Their Night of Evil Crimes Against Family Shocked America | Petit Family

hey you and welcome my name is Mike and in this old video we are looking at a crime That Shook a small town to its very core I guess there's a first time for everything this is a tough one it's a dark one like I suppose you could kind of say that about all my videos but this one is like dark dark like real dark pitch black and it is the story of a home invasion in the small town of Cheshire Connecticut [Music] it is a case where everything that could go wrong did go wrong and sometimes willfully so in Sleepy Cheshire 2007 so you know what let's give it a game [Music] [Music] as you might have guessed uh I mean I already said so our story today takes us to the town of Cheshire Connecticut a tail under roughly 30 000 people it sits just outside of New Haven and my favorite thing about it is that when you type in exactly at Cheshire Connecticut into Google Maps this picture comes up it's a small quiet idyllic Town white picket fences you know what a drill a place where not a whole lot happens but a whole lot did happen on the 23rd of July 2007. Transformers was the number one movie Umbrella by Rihanna was the number one song and while those are on in the background this 911 call came in from a bank if you can believe that a woman named Jennifer had walked in to withdraw money and I told the teller something frankly they kind of the kind of thing you assume is a joke because it is so horrifying let's give that call a lesson my name is Mary Lyons I'm the banking center manager we have a lady who is in our bank right now who says that her husband and children are being held at their house people are in a car outside the bank she is getting fifteen thousand dollars to bring out to them that if the police are told they will kill their children and the husband her name is Jennifer Pettit p-e-t-i-t okay she stores in the bank yes she is okay she's being held for her husband and families being held go on I actually went outside but I don't oh wait I see her walking now she is petrified this story got a whole lot worse for the Petit family made up of Dr William Bill Pettit his wife Jennifer Hawk Pettit and their two daughters Haley I'm Michaela C2 career criminals and the worst kinds of sacks of [ __ ] you got Joshua commissar Jeske and Stephen Hayes they had violently invaded their home after stalking the family and had forced Jennifer to withdraw money and then they did some more horrific things [Music] William Pettit and Jennifer Hawk met all the way back in 1985 when he was a confident young third year resident and she was an experienced oncology nurse at UPMC Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh before the end of that same year 1985 and just as Bill's residency was coming to an end the bossful young couple would marry and move to Cheshire Connecticut where they settled and Bill he began working as an endocrinologist Jennifer she was Health director at a boarding school [Music] after a few years of happy marriage the couple they decided to start popping them out and on October 15 1989 Along Came their first daughter Haley followed six years later by Michaela Haley Pettis was a Star Trek athlete and dreamed of the day she would be a doctor just like her dad she had been spurred into the medical profession by her mother's diagnosis with Ms in the mid 90s when Haley was just a young one she was so passionate that she'd made it her mission to raise funds for Charities related to the cause and even established her own fundraising non-profit called Haley's hope in 2007 seventeen-year-old Haley was looking forward to the next big step towards her ultimate goal as she was scheduled to begin studying at Dartmouth College later that year with a doctor father nurse mother and a big sister's dead set on medical school it was all but inevitable that Michaela would also follow them into what had become the family business at that point so much so Michaela nicknamed KK already had plans to take over the running of Haley's hope when Haley herself went off to college the strong-minded 11 year old had even decided she was going to rename the non-profit Michaela's Miracle nice Michaela's in her passion you know was cooking she was always very excited to be cooking these new and exotic spicy new dishes for the family which I think you know the family that would always eat together should be cooking away she was a very strong-minded uh independent strong-willed 11 year old and so summer July 2007 summer summer vacay baby you know Haley Michaela they were off they were already five thousand you know the days are hot the days are long and the family were happy shortly after 6 p.m 6 p.m in the evening folks on the 22nd of July 2007 mother Jennifer and younger daughter Michaela they went dead Hunter Hunter gather into the local grocery store Michaela she was itching to cook Feast Feast for the fam they went to the Stop and Shop grocery for some uh hmm well I guess you could say groceries so 48 year old Jennifer 11 year old Michaela were shopping away 50 year old bill golf four something I don't know I don't