By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
and Patricia Villers
SHELTON >> Franga Ndoj, whose grandson Kristjan was fatally shot in March, took a framed color photograph of him down from a shelf in the home they shared and kissed it, with tears in her eyes.
“I’m not doing well; the past few months have been hard,” she said. “I think they know who did it, but they aren’t saying anything. It would be better if they knew what actually happened.”
She remembered how Kristjan would leave for school and give her hugs and kisses, then do it again when he returned.
“He was my life,” she said, speaking in Albanian.
After almost four months with no arrest in the fatal shooting of the popular Shelton High School sophomore, his grieving loved ones are frustrated and hoping anyone with information will come forward and tell police.

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Jan and Bill Smolinski stand in a wooded area behind the home at 69 Wigwam Drive in Shelton, where the homeowner remembers seeing a car and truck driving behind her home around August of 2004. Their son, Billy Smolinski Jr. disappeared from Waterbury in 2004, and his parents are pushing police to investigate the area for more answers. Peter Casolino/Register

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo, Investigations Editor

and Andy Thibault, Contributing Editor

The family of missing man William “Billy” Smolinski is pushing for police to do a more thorough search of a large wooded area off Wigwam Drive in Shelton, where a resident believes she spotted Smolinski's truck being driven into the woods around the time of his 2004 disappearance.

“There are other places of interest, but this one is top on the list,” said Janice Smolinski of Cheshire, Billy’s mother.

Just this week, state police examined bones which had been found by volunteer searchers at the Wigwam site in February, but the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner determined Tuesday they were animal bones.

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By Andy Thibault
Contributing Editor
and Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
SHELTON — On a summer evening about eight years ago, cardiac nurse Jean Petrucelli — still dressed in scrubs after work — relaxed as she grilled dinner off her back deck overlooking the woods.
The woods are a refuge for Petrucelli, a place where she gains peace just breathing air and listening to the singing birds. Occasionally the sounds of all-terrain vehicles wreck the calm throughout the natural setting of about 150 relatively unspoiled acres off Wigwam Drive.
A bizarre sight jarred her.

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By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
A man who gave police information that led to a massive, unsuccessful search for the body of missing man William “Billy” Smolinski Jr. in Seymour has fled from a halfway house where he was serving the remainder of his sentence, an official said Friday.
Department of Correction spokesman Andrius Banevicius said Chad Hanson, 32, escaped from a community release program Dec. 19.

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