This crashed vehicle is believed to have been used in a getaway attempt by two men who were seen leaving the Petit family’s house in Cheshire, Conn. Three people were killed in the home invasion.

AP / Yoon S. Byun

CHESHIRE, Conn. — Five years ago when he was being sentenced for a string of burglaries, Joshua Komisarjevsky told authorities that he used military night-vision goggles while committing his crimes. He also wore latex gloves, he said, to avoid leaving fingerprints.

Whether he employed those same tactics on Monday, when he and Steven Hayes allegedly breached the confines of a split-level home on Sorghum Mill Drive at 3 a.m., and left a triple homicide in their wake is unknown. What is clear is that both men — parolees with lengthy criminal histories — have for years specialized in burglaries and house breaks.

This is what authorities found inside a house afire:

The body of 11-year-old , Michaela Petit, tied to her bed. The burned body of her sister, Hayley Petit, 17, a recent graduate of Miss Porter’s School in Farmington who planned to attend Dartmouth College, found dead at the top of the stairs. The body of their mother, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, a nurse at Cheshire Academy, found on the first floor.

According to published reports, Dr. William P. Petit Jr., a prominent endocrinologist, badly beaten and bound around the legs, managed to hop up the cellar stairs as flames destroyed his family and his home. Petit remains at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury in stable condition.

In a timeline they issued yesterday, the police said one of the suspects forced Jennifer Hawke-Petit to drive to a local bank branch at 9:10 a.m. to get money. As the suspect waited outside, Hawke-Petit alerted the teller that her family was being held hostage.

“If it hadn’t been for the bank teller, we would not have caught the suspects right away,” said Cheshire Police Lt. Paul Markella.

At the burning house, the police found the suspects running out the back door. Komisarjevsky and Hayes then stole one of the Petits’ cars, said Markella, striking a police cruiser and ramming through a police blockade before being taken into custody at gunpoint.

Firefighters discovered the three bodies.

“Two bodies were immediately identified as females. One individual was burned, and we couldn’t tell who it was” at the outset, said Markella. At some point, Markella said, one of the victims was raped.

“The police just said, ‘Lock your doors. Stay inside till further notice,’ ” said Megan Clarke, 15, who lives across the street. “Police cars were racing. I saw all the caution tape. I was like, ‘Wow, what’s going on?’ ”

Clarke said she finally went out when she saw neighbors gathering on a nearby lawn, amid the chaos.

“It was hard, trying to figure out what happened. Was it just a fire? Why would they have all these policemen in their full armor? It was a shock when we found out that three people are dead.”

Komisarjevsky, 26, and Hayes, 44, of 5-H Horne Ave. in Winsted, were arraigned in Meriden Superior Court yesterday on charges of assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary, arson, conspiracy to commit arson, larceny, robbery and risk of injury — all in the first degree. The police say more charges will follow.

Komisarjevsky’s family home on North Brooksvale Road is less than two miles from the Petits’ home. Whether the two suspects allegedly chose that home deliberately, or whether either or both of them knew any of the family members, authorities would not say yesterday.

Today the suspects are behind bars, each held on $15 million bond.

Komisarjevsky and Hayes may have met at a treatment center outside of Hartford, where they both were enrolled in programs last year. Brian Garnett, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Corrections, could not confirm whether that was the case.

But Garnett said Komisarjevsky first reported to Bernal Treatment Center on June 6, 2006; Hayes reported there seven days later. Komisarjevsky was transferred to Filliman House on July 25, 2006; Hayes was transferred to Filliman six days later, Garnett said. Both centers are part of Community Solutions Inc., whose services include drug rehabilitation and a halfway house.

A spokesperson for the halfway house, said Hayes was referred back to the Department of Corrections “for a technical violation,” but did not know the outcome. Garnett said Komisarjevsky was paroled on April 10 of this year.

“Both offenders were deemed to be appropriate candidates for supervised parole in the community, based on their criminal history, which involved the minimum level of violence,” Corrections said in a statement yesterday.

“They had been initially released to halfway houses within 19 months of their parole date and then were transferred to parole in the community on that date. Both were on a weekly reporting schedule with their parole officers and had been in full compliance with the requirements of their release, including being employed on a fulltime basis.”

In 2002, a Superior Court judge sentenced Komisarjevsky to nine years in prison with six years of special parole on numerous burglary charges. At the time, he was serving a three-year sentence with six years’ special parole on similar charges out of Meriden Superior Court.

According to the Hartford Courant, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Ronald Dearstyne told the court that Komisarjevsky began robbing homes at age 14; the first was in Cheshire. Most of the robberies occurred over a period of eight months, from July 2001 to February 2002, and involved the theft of more than $20,000 of electronic items, including computers, telephones and DVDs, Dearstyne said.

Dearstyne also told the court that Komisarjevsky had told the police that he carried a military backpack, equipped with, among other things, night-vision goggles, and a knife to rip through window screens.

“I cannot remember in my 15 years, a person who has laid out such a plan to this degree, where he would use night goggles,” Dearstyne said, according to the Courant. He added that one victim “states he has four children who were sleeping upstairs in the house the night he robbed them. They were very frightened by the incident. They were glad he didn’t go upstairs.”

Bristol Superior Court Judge James Bentivegna called Komisarjevsky “a cold, calculating predator.”

Hayes has an extensive criminal record that stretches back years, including convictions for forgery; escape; larceny, forgery; and burglary.

In 1996, according to published reports, Hayes was involved in a car chase while he was wanted for escaping a halfway house in Hartford. At the time, he had nearly completed a four-year program, according to aCorrections spokesman.

The drone of idling satellite trucks blotted any sounds of summer yesterday outside the Petits’ home in this town about 25 miles southwest of Hartford, where a host of bird feeders hung from trees and pink and yellow coneflowers edged the driveway.

Helen Lee, a retiree who lives around the corner, walked slowly past as Connecticut State Police crime lab investigators gathered evidence, scouring the lawn and charred interior of the home.

“I heard about it in the library yesterday,” said Lee. “This is horrific. This is a very quiet town.”

Lee has seen recent changes in Cheshire in the 40 years she has lived there. Once she knew all her neighbors. Now, she said, new people move in all the time, and the income level is on the high side. Amid the 1950sranch houses, historic Cape Cods and colonials, and shady subdivisions, “they’re building mansions,” she said. “We’re a neighborhood of doctors, lawyers and professional people,” said a woman who lives across the street from the Petit’s house. “We keep to ourselves.” Of the Petits, she said, “They were a lovely family.”

Just 1.9 miles away, at 840 North Brooksvale Rd. — the home of Komisarjevsky’s parents — a man peered from a side window of a white antique Cape in need of repair yesterday afternoon.

In the yard, a child’s rocking horse and plastic playhouse sat in the shade, and wind chimes hung across a wishing well, rang in the breeze

“No cameras, no cameras,” the man said. Then he slid open a tiny window screen, and handed copies of a statement to several reporters.

The statement said:

“This is an absolute tragedy. Our deepest sympathy goes out to the Petit family (and all those whose lives they touched). We cannot understand what would have made something like this happen. There is nothing else we can say at this time.”

Asked if he was Joshua Komisarjevsky’s father, the man just shook his head and asked reporters to move across the road.

Shortly thereafter, a car with state police license plates pulled up in the driveway.