know anything wiggle he was off doing that uh while the 17 year old Haley she had spent the day uh you know chilling at the beach hanging out with her friends and that evening she was just blazing up chilling at home Jennifer and Michaela they made bruschetta bruschetta it's bread with tomatoes and possible I don't know what you want from me folks but they all stopped you know at 7 p.m the entire Petit family were all sitting down munching away on their Pastor bruschetta they watch TV and eventually everyone retired to their beds except bill that is Bill never made it off to sofa sure I know that game myself he succumbed to too much sun and too much pasta Haley fell asleep in her room and Michaela fell asleep with her mother and Jennifer and Bill's bed by 10 the whole family was asleep and everything was quiet in the Pettit house what the family didn't know couldn't couldn't have known was that they were they were already doomed when Jennifer and Michaela were out shopping at the grocery store someone had seen them liked what they saw and followed them home do you know where you are right now you know why you're here going terribly wrong okay 26 year old Joshua commissarjevsky had been out of prison for just a matter of months in July 2007 having served just five years of a nine year sentence for several burglaries to be honest if one of the like several thousand flags on the play had been caught you know during Joshua's his whole upbringing his whole time in prison he never would have gone out um that's there's a lot of drop drop balls around Joshua Comer sajevski because he's just uh piece of [ __ ] really comes to mind he was apparently released early as the parole board didn't receive his records and were unaware of just how insane and dangerous he was Joshua was born on August 10 1980 to his 16 year old mother whose family had a long history of mental illness and addiction issues and he was put up for adoption two weeks later his adoption by Benjamin and Jude comma sarjevski would would turn out to be both a blessing and a curse because you know they were lovely lovely family they gave Joshua everything he wanted you know ding ding ding though it turned out that um Joshua was being sexually abused by another kid because comma sojevsky's had fostered so kind of ding ding ding on that one and you know perhaps with some early intervention Joshua would have gotten the help he he needs right uh having this whole lot of shite um but you know the comments of FC's they were quite religious so they were like you know what I know you're going through some stuff but hey have you tried praying I just have a bit of vanilla prey hey frankly I don't see anything wrong with that and so this led Joshua to a life of prime he became a career criminal in and out burglaries home invasions his specialty but Joshua was not alone he had an accomplice 42 year old Stephen Hayes Joshua cummer sojevsky met Stephen Hayes when the two men were fresh out of prison in 2006. the wall would turn out to be a real shitty twist of fate stop that twisting now both men were released to the same halfway house and there they just got on like two things that get on real well can't think of anything right now but you know what I mean Hayes was born May 30th 1963 in Homestead Florida and like Joshua he'd shown earlier worrying signs of his later Behavior dig giveaways you might say hey's own brothers would say that Steven was a sociopath from the very beginning and would not only deliberately hurt and injure his siblings but he would manipulate their parents into believing he was the one who had been the victim what a little bastard he wasn't quite on the same kind of like Evil Genius level that Joshua commerce was but he was no less of a criminal he'd been arrested 30 times uh until you know he met Joshua in and out of prison left right and Center these were the two men who had seen Jennifer and Michaela at the grocery store and eyeballing them felt they'd be worth a few Bob [Music] it wasn't planned you know apparently to be a a violent incident they were just gonna you know they just saw them they thought they'd be worth a few Bob and so they they were they're planning on just breaking in nobody gets hurt we just take their [ __ ] essentially that's what they said uh was the plan and so at 3am the gruesome twosome were outside the Pettit house at 300 sorghum Mill Drive on the edge of town on his way into the house Joshua found a baseball bat a Louisville Slugger he found it as he gained entry into the patches house via an unlocked basement door and he soon discovered Bill fast asleep on the on on the couch in that quite dark house and he he stood there Joshua would say he stood there watching Bill sleep for for quite some time apparently that was a bit of a habit of Joshua's because he would like burglaries home invasions was his his specialty and so when he would break into these houses after he was done stealing everything that wasn't nailed down while the occupants were fast asleep he would go and watch them which isn't creepy at all of course he said he did this because he wanted to imagine what