Ed Kemper and the Cheshire Family Murders

You might think you know everything about Ed Kemper, but we promise you... you don't (like his best friend being a cop!). Tune in to hear the shocking life and crimes of Edmund Kemper aka the “The Co-Ed Killer,” who targeted young female college students in the Santa Cruz area. Then we tell the story of the  Cheshire Family Murders, a home invasion gone deadly that occurred on July 23, 2007, when Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes invaded the residence of the Petit family in Cheshire, Connecticut.

Sources:
https://rare.us/entertainment-and-culture/edmund-kemper-audiobooks/
https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/edmund-kemper
https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/Edmund_Kemper
https://listverse.com/2019/11/18/edmund-kemper-facts/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/17/cheshire-connecticut-home-invasion-murders-10-years-later/483863001/
https://www.ranker.com/list/cheshire-murders-facts/cat-mcauliffe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire,_Connecticut,_home_invasion_murders

Transcript

Emily: [00:00:00] Hello? Hello. 
Liz: [00:00:01] Welcome back guys. Uh, you're listening to, that's a bad sign. What episode is this? I think it's 37, but you know, I feel like we should just stop keeping track. 
Emily: [00:00:11] We will kick it off with recommendation coroner at which Liz he will be 
Liz: [00:00:14] leading. Yes. My recommendation this week is for everyone to go watch the show cruel summer to Moi.
Also suggest am I good? I know it's been all over Dumont. You guys another recommendation? Go follow Dumas on Instagram. It's 
Emily: [00:00:29] like a tabloid account on it's amazing. So what is curl summer 
Liz: [00:00:34] about? So it was described to me as. Like outer banks, but true crime. Oh, so it's teen drama, high schoolers, but there's the kidnapping involved and.
Someone's still someone's boyfriend and, you know, it just gets very intense. I'm only in like three episodes in, but I love it. 
Emily: [00:00:53] That kind of seems like scream when it was an MTV show. 
Liz: [00:00:58] Yeah. It's similar to that. It's a little bit more intense, I would say. Ooh, but yeah, everyone should go watch it. 
Emily: [00:01:05] Okay sold.
I keep seeing it all over to Moi and for people who want to follow, how do you spell that? 
Liz: [00:01:10] I think it's D E U X. Moi. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds about right. I think it's 
Emily: [00:01:16] French. So my recommendation and we talk about the show all the time, but is to go and watch law and order SVU because Liz, did you see the most recent episode?
Was 
Liz: [00:01:27] it on last week? Yes. I keep getting confused. Cause I feel like they skipped a few weeks, so I'm not actually sure if I watched it. Well, 
Emily: [00:01:35] what's great about law and order SVU is it's been on for over a decade. So it was literally an episode 10 years prior where a boy was like 13 and he was a psychopath.
And he did some horrible things. So they locked him up in an insane asylum. And this episode, it's the same actor and he's 21 and he's like ready to be released. And then there's the debate of, can someone like that be healed and rehabilitated or should he be let go and then. Some crazy 
Liz: [00:02:04] stuff happens. Wow.
I definitely didn't watch that, but I'm so excited. I'm going to watch it before I go to bed. It 
Emily: [00:02:10] was very well done. So if you are not a, our SVU episode, this is your time. If you're not an episode, 
Liz: [00:02:17] if 
Emily: [00:02:17] you're 
Liz: [00:02:17] not fan go watch an episode. Yep. We're drinking water because we're both in workout clothes intending to work out after this.
But we'll see. I was worried if we drank, I would just not go work out.
all right, ladies, are you ready? Yes. Well, one sec, while 
Emily: [00:02:43] you're texting, I'm going to read my sources. They are entertainment and culture.com. biography.com, criminal minds, fandom, and 
list 
Liz: [00:02:52] verse. All right, I'm ready. I 
Emily: [00:02:55] am doing a spark note version of ed Kemper, a K the coed killer. Who targeted young female college students in the Santa Cruz 
Liz: [00:03:05] area?
I felt like I have to mentally prepare for this one. 
Emily: [00:03:08] So Kimber was born on December 18th, 1948 in Burbank, California. He had one older sister and one younger sister, and he was very close to his father. However, not so much with his mother. Apparently she was a bit psychotic and some say she even might've even suffered from borderline personality disorder.
