Some thoughts on the Petit family murders

In response to my last post on the horrible murder of the Petit family in Connecticut reader Megan left a comment in which she suggested that the police and the DA might want to look into Dr. Petit himself in connection with the case. She finds it suspicious that he was not killed like the rest of his family, but only hit in the head and left in the basement where he was able to escape.

I would like to tell Megan that she is way off base in this kind of thinking, but I cannot.

The truth is that something like that scenario is all too possible.

I have no reason to doubt Dr. Petit's innocence at this time I am sure that the police are looking into his background even as I type this. They are looking for any connection to either of the killers and they are looking at the doctor's financial situation.

They are checking to see if he has gambling debts or if he was having an affair or if Mrs. Petit had any possible connection to the killers. In fact they will even look at the daughters to see if something one of them did could have marked the family as a target for the two murderous thugs.

Good homicide investigators know that they have to cross every T and dot every I in an investigation of this kind, especially with all the attention that it is drawing from across the nation. Every possibility will be considered and every lead will be run down.

The fact of his survival alone makes Dr. Petit a suspect and when he is able to answer questions he will face some which he will regard as intrusive and even rude. This is just the cops doing their job.

As I said before I have no reason to believe that Dr. Petit is involved with the men who murdered his wife and children, but the possibility must and will be looked at.

What I do blame Dr. Petit for was being unprepared to deal with criminal violence. He should have made sure that he, his wife and his daughters were familiar with the use of firearms and there should have been at least one loaded handgun concealed in the home. Had that been the case the only thing in the press about this case would have been a report in the local paper about two home invaders getting shot.