their lives were like you know to like to fantasize about getting out of his own real [ __ ] life to escape the misery misery that Joshua spread around joyfully so with a baseball bat in his hand he finally gave in wink wink with what he would say was some encouragement uh you know from from Stephen and so he took that baseball bat to Bill pettit's head as he was asleep on the couch [Music] and we're spending behind him um but not wanting to him not thinking that I I could no bill petted big guy for you you know he had no chance to fight back he was incapacitated in seconds with the amount of damage they did to him it's kind of astonishing um that he didn't die from head trauma right there and then Bill only saw two shadowy figures you know going around around his house and he was obviously completely out of it he one of them asked him where the safe was Bill said they didn't have no safe Bill's face covered in blood and he could barely make out that one of them had a baseball bat which was in fact Bill's dad's baseball bat he could also see that another one of the guys was armed with a handgun now bill was not a gun guy but he could make out enough to see it was a nine millimeter handgun what Bill couldn't have known was that it was a pellet gun not a bat a real gun Bill soon lost his grip on Consciousness thanks largely to the blood thinning medication he'd been taking for a heart condition which caused him to lose a metric [ __ ] ton of blood and so after incapacitating Bill um Stephen and Joshua they went upstairs to where the girls were Haley was in her room and so they tied her to the bed with a pillowcase over her head Michaela and Jennifer had fallen asleep reading a Harry Potter book in Jennifer and Bill's bed Joshua took Michaela to her own room and restrained her as Hayes tied up Jennifer each with a pillowcase pulled over their heads all the time Joshua continued to reassure them that they wouldn't be hurt if they just did what they were told and didn't cause any trouble all they wanted was money they told them I don't think it's hard to overstate just how terrifying this must have been for the entire family and so with the tree girls uh restrained Joshua and Stephen they they once again turned their attention to Bill a bill who was in and out of Consciousness constantly I mean he took he was completely brained taking a sweater to the kisser he was completely out of it especially with his militant medication he was Dripping with blood and so what's Joshua and Stephen did is they dragged bill down to a basement down to the basement really they they tied him to a pole they propped his head up pillowcase over over his head they then went back up the stairs proceeded to ransack the entire home this that these nose in the pocket they took each of the family's wallets and even a jar of loose change not quite this score though they were expecting all that would change though because Joshua Little J Jizzy Cox come over here he found a Bank of America Bank book back in the day you know I'm sure as I'm sure a lot of you know before you could just check your bank account on your phone you would have Bank books with records of your what was in your bank account and they found one that had thirty thousand dollars in it and so they went well whoop-dee-doo so now seeing this and quote licking their chops Joshua and Stephen would no longer be leaving which what they found in wallets and some loose change now the plan changed on a dime changed very very swiftly that they were gonna wait until the bank opened and have one of the members of the family go in withdraw money have Jennifer go in withdraw fifteen thousand dollars now why fifty thousand dollars rather than the thirty thousand dollars that was in the account well hey I mean they're thieves and fuckos but they're not greedy the robbers selected Joshua to keep an eye on the girls and a bill while Stephen Hayes would take Jennifer to the bank to make the withdrawal and all the while Joshua was continuing to reassure Jennifer that if she just plays along you know does what they want you know sticks to the plan nobody gets hurt little did she know that her husband was tied up in a basement on the brink of death already having taken a baseball bat to the face a few times however because Joshua and Stephen they broke in at 3am they had a couple of Errors to kill before the bank opens you know stick on TV look at the watch pot in the kettle then then Joshua and Stephen did something which kind of goes against their whole you know saying oh we never planned on killing anybody we never planned on killing anybody at all it kind of just sort of happened because Stephen Hayes left the house he drove to a Citgo gas station just down the road and he he had some empty uh gallon jokes he filled him up with gasoline he filled up a couple of jokes with gasoline ten dollars worth of gasoline he paid using a 20 uh you know Bill in inside the gas station the cashier said he was just a regular guy filling up these tanks with gas nothing weird and then he went back why would he fill up Gala jugs filled with gasoline if he wasn't planning