However, besides that it was a normal family life until the mother and father got divorced. And this really troubled ed because his father actually left and went to move on with another woman and another family. And ed was stuck with his mother at an early age. He started displaying sociopathic behavior.
He was a pyromaniac and he would use his sister's dolls to enact murder and bizarre sexual rituals. Liz's face 
Liz: [00:04:00] right now. Well, I know older brothers will do that kind of thing that they'll mess with your toys, but it gets worse. Oh 
Emily: [00:04:07] God. He took delight in torturing and killing cats. And in one case he buried a cat alive and then dug it up again, then decapitated it and put its head on a 
Liz: [00:04:18] pole.
This is just tabs, right from the get-go 
Emily: [00:04:21] I know pyromaniac torturing animals. This is obvious. Also something with his sisters, he fantasized about being executed by the electrical chair and would often play a game with his sisters where he would call it gas chamber and he would tell them to blindfold him and put him in a chair.
And he would pretend to arrive in agony until he did. 
Liz: [00:04:45] That is so 
Emily: [00:04:46] strange. Yes. And I mentioned earlier that his mom apparently had some emotional and psychological issues, but regardless, she took a look at what was happening with these games, with her children. And she was freaked out and she would lock him in the basement because she was so afraid that he was going to rape his younger sister.
So say what you want about the woman, but I think she has really good, you know, mother instincts, 
Liz: [00:05:11] good intentions. I was going to say maybe not the best way to deal with that, but. I don't know how I would deal with it personally. Yeah. 
Emily: [00:05:18] She, she knows something's going on now at the age of 13, he ran away to be with his father in California only to discover that his father had completely moved on with another family and didn't want anything to do with ed.
So then the father sent him away to live with the father, his parents. So Ed's grandparents. So now he's 14 years old living with his grandparents, Edmund, senior and mod. In a farm in north fork, California, things weren't that great. He didn't get along with his grandmother as well. Doesn't get along with a woman in his life.
He's also six, four, and much bigger than the other kids in his class. And he was only 14. So he was often made fun of this is such like the recipe for a serial killer. Exactly. Then on the afternoon of August 27th, 1964, he shot and killed his grandmother. He then waited for his grandfather and Monsignor to come home.
And then he murdered his grandfather. He called his mom telling her what he's done. And she said, go and call the police, which he did. So the police arrived at the scene and they said that he was just stone cold. He didn't show any emotion. And when they finally got him into the police station, asked him why he did this.
He said, I want to see what it felt like. Chills. So he's 14 years old. So they diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. And instead of putting him in jail, place him in a mental care facility at the state hospital for the criminally insane. 
Liz: [00:06:58] Right. He's hospitalized 
Emily: [00:07:00] there. Might've been a weird guy, as we can tell from these games that he's playing with his little sisters.
However, he also was very smart and he had an incredibly high IQ. And also, if you can tell by now he's a psychopath and something about psychopaths are they can be charming. They know how to act. So he actually became somewhat close with his psychiatrist and the psychiatrist began to trust him so much so that he made ed his assistant.
So being an assistant, he got. Access to all the different psychological exams that they were performing on patients. So ed would study the exams and memorize the answers. So all the years that he was in the psychiatry hospital towards the end, towards his like 20th birthday, he was so well adjusted seemingly.
And when they started. Performing exams on him. He was coming out, looking completely normal. 
Liz: [00:07:56] I hope that there have since been laws against making your psychiatry patient a, an assistant. Oh my God. 
Emily: [00:08:04] I know. Or just be Milda spot somebody who was faking it, but eventually it worked in his favor. And on December 18th, 1969 on his 21st birthday, he was released against the wishes of some psychologists, but eventually.
They all agreed. And he went to go live with his mother in Santa Cruz. 
Liz: [00:08:26] I'm sorry, but if I was his mother, I'd be like, I don't want you in my house. I 
Emily: [00:08:31] agree. And sorry. One thing I forgot to mention his record was also expunged. What? Yeah. He committed two murders 
Liz: [00:08:40] of his own family members. Yeah. 
Emily: [00:08:44] Now he's released living with his mother and he gets a job at the state of California's department of public works.
