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Speaker 5: Hope you are now listening to True Murder, The Most
Speaker 5: Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that
Speaker 5: have written about him Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 5: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 4: Good Evening.
Speaker 6: This is the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers
Speaker 6: in True Crime History and the authors that have written
Speaker 6: about them with their host stands of Haskey. The affluent
Speaker 6: suburb of Cheshire, Connecticut, seemed like the perfect place for
Speaker 6: doctor William PETTITTT and his wife, Jennifer Hawk Pettitt, to
Speaker 6: raise their two lovely daughters until July twenty third, two
Speaker 6: thousand seven, when, according to the police, two ex cons
Speaker 6: invaded the Pettitt home, hoping to embark on a routine robbery,
Speaker 6: one that would ultimately prove deadly. One unfolded at three
Speaker 6: hundred Sorghum Mill Drive. Was a tragic and horrifying sequence
Speaker 6: of events that shocked the community and made headlines across
Speaker 6: the nation. Before the morning was over, Missus Hawk Pettitt
Speaker 6: and one of the daughters would be sexually assaulted and
Speaker 6: the entire house would go up in flames, and only
Speaker 6: doctor Pettitt, his head bloodied, his legs bound, would manage
Speaker 6: to escape with his life with the help of neighbors
Speaker 6: and local police. The two success two suspects were soon
Speaker 6: found captured. Now Joshua Commas Commas ar Jeski and Stephen
Speaker 6: Hayes away trial for murder.
Speaker 4: The book.
Speaker 6: This evening that we are featuring is in the Middle
Speaker 6: of the Night with my host, journalist and author Brian McDonald.
Speaker 6: Thank you for interviewing to this agreeing to this interview, Brian,
Speaker 6: and welcome to the program, Brian McDonald.
Speaker 4: Hey Dan, how are you? Tony?
Speaker 6: Very well, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 6: A great book, by the way.
Speaker 4: No problem. Thank you.
Speaker 6: Now, first off, let me ask the question I usually
Speaker 6: asked the guest because I'm always interested in it. Usually
Speaker 6: it's to an interesting answer. What made you decide to
Speaker 6: write a book about this particular case?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I mean, first of all, because of
Speaker 4: how shocking it was. I'll give you. I'll give you
Speaker 4: a little bit of the background. I didn't I didn't
Speaker 4: open the paper. Now this was front page news. I
Speaker 4: live in New York City. This was front plate page
Speaker 4: New York Times News, this murder in Connecticut for for
Speaker 4: a while after it happened. And it wasn't like I
Speaker 4: opened the paper and said, Jesse, I want to write
Speaker 4: about this, And it didn't unfold that way at all.
Speaker 4: I had written a book from my publisher, a true
Speaker 4: crime book called Safe Harbor. It was about a woman
Speaker 4: that was murdered on Nantucket, and so I had a
Speaker 4: little bit of a track record with Saint Martin's True
Speaker 4: Crime and my agent and my editor from the first
Speaker 4: true crime book I did, conspired and called me and
Speaker 4: asked me if I would be interested in writing about
Speaker 4: the Cheshire murders. So I didn't jump into it right away.
Speaker 4: It was such a heinous crime. It was, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, it involved children's sexual abuse all you know,
Speaker 4: things that can keep you up at night, you know,
Speaker 4: And so I but after reading about it and doing
Speaker 4: some initial you know, investigating into it, I decided that
Speaker 4: it was a story and it was a story that
Speaker 4: resonated so so clearly with in Cold Blood, you know,
Speaker 4: the granddaddy of ultrue crimes, that it was an opportunity
Speaker 4: that I thought I couldn't. I couldn't pass up, So
Speaker 4: so I did it.
Speaker 6: Now, let's go back and set the scene for where
Speaker 6: this crime takes place. The community to doctor William Pettitt
Speaker 6: and his wife and the daughter lived. Give us that background,
Speaker 6: give us to what the life of doctor Pettitt would
Speaker 6: be in his family. What were they like typically, what
Speaker 6: was a community like? How big is the community and
Speaker 6: where is it geographically to a bigger city where we
Speaker 6: might recognize.
Speaker 4: Okay, it's a it's a bedroom community, Cheshire, Connecticut. It's
Speaker 4: a beautiful, bucolic New England town. It's like the towns
Speaker 4: you see in uh in movies about about New England.
Speaker 4: It's uh, there's some farming elements still there, but it's
Speaker 4: been built up through uh, you know, some waves of
Speaker 4: affluence and uh. It's a bedroom community to Hartford. Not
Speaker 4: only Hartford where the insurance companies, uh, you know, the
Speaker 4: big insurance companies have their headquarters, but also to Yale
Speaker 4: Yale University, and a lot of people that work at
Speaker 4: at and for the university live in Cheshire, Connecticut. Now,
Speaker 4: doctor Pettitt was a in the end, the chronologist. His
Speaker 4: wife was a nurse, worked in a local private School,
Speaker 4: Cheshire Academy of very well known uh in in the
Speaker 4: area of private school and she was the school nurse.
Speaker 4: Doctor Pettitt had a private practice and also worked out
Speaker 4: of a hospital up there. He was very well known
Speaker 4: in the community, very well respected in the community. They
Speaker 4: had had two daughters, Haley who was about to enter Dartmouth.
Speaker 4: She was going to follow her father's footsteps. He had
Speaker 4: graduate waited from Dartmouth. She was going to study pre
Speaker 4: law and michaela who was eleven at the time. And
Speaker 4: michaela precocious young lady who was a fan of Rachel
Speaker 4: Ray and wanted to be a foodie, a chef, a
Speaker 4: celebrity chef and what have you. So they were really
Speaker 4: the idyllic family. I mean, it was a perfect little block.
Speaker 4: They lived on. Sorgam Mill Drive is a you know
Speaker 4: as a block replicated thousands of times throughout North America.
Speaker 4: It's the kind of block you want to live on,
Speaker 4: you want to raise a family on. It's something like
Speaker 4: this happening on a street like that is so incongruous,
Speaker 4: it's it's it's absolutely shocking. So it was like the
Speaker 4: perfect setting for a family, for a for the doctor
Speaker 4: Pettitt's family.
Speaker 6: Now, let's go to the main characters in this tragic tale.
Speaker 6: Joshua Coomas, Komasar.
Speaker 4: It's Commisar Jefski. Yeah, it's yeah Jeki.
Speaker 6: Okay, we got it.
Speaker 4: That name. First of all, Dan, let me just give
Speaker 4: you a little background. I mean, the name itself is
Speaker 4: was you know, it's a famous Russian name. His Joshua
Speaker 4: was adopted into the family. But I mean, you're not
Speaker 4: alone tripping over that name. Everybody trips over all the
Speaker 4: journalists do, all the law enforcement people throughout his life,
Speaker 4: everybody associated can't get this name out. But the name,
Speaker 4: you know, it's Russian, that's that's snow Shock. But it's
Speaker 4: a very famous His grandfather, his adoptive grandfather, Joshua was adopted,
Speaker 4: who was a Russian uh director, a very well known director,
Speaker 4: Russian director in the in the Bolshoi Theater, the famous
Speaker 4: Bolshoi Ballet, the Bolshoi Theater, moved to immigrated to the
Speaker 4: United States, and uh you know, uh, well, I'll tell
Speaker 4: you a little bit about how Joshua's family came out.
Speaker 4: But go ahead, I'm sorry to throw up what was
Speaker 4: your question?
Speaker 6: Oh no, no, I just it's Joshua's life. You've already
Speaker 6: alluded to that he's adopted, So tell us go just
Speaker 6: back a little bit to how he came to be
Speaker 6: adopted into this wealthy, affluent family.
Speaker 4: Okay, he was, you know, he was adopted at birth.
Speaker 4: He didn't know his birth parents. His he found a
Speaker 4: little bit out about them later on. And his mother
Speaker 4: was only sixteen, his biological mother was only sixteen. His
Speaker 4: father was just a little bit older, maybe nineteen twenty.
Speaker 4: There was the indications that there was you know, that
Speaker 4: there might have been drugs involved in the biological parents,
Speaker 4: and that's why they put Joshua up for adoption. But
Speaker 4: that didn't do anything to give him a bad life,
Speaker 4: because he traded He traded up by being adopted. He
Speaker 4: was adopted the Commissary Jessky. His parents, his adoptive parents,
Speaker 4: Ben and Jude Commercer Jessky, were by all indications, a lovely, lovely,
Speaker 4: lovely couple. There were Christians, they were fervent Christians. They, uh,
Speaker 4: Joshua had belong to a series of of I want,
Speaker 4: I don't want to say fundamentalist churches, but in that vein,
Speaker 4: you know, very very religious people and and they were also, uh,
Speaker 4: the surroundings were just amazing. His his grandfather, not the
Speaker 4: Russian grandfather, because his grandmother married. It gets a little
Speaker 4: convoluted here, but his grandmother married the Russian grandfather died.
Speaker 4: His grandmothers married a man by the name of Chamberlain,
Speaker 4: who was a actually a pretty well known writer. He
Speaker 4: was a columnist for several big magazines and also a
Speaker 4: book reviewer for the New York Times. And he owned
Speaker 4: a sixty five acre estate in Cheshire, and it was
Speaker 4: surrounded by horse farms. It was it's beautiful. It's a
Speaker 4: wooded streams, babbling brooks, you name it. It was just a
Speaker 4: beautiful place. And that's where Joshua grew up. His his
Speaker 4: parents had a small house. They called it the homestead.