on doing what they would do [ __ ] meanwhile in the basement occasionally bill would have a long enough period of semi-consciousness and alertness to attempt to free himself from his restraints he twisted and he ground away at the bindings hoping to free himself and at the very least get help the constant nods and Blackness however kept him from Gathering any momentum then he heard a different voice from upstairs wouldn't he recognized as his wife's she was telling the men that she needed her handbag and her checkbook he knew they must be planning on taking her to the bank things were quiet but then Bill heard Jennifer's voice again The Intruders had told her to call in sick on Bill's behalf they didn't want anybody turning up to the house when Bill failed to show off for work and Bill he'd missed like one day in 20 years he was like people would pick up pretty quickly if he didn't show up for work upstairs the plan was in motion Hayes and Jennifer they would drive to the bank uh you know Hayes would keep the car running Jennifer go in make the withdrawal they would go back to the house they would go back to the petted house and then you know if they leave Joshua and Stephen would leave simple as yeah see apparently everything went according to this plan until Jennifer walked into the bank the men holding her family had told her she'd be fine if they got their money but she also believed them when they said they'd kill them all if they didn't get what they wanted she knew she had to do something and so she told the teller quietly what was going on all the time Jennifer was in the bank Stephen Hayes was circling the Block in a stolen minivan the withdrawal Jennifer was being ordered to make actually required proof of ID 15 grand it's a lot of money which she did not have as Hayes had taken a trauma quickly decide if this was if she was in another scam or if this was a genuine situation they went with genuine situation they would say that they took one look at Jennifer's eyes and were like yeah no this is this is legit and so she authorized the withdrawal now Jennifer had no idea the police the police were being called she took the money she left she walked back to the car where Stephen Hayes was waiting outside and then they went back to the house kind of look and see where she's gone as she went outside oh wait I see you're walking now she is petrified apparently some family is tied up being held hostage and they're forcing the a woman to go to the bank to withdraw a large amount of cash to pay the captors um basic information on it but sounds like uh he might be in this for a little bit all right where is this uh the lady is that Bank of America done the lady just left possibly with with the captors uh in a Chrysler Pacifica heading out the street side [Applause] yo what do you want to do you want to try to find that car what do you want to do and we're gonna put that out just left Bank of America the catfish might be in the car with her uh Chrysler Pacifica um around 10 minutes after receiving the call from the bank at 9 27 a.m several marked and unmarked cars were on their way to the house at sorghum Mill Drive the police officers were ordered to form a perimeter on holes until they had everyone in place and could confirm everyone inside was safe they were absolutely not and this is when another 9-1-1 call came in from someone who lived right next door 62 year old David simchik had found his neighbor Dr Bill Pettit in his driveway Bill had managed to escape the house David lived just next door and he hadn't got a clue what was going on in fact when he saw Bill outside he didn't even recognize Bill that's how covered in blood beaten up he was Bill was in a seriously bad way no [ __ ] David didn't have a clue what was going on as David was desperately trying to understand what was going on and he was on the phone to another operator trying to explain what bill was mumbling to him as he passed any other Consciousness a SWAT police officer rocked up and pointed a gun at both Bill and David as they stood in the driveway the police didn't know are you guys internet are you guys the hospital what's what's going on nobody knew what was going on the police had already been there because of the call from the bank teller and I'd seen seen this happening one of the officers shouted at built it to tell to say who's in the house who is in those the only thing bill would respond with was the girls are in the house and as bill was murmuring this passing in and out of Consciousness covered in blood smoke began to pour out of the pitted house at the same time officers forming a perimeter around the house had seen two men Sprint out of the padded house and jump into Jennifer's minivan at haul ass the police officers clearly saw they were driving too quickly for this to be anything run-of-the-mill just minutes later the two fleeing men smashed there would be Escape car straight into an oncoming police cruiser officers following quickly in a second vehicle saw all of this happen and they ordered the two men to get out of the car get on your stomachs Joshua Kama sajevsky and Stephen