Connecticut's Dr William Petit who survived home invasion murders reveals horrors in book

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Dr William Petit, 58, was the only survivor of the 2007 home invasion killings
His wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit was brutally raped before being strangled
Daughters Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17, were tied to their beds and burned
Joshua Komisarjevsky, 35, and Steven Hayes, 52, were later convicted
Dr. Petit can't help but wonder 'What if that lock on the bulkhead door had been working properly?'
The two were sentenced to death but that has now been commuted to life
New sentence follows abolition of death penalty in Connecticut last month
Dr Petit has since helped write a book about the murders of his family
He has remarried and now has a toddler son called William Petit III

Published: 10:47 EST, 21 September 2015 | Updated: 15:06 EST, 21 September 2015

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It was the crime that horrified America. On a balmy summer night in 2007, a mother and her two daughters were brutally murdered by a pair of callous petty criminals.

Joanna Hawke-Petit, 48, and her daughters Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17, died at the hands of Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes.

Mrs Hawke-Petit was raped and strangled, her daughters burned to death and Michaela sexually assaulted. The only member of the family to survive was the little girl's father, William Petit.

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Survivor: Dr William Petit, pictured with his new wife Christine, is the sole survivor of the 2007 massacre that claimed the lives of his family. His wife Joanna and daughters Michaela and Hayley were all murdered

Now Dr Petit, 58, has revealed the details of what really happened on that fateful night in a new book, The Rising, Murder, Heartbreak, and the Power of Human Resilience in an American Town, by Ryan D'Agostino. The author has fill access to Dr. Petit and his family.

In it, he details how two small time criminals who met in a half way house for released prisoners turned a happy family Sunday into a night of unsurpassed savagery that ended with three murders.

On the night of the killings, Dr Petit woke up on the sun room couch to find himself bound and with two strange men looking down at him.

One was holding a 9mm gun, while the other carried a bloodstained Louisville Slugger baseball bat that he had used to beat Dr Petit around the head.

His hands were bound tightly palm to palm with plastic ties cutting in the skin and his ankles bound so tight the bones cut into each other.

The doctor guessed they had broken in at around 2 or 3 am - and that he had been unconscious for two hours.

The pain in his head was real. The blood streaming over his eyes was real and he was bleeding out faster because of the prescription blood thinner he was on for heart trouble.

Gone: Dr Petit pictured with (left to right) Michaela, 11, Hayley, 17, and Joanna, 48, during a family holiday

Tragic: Mrs Hawkes-Petit, left, was raped and strangled while Hayley (center) and Michaela were burned alive

Truth: The full story of the tragedy that claimed the lives of Dr Petit's family will appear in new book, The Rising, by reporter Ryan D'Agostino

He felt like he was going blind as he slid in and out of consciousness. They told him they were looking for cash and asked where the safe was. There was no safe.

He was then moved down into the basement where they retied his hands together behind his back and around a pole, a clothesline around his waist and chest, a quilt thrown over him.

The rest of the house seemed oddly silent to Dr Petit and he had no idea where the rest of the family, his wife and two daughters, were.

'It is an indescribable feeling, being a prisoner in your own home, being beaten to the point where you can barely manage to walk from here to there in a house you've lived in for 22 years,' writes D'Agostino.

'Everything is familiar and grotesque at the same time, a fever dream of his own life.'

Upstairs, the two men were searching in drawers and cupboards for cash. Bill's wallet had no cash inside but pictures of his wife, Jennifer and his daughters, Hayley and Michaela.

The search continued until they found a bankbook showing an account with $30,000 in it. Their plan changed.

They would wait until the bank opened and drive Jennifer to the bank with instructions to draw out $15,000, while the other perpetrator stayed at the house on Sorghum Drive.

Down in the basement, Bill had no idea what was was going on upstairs. 'His brain feels swollen and bruised – he can feel his pulse in his skull,' adds D'Agostino.

'His body feels unbearably heavy, and his mind is careening between half-sleep, desperation, fear, calculation, pain, and unconsciousness.'

Hours later, he heard his wife's voice coming from upstairs. It's muffled but it is kind.

D'Agostino writes: 'He is witnessing his wife, who must be petrified, having a conversation with two men who broke into their home and beat his skull with a bat.'

Mrs Hawke-Petit is heard telling the intruders that she will need to get her checkbook before going to the bank. A while later he hears her calling his practice and saying he won't be in, he's ill.

The next sound is 'thump, thump, thump' coming from the living room. 'He can't bring himself to imagine that what he hears is the sound of his wife being raped on their living room floor,' writes D'Agostino.

'Can't make himself think about what has happened to his two girls, his beautiful Michaela and Hayley'.

He heard a moan and yelled 'Hey'. A man responded, 'Don't worry. It's all going to be over in a couple of minutes'.

Devastation: A photograph taken at the time of the killing of one of the two girls' burned beds

Damage: Killers Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes set fire to the house before attempting to escape

Dr Petit knew he had to get help. He had to somehow get next door to his neighbor's house. He rubbed his wrists on the pole so hard, the plastic ties came apart.

