Introduction In the early morning hours of July 22, two men entered the home of Dr. William Petit Jr. and his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, in Cheshire, Conn., an affluent suburb of New Haven. Petit, his wife and his two daughters were brutalized, bound and held hostage for several hours. Later in the morning, one of the assailants accompanied Petit's wife to a bank and forced her to withdraw $15,000. After returning to the house and strangling her, the suspects set the house on fire to cover their escape in the Petits' sport utility vehicle. Having been alerted by a suspicious bank teller, local police blocked the escape. Petit managed to get out of the burning house, but his daughters died inside. The attack in Connecticut was only the latest brutal incident in a series of home invasion robberies targeting affluent families.