On the morning of March 7, 2006, a fire whipped up the stairs of Kathy Hardy’s home on Little Bay Lane in Short Beach. She collapsed between her bedroom and the stairway, unable to find a way out. Luckily her three young children were not with her that night. Nor was her beloved toy poodle, Zoey, who would have barked to alert her but ominously had gone missing just a week or two before.
Fire officials later determined that someone had entered the house at 27 Little Bay Lane, soaked the stairway with an accelerant and lit a match. The fire destroyed the upper half of the house, which has since been rebuilt. The intruder apparently knew that the 39-year-old Hardy kept her door unlocked and that her kids were with their dad that night. He might even have known the dog was gone.
Everyone connected to the case agrees that the person who wanted her dead “was someone she knew,” said Lt. William Carroll, who heads the Branford detective bureau. Police have eliminated the motives of robbery, rape or a crime of passion. But those are just the obvious three.
As the three-year anniversary of Kathy Hardy’s murder approaches Saturday, federal, state and local authorities familiar with the case are leaning toward a theory that two or three men were directly involved in a plot to kill her.
The Hardy case, complicated by the social intricacies of her life, has taken a variety of twists and turns. In the course of the investigation, police zeroed in on three people who were arrested on unrelated drug charges. But they remain “people of interest” in the Hardy case. Another person not in prison is also is also considered a relevant figure.The police have interviewed those in prison a number of times.
There is no question in any one’s mind that this fire was “absolutely intentional,” Branford Police Chief John DeCarlo said in an interview.
Over the course of time the Branford police, overseen by the State’s Attorney’s office, has joined forces with state police and the FBI. At various points, a federal grand jury has taken testimony in the case. Lt. Carroll, who heads the inquiry, and Paul Perrotti, the chief detective assigned to the case, have conducted more than 125 interviews.
Kathy Hardy’s family told the New Haven Register that she had bouts of mental illness, that she had taken drugs, and that she became a police informant. She was by all accounts a devoted mom and a gifted gardener. But after her divorce, which she apparently sought, she began to hang out with a different crowd, folks her family did not like. Whether the motive in her killing centered on a personal relationship or her role as an informant is not yet known. (Click here to read Mark Zaretsky’s Register story about the Hardy family.)
When police arrived at the fire scene that day, they found Hardy’s car door, parked in the driveway, wide open. The interior overhead light was on. One theory is that the person who committed the arson checked the glove compartment to make sure he was at the right place. He may also have left the car door open in order to make as little noise as possible in this beach community where houses lie side by side.
Police have talked to this man, who is now in jail for another crime. He admits to being at the scene at about 3 a.m. but says he left because he thought the person inside had company. She did not.
Neighbors also say they saw a black truck leave the area before the fire started at about 8:30 a.m. Police believe the suspect drove the truck and that he might have made two trips, the first to check out the house at about 3 a.m., and a second later on.
Chief DeCarlo says the Hardy case is complex. “It is like one of those thousand-piece puzzles. So what we are doing is reconstructing some very complex relationships that took place between her and other people. By rule of law we have to obtain the necessary legal standard to present the case to a prosecutor or a judge. When we do make those final connections, and we will, we will proceed to court.”
Short Beach is a tight-knit community, a place with “a lot of collective efficacy,” says DeCarlo. What he means is people know one another well and have useful information about each other. But “when someone not from the area is introduced into the neighborhood that person brings a whole other set of criteria. Kathy Hardy was new. Her friends came by but they were from outside Short Beach.
“So we can’t go to the Short Beach community and say, ‘Who is she?’ She has no history here.”
Indeed as police went door to door in the days following the crime, few knew Kathy Hardy though many had seen the posters she put up everywhere looking for Zoey. The poster said the children were distraught. She offered a $200 reward for the dog’s return — “no questions asked.”
She moved to Short Beach in the summer of 2005. She and her former husband, Jeff Hardy, had lived in the area at an earlier time. They were married in 1997; they divorced in 2003. He has subsequently remarried and his children and his wife’s children all live together in Branford.
Police urge anyone with information to call them. The active tip line is 203 – 315-3909 and the caller may remain anonymous. Gov. M. Jodi Rell has offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading to an arrest and a conviction.
As for Zoey, the puppy who was never found, her disappearance may well have been intended as a message for Kathy Hardy, a message she either did not understand or did not heed. ###
Excellent follow-up, Marcia. Thank you.