Hayes they complied they got out of the car they got in their stomach's hand behind her back and they were asked by the police was there anybody in that house you just fled from they asked Stephen first he said we didn't know they asked Joshua second and he terrifyingly said something that echoed what bill was saying he said the girls are still in the house you better get going that's a Roger they are on their way and they are notified that the suspects are in custody they will be looking for the two female parties in the house in the upstairs bedroom as well as the uh the woman from the vehicle that I drove to the bank she should be an upstairs bedroom possibly uh 36. smoke was pouring from the windows of the Pettit house fire Crews responded almost immediately and were the first ones through the door what they saw inside will likely be seared into their minds forever first they found 17 year old Haley she'd somehow made it out of the hallway before being overcome by the smoke and the Flames officially her cause of death was due to smoke inhalation but it's likely she also suffered from the fire itself as her body was found lying face down yet there was more burn damage to her on the front than on her back it's likely that she had been engulfed by the fire in the Flames that had burned away her restraints and then in a frantic Panic she'd try desperately to get away but it succumbed to the Smoke only a few feet from her room next to be found was 11 year old Michaela she was still in her bed and like her big sister she had been overcome by smoke inhalation Michaela had died before the Flames got to her lost to be found but actually the first to die was Jennifer Jennifer hadn't even lived long enough to experience the fire she'd been strangled to death not long after herself and Stephen had returned from the bank two men are in custody in a heinous triple murder sexual assault arson and home invasion at the home of a doctor and his family in a sleepy bedroom community in Cheshire Connecticut what a waste what what sadness and it's he's a man who's affected these two men looking probably just for a few dollars have affected an entire community of people who supported their families prosecutors describe the suspects as career criminals 44 year old Stephen Hayes lived in a nearby community while 26 year old Joshua commessarjevsku lived in Cheshire just over a mile from where the home invasion took place police say the men broke into the house of Dr William Pettit his wife Jennifer and their two daughters aged 17 and 11 and terrorized the family for hours just whose idea it was to actually start the fire uh well it depends on who you believe Joshua or Steven they both would have conflicting Tales when they were later interviewed about what happens and they both blamed each other as you can imagine Stephen would say that when he got home uh from the bank with Jennifer Joshua who'd been left in the house overseeing everything Joshua told Stephen that he had sexually assaulted Michaela in her bedroom Joshua said to Stephen he should do the same to Jennifer to quote even the score which Stephen did strangling her to death on the living room floor afterwards Joshua he headed the other way around he would say that yet while Stephen and Jennifer were gone to the bank uh he had sexually assaulted Michaela but by the way he tells it um it sounds like Mikhail was kind of a willing participant which is actually [ __ ] [ __ ] sick foreign I think she wasn't like resisting or anything so I just kept everything okay I turned back around um and he's pouring a whole bunch of gasoline on the kitchen floor Joshua then claimed that when Steven and Jennifer got back Stephen saw the police in the tree line outside their home and then realizing Stephen realizing that Jennifer must have said something in the bank he strangled Jennifer out of Rage that she had you know told the police about this and then Joshua said Stephen sexually assaulted Jennifer after he had killed her both men also maintained that the other one was the one who insisted they had to burn the house down to destroy the evidence both claimed that the idea to burn the house down was a spur of a moment's decision again though um well if it was a spirit of moment decision why did Stephen Hayes go and buy gasoline earlier the gasoline which they would eventually pour over the tree girls and over the house and then throw a match in Bill Pettit escaped by literally the skin of his teeth he was he was tied up in the basement he heard what they were doing to his wife and his youngest daughter and then just seconds before the fire was started he finally managed to break free of his restraints even his his hand restraints his angles were still down he managed to escape out of the house and he rolled to the neighbor's driveway what a horrifying [ __ ] show the trials of both Joshua comersinjevsky and Stephen Hayes they only came about out of the sheer desire that pretty much everyone had to see Joshua and Stephen die for what they had done both men actually offered to plead guilty and spare a trial in return for a life sentence the