Murder in Connecticut

By Michael Benson (The Lyons Press), $19.95

Michael Benson thinks that perhaps "we should deny the sadistic and sociopathic their fifteen minutes of fame, change their names when we write about them, put black bars across their eyes when we publish their photographs. It's a thought."

Benson, author of Murder in Connecticut, the first book about the Cheshire murders, is uncomfortable with a world where true-crime books "change names to protect the innocent yet put the correct names of the criminals in bold letters right on the cover. There is an argument that it should be the other way around," he writes. It is a thought.

Like Benson, I never knew the Petit family, three out of four of whom were gruesomely and carelessly murdered in a robbery in June 2007. All I have to rely on is the Petits of memorials and local news stories.

Aside from a skepticism toward hyperbole, I have no reason to doubt that portrayal: They were, by every account, a warm, accomplished family who raised bundles of money for Multiple sclerosis charities (mom Jennifer was diagnosed with the disease), an exceptional example of the kind of upbeat, philanthropic families that populate the affluent towns that dot Connecticut.

Maybe there is nothing more to say. If there is, Benson, a prolific Bronx-based author who's written or co-written 50 books, didn't find it. His heavy reliance on the default Petits of the media makes me think he didn't look.

A search for tabloid dirt would have been crude and fruitless, but the sole reliance on flowery, mourning-saturated details seems to only serve the purpose of emphasizing how tragic this particular crime was. Benson builds up the Petits to seem like unlikely murder victims and not much else; the idea of an especially tragic murder implies that the crime would be less noteworthy if it happened to a dysfunctional family. In the end, Murder in Connecticut adds no depth to the story we all know by now, just more detail.

The story starts on a sunny day in Cheshire, "an idyllic little town" that is "straight out of a 1950s movie about life in Everytown, USA." Dr. William Petit, his wife Jennifer and daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, are sitting down to dinner. Jennifer was "absolutely beautiful without a shred of vanity." She and her daughters "radiated wholesome American perfection" and "[i]nside the house was domestic bliss." But don't take Benson's word for it; this pristine portrait is reiterated in an overwhelming slew of rehashes of speeches from vigils and memorials.

Benson had to spend time on the killers, though he obviously wishes he didn't. He calls them "lowlifes," "slime," and "monsters." Like his portrayal of the Petits, Benson's view of their killers is simplistic but true enough. These are apt terms for a pair who beat an innocent man to near death, strangled his wife to death and raped their daughters and burned them alive.

Benson's visceral or moral discomfort with writing about them leads him to fail to deliver a full (or interesting) portrait and also any kind of narrative on them. The two aren't given names until the account of the crime has been delivered; Benson calls Joshua Komisarjevsky the "young man" and Steven Hayes "the middle aged man." The introduction to Komisarjevsky comes in a long transcript from a previous burglary trial, which makes one feel less like a reader and more like a juror. Through the scant pieces of Komisarjevsky's life, we get a fractured view of this troubled "townie" and our only glimpse of Hayes.

Forty pages into Murder in Connecticut, Benson references In Cold Blood, comparing the murders of the Petits to the murders of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kan., which Benson says was "memorialized by author Truman Capote" in the 1966 non-fiction classic.

Benson has a different memory of In Cold Blood than I do. I remember spendthrift farmer Herb; his "invalid" wife Bonnie; ever-dutiful daughter Nancy; and solitary son Kenyen. I also remember the men who (similarly to the Petits' killers) murdered them as part of a robbery: Perry Smith, the man-child in constant search of aspirin and root beer and Dick Hickock, the smug businessman who called everyone "baby." In Cold Blood, a book populated by fully rounded and real-seeming people and which doesn't have a thread of sensationalism, shows Benson's approach isn't the only ethical one.

Any non-fiction book should turn its subjects into compelling characters. Call me a voyeur but I would like to feel like I know the Petits and their killers as well as I feel I do the Clutters and theirs. But all I have to rely on is the paper-thin figures of memorials and local news stories and the 241 pages of Murder in Connecticut doesn't give me much more.

editor@newhavenadvocate.com