I don't know what that means. All I know is that's crazy. He's 
Liz: [00:08:56] just like a normal working guy, 
Emily: [00:08:58] except he is six, nine and weighs 300 pounds. He's ginormous. Have you seen pictures of him? 
Liz: [00:09:06] Yeah, he's, he's huge. It's really another, no other way to 
Emily: [00:09:10] describe it. So he actually has this idea that he wants to become police officer 
Liz: [00:09:16] and he, sorry to stop you, but why do so many serial killers want to pursue careers in.
Like law enforcement. I know who was the other person. I know there was, well from episode one when I did the happy face killer, he wanted to be part of the RCMP and that didn't work out. Oh yeah. And I'm pretty sure there's one more, but it just feels like a common theme. You're 
Emily: [00:09:38] right. Oh, and I did the serial killer who was in the military.
Yeah. I forget his 
Liz: [00:09:42] name. The creepy one who wore underwear 
ladies' 
Emily: [00:09:45] underwear. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes. Again, another part of the recipe, he wanted to become a police officer, uh, specifically a state trooper. And they actually wouldn't let him not because he murdered people. They didn't know that it was because he was too tall.
And I guess you can't be, there's a certain height limit. 
Liz: [00:10:08] I'm sure there's some sort of fitness test. He probably couldn't pass. I'm pretty sure it was because he was too tall. Okay. That's crazy. 
Emily: [00:10:16] But either way, he wants to become a police officer and he couldn't, however, that did not stop him from going to a bar called the jury room where all the police officers in town would hang out and he befriended them to the point that all the police officers loved and camper, and they called him big ed.
And everyone said big ed is just this like giant goofball. He's the nicest guy in the world, like too bad. He couldn't be a cup. Oh, that's just big Eddie. Like he's a Teddy bear. 
Liz: [00:10:48] Eddie. The Teddy 
Emily: [00:10:48] at this is ed Kemper. I know he was so close with some of the police officers that one gave him a training school badge.
Another gave him a pair of handcuffs. And a third, let ed camper borrow a gun, 
Liz: [00:11:04] shaking my head over here. So 
Emily: [00:11:05] while he's doing this and enjoying his time with his fellow police officer friends at the jury room, he is also in the habit of picking up female hitchhikers. However, he would always bring them where they want to go and release them.
It wasn't until May 7th, 1972, when he gets a fight with his mother and he begins driving. He then sees two young college students, Marianne Peshy, and Anita Lucia Tessa gone into his car. He manually strangled and stabbed them both then later dismembered and it capitated their bodies. They were both 18 years old.
Later that year on September 14th, 1972 Kemper picked up 15 year old. I outgo CU who had decided to hitchhike rather than wait for a bus to take her to dance class. He picked her up and attempted to suffocate her, but then he raped her when she was still alive and then strangled her with her own scarf.
He also engaged in necrophilia with her. So we talked about this. Kimber's a huge guy. How is he getting these girls into his cars? The police actually asked him this later in life when they interview him and he says, quote, Some girls weren't really convinced. So I looked at my watch and I sighed like, come on.
I don't have time. And that always convinced them the ad, the impression I was in a hurry and didn't have time to hurt them. That's. 
Liz: [00:12:37] Diabolical 
Emily: [00:12:38] crazy. So now January 7th, 1973, this is a year after the first three murders. I just mentioned Cynthia and shawl is 19 years old. Ed picks her up and shoots her in the head with a pistol and also engages in necrophilia with her corpse.
Then just a month later on February 5th, 1973, Kemper used a campus parking sticker. His mother had given him to facilitate a double murder. He drove to the university where he offered a ride to two students, Rosalind Thorpe, and Alice Lou shortly after picking them up, he shot the two woman in their stomachs.
He then put a blanket on both of them, but they were dead, but a blanket to cover their wounds and drove past campus security at the gates, stopping to tell them that the two woman in the backseat of his car were just too drunk and passed out and they let him go, oh my 
Liz: [00:13:38] God. 
Emily: [00:13:39] He later brought them home and decapitated, both women.
So now that brings us to April 19th, 1973, and ed gets into yet another fight with his mother. And this time he snaps, he murders his mother who is now 52 years old by bludgeoning her in her sleep with a claw hammer. He then dismembers and engages her, her body and necrophilia. Yeah. I 
Liz: [00:14:05] have minimal comments here because I just can't even produce words.
After this, 
Emily: [00:14:10] he went to the bar to have a drink, but decided he had not satisfied his craving for murder. So he called over his mother's friend, Sally Hallett, who was 59 and killed her by strangulation. So after murdering his mother and her friend, He took to his car and just drove away. And after four days of roaming around and driving on the road, he then calls his friends who he's, who are police officers.
And he tells them everything and they don't believe him. Oh my God, I can't. And the police officers say big ed, why are you doing such a weird joke? And they hang up. That 
Liz: [00:14:54] is wild. 
Emily: [00:14:56] So then big ed calls back and he starts giving them details about crimes that they didn't release to the public. And finally, the police officers who are still skeptical, say, maybe big ed did do this 
Liz: [00:15:09] and please send a whole force to arrest him because he's enormous and 
Emily: [00:15:14] good point.
And they go, they go and send a few men to arrest him. He immediately admits to everything he's done. And he requests to be sentenced to death and executed by the electrical chair, which was like his childhood fantasy. If you remember, however, due to California, having temporarily suspended capital punishment, he was denied this and instead he has to serve eight concurrent life sentences in prison.
Liz: [00:15:46] That's what always has fascinated me about ed Kemper is that he could have continued on yeah. For at least a little while until someone realized that his mother was dead. Oh yeah. But he just decided to turn himself in. Doesn't make him a good guy. No, it certainly does not. Uh, 
Emily: [00:16:03] two other things to end on, which are interesting was ed Kemper was not the only active serial killer in the Santa Cruz in the seventies.
In fact, there were two other men, Herbert and Whelan and John Linley Frazier. And this was actually such a huge deal for the police because they didn't want to admit that they had one serial killer when body showed up. They certainly didn't want to admit that they had three serial killers. So in like hot one of these guys, I forget who was first, let's say it was like, Herbert.
And then the killings kept happening. The police were freaking out and actually two of Kemper's victims, they gave credit to, um, th they gave credit to herb Mullin. So the police just had no idea, you know, what was going 
Liz: [00:16:50] on? Does it mirror, did the seventies have a lot of serial killers? They had a lot 
Emily: [00:16:54] of serial killers, but that was, it was still new, you know, in the seventies, people didn't realize how dangerous it was.
Yeah. Yeah. Now I want to end on a quote. This is so disgusting of at camper. And it says when I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things, one part of me wants to take her home, be real nice and treat her right. The other part wonders what her head would look like on a stick. 
Liz: [00:17:20] Oh my God.
I've definitely read that quote before. Yeah. And now I will not sleep tonight. 
Emily: [00:17:28] I'm like gagging. Sorry. Right now, just 
Liz: [00:17:30] thinking about such an interesting case study though, and doesn't, don't make this up, that he actually assists the police in talking about other serial killers in their mindsets. Yeah, 
Emily: [00:17:40] that's true.
So what the FBI was first forming their behavioral psych or their serial killer behavioral unit, which there's a whole Netflix show called Mindhunter about, he was one of the first people that was interviewed and he gave some really insightful information. And something else that he does from prison, he reads audio books.
Like he actually is taped reading audio books. Yes. And I'm not talking about serial killer books. I'm talking about random books that people enjoy reading. Like he's the 
Liz: [00:18:12] narrator, he's the narrator. That's so 
Emily: [00:18:15] creepy. I don't understand why he won't allow that, but I guess he's happy because he says he can give back to the world.
I don't believe that I don't think he's cares about anything. 
Liz: [00:18:25] Um, no, I don't believe that for one second. 
Emily: [00:18:28] I think it's like a power thing. He can still reach the outside world. 
Liz: [00:18:31] Yeah, that's true. Well, we're such psychologist, I 
Emily: [00:18:35] think just to end, ed Kemper obviously is creepy. And he's your typical serial killer, but being friends with the police he's too close for comfort.
