question:
did Jennifer Hawke-Petit know that her captors had plastic gallon jugs filled with gasoline?
it goes without question that Mrs. Petit feared for the lives of her daughters when steven hayes drove her to the bank that monday morning in july three years ago. why else would she withdraw the 15 thousand dollars and get back in the car with hayes instead of staying in the safety of the bank.
the threat could very well have been the gasoline. should hayes sense that Mrs. Petit was raising the alarm, or not coming out of the bank with the money, he would phone komisarjevsky who would spread the gasoline and set the house on fire, leaving Hayley, 18, and Michaela, 11, and Dr. Petit, tied and bound behind him as he fled.
if Mrs. Petit knew about the gasoline, and it seems likely that she did, then she must have realized that there was a real possibility that hayes and komsiarjevsky were not planning on leaving any witnesses. but she must have also believed that her only chance of saving her family was going back to the house. no matter what horrible scenarios played in her mind, it is highly unlikely that she gave even a moment's thought of surviving without her children.
if the gas was the threat, then it was one that hayes and komisarjevsky would ultimately follow through on. Mrs. Petit, however, wouldn't be alive to see the horror of it. she had already been raped and strangled when the house was set on fire. Hayley and Michaela would die in the inferno. Dr. Petit managed to escape.
steven hayes's trial begins sept. 13th, komisarjevsky's next year
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