Speaker 4: It makes it sound like it's a bigger place than
Speaker 4: it actually was, you know. And it was kind of
Speaker 4: ramshackled when when I went up in sort. But the
Speaker 4: I mean he had he had every every advantage. Now,
Speaker 4: early on he started to show some he started to
Speaker 4: show some behavioral problems and and and they had to
Speaker 4: take him out of public schools and his mom homeschooled him.
Speaker 4: But that that didn't inhibit any any education at all.
Speaker 4: I mean he he his mother was a librarian. His
Speaker 4: a grandfather who lived on the estate with this, was
Speaker 4: a writer. His grandmother was a ballet dancer. I mean
Speaker 4: they had all of this influence of arts and and
Speaker 4: and and letters and and uh. His father was U
Speaker 4: Ben commercer. Jeesky was a carpenter and an electricians. So
Speaker 4: we had you know, tutelage in in uh you know,
Speaker 4: working with his hands and everything. I mean, had a
Speaker 4: wonderful uh childhood. It was just uh, it was just great.
Speaker 4: But but around the age of twelve he started to
Speaker 4: get he had this and you know, I'll tell you
Speaker 4: a little bit. I actually spoke to him on a
Speaker 4: number of occasions and uh and had a correspondence with him,
Speaker 4: uh via letter letters for for for many months leading
Speaker 4: up to the trial. But I'll tell you that later.
Speaker 4: So that's how I have I'll let us information comes
Speaker 4: firsthand that comes from him. You know, when he was
Speaker 4: around twelve, he broke into a house he was coming home.
Speaker 4: He used to he used to uh leave the house
Speaker 4: like hit wait till his parents went to sleep, and
Speaker 4: then about twelve o'clock and nine one o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 4: he'd get out of the house. He'd go out his
Speaker 4: bedroom window and jump on the garage and then go
Speaker 4: into the woods, you know, and spend the night in
Speaker 4: the woods. And he'd always make it back in time
Speaker 4: before six o'clock and when his father would wake up,
Speaker 4: so his father never knew he was out of the house,
Speaker 4: but he was. He was doing these night night voyages
Speaker 4: or whatever through the woods by himself, you know. And
Speaker 4: one day he got he ventured father. Then he thought
Speaker 4: and the sun was coming up, and he knew he
Speaker 4: was going to get caught, so he broke into a house.
Speaker 4: He's twelve years old. He broke into a house, stole
Speaker 4: a set of keys for a car, and took the
Speaker 4: car out of the driveway and drove it home so
Speaker 4: he could beat his father getting up so he wouldn't
Speaker 4: get caught. And that's how his life of crime started
Speaker 4: and was pretty big. It was for a twelve year old.
Speaker 4: There was a pretty big entrance to the last year
Speaker 4: rime stealing a car. But something he realized how and
Speaker 4: this is according to him, and you know how much
Speaker 4: of it is, you know, Joshua has a tendency to
Speaker 4: exaggerate a little bit. I think it doesn't sit his
Speaker 4: but his I mean, the crimes that he would commit
Speaker 4: over the next fourteen years leading up to the murders
Speaker 4: in Cheshire were just enormous. I mean, even if only
Speaker 4: fifty percent of them were true, it was an enormous
Speaker 4: life of crime, and an amazing life of crime. He
Speaker 4: found out, he said to me, how easy it was
Speaker 4: to break into the house. So he started breaking into
Speaker 4: the houses when he was twelve. He'd get on his bicycle,
Speaker 4: he'd have he'd go out the window of his bedroom,
Speaker 4: like I said, he'd get on his bicycle. He had
Speaker 4: a camouflage outfit that he sent away for you know,
Speaker 4: like a mail order camouflage outfit. He had a dark
Speaker 4: skull cap. Later on he bought night vision goggles, you know,
Speaker 4: from the back of a magazine something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean, I'm laughing, but I'm not. It's
Speaker 4: not it's not funny at all. I don't I don't mean,
Speaker 4: I don't mean to diminish what what happened. But you
Speaker 4: can imagine this kid at twelve thinking that he was,
Speaker 4: you know, the burglar, you know, par excellence, and and
Speaker 4: he was. He started breaking into houses by the dozens.
Speaker 4: When he was twelve, he broke into houses all over
Speaker 4: this town of Cheshire and middle in central Connecticut. He
Speaker 4: broke into houses around the Pettit neighborhood where the you know,
Speaker 4: the murders would happen. Many years later, he by his
Speaker 4: own account, broke into at least two hundred houses during
Speaker 4: his teens. Sometimes he wouldn't take anything. He would sit
Speaker 4: in the house. He said, he wrote this whole letter
Speaker 4: of explaining how it was being in a house with
Speaker 4: the people sleeping upstairs and them not knowing he was there,
Speaker 4: and the feelings that he had. He'd listened to the
Speaker 4: sounds of the house, the apes, the house settling, the
Speaker 4: wind in the eaves. I mean, it was really really creepy.
Speaker 4: He had this, you know, long, long explanation. Sometimes he wouldn't,
Speaker 4: like I said, he wouldn't take anything. Sometimes he'd just
Speaker 4: take a picture off the wall, just to like screw
Speaker 4: with the people's minds a little bit, you know. I
Speaker 4: mean there was something. I mean, obviously there was a
Speaker 4: something was something was a mess or something was wrong
Speaker 4: with his you know, with his psyche early on. But
Speaker 4: he didn't get caught. He wouldn't get caught he finally
Speaker 4: when he was about I want to say, sixteen years old,
Speaker 4: he started a fire in an abandoned car dealership in
Speaker 4: Cheshire and he got caught for that. And because he
Speaker 4: got caught for that, some of the prior crimes came out.
Speaker 4: Either he gave it up himself or I'm not really
Speaker 4: sure how it happened, but he faced the first of
Speaker 4: a series of judges in his late teens that would uh,
Speaker 4: he had like a he had this he has this
Speaker 4: way about him now when I interviewed him, I sort
Speaker 4: a lot. You know, it's that he comes across so likable,
Speaker 4: so polite, so soft spoken. So you know that people
Speaker 4: wanted to believe throughout his life that there was something
Speaker 4: in there worth saving. You know, there was something he
Speaker 4: has these uh a way of looking at you that
Speaker 4: that that has an innocence about it, you know. And
Speaker 4: uh and and and he started to get breaks. You know,
Speaker 4: one judge after or another gave him you know, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, put him in like the parents the first time,
Speaker 4: the first arrest, the parents talked to judge into letting
Speaker 4: them put him in a Christian Christian camp, and he
Speaker 4: went into a Christian camp and up in New Hampshire,
Speaker 4: and he spent some time up there, and then he
Speaker 4: got caught for something else, and the judge said to him,
Speaker 4: you know, you need some psychological help. So they put
Speaker 4: him in this psycholog This wasn't a mental hospital, but
Speaker 4: it was a hospital for trouble teens, a place for
Speaker 4: trouble teens, but it wasn't jail. And then the third
Speaker 4: judge he got caught for something. The third judge said
Speaker 4: to him, you know, either go in the army or
Speaker 4: now he's nineteen, either go on the army or we'll
Speaker 4: put you in jail. So he joined the army. He
Speaker 4: would ultimately go a well from the army Army reserves
Speaker 4: about a year later, or less than a year later.
Speaker 4: But you know, there was so many missed opportunities early
Speaker 4: on where and in the meantime he amassed this like
Speaker 4: enormous number of burglaries, and you know, people were looking
Speaker 4: the other way. People kept thinking that there's something about
Speaker 4: this guy that's that's not you know, that's you know,
Speaker 4: he's too nice of a boy to be worried about,
Speaker 4: you know, But he wasn't. You know, he had already
Speaker 4: started to formulate a personality that wasn't wasn't a nice
Speaker 4: boy at all. It wasn't a nice boy at all.
Speaker 6: So one of the things that you didn't talk about
Speaker 6: we could talk about a little bit later. But I
Speaker 6: think it's fair that at least fair to his character.
Speaker 6: Not that I put that much weight on it, but
Speaker 6: but the fact is that, again, a lot of this
Speaker 6: stuff is coming from.
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Speaker 6: Webster details his perspective. He's telling you this so you
Speaker 6: have no way to really verify. But in the same instance,
Speaker 6: to be fair, he says that at six years old
Speaker 6: that uh, there was two more adopted children, and there
Speaker 6: was an older boy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: He characterizes not as moless station. So anybody's gonna he
Speaker 6: said it was outright, flat out rape and was torturous
Speaker 6: for him for I don't know how much time. Maybe
Speaker 6: you can tell us a little bit about that, because
Speaker 6: I mean, if there is anything, if there's anything about
Speaker 6: his background that seems amiss, this is really this really
Speaker 6: is it and it and it It can be considered
Speaker 6: fairly well, very serious de bite his idyllic.
Speaker 4: Background, considering considering what would happen on sorgum Mill Drive,
Speaker 4: which we'll talk about, you know, in a little bit,
Speaker 4: but considering what happened in the house that night, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you're absolutely right. I mean it has a huge, huge,
Speaker 4: and no doubt. Joshua goes to trial next next year,
Speaker 4: early next year, and no doubt that's going to play
Speaker 4: a large part in the defense of of of him.
Speaker 4: And what you're talking about his mother, Uh, it wasn't
Speaker 4: an adopted it was a She brought in two foster
Speaker 4: children and one of them was josh was six or
Speaker 4: seven at the time, maybe even younger. I don't I
Speaker 4: can't remember. For six yeah, six years old at the time.
Speaker 4: And this there was a boy and a girl of
Speaker 4: the foster children, and the boy was sixteen and according
Speaker 4: to Joshua, and it's and it's the court records because
Speaker 4: Joshua would would be arrested when he was twenty two
Speaker 4: and and in those records, in testimony from that from
Speaker 4: that trial, he uh, it came out that he had
Speaker 4: in fact been uh sexually assaulted by by this this
Speaker 4: Forster Forster boy, you know. And Joshua, you're right, Joshua says,
Speaker 4: and I think the quote is merciless rape, that he
Speaker 4: was and that it went on for months. You know,
Speaker 4: there's no way, I mean, even though it's court records,
Speaker 4: I guess there's no way short of putting his parents
Speaker 4: on the stand. And I you know, I don't really
Speaker 4: know whether they were completely because it went on for
Speaker 4: so long to substantiate it completely. But there's you know,
Speaker 4: there's I think there's there's also court records from psychiatrists,
Speaker 4: psychologists and what what have you that interviewed Joshua. So
Speaker 4: it's pretty there's a there's a pretty good chance that
Speaker 4: it actually occurred that he was raped when he was
Speaker 4: five or six by the by the older foster boy.
Speaker 4: So you're right. And and uh, like I said, what
Speaker 4: what would transpire on sorger Mill Drive would would certainly uh,
Speaker 4: you know that that is certainly a huge, huge part
Speaker 4: of his formative uh, his formation as a as a
Speaker 4: as a as a human being, but also as a
Speaker 4: as a criminal and as a you know, a criminal
Speaker 4: that committed one of that most heinous crimes in Connecticut
Speaker 4: state history. So you're right, yeap.
Speaker 6: Now the other perpetrator here, the other character in this
Speaker 6: is a man named Stephen Hayes. A lot more, a
Speaker 6: lot less interesting, but still for the official record, who
Speaker 6: was Stephen Hayes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Stephen, they were like a Mutton Jeff combination. They
Speaker 4: met on and they met in a halfway house. Stephen
Speaker 4: Hayes is quite a bit older than Joshua. He was
Speaker 4: a lifelong criminal. His first arrest was in his early twenties.
Speaker 4: It was believe it was a drug arrest, and then
Speaker 4: he would go on to have I think twenty it's
Speaker 4: either twenty three or twenty six more arrests during his lifetime.
Speaker 4: So he was an habitual criminal. Most of the arrest
Speaker 4: had to do with drugs and money for drugs and
Speaker 4: what have you. He was, no doubt, by the time
Speaker 4: he met Joshua, almost institutionalized because he had spent you know,
Speaker 4: a large majority of his of his adult life behind
Speaker 4: behind bars, you know, in a dozen or more different
Speaker 4: prisons in and around the state of Connecticut. So he was,
Speaker 4: you know, and and and during his trial, Hayes has
Speaker 4: already gone to trial, and his trial, there was a
Speaker 4: lot came out about his childhood. It wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 4: leave it to Beaver. It wasn't you know, the Huxtables
Speaker 4: by any stretch of the imagination. He had a rough childhood.
Speaker 4: His father was a uh you know, his father was
Speaker 4: in the wind early apparently left the family and the
Speaker 4: mother and uh, you know, they had it was it
Speaker 4: was a hard, hard, hard, hard, hard luck life, you
Speaker 4: know that he had. But he did. He also had
Speaker 4: two brothers who went on and did just fine, you know,
Speaker 4: So it wasn't you know, there's no excuse there for
Speaker 4: the life that he chose. And you know, like I said,
Speaker 4: it was, it's kind of a boring story. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like he'd get out of jail, it'd start to work,
Speaker 4: it'd start to smoke, crack'd start to steal to perpetuate
Speaker 4: his his habit, and then he'd get arrested and go
Speaker 4: back to jail. And that's that's the that was the
Speaker 4: life of Stephen Hayes. He met Joshua in a halfway house.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: It's called Stillman House, I believe. And it was on
Speaker 4: one of the many times he was in the parole
Speaker 4: process being paroled out into the into the world. And
Speaker 4: I always say this that you know, however you feel
Speaker 4: about that. I mean, there were so many there's so
Speaker 4: many parts about this crime that have like an evil
Speaker 4: aura aura or an element of evil to it. And
Speaker 4: the date that they met each other was kind of
Speaker 4: like one of those one of those things. They met
Speaker 4: on June sixth, two thousand and six, which is six
Speaker 4: six six, uh and uh, and that uh was you know,
Speaker 4: it probably means nothing, but it also was gave me
Speaker 4: a chill when I saw the when I saw the date.
Speaker 4: And uh, they uh, they hit it off right away.
Speaker 4: Hayes was kind of a happy, go lucky guy, if
Speaker 4: you can be as a as a lifelong convict, and
Speaker 4: he he was, uh a where Joshua was kind of
Speaker 4: a quiet, quiet guy. But somehow they hit it off.
Speaker 4: They liked each other, and uh, you know, when they
Speaker 4: did end up going out, they uh, I mean being
Speaker 4: let out of the halfway house into the into the world.
Speaker 4: They they remained friends and and at first they were,
Speaker 4: you know, they were trying. It looked, by all appearances,
Speaker 4: like they were trying to do, uh, you know, live
Speaker 4: a straight and narrow, you know, as clean and straight,
Speaker 4: straight and clean life. They both were going to cocaine
Speaker 4: anonymous meetings. They were they both became employed right away.
Speaker 4: They were doing some uh working for contractors. Joshua was
Speaker 4: putting roofs on on houses. Hayes. He got Hayes a job,
Speaker 4: but with his company, Hayes was also doing other things.
Speaker 4: And so it looked for a very short time like
Speaker 4: they were you know, trying to actually you know, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a right to you know, live their
Speaker 4: life in a law abiding manner.
Speaker 6: So now what did they plan to do? I mean
Speaker 6: you say they were working for a little bit. Uh,
Speaker 6: that was somewhat brief. But what was their original idea?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 6: Why did why did they even hook up? I mean
Speaker 6: Joshua liked the guy, and then obviously Hayes was impressed
Speaker 6: with Joshua, a very charismatic guy of very organized and
Speaker 6: and besides, Steve needed a break from Joshua. Was there
Speaker 6: something it sounded like originally that the most that maybe
Speaker 6: Hayes could have come up with is some kind of
Speaker 6: robbery of some sort or some burglerary. He knew that
Speaker 6: this guy could break into places. So what was your research?
Speaker 6: What did you find was the at least their initial plan.
Speaker 4: Well, like I said, initially they were working legitimately together.
Speaker 4: They were you know, Hayes had a plant to buy
Speaker 4: his own. He was borrowing cars he didn't have. He
Speaker 4: had to borrow his mom's car. He was living with
Speaker 4: his mother in a small town called Winstead up in
Speaker 4: central Connecticut, not too far from Cheshire, and he had
Speaker 4: to borrow his mom's car and friend's cars. So he
Speaker 4: was saving up for a truck, and part of his
Speaker 4: parole agreement was that he'd have a place to stay,
Speaker 4: and his mom signed off on that, and lord knows
Speaker 4: why she did, because he had, you know, so many
Speaker 4: times before put her in a position where, you know,
Speaker 4: where he didn't follow through on his promise, you know,
Speaker 4: he'd get high or something like that. So but this
Speaker 4: time it looked like he was going to do the
Speaker 4: right thing. He had saved a couple of thousand dollars
Speaker 4: to buy a car or a truck, and he was
Speaker 4: paying his mom rent, I think, and and you know,
Speaker 4: he was he was trying to live the right thing.
Speaker 4: But then and he was going to these meetings, he
Speaker 4: was going he was staying clean and sober, and but
Speaker 4: then he got high. I mean, it was as simple
Speaker 4: as that, because all of a sudden that there were
Speaker 4: the two or three thousand dollars that he had and
Speaker 4: a bank account was gone, and his mother got wind
Speaker 4: of that. His mother found out about that, and she
Speaker 4: gave him an ultimatum, having been through this so many
Speaker 4: times before with him, that that he had to get
Speaker 4: out of the house. So now he was going to
Speaker 4: violate his parole if his mother throw him out of
Speaker 4: the house. That meant the violation of his parole. He
Speaker 4: was going to go back to jail. So that was
Speaker 4: his impetus to to pull a crime. Now. Joshua, on
Speaker 4: the other hand, had you know, told Hayes about his exploits,
Speaker 4: you know, about how what kind of a burglar he was,
Speaker 4: and we haven't talked about that, but he was. He was.
Speaker 4: He was an incredible burglar. He was. He was, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, they used to call him cat burglars. But
Speaker 4: he could break into He could break into anything. He
Speaker 4: knew how to disarm alarm systems, he knew how to
Speaker 4: get into the most fortified houses. He did. He broke
Speaker 4: into businesses, he broke He says that he was a
Speaker 4: hired to burglarized places, lawyers offices and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: He was just so no doubt he was telling Hazel
Speaker 4: of this these stories when they were in the Halfway House.
Speaker 4: So I think it's so the way, although this hasn't
Speaker 4: didn't come out in the trial, but it'll probably come
Speaker 4: out in Joshua's trial. The way I see it at
Speaker 4: least is that Hayes approach approached Joshua with the with
Speaker 4: the idea. Now he said he said to him, you know,
Speaker 4: why don't we do why don't we do a job together. Now,
Speaker 4: by this time Joshua, who also had a history of
Speaker 4: drugs and a pretty pretty extensive history of drugs. I
Speaker 4: don't know whether Joshua was using by this time, by
Speaker 4: the time Hayes approached him with this, with this idea
Speaker 4: to pull a job together, but he must have been.
Speaker 4: You know, I know that soon after he was at
Speaker 4: a party where he was drinking, and that that's an
Speaker 4: indication that maybe he was not too far if if
Speaker 4: he wasn't already back on drugs. So Joshua said, yes,
Speaker 4: you know, he said, all right, we'll pull a job together.
Speaker 4: But they you know, they had this idea, Joshua, I
Speaker 4: guess Hayes put a dollar amount on it. He said
Speaker 4: he needed a big score. You know, we had to
Speaker 4: get an apartment, he had to get a car, or
Speaker 4: he was going to be sent back to jail. He
Speaker 4: was going to have to he was going to violate
Speaker 4: his parole. So, you know, apparently they were they were
Speaker 4: going to do something that was out of even Joshua's ordinary.
Speaker 4: You know, they they came up with an idea, whether
Speaker 4: it was Joshua and I'd have to believe it was
Speaker 4: Joshua because he was infinitely smarter than Hayes and what
Speaker 4: have you. He he came up with an idea to
Speaker 4: take a family hostage. He was going to break into
Speaker 4: the house and he was going to you know, neutralize
Speaker 4: whatever had to be neutralized, and he was gonna tie
Speaker 4: whoever was up in the house, and he was gonna
Speaker 4: you know, spend that time to ransack the house for
Speaker 4: money and and what have you. Now that's how it started. However,
Speaker 4: Joshua's motive for this crime wasn't just about money, if
Speaker 4: about money at all, I think that he was more
Speaker 4: or less given, you know, humoring Hayes about the about
Speaker 4: the idea to get you know, to make that they
Speaker 4: would find this kind of money in the house. But
Speaker 4: I don't think that was Joshua's motive at all. And
Speaker 4: I'll talk about that if you'd like, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, tell us Joshua was the person that winds up
Speaker 6: spotting the victim or picking the potential victim for his
Speaker 6: this job idea. So a lot there's a lot of
Speaker 6: credibility or a lot of credence to the idea that
Speaker 6: he's the guy that.
Speaker 4: Came up with it.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us how we picked out the potential victims
Speaker 6: for this robbery idea, and tell us about who you
Speaker 6: think was the target. Wasn't just about robbery, and tell
Speaker 6: us why and and who this person was.
Speaker 4: Okay, the crime happened in Cheshire. The murders in Cheshire
Speaker 4: happened on a Sunday night, Monday morning. You know, actually
Speaker 4: it was Monday morning by the time they broke into
Speaker 4: the house. The night before, Hayes and Joshua had gone
Speaker 4: out looking to rob a house, and they actually broke
Speaker 4: into two houses in Cheshire. And and from the way
Speaker 4: Joshua explains it the way court court, I mean information
Speaker 4: that came out through the trial Hayes's trial, it was
Speaker 4: more like a dry run. They were like Joshua was
Speaker 4: the burglar, Hayes wasn't. He wanted to see how Hayes
Speaker 4: would react going into the houses and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: He wanted to put him through his paces a little bit.
Speaker 4: And that's what they did. They robbed two houses the
Speaker 4: night before. I'm not saying that it wasn't listen to
Speaker 4: people that those houses that they burglarized. Believe me, they're
Speaker 4: breathing a sigh of relief that what happened on siorgam
Speaker 4: Mill Drive didn't happen to them. I'm not diminishing that
Speaker 4: at all. But but but from Joshua's perspective, it was
Speaker 4: more or less a you know, like a dry run.
Speaker 4: He wanted to see how Hayes would react under the
Speaker 4: pressure of robbing a house, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 4: they robbed two houses and they got nothing that they stole.
Speaker 4: A couple of credit cards they stole. There was some
Speaker 4: cash laying around, some odds and ends, not a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff, you know. They did, however, take pictures from
Speaker 4: the house, you know, family pictures of the house. And
Speaker 4: uh and and I believe a knife. They stole a
Speaker 4: knife out of one house. It was scary stuff, but
Speaker 4: it wasn't, luckily, it wasn't, you know, even close to
Speaker 4: what would happen the following night. The following night, he
Speaker 4: Joshua had plans to meet Hayes to go out again
Speaker 4: looking for a place to rob. And that day, either
Speaker 4: that afternoon or maybe it was the afternoon before, Joshua
Speaker 4: went to stop and shop or a sporting goods store.
Speaker 4: He bought a pellic gun that uh, you know, handheld
Speaker 4: a pistol, pellet pistol. He bought rope, clothesline rope, He
Speaker 4: bought h zip ties, he bought other things to that
Speaker 4: that he would use on sorg of Mill drive. Was
Speaker 4: there a couple of masks, Well, they made the masks
Speaker 4: out of ski ski hats, you know, ned hats, but
Speaker 4: eyes in the you know, the cut eyes in the
Speaker 4: in the in the halls, So they didn't they didn't
Speaker 4: actually buy the masks, but they bought, you know, he
Speaker 4: bought the other stuff, and he was Joshua has a
Speaker 4: five year old daughter, or she was five back then
Speaker 4: when the crime happened, so she's older now and he
Speaker 4: he had just gotten custody of her. Now he was
Speaker 4: only out of jail, I mean, Hayes was Hayes was
Speaker 4: out of jail about a month. I think Joshua was
Speaker 4: out of jail, out of the halfway house even less time.
Speaker 4: So these guys weren't weren't oh no, no, Actually Joshua
Speaker 4: was out a little bit more time. So these these
Speaker 4: you know, they were they hadn't been out in the
Speaker 4: population all that long. But Joshua somehow had gotten custody
Speaker 4: of his of his five year old daughter from from
Speaker 4: her mother, who was apparently having drug problems at the time,
Speaker 4: was in some rehab or thing, so he had custody
Speaker 4: of his five year old. He was living at his
Speaker 4: mother's house where he grew up in his mother and
Speaker 4: father's house, and before he met Hayes. The night of
Speaker 4: the murders, he gave his daughter a bath, He read
Speaker 4: her Bible stories, put it, tucked her to bed, tucked
Speaker 4: her in, tucked her, put her to sleep, made sure
Speaker 4: she fell asleep. And all the time Hayes is texting
Speaker 4: him saying, you know, come on, let's go. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm ready, and Joshua was texting them back, hold your horses,
Speaker 4: I'm putting the kid to bed, you know, and you know,
Speaker 4: considering what would happen several hours later, it's just it's
Speaker 4: just it's I'm here. It's mind boggling. It really is
Speaker 4: mind boggling. So so finally he he he puts his daughter,
Speaker 4: his daughter goes to sleep. He also had a Joshua
Speaker 4: had a girlfriend who who had just moved to Arkansas
Speaker 4: and her uh, you know, partly I think her father
Speaker 4: moved the family, although I guess it had to be
Speaker 4: more than this, but to get away from him. She
Speaker 4: was sixteen years old. Joshua had a series that the
Speaker 4: girl that the mother of his daughter was fifteen when
Speaker 4: he impregnated her. He had a sixteen.
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Speaker 4: Ten year old girlfriend when the murders occurred, she had
Speaker 4: just moved to Arkansas. So he was attracted to you know,
Speaker 4: almost children, very very girls. And by this time he's
Speaker 4: twenty six. So he's dating a sixteen year old and
Speaker 4: now she moves to Arkansas. But there she's on the
Speaker 4: computer sending him pictures of herself and they're having cyber
Speaker 4: sex on the phone. This is after he put his
Speaker 4: daughter to sleep, and finally he gets dressed, and his
Speaker 4: mother said His mother said to police that when I
Speaker 4: saw him put on the dark he had like a
Speaker 4: dark sweatshirt, a hooded sweatshirt. She said, I knew some
Speaker 4: there was, that there was trouble, that he was headed
Speaker 4: for trouble, you know. And Joshua left the house, left
Speaker 4: his daughter sleep asleep. His mother worried and got in
Speaker 4: the family van and went to meet Hayes. Now I
Speaker 4: jumped ahead a little bit. That afternoon, before all of
Speaker 4: this happened, Joshua was in the Stopping Shot parking lot
Speaker 4: in Cheshire. It was about six o'clock at night. He
Speaker 4: said he was waiting to get paid from a contractor
Speaker 4: he had done some work for. He was supposed to
Speaker 4: meet him in the parking lot. While he's waiting there,
Speaker 4: the Pettit family car, a Chrysler PACIFICA, pulls up right
Speaker 4: next to him. In the car is Missus Pettit, Missus
Speaker 4: Jennifer Hawk Pettitt, doctor Pettitt's wife, and they were eleven
Speaker 4: year old daughter Michaela, now Michaela was tall for her age.
Speaker 4: She was eleven years old. I mean there's no getting
Speaker 4: away from that. But she was. She was taller than
Speaker 4: most of her peers and what have you, and precocious
Speaker 4: and bouncy. And Joshua watched Michaela get out of the
Speaker 4: car and go into stopping shop. She was going to
Speaker 4: buy some groceries for dinner that night. She was cooking.
Speaker 4: Like I said, she was a foodie, so she was
Speaker 4: cooking family dinner. And he waited for them to get
Speaker 4: out of the do the shopping, get back into the
Speaker 4: face family SUV and Joshua followed them to sorgam Mill Drive.
Speaker 4: Now he saw the house, he said to me. When
Speaker 4: I talked to him, he said the reason that he
Speaker 4: followed the Pacifica was that because the car said to
Speaker 4: him that the family had money. Now that's ludicrous. Cheshire, Connecticut,
Speaker 4: although it's not it's not the top affluent town. You
Speaker 4: can imagine it is very affluent, and Chrysler Pacifica is
Speaker 4: not is it doesn't doesn't say money in Cheshire, Connecticut.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're talking about a parking lot that's filled
Speaker 4: with Mercedes and BMW s u V s. It's not.
Speaker 4: It doesn't say money at all, so that it shoots
Speaker 4: big holes in that in that excuse Joshua has. But
Speaker 4: so he had followed the he had followed the Pacifica
Speaker 4: to the Pettitt home orgum Mill Drive. He knew the area.
Speaker 4: He had robbed houses in the area there when he
Speaker 4: was just twelve years old, twelve fourteen years old. So
Speaker 4: later on when he picks up Hayes, when he meets Hayes,
Speaker 4: Hayes asks Joshua, do you have any ideas? And Joshua says, yeah,
Speaker 4: I do. So they went out and they went to
Speaker 4: a bar and they did some drink, and they went
Speaker 4: they looked for houses to rob up up by this
Speaker 4: bar in Bristol, Connecticut, which is about fifteen miles north
Speaker 4: of Cheshire. And then about three o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 4: Joshua said, come on, I got Let's go to the
Speaker 4: place that I wanted to go to. And they drove
Speaker 4: back to Cheshire, Connecticut, and on it was two thirty
Speaker 4: three o'clock in the morning, on to sorgum Mill Drive.
Speaker 4: And you know sorgum Mill Drive that time of the
Speaker 4: night you can hear a pin drop. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: the most it's it's you know, the quintessential quiet suburban
Speaker 4: block and they were rolled up in front of the
Speaker 4: house or a couple of houses down from it. They
Speaker 4: put their masks on. They walked along the gravel street.
Speaker 4: It was paved, but there was loose gravel on it.
Speaker 4: I was on the street there was loose gravel on it.
Speaker 4: You can imagine their feet crunching on the gravel. And
Speaker 4: they went up alongside the house, up the driveway, and
Speaker 4: Joshua noticed the light on in the porch was an
Speaker 4: enclosed porch, and there was a man sleeping on the
Speaker 4: couch who was stocked the pettitt. Joshua told Hayes to
Speaker 4: wait in the shadows in the trees. It had started
Speaker 4: to rain a little bit, and Joshua went around the
Speaker 4: back of the house. There were bulkhead doors. He opened
Speaker 4: the bulkhead doors and was able to jimmy the door
Speaker 4: into the basement open. He had a small little flashlight
Speaker 4: with him. He swept it, swept the basement with the
Speaker 4: light and found saw a Louisville Slugger baseball bat at
Speaker 4: the foot of the stairs. He climbed up the stairs.
Speaker 4: And now this guy, he was as stealth as you
Speaker 4: could be, you know, I mean, he had nobody was
Speaker 4: going to hear him come and come and walking on
Speaker 4: the on the floor or anything like that. He was
Speaker 4: able to sneak up to the couch where doctor Pettitt slept.
Speaker 4: He raised the bat and he and he told me
Speaker 4: that he swung it as hard as he could. He
Speaker 4: hit doctor Pettitt in the head as hard as he could.
Speaker 4: Now he has this man who had played golf that afternoon,
Speaker 4: had a family dinner, his two daughters, and his wife
Speaker 4: is sleeping upstairs. I mean, it had to be like
Speaker 4: this is this is the worst movie that could have
Speaker 4: ever played, and it was so unlikely that something like
Speaker 4: this could happen to this man. Joshua hit him about
Speaker 4: Joshua hit him about six times, five or six times
Speaker 4: as hard as he could. Doctor Pettitt has some kind
Speaker 4: of a heart disorder, and he was on this stuff
Speaker 4: kombit In, which is a blood thinner. So there was
Speaker 4: blood everywhere. Joshua told me that the blood was all
Speaker 4: over the all over the room, and all over him
Speaker 4: and all over doctor Pettitt. But doctor Pettitt didn't die.
Speaker 4: He he was able to. Joshua sat him up on
Speaker 4: the on the bed and told him exactly what he
Speaker 4: was going to do, you know, and tied him up,
Speaker 4: and then he let Hayes into the house. And once
Speaker 4: that happened, they had control over the house, you know, so.
Speaker 6: And he asked, he asked doctor Pettit too. It was
Speaker 6: amazing that he got whacked six times as heart as
Speaker 6: Joshua could. And then he got him up and said, listen,
Speaker 6: who's in the house We want.
Speaker 4: Right upstairs, Joshua. Joshua said he was worried about that.
Speaker 4: He knew he knew the girl, the girls were in
Speaker 4: the house, but he thought maybe there was you know, ah,
Speaker 4: they had a son, he said. He said to me,
Speaker 4: he was worried that it was a thirteen year old,
Speaker 4: I mean an eighteen year old wrestler in the house
Speaker 4: or something like that. So he was worried about that.
Speaker 4: But then and Hayes walked up the stairs, you know,
Speaker 4: and they first went into the older daughter's room. Haley
Speaker 4: woke her up, you know, with the hand over the
Speaker 4: mouth so she wouldn't scream, and uh, you know, they
Speaker 4: had the pistols. So you know, doctor Pettitt was tied
Speaker 4: of course, they tied him up, gagged, and uh, they
Speaker 4: had the pistols. So it looked like a real gun,
Speaker 4: you know, the pelic gun looks like a real gun
Speaker 4: that somebody that doesn't know. And they were able, they
Speaker 4: were able to tie Haley up with the to the
Speaker 4: bed and bind her hands. And then they walked into
Speaker 4: the master bedroom where Michaela had gone to sleep with
Speaker 4: her mother, and uh, they woke you know, the the
Speaker 4: mother and Michaela up, and they also tied them. They
Speaker 4: brought Michaela back to her bedroom and tied her to
Speaker 4: the bed in her bedroom. And now they had the
Speaker 4: family held hostage just like that, you know, just like that,
Speaker 4: they had dominion over the house. You know what they
Speaker 4: do next, well, I mean they were in the house
Speaker 4: for six hours and uh, you know, at some point
Speaker 4: Joshua got the came across the check book. I mean
Speaker 4: they ransacked the house. I mean I'm not rans acted,
Speaker 4: but I mean pulled out drawers and looked for money
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. And uh, at some point Joshua
Speaker 4: saw a checking account that had money in it, and
Speaker 4: I guess he came up with the idea then that
Speaker 4: they were going to bring missus Pettit to the bank
Speaker 4: and withdraw money from it, and you know, to wait
Speaker 4: till nine o'clock in the morning. So they got in
Speaker 4: the house. It's at three. You had six hours that
Speaker 4: they were in this house. Can you imagine the terror
Speaker 4: of this family. Uh, these these girls uh you know,
Speaker 4: went through We're thinking and uh, you know, at some
Speaker 4: point Joshua sent Hayes out for uh for to Phillip.
Speaker 4: They found gallon uh winch or wipe or fluids containers
Speaker 4: in the garage and the empty the fluid out of
Speaker 4: the containers, and he sent Hayes to a gas station.
Speaker 4: So as soon as that, as soon as they made
Speaker 4: that move, they had decided that nobody was gonna live
Speaker 4: in that house, you know. I mean, there was a
Speaker 4: whole lot of things said in the trial that, you know,
Speaker 4: they were gonna take the family out of the house
Speaker 4: and burn the house down for DNA evidence and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. But that's all that's all nonsense. As soon
Speaker 4: as they as soon as Hayes went to the gas station,
Speaker 4: they had made up their mind so that they were
Speaker 4: gonna kill everybody in the house, you know. And when
Speaker 4: Hayes was at nine o'clock in the morning, things started
Speaker 4: to really spin spiral out of control, dissent into like
Speaker 4: hell Hayes brought Missus Pettitt to the to the bank
Speaker 4: at at at nine o'clock in the morning. Now it's
Speaker 4: raining pretty hard outside. While Hayes is uh in going
Speaker 4: to the bank with Missus Pettitt, Joshua was in Michaela's room.
Speaker 4: He stripped her. He took pictures of her with his
Speaker 4: with his cell phone. He had at least he at
Speaker 4: least sexually assaulted her, although in the Haz's trial it
Speaker 4: came out that in fact it wasn't it was much
Speaker 4: more than just assault. Joshua told me that he masturbated
Speaker 4: on her. Uh. And in Hayes's trial it came out
Speaker 4: that it was much worse than that, to an eleven
Speaker 4: year old girl bound and tied on her bed. Apparently
Speaker 4: he took pictures of Haley to the eighteen year old girl.
Speaker 4: When Missus Pettick came back from the bank, Stephen Hayes
Speaker 4: raped and strangled her. She was the first murder of
Speaker 4: that morning. Uh. And then they took the gasoline and
Speaker 4: spread it all over the up the main floor of
Speaker 4: the house, all the way up the stairs around the
Speaker 4: beds where the girl where the girls watched them. You know,
Speaker 4: the girls saw them pour the gasoline around their beds.
Speaker 4: This whole time, Doctor Pettitt is still according to his testament,
Speaker 4: he was going in and out of consciousness. They had
Speaker 4: moved him into the cellar and tied him to a
Speaker 4: post in the cellar, so he wasn't he wasn't. He
Speaker 4: didn't have an eye view first person, you know, a
Speaker 4: clear view of what was going on. He heard things
Speaker 4: up in the house, but he he really didn't know.
Speaker 4: And then either Hayes or driving now in the meantime, Oh,
Speaker 4: I forgot this. This is this is the past part.
Speaker 4: The missus Pettitt, Well, she's taken fifteen thousand dollars out
Speaker 4: of the bank rights on the back of the of
Speaker 4: the uh whatchoral slipped and my family is being held
Speaker 4: hostage in my house. And that that she's able to
Speaker 4: tell that the teller that they're not going to harm
Speaker 4: my family if you don't call the police. And of
Speaker 4: course the bank manager right away notifies the police. The
Speaker 4: Cheshia police come or you know, the cavalry comes to
Speaker 4: the house, and they their response was criticized, and I
Speaker 4: believe rightly so, I mean, they spent so much time
Speaker 4: trying to get just the right equipment, you know, the
Speaker 4: SWAT team you're talking about, I don't know, a twenty
Speaker 4: man police force in Cheshire, Connecticut, and they put helicopters
Speaker 4: in the air and everything and securing a perimeter. In
Speaker 4: the meantime, the people that they're trying to save are
Speaker 4: still alive, but wouldn't be for very long, you know.
Speaker 4: So they had the house surrounded and either Joshua or
Speaker 4: Hayes lit the match and drop the match, and both
Speaker 4: of them ran out of the house. They were caught.
Speaker 4: They had the house went up in flames, an inferno,
Speaker 4: and you know, you can imagine, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: it was doused with gasoline. You dropped the match. House
Speaker 4: went up like a like a tinder box, and Hayes
Speaker 4: and Joshua were caught. There was a roadblock at the
Speaker 4: end of sorger Mill Drive. They tried to run right
Speaker 4: through it. They told the card they were in the
Speaker 4: Petit Petit suvy trying to make their escape, and and
Speaker 4: you know they were. They were apprehended, you know, one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty yards from the house, so there, you know,
Speaker 4: they didn't get far, but by that time the house
Speaker 4: was just an inferno, and you know, they said that
Speaker 4: they heard the girls screaming. Neighbors heard the girl screaming,
Speaker 4: and you can't you can only imagine the horror that
Speaker 4: that would happen. Doctor Pettitt was able to escape, He
Speaker 4: was able to get out of the house. He crawled
Speaker 4: through the basement bulkhead doors, hopped to a to the
Speaker 4: neighbor's house next door. He's actually he testified at the trial. Now,
Speaker 4: Hayes Hayes trial was just just culminated, had just finished
Speaker 4: in Hayes was sentenced to see that. Yeah, yeah, Hayes
Speaker 4: was sentenced to death, the first death sentence in you know,
Speaker 4: probably fifteen years. There was an execution in two thousand
Speaker 4: and five, but that fellow was that criminal was sentenced
Speaker 4: ten years before. So it's the first death sentence in
Speaker 4: a long time. And Joshua's trial occurs in early February
Speaker 4: or mid February, actually it begins, so and you know,
Speaker 4: there's probably a very good chance that he's going to
Speaker 4: be sentenced to death also, so you might have a
Speaker 4: double execution in Connecticut first time ever.
Speaker 6: Maybe, you know, right, right, wow, that's incredible tale. Now
Speaker 6: we've only got a few minutes, but you know, if
Speaker 6: you can, we can go a little bit longer, because
Speaker 6: what I found really fascinating was from the interview that
Speaker 6: you pointed me to, was that and I've seen this
Speaker 6: myself and there have been a few other authors. I
Speaker 6: talked to Nick Prawn from a Lethal Marriage about Bernardo
Speaker 6: Hamalka case, and he said the same thing happened to
Speaker 6: him where people were really critical. It surprised him, but
Speaker 6: he said he had quite a few people calling him,
Speaker 6: you know, exploitive. Maybe tell us about your experience. I
Speaker 6: thought it was interesting the response from doctor Pettitt too
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean the book came out, and the
Speaker 4: book was because I now I had three and Joshua.
Speaker 4: Not only did I carry on this letter of correspondence
Speaker 4: with him back and forth for over over three months.
Speaker 4: I had two hundred handwritten pages that he that he
Speaker 4: sent me, so I had an enormous amount of access
Speaker 4: to his life and what happened that night in the crime.
Speaker 4: And then not only that, he invites me to come
Speaker 4: up and interview him. And this is months years before
Speaker 4: his trial, you know, I mean, and the Department of
Speaker 4: Corrections didn't ask me what I was doing, who I
Speaker 4: was and I put my name on a visitor's list
Speaker 4: and then they so, you know, I'm interviewing Joshua commiser Jeski,
Speaker 4: and I've and I had three face to face interviews
Speaker 4: with him in in the maximum security prison he's being held.
Speaker 4: So I had all of this information and it was
Speaker 4: and it caused quite a star in Connecticut because the
Speaker 4: book came out before the trial, and they thought it
Speaker 4: was going to uh, it was going to you know,
Speaker 4: because so much of it was Joshua's story that that
Speaker 4: it thought that it was like, you know, it was
Speaker 4: going to help the defense. You know, that he that
Speaker 4: that it was going to show him in a sympathetic light,
Speaker 4: and so actually nothing could be farther from the truth.
Speaker 4: I just told it the way it was. I mean,
Speaker 4: it wasn't and I don't I don't believe it, but
Speaker 4: it just tells his life story, you know, and in fact,
Speaker 4: he had every advantage, you know, like I said before,
Speaker 4: the way he didn't come from a bad background at all,
Speaker 4: you know. So, uh so when the book came out,
Speaker 4: I got it was just a firestorm of reaction mostly
Speaker 4: from people and uh, you know, and in the neighborhood,
Speaker 4: in the area of Cheshire, Connecticut. But it was violent,
Speaker 4: it was vitriolic. I had phone calls and letters and
Speaker 4: emails and calling me everything under the sun, saying that
Speaker 4: I was worse than than than the criminals, that I
Speaker 4: deserve worse than what they get. I mean, it was
Speaker 4: pretty and it was really personal. It was a very
Speaker 4: personal thing. And you know, they questioned my motives and
Speaker 4: my you know, uh you know, call me a you know,
Speaker 4: like you said, an opportunist and all, you know, all
Speaker 4: of this stuff, and none of that was anything. It
Speaker 4: was a news story to me. I was I was
Speaker 4: covering that as a news story, you know, it was
Speaker 4: it was. It was a horrible crime and it was
Speaker 4: a terrible thing that happened. But it's a news story
Speaker 4: and it deserves to be written about it that deserves
Speaker 4: to be covered. And just because I got an interview
Speaker 4: with a guy that wasn't my fault, where was I
Speaker 4: going to turn it down? No, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: interview him. You know, I'm not going to interview uh
Speaker 4: the one of the only two people, uh surviving that
Speaker 4: had a a a firsthand view of what happened. I mean,
Speaker 4: doctor pettit too. But doctor Pettitive was in the basement.
Speaker 4: But there's only two people alive that could tell you
Speaker 4: what happened inside that house. And I talked to one
Speaker 4: of them, you know, and I'm going to say I'm
Speaker 4: not going to use that. Of course I'm going to
Speaker 4: use it. So so, I mean, you could go on
Speaker 4: Amazon dot com and see the city. There's like I
Speaker 4: don't know how many reviews there are, but there's quite
Speaker 4: a substantial amount of reviews, and like ninety five percent
Speaker 4: of them are the worst possible review you can really,
Speaker 4: but ninety percent of them are they didn't read the book.
Speaker 4: They didn't read the book, and they say it in
Speaker 4: their in their critique, in their in their review with
Speaker 4: a book, how dare this person do that? And how
Speaker 4: dare them do that? And you know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: you can understand they needed to be mad at somebody.
Speaker 4: You know, this was this went rip the hole in
Speaker 4: this community up there. It was just such a bad,
Speaker 4: bad crime, you know, and they needed somebody to be
Speaker 4: mad at. And I came along, and I was the target,
Speaker 4: no doubt about it. And and doctor Pettitt, you know,
Speaker 4: I have nothing but respect and an enormous amount of
Speaker 4: empathy for the man I mean, can you imagine what
Speaker 4: what You can't imagine what he went through. And but
Speaker 4: he was vocal about the book. He made no secret of.
Speaker 6: What were here his points though, I mean what specifically
Speaker 6: what did he say?
Speaker 4: Well, why did he criticize it? Well, I got a
Speaker 4: call from the victim's advocate right before the book came out.
Speaker 4: Now it was literally like a week before the book
Speaker 4: came out, and the victim's advocate asked me to hold
Speaker 4: off on publishing the book until after the trial. And
Speaker 4: I said, you know, I don't think I can. First
Speaker 4: of all, I'm the author. You know how it is,
Speaker 4: you know this the whole machinery goes into a fact.
Speaker 4: You know, these books get printed, and you know it's
Speaker 4: like it's like once the writer sends it in, it's
Speaker 4: out of their hands, you know. So the publisher. Yeah, so,
Speaker 4: which is what I told him to talk to the
Speaker 4: publisher and I think she did. She you know, and
Speaker 4: I and I said, listen, I'll call my editor. I'll
Speaker 4: do what you know, because I didn't have you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, yes, I knew it was going to be
Speaker 4: sensational and in in in the context of Connecticut, it
Speaker 4: wasn't a big story. I mean, the book didn't sell.
Speaker 4: Uh there's much better selling books out there, But in Connecticut,
Speaker 4: this was the biggest story for for a month, my book,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. It was front page Hartford
Speaker 4: Current News for for weeks, you know. So it was big,
Speaker 4: big stuff in Connecticut. And I knew that was going
Speaker 4: to get that reaction, but I didn't care. I would
Speaker 4: have held off on it. I would have said, all right,
Speaker 4: you know, I'll wait till after the trial. You know,
Speaker 4: I'll wait after. But my publisher publishers thought differently. They said, no,
Speaker 4: no way, We're going to capitalize on this. So the
Speaker 4: book came out, and you know, uh, he it did.
Speaker 4: It did inhibit It did upset the trial process because
Speaker 4: they were going to uh try Joshua Commercer Jeesky first,
Speaker 4: and because the book is so laden with information about him,
Speaker 4: they decided to try Hayes first. So in that sense,
Speaker 4: it did did cause a problem. But it was also
Speaker 4: they also said it was going to taint the jury pool.
Speaker 4: Taint the jury pool, can you imagine? I mean that
Speaker 4: the fact of the matter is is that that they
Speaker 4: insisted that I guess doctor Pettitt, but the prosecutor insisted
Speaker 4: on going for the death penalty here, so that both
Speaker 4: Hayes and commerce ser Jeessky were going to plead guilty
Speaker 4: to life without parole. They weren't going to contest it.
Speaker 4: They're going to go to jail for the rest of
Speaker 4: their lives. But the prosecution said, no, we want these guys,
Speaker 4: we wanted we want to we want to sentenced to death.
Speaker 4: So because of that, they have a trial that gets
Speaker 4: covered coverage, worldwide coverage absolutely. I mean doctor Pett's going
Speaker 4: to be on Oprah tomorrow afternoon. I mean that the
Speaker 4: the uh, the the interest in this, the coverage of
Speaker 4: this thing was just insane and and every lurid detail
Speaker 4: about what happened to the eleven year old Michaela, her
Speaker 4: sister uh Haley, and Jennifer Hawk Pettitt was displayed all
Speaker 4: over the newspapers, all over everywhere. I mean, it was
Speaker 4: just you couldn't you couldn't, you couldn't look at this,
Speaker 4: the testimony and evidence that was presented at this trial.
Speaker 4: And that's because of the decision by the prosecutor. And
Speaker 4: I would imagine doctor Pettitt to go for the death penalty.
Speaker 4: So the fact that no matter that my book was
Speaker 4: going to taint the jury. Well can you imagine them
Speaker 4: trying to get a jury for the next trial, for
Speaker 4: Joshua's trial, Now it's going to be I mean, who's
Speaker 4: not gonna in Connecticut is not going to know about
Speaker 4: this case and know about all of the you know.
Speaker 4: So so you know, I guess that was that was
Speaker 4: Doc Pettit's thought about it, you know, and you know
Speaker 4: him here too. I think he needed somebody to be
Speaker 4: mad at, you know, And and you know, if that's
Speaker 4: if that's the way it is, that's fine with me,
Speaker 4: you know, because you know, I, like I said, I
Speaker 4: I don't you know, I never wanted to hurt this man,
Speaker 4: and I thought I portrayed his family with dignity and
Speaker 4: respect in my book. I know I did. I went
Speaker 4: out of my way to do it. I mean, there
Speaker 4: was nothing wrong, there was nothing bad there to do
Speaker 4: it anyhow, But I was not But I did not sensationalize.
Speaker 4: And I try to be as as as you know,
Speaker 4: to put them in the light that they deserved. And
Speaker 4: I and I think I did so, you know, but
Speaker 4: you know, what are you going to do? He's you know,
Speaker 4: So that's that's how that played.
Speaker 6: Out, you know, and let me ask you a couple
Speaker 6: of questions here about this Specifically, I wanted to know
Speaker 6: because I was involved in our cases are similar, there's
Speaker 6: some parallels. Anyway, I provided evidence I had a correspondence
Speaker 6: with the killer for a year and this was well
Speaker 6: before the trial, well well before the trial. But in
Speaker 6: that my particular case, he had said he had passed
Speaker 6: out and didn't remember any anything of the commission of
Speaker 6: the crime. But as despite that, even there was other evidence,
Speaker 6: documentary evidence was given to me, so I in turn
Speaker 6: contacted police. Now was any part of the criticism and
Speaker 6: was there was about that that you potentially could have
Speaker 6: had some evidence? I mean, you're you're talking about the
Speaker 6: only living witnesses, So when Joshua talks about Hayes, and
Speaker 6: Hayes talks about Joshua, was there anything like that? And
Speaker 6: and did you have any responsibility to go to authorities?
Speaker 6: And was there any criticism because you didn't and you
Speaker 6: acted like a journalist and just held back to information.
Speaker 6: Tell me if there was anything like that in your
Speaker 6: particular Well.
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right, Dan, I mean there was. I mean, Joshua,
Speaker 4: did uh focus some of the blame on Hayes, and
Speaker 4: Hayes would turned around in his trial and blame Joshua
Speaker 4: for it, you know, I mean there was a lot
Speaker 4: a lot of it about uh, you know, Missus Pettitt.
Speaker 4: Now there was DNA evidence that that absolutely Hayes raped
Speaker 4: Missus Pettitt and then he admitted to killing her, you know,
Speaker 4: in in in court. So you know, there wasn't a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff, but there was. But where my hands
Speaker 4: were tied was there was a gag order on this
Speaker 4: on on on everybody involved. So the police couldn't talk
Speaker 4: to me, The lawyers couldn't talk to me. Hayes didn't
Speaker 4: wasn't going to talk to me. So there was nobody
Speaker 4: I could go to to uh corroborate Joshua's story. You know,
Speaker 4: there was nobody I could go to to say, uh, well,
Speaker 4: what's what's your side? Because they couldn't do it. They
Speaker 4: would they would, they were, they couldn't. They couldn't talk
Speaker 4: to me. So u so. But but that said, you
Speaker 4: know what, the way Joshua's narrative of the crime plays
Speaker 4: almost to the to the note the way the prosecution
Speaker 4: uh uh portrayed the crime. The prosecution's narrative in their
Speaker 4: in their portrayal of the crime in court was like
Speaker 4: they were reading my book. I swear there was like
Speaker 4: just there was just like a few points where it varied,
Speaker 4: you know. But all of the things about Joshua hitting
Speaker 4: doctor Pettitt, about the tying up the girls, about going
Speaker 4: out for the gasoline, about uh, you know, Joshua's rolling
Speaker 4: the house, being being the the alpha of this of
Speaker 4: this duo, all of this stuff that that that I
Speaker 4: all of the information that I got from Joshua was substantial,
Speaker 4: substantiated by the prosecution, you know, so you know he
Speaker 4: was he was. He proved to be a credible, incredible,
Speaker 4: incredible uh source. He was a credible source. Joshua. Now, uh,
Speaker 4: he he never copped. He never admitted to killing anybody.
Speaker 4: He said that he didn't uh he didn't want anybody
Speaker 4: to die in the house, and stuff like that. And
Speaker 4: that's where his story starts to lose lose its validity,
Speaker 4: because there's no doubt that that you know, he was,
Speaker 4: he was. It was his plan to kill everybody in
Speaker 4: the house. I have no doubt I have I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't doubt that for a second.
Speaker 6: Well, how does he how does he how does he
Speaker 6: argue against that the gasoline around the beds? Where did
Speaker 6: you get that information? And how does he how does
Speaker 6: he argue against that?
Speaker 4: I mean, he can't he and and I asked him
Speaker 4: about it. Now now I'm in, I'm in when i'm
Speaker 4: when I'm interviewing. It's not like I'm interviewing him on
Speaker 4: the phone or over you know, it's over coffee at Starbucks.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's in a maximum security prison. It's being taped.
Speaker 4: He knows it's being taped. I know it's being taped.
Speaker 4: It's like, there's I can't I can't be as blunt
Speaker 4: in Michael, or nor can I guess I could be
Speaker 4: as blunt as I want, But he's not going to
Speaker 4: be as as forthcoming and his answers as as as
Speaker 4: he might have might have been. Because even though he
Speaker 4: said to me, I don't care, he said, I I
Speaker 4: know they're going to execute me, and I don't care.
Speaker 4: I want to die. And Hayes said the same thing.
Speaker 4: You know, Hayes has said the same thing. But they're
Speaker 4: both they're both criminals, and they're both liars by by nature,
Speaker 4: you know, so so you know, I think that he
Speaker 4: got to the point where it where he could have said, yeah,
Speaker 4: you're right, I dropped the match and I sort of
Speaker 4: fire go up around the girls and I ran out
Speaker 4: of the house. But he never said he wouldn't say
Speaker 4: that to me. But it was it was, you know,
Speaker 4: it was it was. I mean, it's pretty certain that
Speaker 4: that that happened, you know, And.
Speaker 6: He downplayed the rape too. You had said too that
Speaker 6: it seemed, you know, you get deduce logically that there
Speaker 6: was something else to it other than just robbery by
Speaker 6: the targeting with Mike Yela, but he denied that. So
Speaker 6: that's another thing that he denies, even though yeah.
Speaker 4: You're right, and there's a body of evidence that says
Speaker 4: that it's absolutely what happened. I mean's he's borderline. He's
Speaker 4: a better borderline pedophile. I mean, he said, you know,
Speaker 4: I only mentioned two sixteen year olds, but he's got
Speaker 4: a whole history of it. Seems like he stopped maturing
Speaker 4: in his excuse me, his sexual appetite when he was sixteen,
Speaker 4: because he had a girlfriend who was sixteen when he
Speaker 4: was sixteen, and then he stopped dating anybody older than
Speaker 4: sixteen until he was twenty six and arrested.
Speaker 6: The last time you know, I wanted to ask you
Speaker 6: too when you were criticized. I'm just very fascinated by this.
Speaker 6: Was it who were the main criticizer?
Speaker 4: Was a members of the public, like yea like that?
Speaker 6: But was it the was it the police department at all?
Speaker 6: Or was it the disc that.
Speaker 4: I get criticized? Well, yeah, I got to tell you.
Speaker 4: In in the in the trial, the Hayeses trial, something
Speaker 4: came up and it's you know, I don't you know,
Speaker 4: I h it's it's a little elaborate to tell the story.
Speaker 4: I don't know how much time we have, but I
Speaker 4: but I was embarrassed. But they they they actually introduced
Speaker 4: his evidence in the in the in the penalty phase
Speaker 4: of Hayes's trial, he had been found guilty and then
Speaker 4: it goes to penalty phase where where they decide whether
Speaker 4: to put him to death or that. During the penalty phase,
Speaker 4: they used letters that Joshua had written to me because
Speaker 4: they had copied that. Every Department of Correction copies all
Speaker 4: the letters, so they had letters. They introduced that source
Speaker 4: material into the trial, and they said things at that
Speaker 4: time that were that put me in a very bad
Speaker 4: light as a journalist, as as a human being, you know,
Speaker 4: and and in court came out so and and it
Speaker 4: had nothing to do with Hayes's whether Hayes was should
Speaker 4: be put to death in that And and I'm absolutely
Speaker 4: certain that it was done to to humiliate me because
Speaker 4: I think that I had put the Department of Corrections.
Speaker 4: I mean, they came out looking you know that they
Speaker 4: let me in there to interview this guy three times.
Speaker 4: You know that they let all of that, They let
Speaker 4: me carry on this correspondence with this guy. This is,
Speaker 4: without a doubt, the highest profile criminal in Connecticut in
Speaker 4: twenty years. I mean, without it down, nobody's even close second,
Speaker 4: you know, And they absolutely it was like I was
Speaker 4: visiting a relative, you know. I mean, I had such
Speaker 4: access to this guy, and and and I no doubt ruffled,
Speaker 4: ruffled those kind of feathers. And I and and that
Speaker 4: the book came out before the trial, I think because
Speaker 4: doctor Pettitt was such is such an influential presence up there,
Speaker 4: and he really really was, you know, adoring the trial
Speaker 4: and what have you. I think that, you know, I
Speaker 4: think they went out of their way to to to
Speaker 4: embarrass me, you know. And and and you know, I
Speaker 4: think that you know, and I probably I'm still there
Speaker 4: is still an investigation going on that supposedly an open
Speaker 4: investigation by the Attorney General's office into me and and
Speaker 4: how I got into visit Joshua, you know, and uh,
Speaker 4: you know that I misrepresented myself that there was there
Speaker 4: was other things that that came up that were discussed
Speaker 4: in trial. Like I said, if you want me to
Speaker 4: talk about it would be more than willing to. It's
Speaker 4: going to take a little time to explain it though,
Speaker 4: And uh, you know, so I don't know what's going
Speaker 4: to happen. I might even be subpoena because for because
Speaker 4: Joshua's trial, because I'm the only journalist to have interviewed him.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm probably, outside of his lawyer, the only
Speaker 4: person that has this kind of information that that you know.
Speaker 6: So well, what one last question, because we could go
Speaker 6: on for another couple of hours, but I think it's
Speaker 6: more fascinating to us than maybe the audience. But but anyway,
Speaker 6: what I wanted to ask was that the correspondence is
Speaker 6: copied by the Department of Corrections. You were saying, yes,
Speaker 6: it is okay, but did they alert the authorities like the.
Speaker 4: District I'm sure it goes right now.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, but when did they what did you come
Speaker 6: first or did they already was that an ongoing thing?
Speaker 6: And I find it strange that they would let you
Speaker 6: have this correspondence. Meanwhile, they let you in seemingly like
Speaker 6: they didn't.
Speaker 4: Know who you were. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, you could you could very easily paint a
Speaker 4: conspiracy theory out of that. I mean, there's no doubt
Speaker 4: about it. But I don't think it. I mean, my
Speaker 4: my sense of it, my the way I you know,
Speaker 4: haven't been you know, a principle in this, in this
Speaker 4: whole thing, I don't, I don't. I think it was
Speaker 4: just oversight on their part. I think they just they
Speaker 4: just drop the ball. I don't think there was no No,
Speaker 4: I agree with you. I agree with you.
Speaker 6: I think they dropped the ball. But at the same time,
Speaker 6: I just wanted to get that one fact or that
Speaker 6: information from you. The Department of Corrections, unlike in my case,
Speaker 6: the Department of Corrections did not copy any of the
Speaker 6: written material.
Speaker 4: Oh, they would record, they would record visits.
Speaker 6: But so I knew that. But and so to get
Speaker 6: around that, he sent me information via a letter and
Speaker 6: they didn't copy those letters. So I thought it was
Speaker 6: interesting that you said that the Department of Corrections would
Speaker 6: record all those letters or keep copies of those letters.
Speaker 6: But it seems like just to me, that they didn't
Speaker 6: catch wind to what was going on till you came
Speaker 6: into the picture and then came forward, and then they said, oh, listen,
Speaker 6: we better go back there. And like some people may
Speaker 6: read a letter, and some people may really read a letter,
Speaker 6: if you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, you know. And I'm not one hundred percent
Speaker 4: sure that they copied all of it, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: maybe they only copied, you know, I got because in
Speaker 4: the in the in court, if court testimony is any
Speaker 4: indication in court, they said that I had written that
Speaker 4: there were half a dozen or eight letters that Joshua
Speaker 4: wrote to me, and that's that's not right. Joshua wrote
Speaker 4: more than twenty letters to me. So maybe they didn't.
Speaker 4: Maybe they didn't do their job in that regard either.
Speaker 4: Maybe they didn't.
Speaker 6: They probably caught on late, just like when they finally
Speaker 6: caught on and.
Speaker 4: You were refused visit. So yeah, that was the horse
Speaker 4: was out of the barn by that time. I mean,
Speaker 4: he had told me he had given me just about
Speaker 4: everything but in the first in the first half a
Speaker 4: dozen letters, I know just about the whole story, so
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, it was like I said, after
Speaker 4: after the fact.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's very interesting. Well, I want to thank you
Speaker 6: Brian for this very very fascinating interview and about a
Speaker 6: great book and a great story that's still continuing. As
Speaker 6: we can see. His trial's not even till next year,
Speaker 6: you said sometime. And I don't know if I'm a
Speaker 6: predictor of anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if they
Speaker 6: call your name up and have you involved even somewhat,
Speaker 6: because those letters are much better than any confessional ever
Speaker 6: ever be It's you know, it's much better when the
Speaker 6: perpetrator said this, and it's written in very strong evidence
Speaker 6: for sure. But anyway, thank you very much, Brian. I
Speaker 6: really appreciate it. People who been listening to the program
Speaker 6: have been listening to Brian McDonald with his book In
Speaker 6: the Middle of the Night, the shocking true story of
Speaker 6: a family killed in cold blood in the middle of
Speaker 6: the night. Thank you very much, Brian McDonald for coming
Speaker 6: on the program and a great interview.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. Thanks Dan, have a good evening.
Speaker 4: Bye right bye, bye bye.
Speaker 5: Bye.
Speaker 6: You've been listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers
Speaker 6: in true crime history, and the authors that have written
Speaker 6: about them, with your host Dan Pasky. Good evening,