For the first time in four years, the public is getting to hear the voice of Cheshire home invasion suspect Joshua Komisarjevsky.
A statement Komisarjevsky gave and Cheshire Police recorded the day of the murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, was released publicly late on Monday. The tape was played in court for jurors last week.
HEAR PART OF THE RECORDED STATEMENT HERE
The release of the tape came on the same day as some difficult testimony in the New Haven courtroom.
Dr. Malka Shah, the medical examiner to performed the autopsy on Hayley Petit, took the stand on Monday afternoon. Hayley's father, Dr. William Petit, left the courtroom before Shah's testimony began.
Dr. Shah talked about finding soot in Hayley's nose and throat. She had burns over most of her body and burned ropes around her wrists and ankles, Shah testified.
Jurors also viewed autopsy photos of Hayley, and many found the photos difficult to look at.
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Earlier in the day, Cheshire Detective Joseph Vitello, the investigator who interviewed Komisarjevsky during the recorded statement, took the stand.
Vitello's testimony undercut efforts by Joshua Komisarjevsky's lawyers to blame his co-defendant, Steven Hayes, for pouring the gasoline before the house was set on fire. Hayes was convicted last year and is on death row.
Authorities said Komisarjevsky and Hayes broke into the house in Cheshire in July 2007, beat Dr. William Petit with a bat, then tied him, his wife and two daughters up as they looked for money.
Hayes later drove Jennifer Hawke-Petit to a bank so she could make a withdrawal and then raped and strangled her after they returned to the house, police said.
The girls, Michaela and her sister Hayley, died of smoke inhalation in the gasoline-fueled fire.
Komisarjevsky and Hayes have blamed each other for escalating the violence, but prosecutors said both men are equally responsible.
Vitello also told jurors on Monday, the day that would have been Jennifer Hawke-Petit's 53rd birthday, that Komisarjevsky took explicit cellphone photos of Michaela Petit, whom he has admitted to molesting.
Komisarjevsky planned to send the photos to Hayes so that he could show them to the girl's mother if she didn't cooperate while the two were outside the home.
In Komisarjevsky's audio-taped confession, he said he spotted Michaela and her mother at a supermarket, followed them home and later returned with Hayes.
Komisarjevsky said he followed them home because the Petits had a nice car and looked like they had money, Vitello said.
Prosecutors also showed photos taken by a video camera of Hawke-Petit and Michaela at the supermarket, shopping for what turned out to be the family's last meal together.
They show Michaela in the produce section and appears to be looking back at her mother in one photo.
In another, also taken in the produce section, she has an item up to her face that she apparently is eating or smelling and her mother moves closer.
Prosecutors also showed photos from the video camera of two men near an ATM. They're expected to argue that one of the men is Komisarjevsky.
Komisarjevsky's attorneys tried to show the jury he immediately cooperated with police by telling them two girls were in the house engulfed in fire, while Hayes offered no help.
But Vitello said Komisarjevsky was quick to implicate Hayes, while not revealing some details of his own role.
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