2007 Cheshire, Connecticut Murders

On July 23, 2007, two home intruders, Linda Mai Lee (known as Steven Hayes at the time of the crimes) and Joshua Andrew Komisarjevsky, entered the Cheshire, Connecticut home of the Petit family. According to court evidence and confessions, the pair had initially planned only to burglarize the residence but escalated to murder. Komisarjevsky had spotted Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughter Michaela at a local grocery store the previous evening and followed them home.

Upon entering the home in the early hours of July 23, Komisarjevsky beat William Petit with a baseball bat, and the two men restrained him and the rest of the family. Lee later drove Jennifer Hawke-Petit to a bank, where she was forced to withdraw $15,000; she alerted a bank teller that her family was being held hostage, and the teller notified police. While police established a perimeter outside the home without revealing their presence, Komisarjevsky sexually assaulted 11-year-old Michaela, an assault later confirmed through DNA evidence from her autopsy. Lee raped and strangled Jennifer Hawke-Petit. William Petit managed to escape through the basement despite severe injuries and reached a neighbor's yard for help.

Before fleeing, Lee and Komisarjevsky doused the house, including the daughters' bedrooms, with gasoline and set it on fire, having tied Hayley and Michaela to their beds. Both girls died of smoke inhalation; Hayley had managed to free herself and collapsed in a hallway, while Michaela's body was found still bound to her bed. The two perpetrators fled in the family's car but were quickly apprehended by police after crashing into a police vehicle. The invasion lasted approximately seven hours. Both Lee and Komisarjevsky later confessed to the killings, each blaming the other for escalating the violence.

Lee was convicted on 16 of 17 counts in October 2010 and sentenced to death in December 2010. Komisarjevsky was convicted on all 17 counts in October 2011 and sentenced to death in January 2012. In August 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the state's death penalty unconstitutional, retroactively commuting both sentences to life imprisonment. Komisarjevsky's subsequent appeals, including claims regarding withheld evidence and trial venue, were rejected by the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2021 and the U.S. Supreme Court declined further review.

The case drew significant national and international attention and was described by the Hartford Courant as among the most widely publicized crimes in Connecticut history. It significantly influenced the state's death penalty debate, prompting a 2009 gubernatorial veto of a repeal bill that cited the case, before the legislature ultimately abolished capital punishment for future cases in 2012. The murders also spurred reforms to Connecticut's parole and criminal justice systems, including new monitoring requirements for parolees and a ban on parole for violent offenders. William Petit, the sole survivor, later established foundations in his family's memory and was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly.