Dr. William Petit and his family before they were brutally murdered
A shocking story of a Connecticut man, Dr. William Petit who lost his wife and daughters in a brutal home invasion in 2007 will leave everyone with grieving heart. On Wednesday, Petit said it was 'sad' one of the killers had his death sentence revoked to comply with new state laws.
According to the story published on Dailymail, Dr. William Petit was tied up in the basement of his New Haven home during the July 23, 2007 attack and almost beaten to death. He was forced to listen as his wife was r*ped and murdered by Steven Hayes. Petit managed to flee to a neighbor's home as his daughters perished in the fire Hayes lit.
Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky committed their crimes in July 2007, when a home-invasion robbery spiraled into a nightmarish litany of rape, child abuse and murder.
The pair forced their way into Petit's home and beat him badly with a baseball bat before tying him up in the basement of his house, which he shared with his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and their daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11.
The pair demanded money from Petit, then 50, and ransacked his home - but when they found a banking book with $30,000 in it, they changed their mind.
Instead, they decided they would take Hawke-Petit to a bank, and force her to withdraw $15,000. She did, and told the teller what was happening.
But the police did not arrive in time for what happened next.
Once back home, Hayes raped Hawke-Petit, then strangled her to death. Petit, still tied up in the basement, could only listen.
When he heard one of the men say that 'it will all be over soon,' Petit realized that they were all going to be killed and managed to break the bonds on his hands - but not those on his feet - and crawl to his neighbor's house.
The doctor was so bloodied and disfigured by his beating that his neighbor of 18 years didn't even recognize him at first.
As Petit was crawling to safety, his daughters were suffering. They had been tied to their beds, with pillowcases placed over their heads.
Komisarjevsky raped 11-year-old Michaela - he later told authorities he thought she was 16 or 17 - and then Hayes splashed gasoline around the house and set it ablaze.
In journal entries read in court during the trial, Komisarjevsky wrote that he 'resented' the idea that people believe he raped Michaela, but admitting he did sexually assault her and then 'ejaculated onto her' in a 'vulgar display of power.'
He also took photos of her after the assault.
Hayley was able to free herself, but died in the hallway due to the superheated fumes. Michaela's body was found on her bed. It could not be determined how she died.
The suspects then fled the house, ramming through a police barricade with the Petits' vehicle, before being apprehended.
Facing the prospect of execution in 2013, Hayes told The New Haven Register: 'Death for me will be a welcome relief and I hope it will bring some peace and comfort to those who I have hurt so much.'
Speaking outside the court Wednesday, Ullmann said he was delighted by the result.
'It’s a relief for many of us lawyers who have worked on this for so long, to see the elimination of this barbaric punishment [the death penalty] from our laws.'
He added that the only person killed against their will by the state in recent decades was serial killer Michael Ross in 2005 - and he had in fact requested execution.
'So the state never achieved getting somebody executed against their will,' he said. 'It was an incredibly failed criminal justice policy. The costs to the state were enormous. This money could have been used for victims and treatment programs.'
He added that Hayes had converted to Judaism while in court, and that he had to be talked out of suicide several times.
Hayes also sued the Connecticut Department of Correction in August of 2014, alleging the preparation practices for kosher meals in the kitchen at the state’s highest-security prison do not conform to Jewish dietary laws.
A federal judge ultimately rejected that argument.
Since the deaths of his daughters and wife in 2007, Petit has remarried. He and his wife Christine had a son, William Petit III, in 2013.
But he has said he will never come to terms with the loss of his first family.
A Tweet from Easter shows an image of Michaela, Hayley and Hawke-Petit looking down from Heaven, with the message: 'Easter 2016 / Gone but not forgotten.'
In May he began a run for state legislature.
Connecticut is the 19th state to remove the death penalty from its books.
Superior Court judge Jon C. Blue concluded: 'With the gravity of these crimes and the depravity of your character, nothing more needs to be said.'
He then handed down six consecutive sentences of life without possibility of parole, followed by a total of 106 years for Hayes's crimes.