Liz: [00:18:44] Yeah. I mean it does remind me of Ted Bundy. Yeah, 
Emily: [00:18:49] for sure. Just shows how fucking 
Liz: [00:18:51] crazy these people are. And just because someone is charming does not mean you should trust them. And 
Emily: [00:18:56] that's why I recommended law and order SVU because the kid went to, I 
Liz: [00:19:00] know I figured that tied in. Yeah. All. Thanks. 
Emily: [00:19:03] Em, passing over the notes to you.
Liz: [00:19:16] Okay. Now I wish that I could tell you that my story wouldn't be as depressing, but unfortunately it's really sad. It's 
Emily: [00:19:25] one of those episodes. Yeah, it's dark. 
Liz: [00:19:29] Oh, okay. So I'm going to be telling the sad story of the Cheshire family murders. Hmm. Don't like that. My references include USA today. Dot com ranker.com and Wikipedia.
Now, the reason I picked this is because the case always has stuck with me one, because it's so sad. And two, because one of my sisters actually lives in Cheshire, Connecticut with her husband and two kids. 
Emily: [00:19:58] Oh. So it hits close to home. Exactly. 
Liz: [00:20:01] So it like, it really could have been anyone. On a Sunday evening in July, 2007, 48 year old Jennifer Hawk, Pettit and her 11 year old daughter, McKayla went grocery shopping at their local stop and shop in Cheshire, Connecticut.
Oh my God. I'm already going to cry. It's horrible. I'm so sorry guys. Apparently Mikayla wanted to help her mom cook dinner for the family that night, including for her older sister's 17 year old Hailey and her father at 50 year old William. Unfortunately, they unknowingly crossed paths with pure evil on this trip to the store.
26 year old Joe. Oh my God, fuck me. I'm not gonna pronounce this right at all. I meant to listen to this 26 year old Joshua  notice the mother daughter duo and took an interest in them. No, he followed them to their home, but then he went back to his house shortly after this. He sent a text to his acquaintance, 44 year old Steven Hayes.
And he said, I'm chomping at the bit to get started. Nita margarita soon. Hey is said we still on Combs. Jet-ski said yes. He said soon. And he replied, I'm putting the kid to bed, hold your horses. 
Emily: [00:21:20] How do these two men know each other? 
Liz: [00:21:23] Well, I'll get there later. Pave says, dude, the horses want to get loose.
LOL. I'm going to cry. So a few hours later at three o'clock in the morning, Combs jet ski and Hayes drove to the pet at home with the intention of robbing them. They found Dr. Pettit asleep on a couch in what they described as like a sunroom on the first floor. And they beat him viciously with a baseball bat, and then they dragged him into the basement where they tied him to a pipe with zip ties and rope.
How'd they get in, um, an unlocked door in the basement. Oh no. Yeah. Lock your freaking doors always. So now that the man of the house was secured and out of the way they could continue on with the burglary. The two men went upstairs, where they found the mother, Jennifer and the two daughters asleep in their rooms.
They tied all of them to their bed posts with the zip ties and put pillow cases over their heads. After this, the two of them. Ransack the house to see what kind of cash and valuables they could find. Ultimately, they were pretty disappointed with what they found in the house. However, they found a check register with $40,000 recorded.
Now I had to look it up. I had to look up what a check register was because. We don't use texts these days anymore. It's basically just a checkbook recording. So like we deposited X check and there was a total of $40,000. So the balance of the account. Yeah. So then they decided they would steal $15,000 from the family, a good chunk of money.
I don't know why they picked that number, but they did. Why not pay that off stupid? I'm not sure. They're not the brightest. At some point Hayes leaves the house with two cans that he stole from the Pettit's and he drives to a local gas station where he purchases $10 worth of gasoline. Now we know this for a fact because there's surveillance tape of it.
When he returned, he took Jennifer, the mother and said, we're going to the bank and you're going to take out $15,000 from your line of credit. So mind you, this began at three o'clock in the morning. It now has to be, I don't know, 7:00 AM whenever banks open. Oh my God. The anxiety. So yeah, these people have been tied up for at least four hours at this point.
So Hayes takes Jennifer to the bank. So she goes into the bank and she tells the bank teller that there are men holding her family hostage and that they were threatening to kill them all. So the bank teller calls nine one one while Jennifer is still inside the bank and, and they report the situation.
