Before Steven J. Hayes tried to kill himself last January, he wrote a note. He described himself as both a monster and a coward – one who was always able to change, but lacked the courage. The final words of the note: “cowards don’t change — they become me.”
They become, he meant, a killer – one convicted of murdering a mother, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and her two daughters, Hayley and Michaela.
Hayes sits in Courtroom 6A at 235 Church St. day after day in a chair flanked on each side by his attorneys. He looks like a shell of the former self that is plastered all over front pages, evening newscasts, and even political flyers. He looks flat, defeated — and, yes, a bit cowardly — as the court considers whether or not he should receive the death penalty or life imprisonment.
The word “coward” comes up again and again.
Defense attorney Patrick Culligan told jurors at the beginning of the penalty phase of the trial that he would not present evidence of a terrible childhood that forged a future killer. That assertion was contradicted by powerful testimony, however, from forensic psychiatrist Eric Goldsmith, who was hired by the defense to evaluate Hayes and determine his state of mind at the time he and co-defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky, invaded the Petit family home.
A chilling story emerged of an abusive father who beat his children. The father, Jim Hayes, also invented a particularly perverse method – the “determining process” – to encourage one son to brutalize the other and to ultimately define for each boy what is means to be a coward.
The reading of two letters written by Hayes’ younger brother Matthew has left an indelible mark on the sentencing proceedings as well. The first letter was prepared days after the home invasion in July 2007 during which the triple murder took place. Its tone is one of unresolved anger and condemnation as Matthew described growing up with Hayes — a bully for a brother who teased, tormented, and physically hurt him.
According to Matthew, their father would send them to the “determining room” to fight it out whenever one of them (usually Hayes) failed to confess to a transgression. Whoever emerged from the room first was forced to accept blame regardless of culpability and endured another beating by dad. Being smaller and younger, Matthew wrote, he always bore the burden of punishment. “Steven is what Steven is because ultimately, he is a coward. A coward does not face responsibility.”
As an adult, Hayes became a substance-abusing petty thief who was, according to Goldsmith, known for his “smash and grab” method of stealing purses from unoccupied cars in a reservoir parking lot in order to support his drug use. He went to great pains to avoid contact with the people he stole from because he was afraid.
Hayes described to Goldsmith with obvious admiration how Komisarjevsky was so brazen that, among the many home invasions he undertook, he even broke into a state trooper’s home during the night at one time. “This guy’s got great balls,” concluded Hayes about his co-defendant.
The abused boy who cowered in a room and bullied his little brother into brutal beatings became the incompetent thief who was, a police report indicates, so scared when officers surrounded him after a “smash and grab” that he almost soiled his pants. It isn’t difficult to imagine how Hayes came to idolize Komisarjevsky and perhaps want to emulate him – he was surely the opposite of a coward in Hayes’ mind.
In April 2010, Matthew wrote a second letter – this one more conciliatory, more forgiving — urging his brother to seek personal redemption before he dies. Matthew invoked the memory of their mother, Diane, who died last year. He reminded Hayes that their mother “didn’t raise cowards, she divorced one” but in trying so hard not be their father “you’ve eclipsed him.”
The imagery of cowardice is a powerful one for both brothers, but they seem to have come to very different conclusions, based on their abusive childhood, about what constitutes a coward. How this all plays out with the jury when they enter the ultimate “determining room” is unknown. But the choice of whether to die is not his, wrote Matthew to his brother. Hayes can honor their mother, he continued, by standing up and being a man. “God, nor your mother, want you now, because your work here isn’t finished. And neither will accept a coward.”
Previous installments of the Petit Trial Court Diary:
• Day One: Deceptive Calm
• Day Two: It Was All About “The Girls”
• Day Three: Defense Strategy Emerges: Spread The Blame
• Day Four: Pieces Fall Into Place
• Day Five: Numbers Tell A Story
• Day Six: Suffering Takes Center Stage
• Day Seven: A Gagged Order
• Day Eight: A Quilt & A Puppet Theater Bring Home The Horror
• Day Nine: It’s About Specific Intent
• Day Ten: The Notes Told The Tale
• Day 11: To Save A Life, Lawyers Must Humanize Alleged Monster
• Days Twelve & Thirteen: A Life, In Context
• This Time Around, Petit Jurors Are Yawning, Chuckling