Review: The Cheshire Murders

A documentary detailing the 2007 home invasion and triple murder at a Cheshire, Connecticut home. Although family patriarch William Petit survives, wife Jennifer and their two daughters (11 and 17) were sexually assaulted and eventually murdered by career crim Steven Hayes and all-round creep Joshua Komisarjevsky. The film also points fingers at the police’s seemingly very late reaction to the escalating situation inside the family home.

If there’s a true crime doco on TV, I’ll generally watch it, as was the case with this 2013 film from filmmakers Kate Davis and David Heilbroner about a home invasion that somehow turned into a triple homicide. This is a truly tragic, horrific crime committed against a seemingly wonderful, All-American family. “In Cold Blood” is referenced in the film and it’s certainly an apt comparison, even if you’re constantly changing your mind on who the Robert Blake guy is and who is playing the Scott Wilson character. Like that infamous film (based on the Truman Capote true crime novel), it frightens you that while you’re peacefully and ignorantly going about your day, a perfect storm of trouble is brewing and headed your way.

I was worried early on that because the culprits were caught so early on in the piece that this would be hard to stretch to 90 minutes, but thankfully there’s much more to the story in the aftermath. There’s some pretty interesting details here, like how one of the killers’ daughters went to the police academy, and once you start to learn about these two men, you realise there is indeed more going on here. On the surface, these guys didn’t seem like cold-blooded murderers. Burglars yes, very much so. But to take a life in cold blood? That takes something else entirely, one imagines. Yet, they did indeed commit the crimes and the younger of the two men in particular seems to have quite a dark side to him. The more we hear about him, the more one suspects he’s intelligent, cunning, manipulative and a whole lotta other things. The brother of the elder of the two men is actually angry at the system for releasing his criminal brother for an earlier crime so he could go on to commit this one. His other brother simply hopes someone shoots the bastard on the way to court. These are his brothers and they want him dead, so obviously this man is no boy scout. Yet, as much as these two brothers feel this way, even they find it hard to accept that their brother (who seems like an idiot career criminal, as opposed to his sicker, more obviously evil partner) would rape and burn people. The facts state that he is indeed a murderer and rapist, though (and manipulative in his own way as well). The other criminal? Oh it’s perfectly easy to see him doing this. When you hear him speak, he speaks in a chillingly flat way that suggests basically a sociopath. This guy’s a piece of shit, no matter his troubled past. It explains his psyche but in no way does it lessen his guilt.

Meanwhile, your heart goes out to the family patriarch. How do you live with the knowledge that you survived but your wife and kids died? So tragic. This man shows amazing strength to appear on camera here, let alone to get on with life in general. I also felt for one of the victims’ father, a pastor who is very much against the death penalty, putting him in a very, very tough position morally and emotionally. Perhaps the most outrageous and infuriating thing here is that we learn the police arrived on the scene for 30 minutes while people were inside the house being raped, murdered, and set on fire. WTF?

This isn’t anything brilliant, but they wring more out of this story than I initially suspected was possible. There’s a lot to be sad and angry about here, and it’s really interesting stuff.

Rating: B-