Griswold — A blue and white ranch-style home sits nestled right into a half-moon of tall pine bushes in a sleepy, small-town neighborhood referred to as Kenwood Estates.
The whistle of a wind chime floats throughout an idyllic entrance porch, bordered by a backyard stuffed with fairy collectible figurines, birdfeeders and a birdbath watched diligently by a long-haired housecat. Inside, Rob Berube sits at a kitchen island topped with white marble, flipping by means of pictures from the building of his dream retirement residence. His spouse, Debi, clips coupons for his or her Sunday dinner.
Farther down the winding, wooded street, a person pushes a smiling baby on a sunshine-yellow swing whereas chatting with a neighbor. An American flag waves above a traditional, white gazebo and a set of Adirondack chairs that face the peaceable Pachaug Pond.
It’s a image of quintessential, postcard New England.
4 years in the past, it was a really totally different scene.
On the night time of Dec. 20, 2017, two siblings from downtown Hartford made their approach down that very same, winding street. They have been misplaced within the woods, a lot as they have been misplaced of their lives — the brother, a convicted prison dealing medicine to the addicted. The sister, a struggling single mom who simply succumbed to being her massive brother’s confederate.
A couple of hours later, the house that previously occupied the property at 70 Kenwood Estates in Griswold was scorched to the bottom and everybody who lived there was useless.
Sergio and Ruth Correa are to be sentenced within the homicide of three members of the Lindquist household that night time in one of the vital vicious crimes in current Connecticut historical past.
Kenneth Lindquist, a 56-year-old building venture supervisor who constructed his household residence from the bottom up over greater than twenty years, was killed by a baseball bat that shattered his cranium into greater than 30 items. His spouse, 61-year-old Janet, a sort, loving mom of two with a Christmas cookie recipe that was well-known across the neighborhood, was tortured and strangled in her bed room. Their youngest son, 21-year-old Matthew, was attacked with a machete and left to die within the woods. The household’s golden retriever, Skylar, was struck with a golf membership.
The Lindquists’ residence, after hours of mayhem and violence, was set on fireplace, lowering it to rubble.
For almost three years, the lot sat empty aside from the broken basis, a reminder of the horror that had been unleashed upon the neighborhood.
Eric Lindquist — Kenneth and Janet’s son and Matthew’s older brother — was left to scrub up the mess and, within the midst of his grief, grapple with what to do with the land the place his household as soon as lived.
“It was form of a scar on the neighborhood,” mentioned Rob Berube, who now owns the property.
A 12 months in the past, that scarred lot was changed — piece by piece — by a brand new residence.
A brand new starting
The Berubes broke floor in October 2020. They laid a brand new basis, planted their seeds for grass and flowers and bushes, and placed on all of the ending touches of a comfy, household residence: a basketball hoop for his or her granddaughter within the drive, hand-stitched quilts made by a member of the family on each mattress and a state-of-the-art kitchen with chrome steel home equipment.
The couple, shut in age to Kenneth and Janet Lindquist, have rewritten the narrative of the house and made it into what the Lindquists as soon as made it — a welcoming house for household and pals, a spot the place household meals and baked items are all the time filling the kitchen, a dream residence constructed with and stuffed with love.
The previous scar on the neighborhood of meticulously designed houses and manicured lawns is now the middle of household life for the Berubes, the place recollections are being made across the farmhouse desk — Debi Berube jokingly calls it “the final supper desk” — that fills their eating room.
The lace-covered floor is surrounded by seven chairs and a bench, the place each Sunday the Berube’s two kids, granddaughter, two greatest pals and Debi’s father and soon-to-be stepmother collect for Sunday dinner.
On the counter, between the oven and a white KitchenAid mixer, sits a recipe card holder with the week’s Sunday recipe ready to be cooked: Tuscan hen, beef stroganoff, meatloaf.
On Sunday, March 13, the household gathered across the kitchen island, serving to with dinner preparations and telling tales. The couple’s 32-year-old son Matthew Berube stored his eyes on a sticky notice that laid out a minute-by-minute schedule for when every a part of the meal must be slid into the double-oven.
Rob Berube and his greatest pal, Barry Black, sometimes slipped out to examine on a golf sport on the TV in the lounge, the place the household’s huge Maine coon cat, Fairly Kitty, lounged on a chair.
Within the kitchen, Debi Berube kissed her granddaughter Isabella Galipeau’s cheek as she moved casserole dish after casserole dish from the oven to the island. Isabella stood back-to-back together with her grandfather, guffawing as she measured her peak in opposition to his.
After they took their seats, they toasted to their household and erupted in laughter over tall pours of crimson wine.
“That is what it’s all the time like, we’re all the time laughing,” mentioned the Berubes’ daughter, Jessica Berube, cozied up beside her daughter on the finish of the desk.
