Milford families torn apart by stabbing death Milford residents share thoughts about Plaskon, Sanchez families

Maren Sanchez's home at Mariner's Walk in Milford, Conn. on Thursday, May 1, 2014. Maren Sanchez's home at Mariner's Walk in Milford, Conn. on Thursday, May 1, 2014. Photo: Brian A. Pounds Buy photo Photo: Brian A. Pounds Image 1 of / 35 Caption Close Milford families torn apart by stabbing death 1 / 35 Back to Gallery

Michael P. Mayko

and John Burgeson

MILFORD -- Christopher Plaskon comes from a respected family, well-connected in local law enforcement and political circles, with a waterfront home in an exclusive beachfront community. Maren Sanchez grew up in the restaurant business, specifically Bridgeport's popular Ralph `n' Rich's, where all the waitresses, including her mother, socialized together, got pregnant around the same time and raised their children like a big extended family between shifts serving chicken parmigiana.

For a while, these two lives intersected naturally, as might be expected of two kids the same age living three miles apart along the Milford shoreline. Plaskon became a high school football player and somewhat of a class clown. Sanchez enchanted classmates with her bubbly, almost magnetic persona. Those who knew them say they were friends.

But those childhoods are gone.

Sanchez, a 16-year-old honor student, has been laid to rest. Plaskon, also 16, has been charged with her murder and is now on suicide watch in an institutional infirmary, where his attorney says he's being medicated for psychosis. And the families that raised these two friends and classmates have been unconscionably broken.

Now that the police tape is gone, Milford, a placid, middle class community wedged between Bridgeport and New Haven, is reeling from the violent killing that has made the city the backdrop of an international media circus.

"Two families were changed forever that morning," said a longtime Milford resident who knows the Plaskons. "One sent a child to school only to have her never return. The other's child left school that day a murderer."

As Mayor Ben Blake prepared to speak about the brutal killing that has shaken the Milford community at a candlelight vigil for Sanchez last Monday, he looked out over a sea of purple -- thousands of people dressed in Sanchez's favorite color.

"Kids are going to be grieving forever," Blake said. "The community is going to be grieving forever."

Cries every night

By outward appearances, Plaskon had just about everything -- a loving family, four supportive brothers and a home on Long Island Sound.

But one thing he didn't have was Maren Sanchez. And when the spunky junior prom queen turned him down April 25 for a date to the biggest social event of the year, he allegedly jumped her, slashed her throat and killed her in a stairwell at Jonathan Law High School.

That incident changed school, according to Law senior Kurt Holden, "forever," leaving students and staff with searing memories they'd like to forget.

A teacher told police of seeing Plaskon on top of Sanchez during the attack, which took place just minutes before first period. A student came down the little-used stairway about the time the murder was taking place. She heard the commotion, saw a bloody Plaskon with a "dead look on his face," but continued on her way thinking it was just a fight, her father told Hearst Connecticut Media.

Moments later Plaskon dropped the bloody knife, calmly walked into the principal's office and told Police Officer James Kiely, who is assigned to the school: "I did it. Just arrest me."

James Kiely, the school's resource officer, saw blood staining Plaskon's hands and smearing his clothes.

And the student who walked down the stairs?

She wonders what would have happened had she arrived 15 seconds earlier. Could she have been able to stop it? Or would she have been slashed? Her father said she has cried herself to sleep every night since the murder.

The school was shut down and surrounded by police tape. The junior prom scheduled for that evening was called off. And, Jarrod Butts, Sanchez's boyfriend was left to spend what should have been a night of carefree dancing at a beachside vigil for his dead high school sweetheart instead.

Dressed in a suit and surrounded by girls in their gowns, Butts held the shoulders of Sanchez's unworn teal prom dress, its lifeless fabric flitting in the sea breeze.

"She didn't have a bad bone in her body," Ralph `n' Rich's co-owner Rich Ndini said from his perch on the stool at the end of the restaurant's bar that is his usual spot. "She was just a little pumpkin. If you had to choose one kid that this could never happen to, it would be her."

A restaurant family

Sanchez and her mother, Donna Cimarelli-Sanchez, were extremely close. They lived together in the Mariner's Walk condominium complex two blocks from the beach -- two miles down the shoreline from Plaskon.

Sanchez's father, Jose, lives in Miami. Her two siblings also live in Florida.

Cimarelli-Sanchez, a graduate of Bridgeport's Central High School, is a self-employed massage therapist. For seven years, however, she was a fixture at Ralph `n' Rich's first location on Wall Street in downtown Bridgeport. When she started serving, the traditional Italian restaurant, now a local icon located across from the Barnum Museum on Main Street, was in its fourth year of business. In fact, it was the only business open in downtown Bridgeport after dark.

While serving plates of littleneck clams and veal chop sasi, Cimarelli-Sanchez became particularly close with restaurant co-owner Ralph Silano's sister, who is still a waitress there.

Ndini said he knew Maren Sanchez from when she was first born -- a smiley girl, even then.

Sanchez was the kind of girl people simply liked to be around. She was upbeat. Free-spirited. And she had a habit of spontaneously bursting into song.

One time in New York City she spied a police officer with a sour look on his face. So she started singing. People were staring, but Sanchez persisted with her song until the officer cracked a smile.

Epitome of good

Making people feel good was one of Sanchez's natural talents. Her love for life was palpable, drawing people into her orb.

"She was the epitome of a good kid," said Michael Mele, Law's drama adviser. "You want all the kids to be like her."

