http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/nyreg
Dr. William A. Petit Jr., his head bloodied and legs bound, stumbled out of a rear basement door of his two-story home here into a pouring rain, calling the name of a neighbor for help.
The neighbor heard the shouting, but so did the two men inside the house, who peeked outside from an upstairs window.
The men, the authorities say, had already strangled Dr. Petit’s wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and in short order would also kill the couple’s two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. The elder suspect, Steven J. Hayes, 44, had poured gasoline on the girls and their mother, according to a lawyer and a law enforcement official involved in the case, in hopes of concealing DNA evidence of sexual assault. He had raped Ms. Hawke-Petit, and his partner, Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, had sexually assaulted Michaela.
Moments after Dr. Petit escaped, as the house was being surrounded by police officers, the men lighted the gasoline. The girls were tied to their beds but alive when the gas Mr. Hayes had spread around the house was set aflame.
After lighting the fire, the two men jumped into the family’s Chrysler Pacifica sport utility vehicle. They crashed into a police vehicle in the driveway, then slammed into two police cruisers parked nose to nose as a barricade not far from the house, where they were taken into custody.
Inside the house on Sorghum Mill Drive, Hayley and Michaela died of smoke inhalation, not from their burns, according to the Connecticut medical examiner. Their mother was found downstairs.
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