No, I'm just sighing because I know what happens. I guess Jennifer had told the bank teller that the home invaders were quote being knives. And she really thought that they just wanted the money. And as soon as they got the money, they would leave. So the bank teller gave her $15,000. And Jennifer went back to the car to go back to her family because they're all being held hostage.
The police responded by assessing the situation. I'm using air quotes here and setting up a vehicle perimeter around the house without revealing that they were there. So they could have intercepted Hayes and Jennifer on the way back to the house, but they didn't know what was going on inside the house.
So, you know, if they were going to kill it, People inside the house, which I'm not a cop clearly. Um, but it just makes me really upset that the police were at the scene of the crime when, oh, the police completely fucked this up. I know it is so depressing. So when Hayes returns to the Pettit house with Jennifer and the $15,000, he learned that his partner, while they were gone, had sexually assaulted the younger daughter, Mikayla.
How old is she? 11. No. And so what Hayes says happens is comish, jet-ski says to him, why don't you get squared up by assaulting the wife? So he does that in the living room. And meanwhile, Dr. Pettit could hear his wife's assault taking place from downstairs. No. And he felt a jolt of adrenaline, which allowed him to actually break free of his restraints.
I mean, not all of them, his feet were still tied together and he was seriously beaten. Yeah. So it's not like he was sprinting up the stairs or anything, but he got himself loose. Now coma Shefsky notices that Dr. Pettit had escaped. So he comes in to tell Hayes what was going on while he's in the middle of assaulting Jennifer, which then prompted Hayes to strangle her.
No, because things just went sideways. And I mean, I don't know what they were thinking because it went from burglary to escalation real quick. 
Emily: [00:26:26] I honestly think they came in with the plan 
Liz: [00:26:29] too. Murder. Yeah, but they try to play it off at their trial. Like they didn't assholes. So once Jennifer is dead, they decided that they need to destroy the entire crime scene.
So they go on to pour gasoline onto Jennifer's lifeless body and then all around the house. And then onto McKayla and Hayley who were both still alive, these men are horrific. Like truly have no words. So they set the house on fire and they leave to the police, catch them. Unfortunately, Mikayla and Haley, both died of smoke inhalation, but Dr.
Pettit was able to escape the house and crawl to a neighbor's house for help. And the neighbor says that they didn't even immediately recognize Dr. Pettit because he was so his face was completely bashed in. So Hazen comes Jeff ski. They fled the scene in the Pettit's family car. Because again, they're geniuses and they're spotted by police immediately.
And they're arrested after crashing into a police car because the police again were waiting outside the house and all in all the home invasion lasted seven hours. So horrific. Now I'm going to go into a little background about the perpetrators. I was going to finish on it, but I thought we should finish talking about the victims instead.
Emily: [00:27:47] Can I make one comment about the police? Yes. I remember listening to a podcast where. The husband and father was running out and he could see the police and said, like go inside. And they simply didn't. It was just because these are small town cops and they are so 
Liz: [00:28:06] ill-equipped. And I read, um, obviously the police had to give some sort of conference after this happened and the chief of police or whoever whomever's in charge there said, you know, my God, they did exactly what they were trained to do, which I don't know.
It was nothing. I'm not sure. 
Emily: [00:28:23] That is so sad. 
Liz: [00:28:24] Yeah. I don't know how any of them like live with themselves. I know they didn't know what was going on, but still okay. So let's talk about these two absolute pieces of garbage, garbage humans. Stephen Hayes was first convicted of a crime as an adult when he was 16 years old, he was paroled in 1982.
And between then and the Cheshire crime, which was in 2007. He was arrested nearly 30 times. I'm shaking my head. Now, most of those years were spent in jail, but in 2006, he was living in a halfway house, which is where he met comish Shefsky ah, now he was born to a 16 year old mother and was adopted by some family, all in all.
It doesn't seem like he had a bad life, but he committed his first burglary at the age of 14. And in 2002, he was convicted of 18 home invasions. Oh my God. And the attorney said that comish, Shefsky remembered every detail of every burglary that he had committed. And he also told him that he would go into the rooms where occupants were sleeping after he finished taking what he wanted from the houses.
And he would listen to them, breathe. What a psychopath. Yeah. And he said he did this because he enjoyed the feeling of invading people's homes and violating their security. I'm just 
Emily: [00:29:50] shaking my head. 