"She had this ability to just make you feel good, no matter what was going on. I would walk in grumpy many days after a bad meeting or a bad couple of classes and she had this infectious energy and ability to just make you smile, make you laugh and forget about all the bad stuff.

"I'd say, `Maren, get on stage!' and she'd say, `No, I'm gonna sit here and sing,' and she would just lie on the floor and sing you some Beatles song or whatever she was going to do that day. And you couldn't even get mad at her because she made you smile."

Sanchez was also admired for her talent in the arts. Friends say she was a triple threat -- a superb actress, musician and dancer.

"She had the type of voice that you wanted to listen to," said Jesiree Carrera, a Law senior who sang Rufus Wainwright's "Hallelujah" in three-part harmony with Maren and another girl in last year's talent show. "She could sing soprano and alto. She just knew how to fit."

Sanchez won that talent show with a heartfelt solo performance of "Home," a ballad by "American Idol" star Phillip Phillips.

"She just had a lot going for her," Carrera said. "She was also very smart. And athletic. She just loved to be involved and now in our school you can really feel that she's missing."

When she wasn't strumming the guitar she taught herself to play, Sanchez could be often be found taking photographs. She documented birthday parties and trips to Florida to see her family and summer beach excursions with friends. She was proud when she was asked to be the school photographer at last year's junior prom.

Sanchez also built her own custom bedroom furniture and sewed many of her own clothes. She had a keen eye for design and a distinct sense of taste. If you didn't like the way she dressed, she didn't care -- because she liked it. So no one was surprised earlier this year when Sanchez swapped her brown, shoulder-length hair for an edgy pixie cut with a long tuft in front -- "like pink or miley cyrus," she told her friends on Facebook. "Love it with every bone in my body!"

Out of character

Plaskon was apparently one of the many people drawn to Sanchez.

The pair attended West Shore Middle School together, and while rumors that they once dated have been rampant on the heels of Sanchez's death, several sources who are close to both families deny them.

What these sources have said is that Plaskon was infatuated with Sanchez. One source went so far as to describe him as "stalking her."

In the aftermath of the murder, rumors -- unsubstantiated so far -- have spread like wildfire: Plaskon once displayed a knife to students on the school bus; he frequently cut himself on the arms and that he even tried to commit suicide -- but Sanchez was the one who talked him out of it; that he gave advance warning that "something big would happen;" that he was disruptive while attending West Shore Middle School and taking medication for ADHD.

Perhaps such rumors are inevitable when the incomprehensible happens.

But by many accounts, Plaskon was a good kid, an athlete and a class clown.

"(He) seemed like a nice kid," said Ben Buczek, a Law senior who had a class with Plaskon. "Weird, but in a funny sort of way. Nothing out of the ordinary ... You wouldn't think he could do this. Plaskon never displayed any violent tendencies. He didn't seem like the sort of kid capable of harming anyone."

Plaskon grew up three miles down the shoreline from the Sanchez house in one of the enormous units of the three-story Laurel Sands Condominiums. The Plaskon family has lived in the Laurel Beach area for decades. Their current home, purchased in 1990 for $200,000, fronts an exclusive beachfront community with its own brick boardwalk that stretches a quarter mile.

Close community

In the 1950s and 1960s Laurel Beach was the summer hot spot for financially prosperous people. They would buy beachfront houses and spend their summers living in them. By the late 1960s those summer homes started selling off to buyers looking to remodel them for year-round living with a panoramic view of Long Island Sound.

And the financially prosperous lawyers, prosecutors, doctors and businessmen still live there.

Among neighbors, the Plaskon family is well-regarded.

David Plaskon, Christopher Plaskon's father, owns a number of limited liability corporations with names like Bluegrass Landscaping LLC, which lists their Seaview Avenue home as its address. David Plaskon's wife Kathleen is a registered nurse. A records search indicates the couple also own property in Florida.

The Plaskons are related to the Healy family, which has been involved in Milford law enforcement, firefighting and the restaurant business, and the Saley family, which is involved in politics. Paul Healy, Plaskon's uncle, was appointed guardian by the court on Friday.

Christopher Plaskon is the middle of five boys. The oldest, David Plaskon, was a star quarterback for Jonathan Law's football team. He went on to play wide receiver for Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.

Apparently, Christopher Plaskon looked up to his brother. On his Facebook page, Christopher Plaskon lists himself as having studied at Western Connecticut, even though he wasn't expected to graduate from Law until June 2015.

Like David, Christopher Plaskon is also athletic. He played football during his first two years at Law as wide receiver. He also ran middle distance events on both the indoor and outdoor track team.

But something happened this past year. Christopher Plaskon did not go out for football, nor did he run track.

In published interviews, Mark Robinson, his former coach, called Christopher Plaskon "a fantastic athlete, who comes from a very athletic family." And in those interviews he said the Plaskon parents supported Law -- "if we needed anything ... needed bleachers swept."

"This is completely blowing everyone away," said Robinson, who has known the Plaskon family for a decade. "This family, it's not a neglect issue. It's not that they didn't pay attention to him."

Plaskon's Facebook page might offer some clues. There's the WestConn claim and another that he worked at YoMama -- a term used in inner cities as an admission of defeat. Then there's his likes -- Dos Equis, a Mexican beer, and FPSRussia, a popular YouTube channel in which an American acts as a Russian while firing high-powered weapons at various targets -- many of which explode.

He listed Sanchez as his sister under his Facebook family tree.

Sanchez spent some of her last weeks filling in as a table busser at Ralph `n' Rich's after school. Ndini said she was looking for experience. The plan was for her to learn the ropes so she could fill in the future when the restaurant was short staffed.

It was a plan for a future that will never be.