Newsweek humors a vicious murderer

Newsweek magazine recently published an article letting everyone know that Linda Mai Lee said, “For the first time in my life, I’m happy to be alive and do not want to die.”

And who is Linda Mai Lee, you might ask?

You might remember her by another name: Steven Joseph Hayes. Together with Joshua Komisarjevsky, Hayes committed one of the most heinous crimes in modern history, the horrific Cheshire murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley and Michaela at their home in Cheshire, Connecticut.

Upon breaking into the Petit home, Hayes and Komisarjevsky tied up and brutally assaulted father and husband Dr. William Petit with a baseball bat. Michaela was raped while Hayes and Jennifer were at the bank taking $15,000 from the Petit bank account in a hostage situation.

The two teenaged girls were tied to their beds, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. Jennifer Hawke-Petit was raped and then strangled by Hayes before the house was set on fire to destroy the evidence of their crimes. The father, tied up in the basement, managed to stagger out to escape.

Hayes took Jennifer Hawke-Petit to the bank because he and Komisarjevsky wanted to steal fifteen thousad dollars from them. Hayes purchased the gasoline used to commit arson. These two men viciously attacked and murdered an innocent, sleeping family that had never done anything to harm them, purely for reasons of lust and greed. They murdered children in one of the most vicious ways possible, by burning them alive.

Hayes and Komisarjevsky were apprehended by police as they tried to escape, and Dr. Petit, who survived, testified against them at their trial. Both men were convicted and sentenced to be executed for their crimes, but Connecticut no longer allows prisoner executions, so the sentence was changed to six life terms without parole.

These two murderers should have been executed in the most painful way possible, and their bodies left to rot on display as a warning to others who would commit a similar crime, a good, old-fashioned gibbeting. That’s what these two men deserved.

The murders were premeditated. Even though both men claimed their initial plan was only to rob the Petit family, they violently and immediately attacked Dr. Petit upon gaining entry to the house, which had been targeted after Komisarjevsky observed Jennifer and Michaela out shopping and followed them home so he would know where they lived.

The killers knew where their victims lived, what they looked like, and that they would be asleep when they launched their attack in the dead of night.

Today, Steven Hayes has found the perfect modern excuse for committing his unconscionable crimes — he was a woman, trapped in a man’s body, the whole time. He has officially changed his name to Linda Mai Lee to honor his late “husband” whom he met and married while in prison.

The question is, does Hayes feel any remorse?

About Dr. Petit, Hayes said, "I can never expect him to forgive me. I would say I'm sorry and wish I could undo that night. Every moment of that night haunts me because that is not who I am as a person ... What happened goes against everything I believe and will haunt me forever. What makes it worse is knowing that I would never have been in that situation if I had accepted who I am sooner. I could have prevented years of pain I caused everyone if I had only accepted myself."

“I hurt, so I hurt others,” Hayes said.

No, he didn’t just hurt others. He robbed, raped, and murdered them. He beat a sleeping man with a baseball bat. Did Hayes rape and strangle Jennifer Hawke-Petit because he wanted to feel like a woman? If a woman is violently raped by a man who thinks he’s a woman, does that somehow mitigate the crime?

Please, somebody explain it to me, so it makes sense to allow a vicious convicted murderer to game the system like this. Now if Hayes doesn’t get his way, he’s going to sue.

Hayes has found his raison d'être — by changing his name and his gender, perhaps he can put the past behind him.

Does wearing a little makeup, taking hormones and changing one's name change one's gender?

More importantly, does it change one's arrest record?

In February 2024, Hayes’s petition to have his name and sex legally changed was denied, with the court ruling, “It's not in the public's interest for petitioner's name to be changed. While petitioner is not yet on post-prison supervision, he will be upon his release from prison. Given the nature of petitioner's convictions, it is in the public's interest to be able to identify petitioner by his name at the time of conviction during any term of post-prison supervision."

Um … what? This murderer isn’t supposed to ever get out of prison. He was supposed to be executed! Agreed, the prisoner has no right to change his name to obfuscate the fact he is a convicted rapist and murderer.

Steven Hayes is not showing remorse for his crimes. He hasn’t taken responsibility for his actions. He’s looking for someone, or something, to blame for the atrocities he committed with his partner. "I think about them every day and regret my part in what happened and all the pain I caused," he said. "That is why I want to use my life today to prevent someone else from doing what I did." And how will you do that, Mr. Hayes, when you are destined to spend the rest of your life behind bars?

In his diary, Komisarjevsky blamed Dr. Petit for not saving his family after attacking him while he slept, binding him, and threatening to kill him if he resisted while the brutal assaults were taking place upstairs.

When Dr. Petit did escape, he went for help instead of trying to take on two armed men by himself, but that doesn’t make him a coward or to blame for what Hayes and Komisarjevsky were doing to his family.  The only cowards that night were Hayes and Komisarjevsky.

Now Hayes, destined to spend the rest of his life behind bars, wants to live as a woman. He wants hair replacement therapy to hide his male pattern baldness and breast augmentation surgery. He wants to wear bras and panties and makeup and to be called by a woman’s name, as if that could erase his past.

Hayes claims to pay for his makeup, food, clothing, and hormone therapy using the income from his full-time job in the prison, which pays only $280 per month. However, his room and board are paid for by the taxpayer.

Hayes is also acting as his own attorney in his lawsuits filed against the state of Pennsylvania for denying him treatment for his baldness and removal of facial and body hair. "If they choose to go to trial, I will take their head off by keeping my promise and putting every trans-female in PA on the stand to share the abuse they suffer in that system," Hayes said. He wants to look more like a woman and thinks taxpayers ought to pay for it.

Perhaps Hayes has learned something from his time spent incarcerated for kidnapping, raping, and murdering three people. After all, decapitating his victims would be a swifter and more merciful end for his victims versus slowly burning them alive.

Wouldn’t it have been cheaper just to execute the guy?

John Leonard is a freelance writer and author of eight books. His recent book The God Conclusion is available on audiobook as well as print or e-book through LeonardBooks.net. He blogs at southernprose.com.  

Image: logo, via Wikimedia Commons // fair use

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