Liz: [00:29:51] Like, what is wrong with seriously? What is wrong with you? 
Emily: [00:29:55] And both these guys had normal lives. Yeah. 
Liz: [00:30:00] So both of them were convicted.
And sentenced to death by lethal injection. However, in 2015, Connecticut got rid of the death penalty. So now they're just serving life sentences separately 
Emily: [00:30:14] or together 
Liz: [00:30:15] they're in two different prisons. Good. Yeah. And I, I know that Komen, Shefsky tried to commit suicide in prison and didn't succeed thankfully like brought in prison.
Yeah. 
Emily: [00:30:28] Did any of them give a statement? 
Liz: [00:30:32] Yeah. So Steven Hayes at his sentencing or hearing or something like that, he actually apologized and said, this was back. When he thought he was going to get a lethal injection. He said, basically, I'm I deserve this. And I've caused so much pain and hopefully the family members and stuff like that will have some sort of peace when I'm gone, which.
I just don't even buy no, then don't do it in the first place. Yeah. But then on the opposite end of the spectrum coma Shefsky was saying it. I was convicted of this crime that I didn't commit because he was annoyed that he got convicted of going in there with the intent of murdering them. And he said, that's not what happened.
And it just, things escalated and it wasn't planned that way. So he shouldn't have been convicted of that. What a piece of shit. I know. I mean, he literally didn't even say that he was sorry, the poor dad, what what's he doing? Yeah. So now let's talk about the victims and survivor. Okay. So Jennifer Pettit was a nurse and co-director of the health center at Cheshire academy, which was a private boarding school.
She met William, her husband when she was an oncology nurse at the children's hospital of Pittsburgh. And he was a third year medical student at the university of Pittsburgh. And the two of them had been married for 22 years. Cuties 17 year old Hailey had just graduated high school where she was a varsity athlete and an honor roll student.
And she was scheduled to start her freshman year at Dartmouth, that August, where she was going to study medicine. Oh my God. My heart is breaking. And 11 year old McKayla was a student at chase collegiate school. At the time of her death. She really enjoyed cooking for her family as she did on the night of the murders.
And she idolized Rachel Ray. Dr. William Pettit was the only survivor. He was a successful endocrinologist, but he has not returned to his practice. Since this tragedy took place. He focuses on the foundations that have been set up to honor the memory of his family. There are scholarships in both daughters' names and in a press conference.
During the trials, Dr. Pettit is quoted as saying. Mikayla was an 11 year old little girl tortured and killed in her own bedroom, surrounded by a stuffed animals. Haley had a great future. She was strong and courageous, and Jennifer helps so many kids. I'm 
Emily: [00:33:05] in tears. That's 
Liz: [00:33:06] so sad. I know I'm literally crying.
Also. I was watching a little today show clip of him from probably 2012 or something like that. And I just don't even know how he was speaking. And the interviewer was asking him. How do you deal with your survivor's guilt that you must have? And he basically said you don't and you just put it in like a little box in your head.
And sometimes it comes out and you'll have a bad day or a bad weekend and you can't stop thinking about it. And then he says he talks to his new wife and his little son because he got remarried. And he just tries to focus on that, but he said, obviously it's not something you're ever going to get over.
I'm so happy. He got remarried. Yeah. So in 2012, he married Christine Palu, who he met when she was volunteering for the Pettit family foundation. And they have a son named, I think William Jr. Hmm. Let's this is so horrible. It's this one is so sad because there's really no reason for it. 
Emily: [00:34:12] Liz told me she was doing a family murder.
And I said, please don't tell me it was the family in Connecticut. 
Liz: [00:34:18] I, you know, I was looking up cases today. I came across a different case. Um, that was, it's kind of similar where a family died in a fire, but they had been robbed. Uh, so I was going to do that one, but then. It reminded me of the Cheshire case.
And since that one sort of has stuck in my head, um, I decided to go with that one. 
Emily: [00:34:38] Let's just end it with saying, please write us a 
Liz: [00:34:40] review, please, guys, if you're enjoying the show, please write us a review on apple podcast, rate us, and please send us, uh, some crimes to look into because we love hearing from you.
We love you guys. .