'Something else was going on.' Correa triple murder trial testimony focuses on car fire

NEW LONDON - As police and fire investigators in the early morning hours of Dec. 20, 2017 began trying to piece together how a massive fire at a Griswold home started, officers less than 50 minutes away were at the scene of Glastonbury vehicle fire with a disturbing connection to what would later turn out to be a triple-murder scene.

The two fires would soon be linked after a registration check of the charred 2003 Saturn Ion on Nanel Drive in Glastonbury showed the car was owned by 21-year-old Matthew Lindquist, the son of Kenneth and Janet, whose bodies would soon be pulled from the wreckage of the family’s 70 Kenwood Estates home.

The second day of testimony during Sergio Correa’s murder, arson and home invasion trial in New London Superior Court on Monday focused on the younger Lindquist’s vehicle and how police and state fire investigators at the time began connecting it with the developing crime scene less than an hour away.

Correa, a 30-year-old Hartford resident, is accused of killing the three Lindquists, robbing their home and burning down the residence. He is also charged with stealing Matthew Lindquist’s car and setting it ablaze in an attempt to destroy evidence of the earlier crimes.

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At the time Matthew Lindquist’s abandoned vehicle was found parked near the entrance of an apartment complex, police had no inkling that he had been brutally murdered hours before and his body left in a patch of woods near where his parent’s home smoldered.

Over the course of several hours, as detectives made a preliminary examination of the car, the bodies of Janet and Kenneth Lindquist were found in the home’s debris. Kenneth Lindquist died of blunt force head injuries and his wife of a combination of blunt impact injuries, burns and smoke inhalation.

Matthew Lindquist, whose body was not found until months later, died of multiple stab wounds. He was considered a person of interest in his parents’ deaths until investigators shifted their focus to Correa, who prosecutors said supplied Lindquist with heroin.

'Odd' indicators in car fire

Sgt. Paul Makuc, who served as a detective with the state police’s Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit in December 2017, was called to the Glastonbury scene and noticed some “odd” indicators, including the vehicle’s lit headlights, which typically means a fire did not originate in the engine area.

Makuc said the fire seemed to have started in the passenger compartment and raced toward the trunk with the front portion of the vehicle, where major wiring sat, left largely unscathed.

Correa’s adopted sister, Ruth Correa, told police she and her brother killed Matthew Lindquist with a machete after Sergio Correa reneged on a supposed plan to stage a robbery at the Lindquist home with Matthew Lindquist’s help.

Ruth Correa said after her brother killed or left the parents for dead, the siblings robbed the home and set it on fire, according to her previous testimony. She said the two stole Matthew Lindquist’s car and drove to her brother’s vehicle. Sergio Correa, with his sister following in his car, drove Matthew Lindquist’s Saturn “about a ½ hour” before parking near an abandoned building.

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She said her brother drove off in Matthew Lindquist’s car and returned five minutes later on foot. The two drove back to their Hartford apartments and split up the stolen goods, Ruth Correa told police, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Ruth Correa previously pleaded guilty to three counts of murder in the case and is expected to testify this week as a state’s witness against her brother in exchange for a 40-year prison sentence.

Recalling the night of the car fire

Assistant State’s Attorney Tom Delillo elicited testimony on Monday from the initial 911 reporter of the car fire, along with responding Glastonbury and state police. Correa’s defense team did not mount any cross-examinations of the witnesses.

During his testimony, Agent Brandon Ritchie, a Glastonbury patrol officer on Dec. 20, 2017, said he arrived at 40 Nanel Drive at 5:56 a.m. that day to find Matthew Lindquist’s car nearly “fully engulfed” in flames.

After unsuccessfully trying to contact the younger Lindquist by phone, Ritchie said he quickly learned from state police that “something else was going on.”

“I treated (the fire) as a crime scene,” he said.

John Penney can be reached at jpenney@norwichbulletin.com or at (860) 857-6965

This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Correa trial: Police recall home, car fires in Lindquist family murder