Free Republic

Blue-state Connecticut has undergone a jolting metamorphosis over the past three years, with potential ramifications for the Senate contest between Linda McMahon and Richard Blumenthal. Many residents have become a lot more like red-state Texans than blue-state New Englanders. Now, they're enthusiastic supporters of the death penalty and are fond of handguns and shotguns. It's all due to a horrific home invasion in 2007 in the affluent town of Cheshire, a New Haven suburb. Chilling details of the "Cheshire Murders," as they're known, have played out in a New Haven courtroom this fall during the first of two trials. Now,...

NEW HAVEN — More than two years later, the details still have the power to horrify. In the middle of the night, two parolees break into a tidy clapboard house in the central Connecticut town of Cheshire. They club the father, a doctor, and tie him up. One of them rapes and strangles the mother, the authorities say. The other molests one of the daughters, 11-year-old Michaela. The father breaks free and shouts for help. But the intruders have set a fire: The girls, Michaela and Hayley, 17, tied to their beds, die of smoke inhalation. The triple murder on...