.

Glass: He was on foot, or he was stealing bicycles in the neighborhood and getting around. And that's why we could never catch him back then. You know, he knew the woods like the back of his hand.

Altimari: He would stake out a house. He either usually cut through a screen door with a knife, he always bought a knife with him as well or he, you know, found a door that was open that he could jimmy. Would go in quickly, take things and leave.

But after Komisarjevsky was found with stolen goods in his possession in 2002, local police arrested him at his girlfriend's parent's house. Downstairs they found a stash of loot he'd lifted from people's homes.

Jennifer Norton: When the cops searched my house, they found so much stuff in the basement.

He confessed to 18 break-ins, and eventually pointed out to police officers the houses he'd entered, told them about the experience -- wearing latex gloves, sometimes even using night vision goggles -- popping open glass sliding doors and just listening for fifteen minutes to the sound of a home with a family asleep.

He pleaded guilty in 2002 and got nine years in prison. From inside, he sent Jennifer, the mother of his daughter, flowery love letters, telling her how he'd found religion and rejected his criminal ways. In one he writes: "When I get out, we're taking this life by storm. You, me and our beautiful daughter Jayda, nothing will stop us from living our dreams. You can trust in that my love!!!"

By April 2007 he was out, having served four-and-a-half years of a nine-year sentence. He was done with the halfway house and working as a roofer in East Hartford.

Altimari: He's on supervised parole. So he's living at home.

The fantasy about a family life with Jennifer was long over. Komisarjevsky and the girl's mother had engaged in a bitter custody battle over the child, and had recently gone to court to work out a new visitation schedule. But that Sunday morning in late July, Komisarjevsky wasn't at home when his daughter was dropped off by Jennifer's mom.

Authorities now suspect he'd been out late with his halfway house buddy breaking into two houses in Cheshire. Broke through the back screen of one. Creepy-crawling while the families slept. They got a money clip with $140.

Now, officials believe, Komisarjevsky and Hayes were lining up yet another job that weekend -- this time at the nice house on Sorghum Mill Drive. And they had with them the supplies they'd need: an air rifle. And some rope.

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