He untied the clothesline around his waist but he couldn't free his ankles. He dragged himself over to the stairs leading to the bulkhead door and pushed himself up the stairs using his hands and elbows.

Once up in the yard, he couldn't stand up but he had to get to Dave's house next door, some fifty feet away.

His only option was to roll. When he got close, he started yelling for Dave and pounding on Dave's garage door.

D'Agostino writes: 'Dave, his neighbor for eighteen years, looked down at Bill, a beaten, soaking-wet man lying in his driveway covered with blood, and asks, 'Can I help you, sir'?'

A few seconds later, Dr Petit found a police officer standing over him with his gun drawn, not knowing whether he is a suspect or a victim, and asking who is in the house.

Immediately, he shouted: 'The girls! The girls are in the house'! Dr Petit was then rushed to the hospital in shock after losing some five to seven pints of blood.

But back inside 300 Sorghum Mill Drive, more horrors were unfolding.

In Dr. William Petit's Own Words

Under his photo in his Plainville high school yearbook The Beacon, William Petit wrote to another senior, ‘I never quit and I never lose and when the going gets tough I get going’. Here are Dr. Petit's talking about his ordeal in The Rising:

On St. Mary’s Hospital where he was treated after the attack:

‘Everybody there was beautiful and angels to me and I knew I had to get out for the [funeral] services, but it did feel safe.

‘Part of me wanted to hide there and not fact things’.

And he talked about his daughters Michaela and Hayley rather than sorrow.

‘I guess if there’s anything to be gained from the senseless deaths of my beautiful family, it’s for us to all go forward with the inclination to live with a faith that embodies action – help a neighbor, fight for a cause, love your family’.

‘I’m really expecting all of you to go out and do some of these things with your family in your own little way, to spread the work of these three wonderful women’.

At the trial:

‘I did hear, right around that same time, [when somebody came downstairs in the basement and took what sounded like a can of beer out of the refrigerator], three loud noises that I couldn’t understand what they were, as if someone were throwing twenty- or fifty-pound sacks on the living room floor, it sounded like….’

On he deadbolt on the bulkhead door:

‘Well, unfortunately, it was nonfunctional because sometime – perhaps a month earlier when I was getting ready to go to work early in the morning, I came down into the kitchen and Jennifer had come down and I didn’t see her. I called, she was down in the basement, I went down in the basement, and she said she was having a hard time opening this lock, which is a deadbolt. And she had essentially disassembled, disassembled the lock to open the door so that she would be able to get things from the basement to the patio’.

‘The deadbolt was not functional’.

On the bat used by the killers

‘It’s a Louisville Slugger baseball bat that we had for a long time in the garage and in the basement. I think I received it from my—via my brothers and father, who some time back had several package stores. It has the Ronrico Rum name on there, probably was a giveaway with some marketing they were doing’.

On the verdict of six capital felonies:

‘I was really, ah, crying, crying for loss’.

‘Michaela was an eleven year old girl. You know, ah, tortured and killed…in her own bedroom…you know? Surrounded by stuffed animals.

'And Hayley had a great future. And was a strong and courageous person. And Jennifer helped so many kids. At children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh and at Strong Memorial in Rochester and at the Yale Children’s Hospital and Cheshire Academy…. So I was really thinking of the tremendous loss…I was glad for the girls that there was justice, because I think it’s a just verdict, but mostly I was sad for the loss that we had all suffered’.

‘There was, ah – every day when I basically didn’t want to get out of bed, and – nothing against you guys, but I didn’t want to park the car and walk across the street. I didn’t want to get my picture taken for the hundred-and-fifty-thousandth time. I didn’t want to sit here and listen to the things that were being said in the courtroom. There were a thousand times I wanted to jump up and scream out’.

‘I don’t think there’s every closure. I think whoever came up with that concept’s an imbecile’.

‘I’m not sure what my hopes and dream are, if any’.

When asked to give ‘impact statements’, Dr. Petit talked about Hayley, the older daughter:

‘I grieve because she never got to love someone---‘

‘Because she never got to love someone for a long time. She had a friend who was a boy and who still thinks about her. He is now a senior and a basketball player. If he called on a Sunday night at seven o’clock, and she had been studying for six hours and looked washed out, she jumped up and got her basketball clothes on, because that is what they did – they played basketball together and chatted. She loved it and probably loved him’. Otis.

On daughter Michaela:

‘I learned many things from her teachers after she died that I wish they had told me before. One teacher said she always made an effort to over to someone who was ignored by others in the class. Other children told me she stood up to the older kids on the bus when they tried to make the smaller and younger kids give up their seats’.