Each Sunday, the group of 9 will get collectively for a similar ritual. On Tuesdays, Jessica, Isabella and Matthew come over for an additional sit-down dinner. Different nights, neighbors collect spherical for playing cards and cocktails.
On weekdays, Isabella will get off the college bus on the home and enjoys spending her afternoons with children her age in the identical pleasant neighborhood the place Eric and Matthew Lindquist spent years driving bikes and enjoying baseball, wiffleball and kickball.
The Berubes live the life the Lindquists wished to reside on that very same land.
Earlier than the fireplace, the land at 70 Kenwood Estates was filled with household and love, very similar to it’s once more now.
When he appears again on his childhood, Eric Lindquist recollects a life that was like a Nineteen Fifties sitcom. Whereas he and his brother rode their bikes and performed manhunt, Janet Lindquist can be cooking her specialties comparable to prime rib and scallop-stuffed jumbo shrimp in her cozy, but fashionable, kitchen.
“I bear in mind my mother yelling out to us, ‘Dinner’s prepared! Come residence!’ after we have been out enjoying within the neighborhood,” he mentioned.
The Lindquists utterly modernized the kitchen — the place roosters adorned every little thing from the dish towels to the salt and pepper shakers — in 2014, with all up to date home equipment. It was the final massive venture the Lindquists accomplished of their dream residence.
It’s the place Janet Lindquist, a homemaker at coronary heart, spent most of her free time.
On March 13, earlier than the Berubes’ visitors arrived, Eric stood within the kitchen at 70 Kenwood Estates and watched Debi Berube put together to make Sunday dinner.
It was his first time inside the home.
“‘Wow, I’m inside a home that’s international to me however I’m on this similar parcel of land that, if I transplanted myself again in time 5 years in the past, I’d be in my dad and mom’ lounge proper now,” Lindquist mentioned later that week.
Although it’s an all-new house, there’s proof of its previous.
“There are nonetheless traces of my household on the property,” Lindquist mentioned. “The crimson maple tree within the entrance yard, for example, was planted by me once I was 12. It was in all probability 3 inches in diameter and 12 ft tall then. Now it covers a a lot bigger footprint, having survived the extraordinary warmth of the flames solid upon it 4 winters in the past. And there’s nonetheless the connected storage within the yard constructed by me, my Dad, and my grandfather once I was 14 or so.”
The storage, warped by the warmth of the flames that torched the home, remains to be standing. And it nonetheless homes the remnants of the Eighties Triumph Spitfire 1500 that Lindquist was rebuilding along with his dad earlier than he was murdered.
Lindquist, who thanked the Berubes for his or her kindness and compassion, mentioned their residence appears like a contemporary begin for the household, not one tainted with traumatic recollections.
“The Berubes’ home is gorgeous. It has a really cozy really feel, I felt welcome,” Lindquist mentioned. “I didn’t really feel any negativity and I didn’t really feel any remorse. I used to be comfortable to see that they constructed the home that they all the time wished and comfortable to see that it’s understanding for them.”
Whereas some traces of his life there linger — he identified issues like a difficult gentle swap on the identical electrical grid — “At this level it’s now not staring me within the face,” he mentioned. “There’s no extra signal of what occurred there.”
“Again when it was only a basis and a few rubble, I’d take into consideration the issues that occurred,” he mentioned. “However now it’s utterly altered — there’s nothing left to set off the reminiscence.”
However that wasn’t all the time the case.
‘Disconnect from the previous’
Within the years after the crimes, 70 Kenwood Estates was a spot Lindquist went to attempt to bear in mind, to mourn. He’d revisit the positioning to go to his household, he mentioned. However the reminiscence of the fear unleashed there nonetheless haunted neighbors and passersby.
“I would’ve held onto it just a little longer if I had extra privateness there,” he mentioned of the property. “I’d go there as a result of it was a spot to principally go to my household, to recollect, to sit down and assume and stare in my very own world. But it surely was all the time interrupted — by neighbors strolling by and staring, folks slowing down their vehicles as they drove by. I felt like anytime I used to be visiting to pay my respects and simply be alone, I couldn’t be alone.”
Within the midst of his grief, he needed to deal with the logistics and bills of excavating the land — after which deciding what to do with it.
“In 2018, after the mud of the police investigation started to settle,” Lindquist mentioned, “I used to be confronted with a troublesome choice to maintain or promote the property.”
“The choice to promote was pretty simple, even when bittersweet. There was no approach I used to be going to rebuild a home of my very own on that lot,” he mentioned. “I wanted to maneuver on and disconnect from the previous, to begin contemporary with a brand new lifetime of my very own, and I knew that’s what my dad and mom would have wished me to do as nicely.”
However, like most issues occurring in Lindquist’s life on the time, it wasn’t simple.
Realtors wouldn’t contact it.
