Never-released phone calls made to taped Cheshire police lines on the morning of the 2007 Petit family home invasion, some from the cellphones of officers, provide new insight into the chaotic minutes surrounding the deaths of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley and Michaela.

The Courant obtained the calls through law enforcement sources. More than 40 calls came into the police station on the morning of July 23, including one from a department hostage negotiator who was instructed not to report to the scene.

The recordings bolster the long-accepted notion that police were preparing for a possible drawn-out standoff and reveal that they had questions about Hawke-Petit's story that her family was being held hostage. Police have not explained the strategy behind their actions. Police have never performed a review of the incident, and the town's SWAT team — eventually called to the scene — has not produced a report, according to Town Manager Michael Milone. He would not explain why no reviews had taken place.

Cheshire police declined to comment on why they advised the hostage negotiator not to report.

Hawke-Petit and daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, were killed on July 23. Dr. William Petit was beaten but survived. Joshua Komisarjevsky and Stephen Hayes were convicted and are on death row.

On Monday, the night before the sixth anniversary of the crime, HBO broadcast a documentary that included some continued criticism of the police response from members of Hawke-Petit's family.

Part of the criticism coming from Cindy Renn, Jennifer Hawke-Petit's sister, is that Cheshire police have never reviewed their response.

"Nobody in that department ever looked at what they did or didn't do right or wrong," Renn told The Courant. "Admit when you make mistakes and do better the next time and save people's lives."

Renn said that her parents had repeatedly asked Cheshire police to explain what happened at the Petit home but have never received an answer. She said it was not surprising that not all of the taped calls from that morning were released.

Renn said it was understandable that officers were shaken up by the horror they found inside the Petit house, but that it was part of the job to review how responses to major crimes are handled.

"We want to see this never happen again to another family, and if they never even looked at what happened and what they did, then they didn't learn anything from our family's deaths," Renn said. "This was our family's 9/11, and I can only imagine the public outcry if no one ever reviewed what occurred on 9/11."

There is some mystery surrounding the calls. When The Courant requested copies of calls made into those lines on the morning of the Petit slayings, Milone referred the matter to Neil Dryfe, the town's current police chief, who was not with the department at the time.

Dryfe, in a written response to Milone, said that the recordings did not exist. He said they were destroyed by a lightning strike in September 2010. The copy of the calls supplied to The Courant was made after September 2010.

Dispatch tapes also provided to The Courant offer some new details. In one call recorded the morning of July 23, a police lieutenant who responded to the Bank of America, where Hawke-Petit was forced to withdraw money, indicated that there was some doubt about Hawke-Petit's story that her family was in danger.

Lt. James Fasano was dispatched to the bank to interview employees. In a conversation with dispatcher Donald Miller, about 23 minutes after the initial 911 call from the bank, Fasano indicated that he didn't know if Hawke-Petit's account was accurate.

"Apparently she came into the bank, she tried to get some money out," Fasano told Miller. "One of the accounts was in her husband's name, and then she says, 'Well, my kids are at home tied up.' So we don't know if they really are or if she was just trying to get money out at this point, all right."

Miller responded, "OK."

Fasano tells Miller that he had passed that information along to Sgt. Robert Vignola via a cellphone call minutes earlier.

At one point, more than 50 minutes after the initial 911 call, Vignola indicates that one of the females is a possible suspect.

"Three suspects, one is a female supposedly in the upstairs bedroom possibly 36 [dead] with the other two," Vignola states in one recording.

Among the Petit-related calls from that morning was one from Eric Granoth, one of the town's three hostage negotiators, inquiring whether he was needed. Testimony from the criminal trials indicated that police were alerted to a possible hostage situation.

A teller from Bank of America, where Hawke-Petit was forced to withdraw $15,000, testified that Hawke-Petit indicated that she needed the money because her family was being held hostage. The mother was strangled to death when she and Hayes returned to the Petit home from the bank. The two girls died in a fire started by the two killers.

"I need to know whether you want me in or not. I am the hostage negotiator and I got paged," Granoth said in the 15-second conversation.

Miller can be heard asking Deputy Chief Joseph Popovich if he wanted the hostage negotiator to come in. Miller then tells Granoth "not at this time" and hangs up.

Granoth did end up responding to the scene, but as a member of the fire department. Granoth was one of the first firefighters to arrive at the Petit household and futilely attempt to fight the roaring inferno after Hayes and Komisarjevsky had fled the house. Neither of the town's other hostage negotiators at the time, Nikki Moore or Brian Pichnarcik, was called to Sorghum Mill Road that day, according to police records.

"The fact that a hostage negotiator, listening to what was going on during the dispatch communications, felt compelled to call central police headquarters offering his assistance and then being turned away is shocking," said New Haven Chief Public Defender Thomas Ullmann, who represented Hayes.

Ullmann initially said that he had never heard the call from Granoth to the dispatch center. But New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington said the tapes were produced by police and were, indeed, turned over to both Ullmann and Jeremiah Donovan, who represented Komisarjevsky. Donovan could not be reached for comment.