Evil: Joshua Komisarjevsky, 35, was given the death penalty for his crimes which included performing a series of disgusting sexual acts on 11-year-old Michaela before setting her on fire. He is now serving a life sentence

Murderer: Steven Hayes, who raped and strangled Mrs Hawkes-Petit, was also sentenced to death but, like Komisarjevsky, has had his sentence commuted to life after Connecticut abolished the death penalty

After raping Mrs Hawkes-Petit, Hayes strangled her with his hands. The two girls were tied to their beds with pillowcases over their heads and burned alive.

So devastating was the damage caused by the fires started by the evil pair, much of the house was left in ashes, while the insurance adjuster said it was the worst she had seen in 20 years.

For broken-hearted Dr Petit, the days that followed were a blur of tears, recriminations and an ongoing search for a way to cope.

He went to live with his parents after the tragedy and spent hours lying on his bed, sleepless. At night, he could sleep for no more than an hour.

He didn't want to see people. There was nothing to say. There was no closure. He wept for hours, haunted by nightmares day and night.

'They took his family, they took his house, they took his clothes and his car and they stole any sense of purpose he ever felt in the world,' writes D'Agostino.

'People brought over food, money flowed in. Some 2500 letters from around the world arrived and gifts. But in the darkness, all the what-ifs went through his mind.

'What if that lock on the bulkhead door had been working properly? That's how they got in from the backyard. Why hadn't he fixed it'?

'What if the latch on the kitchen door that led down to the basement had been locked'? A hundred thousand what-ifs. What if the police had stormed the house five minutes sooner?'

The police were later quizzed about their lack of haste in storming the Petits' home during the trial of murderers Hayes and Komisarjevsky.

New life: Dr Petit now has a toddler son named William Petit III with his new wife Christine who he wed in 2012

Happiness: Despite finding love again, he says he will never 'get closure' on the deaths of his wife and children

Tribute: Dr Petit, pictured with his new wife, has since given up work as a doctor and has dedicated himself to running a charity in his family's memory

Captain Robert Vignola of the Cheshire Police Department had been at his desk when the call came in from dispatch that there was a hostage situation.

Mrs Hawkes-Petit had tipped off the teller when she was withdrawing the $15,000 that she needed the money to save her family but the police must not be alerted or the intruders would kill them.

The teller went ahead and called the police when she left the bank. Ten minutes after receiving the call, Vignola did a drive-by.

He saw no activity, no lights, circled the block and parked, keeping a line of sight to the house.

Another dispatcher told him they had the home phone number as well as all cell numbers for family members but Vignola ordered no one to call the house.

Vignola was ordering men to the woods behind the house, two police cars were within sight of the house and back-up was on the way.

But protocol kept them from moving in until he saw a suspect running from the Petits' house.

The perpetrators were in Jennifer's car and screaming down the driveway. They ended up crashing into two parked police cruisers that had set up a roadblock and were taken into custody.

Vignola then turned his head back to the Petit residence to see a large plume of smoke coming from the house.

Thomas Ullman, Chief Public Defender, cross-examined Vignola and wanted to know why no one even made an attempt to call.

'I advised them that I was going to wait a couple of minutes for a better inner perimeter, more people, for the safety rescue,' he told the court.

'Almost 20 minutes altogether where no phone call was ever made,' asked Ullman, 'from any police officer into the house?'

Ullman was making it very clear that if they had stormed the house, they could have stopped Hayes from raping Mrs Hawke-Petit and could have stopped the men from burning Hayley and Michaela Petit alive.

Worse was to follow. During the trial it emerged that Michaela had been sexually violated by Komisarjevsky.

Just following protocol – was the only answer the police had for not interrupting the unspeakable torture occurring inside the house.

He later admitted 'that he performed oral sex on Michaela and ejaculated on her'. And he took a photograph on the girl with his genitals in the picture.

Just following protocol – was the only answer the police had for not interrupting the unspeakable torture occurring inside the house.

At the end of the court case, Komisarjevsky and Hayes were convicted of multiple counts of rape and murder and, in October 2011, sentenced to death.

The pair had their sentences effectively commuted to life imprisonment last month after Connecticut abolished the death penalty.

Dr Petit condemned the decision, saying the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors had 'overstepped its powers' and failed to give due consideration to the 'emotional impact' on the victims and their families.

After the trial, Dr. Petit emerged from the darkened bedroom at his parents' home to answer every single letter that was sent.

He established the Petit Family Foundation as a nonprofit charitable organization with the monies sent to him donated to worthy causes in the memory of the girls.

Five years later, in 2012, Dr. Petit found a woman and the chance to love someone again - Christine, the marketing director at the club where he played golf and a photographer.

'He slowly learned it was okay to feel good about another woman, about Christine,' writes D'Agostino.

They fell in love and started a family and are now proud parents of a one-year-old son named William Petit III

But Dr Petit has not and will never get over the deaths of his family and, at a tribute at his local church last year, said his life would be lived in their memories. He would never be released but he would live.

'I guess if there's anything to be gained from the senseless deaths of my beautiful family, it's for us to all go forward with the inclination to live with a faith that embodies action,' he said.

'Help a neighbor, fight for a cause and love your family.'