“I used to be advised by nearly everybody that it will be troublesome to promote the land, that no one would need it,” Lindquist mentioned, due to the historical past of the home that after stood there. He realized he’d need to do it alone.
Earlier than he even put the land available on the market, he received a letter.
Rob Berube, who’d married Debi on close by Pachaug Pond 35 years in the past, knew the lot at 70 Kenwood Estates was vacant. He knew it was a neighborhood that afforded the approach to life the couple wished of their upcoming retirement: an in depth group, pleasant neighbors, the privateness of the tall bushes surrounding the massive yard.
The Berubes had adopted the headlines concerning the crimes and the next trial. “We have been very a lot conscious of what occurred,” mentioned Rob Berube, 61.
They usually didn’t thoughts in any respect.
Of their eyes, most land in Connecticut bears the reminiscence of a demise. Their outdated residence, a Forties farmhouse set removed from the street in Preston, was as soon as the placement of one other couple’s demise.
“I believe different homes we’ve lived in have had extra issues which have despatched shivers up your backbone … I’ve by no means had that spine-tingling feeling right here,” Rob Berube mentioned, sitting on the kitchen island along with his spouse. They mentioned they’ve by no means felt even a second of negativity of their residence and have by no means given thought to the concept that it is likely to be haunted.
“It doesn’t faze us in any respect,” Debi Berube mentioned. “If you happen to didn’t reside the place any individual died, there can be no houses in Connecticut.”
After they first began constructing, neighbors would cease by the development website and whisper, “Have you learnt what occurred right here?”
They did, the Berubes would say, and so they didn’t care.
“We’re not superstitious, we don’t imagine in something paranormal,” Debi Berube mentioned, joking that their pals introduced sage to wave over the land once they began to construct.
However because the lumber-filled lot took the form of a home, passersby modified their musings to ones of aid, even rebirth. “It’s so good to see a house right here once more,” they might say.
Lindquist mentioned he hopes the neighborhood can begin to heal.
“I’m comfortable that new recollections are being made by one other good household that appears to share comparable values as my dad and mom,” he mentioned. “I’m not solely comfortable for them as a brand new household that’s capable of get pleasure from a pleasant neighborhood and supply recollections for generations of their very own, however for the remainder of the neighborhood, my fellow neighbors, who needed to drive by for months and months taking a look at wreckage and a relentless reminder of what occurred there.”
“I’m glad they now not have that fixed reminder each time they drive by,” he added, “however alternatively it appears like the ultimate chapter by way of erasing what occurred there.”
He mentioned he didn’t really feel any negativity within the Berubes’ residence, regardless of standing ft from the spots the place his dad and mom have been murdered.
Total, he’s comforted to know that there’s a house and a household there once more.
Greater than 4 years in the past, Eric Lindquist’s life modified irrevocably when he woke to a name that his dad and mom’ residence was engulfed in flames.
In December 2021, Sergio Correa, 30, was discovered responsible on 13 prices for his function within the Lindquist murders. He faces greater than a lifetime in jail. His adoptive sister, Ruth Correa, testified in opposition to him in alternate for a prompt sentence of 40 years, moderately than the greater than a century she confronted behind bars. They’re set to be sentenced Could 3.
The siblings drove from Hartford on that December night time as a part of a plot to commerce weapons for medicine with Matthew Lindquist, who was battling an opioid habit. Ruth Correa mentioned once they arrived, the plan went awry when Sergio Correa chased Matthew Lindquist into the woods with a machete.
Within the similar woods the place Eric Lindquist mentioned he and his brother used to play, Matthew was left to die.
The Correas then made their approach over to 70 Kenwood Estates, the place they broke in — by means of the basement Kenneth Lindquist had completed with a pool desk and bar — and unleashed unspeakable struggling on Kenneth and Janet Lindquist in the lounge, Matthew’s bed room and the master suite, in line with testimony. They stole the household’s Christmas presents and baggage full of home items comparable to towels. They torched the home and stole Matthew’s automotive, which they set on fireplace in an try to burn the final of the proof, then went residence.
Eric Lindquist, who sat by means of every single day of Sergio Correa’s weekslong trial, mentioned he usually thinks about what would have occurred if the home hadn’t been set aflame.
Although the lack of the home that his dad and mom poured their financial savings, sweat and souls into solely compounded his grief, he mentioned it generally crosses his thoughts that it doesn’t matter what occurred, he would have misplaced the home.
And in some methods, the fireplace could have made it simpler: “who is aware of what it will have appeared like in there, how a lot would have wanted to be gutted, if I may even stand to go within the place,” he mentioned. “Then I’d have handled the clichéd haunted home.”
As a substitute, he cleared the wreckage and one other household began anew.
And now, regardless of the land’s sordid previous, the Berubes’ have their dream home: a customized, cozy residence the place they may welcome their household and retire.
It’s their life’s work realized, very similar to the primary home was for Kenneth and Janet Lindquist.