prosecution to this said um no [ __ ] way and said yeah no we want to kill you for what you did to the family uh we want a death penalty trial for you Hayes went first and as you'd expect he blamed everything on Joshua much was made of his non-violent record before meeting Joshua and the defense tried to tried everything well everything they could to get a life sentence for him during the trial the jury had to view several explicit crime scene photos and hear vivid descriptions of what had happened to each of the of the of the girls several of these jurors required intensive therapy after the proceedings unsurprisingly Stephen Hayes was found guilty and he was sentenced to death Stephen Hayes even gave his motive for participating in the murders as being well his broken ass car he didn't have the money to get it fixed and so he had to steal it he also claimed that he'd been clean of drugs for about four and a half years but had recently fallen off the wagon met a month before the killings he'd been using meth heavily at that point Joshua was up next and the court heard every excuse Under the Sun like Hayes Joshua Commerce blamed his partner for everything the jury also heard how Joshua had been arrested as a teenager for assaulting his own sister something his defense claimed was caused by the abuse inflicted on him by his foster brother there was also talk of you know a girlfriend that Joshua had who was the daughter of a of a Preacher the girl was very young looking in fact her father had real problems with Joshua being with her uh and called him a pedophile straight up and so that kind of led to the belief that the robbery was part of the motive but the real motive was the 11 year old Michaela who Joshua had seen in the grocery store again the jury returned a guilty verdict and the death penalty was awarded this is where obviously very pleased with the guilty verdicts on 17 out of 17 charges it's not clear to me that time heals all wounds but you form some form of scars that uh and like I said in some interview that sort of jagged hole in your heart just smooth out the edges a little bit and you just take it one day at a time and that would be it except uh Connecticut abolished a death penalty and so both Joshua commission and Stephen Hayes were just simply sentenced to I can't even talk uh we're sentenced to life in prison however I think you know what a case has messed up and as horrific as this one I don't think there would ever be any real closure for what had happened I want these two six Sons [ __ ] did it's up there it's real up there and there's so many what-ifs in this case like what if this had been done differently I mean it's like what I said at the intro so many things went wrong everything kind of went wrong what if Jennifer stayed in the bank she simply hadn't left what if the police had gone into the house instead of setting up a perimeter and waiting while they were you know being while the family was being killed inside they had ample time to go in before they were they were murdered and set on fire what if Bill had been able to escape and free the girls I was glad for the girls that there was Justice because I think it's a I think it's a just just verdict but mostly mostly I was sad for the loss that we we have all suffered Dr William Pettit was eventually able to rebuild a new life though he admitted he'll always be haunted by the memories of his family he actually had a successful political career and he continues to advocate for causes he knew mattered to his daughters and to Jennifer he remarried and was up until January 2023 a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives a foundation he set up in their memories raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day on what would have been Haley's 18th birthday both perpetrators are in separate prisons currently in Pennsylvania Joshua sought a retrial didn't get it Stephen Hayes is currently known as Linda Hayes coming out as transgender in 2019. and that is where we leave this old one not really uh happy no no happy ending I'll say that for free but I think do I do my cases but I don't think so this one especially is just tragedy that happened and you try and pick up the pieces and move on afterwards senseless crime and two men who should not have been walking free but they ultimately were and did what is an incredibly horrific um stunning and like the worst possible way uh crime it's not the first time and it will not be the last a lot more a lot more videos to come unfortunately question mark thank you thank you so much for watching I really appreciate you being here uh hearing me tell this horrific story um yeah thanks um here listen I'll see y'all as always in a couple of days so look forward to the next video but until then um yeah after this one just please take care of each other and yourselves because I love you [Music]

Channel: That Chapter

Views: 1,083,708

Keywords: that chapter, petit family, cheshire connecticut, joshua komisarjevsky, steven hayes, bill petit

Id: hhcbcvGgi94

Length: 34min 33sec (2073 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023