Revisiting The 2007 Connecticut Murders Of Mrs. Petit And Her Two Daughters...

Mrs. Petit and her two daughters had been raped. Her husband was beaten unconscious by a baseball bat, losing at least 6 pints of blood in the process. The two murderers had staked out their prey the evening before, taken their fun and stolen what money they could. Now they would be receiving another $15,000, and as soon as Mrs. Petit returned from the bank it would be time to run...

Shortly before 9:30 a.m. that Monday, Ms. Hawke-Petit walked into a Bank of America branch and withdrew $15,000 from the account she shared with her husband. Mr. Hayes waited in the parking lot in Maplecroft Plaza, the same shopping center where the two men had watched Ms. Hawke-Petit and her daughter the day before.

Ms. Hawke-Petit told the teller that she had to have the money because her family was being held hostage, and that if the police were notified, her family would be killed. 

Debbie Biggins, 50, was opening a new account at the bank when she noticed Ms. Hawke-Petit, who seemed tense and in a rush. “I could feel it,” Mrs. Biggins said in a recent interview. “I felt fear.” After Ms. Hawke-Petit left, Mrs. Biggins said, she saw the teller hand a manager a slip of paper.

A bank employee called 911 about 9:30. “The call came in as a suspicious transaction with a hostage situation, but it wasn’t clear,” said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation. The Cheshire police have refused to release a full timeline indicating when officers arrived on Sorghum Mill Drive, but described their response as “immediate.”

By 9:45 a.m., seven to nine Cheshire police officers, including SWAT team members, were working to secure a perimeter around the Petit house, and a police helicopter was en route.

They were of course too late. Forget what you see on your favorite crime drama, cops don't rush to the scene of a crime and burst in like the avenging cavalry. They must first set up a perimeter. 

Half an hour after the call went in they were still setting up their perimeter when the Petit women were killed. To this day the police do not know how many cops were on the scene and the likely reason they will not release a full timeline is because they really don't have a clue as to when it hit the fan. 

Neither killer was armed with anything more potent than an air rifle. Three women lay near death while the police took their time. All of this is revisited because the sentencing trial has begun for one of the animals, but we reported upon how unprotected these poor women were back in August of 2007 when the crime occurred, received the obligatory emails and derogatory comments defending the Dr. and the local police, but since this is in the news anew, the horror of that day needed to be experienced again.

The men in their lives failed miserably. Yet over three years later are still being canonized.

You can click the headline link for the full NY Times story, and an easy Google will provide a lot of additional links to what went down that day.