Brian McDonald

mostly i've kept away from reacting to news articles, editorials and blogs about In the Middle of the Night. however, there is one continuing misrepresentation within those stories that i would like to comment on, that is, that the book places all the blame on steven hayes for the murders of the Petit family.

sometime in the early morning hours of july 23rd, 2007, steven hayes and joshua komisarjevsky came to an ominous decision. as i write in the book, they were complicit in this plan by joshua's own admission: he told me that hayes had to call him three times because he got lost coming back from the gas station where he had filled plastic gallon jugs.

so here's the question: what's the probability that they were going to burn the house down, but leave eye witnesses to their crimes? They were both on parole. They had broken into a home, beat a man nearly to death, tied-up a mother and her two children and had kept them hostage for hours. Before anything else occurred, those crimes would have sent them back to jail for a very long time, perhaps the rest of their lives. Joshua told me that steven hayes committed the first murder that morning. But he also admitted that the gasoline was bought before Jennifer Hawke-Petit was killed. In the book, I write that Joshua couldn't explain the gasoline used to set the fire that killed Hayley and Michaela Petit. I think the inference is clear.

I've much to be thankful for, but I especially would like to thank my family and friends for their love, support and guidance, especially over the past weeks and months. I love you all.

St. Martin's Press has submitted In the Middle of the Night for an Edgar Award, the Mystery Writers of America prestigious yearly honor. I'm grateful.

I can't speak for all of us, but i would venture a guess that most journalists, even ones who write opinion pieces about the law and ethics of our trade, are more interested in the reaction to their story than the facts they have gathered. sometimes even the simplest decisions in journalistic writing: word choice, tense or using the plural is often predicated on garnering that reaction. but sometimes those choices are not only wrong, they're malicious.