True Crime Society - The disappearance of Jennifer Dulos

Jennifer Dulos went missing in Connecticut on May 24, 2019. She was 50 years old at the time of her disappearance. Authorities suspect that she was killed in a violent attack at her home in New Canaan, CT. It is believed that her husband, Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend Michelle Troconis were involved in her disappearance.

Background on Jennifer & Fotis:

Jennifer was born in New York City to her parents Gloria and Hilliard. She had an older sister named Melissa. Jennifer’s maternal aunt is Elizabeth Claiborne who founded the fashion brand Liz Claiborne.
Jennifer graduated from Brown University and went on to earn her master’s degree in writing.
Jennifer was a stay-at-home mother, but she was also a writer for Patch.com and ran her own blog. It has been deleted but you can view the archive here.

Fotis was born in Turkey, but grew up in Athens, Greece. He moved to the United States in 1986. He graduated from Brown University and later earned an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School. In June 2000, he married a woman named Hilary Aldama. They were married for 4 years and divorced in July 2004.
In 2004, Dulos founded Fore Group Inc., a luxury home developer company in Connecticut.
While Fotis was still married to his first wife, he began emailing with Jennifer who he met at Brown University. Shortly after his divorce (August 2004), Jennifer and Fotis got married in Manhattan and moved to Farmington, CT. There they had 5 children together which included two sets of twins.
It seems like their marriage started falling apart and in a blog post on March 12, 2012, Jennifer wrote, “I wish I were a strong person and that confrontation did not both scare and appall me.”
After the slow breakdown of their marriage, Jennifer filed for divorce on June 20, 2017 stating that Fotis was living an increasingly independent life and that he was having an affair with another woman.
In the same month she started renting a house in New Canaan, Connecticut, about 70 miles southwest of Farmington, and moved there with her five children.
In divorce court documents she wrote, “I know that filing for divorce, and filing this motion will enrage him. I know he will retaliate by trying to harm me in some way.” She also stated she believed he was having an affair with his colleague, Michelle Troconis from South America.
Jennifer also alleged that Fotis had threatened to kidnap their children if she did not agree to his terms in the divorce settlement, and that he had bought a gun that year, to which Fotis denied and claimed.
Despite Jennifer requesting an emergency order of custody, they were given temporary joint custody of their children until the end of the divorce proceedings.
In January 2018, Jennifer requested an emergency order of custody again and in March the judge granted it due to Fotis breaking numerous court orders. The judge ruled that Jennifer will have sole physical custody of the children, and both parents would share joint legal custody. Fotis was granted supervised visitation and monitored phone calls.
In February 2018, after Jennifer’s father’s death, Gloria Farber, Jennifer’s mother, sued Fotis Dulos for unpaid loans. She claimed he owed them $1.7 million loaned to him by his father-in-law. But Fotis said his in-laws actually owed HIM more than a million dollars for unpaid work.
Fotis said “At some point, I gave him a blank check – that was the level of trust we had. It was a family business in essence, and we were family.”
Fotis then proceeded to file a lawsuit against them in December 2018.

Jennifer’s Disappearance

Jennifer was last seen around 8:00 am on May 24, 2019, when she dropped her children off at New Canaan Country School and then at 8:05 am on a neighbor’s security camera returning home.
The same day, she missed two doctor appointments that she had scheduled for 11:00 am and 1:00 pm in New York City.
Later that evening, at around 7:00 pm, two of her friends and her children’s nanny, reported her missing after they failed to get in contact with her.
Family and friends of Jennifer stated that it would be out of character for her to leave her home on her own without telling anyone.
Lauren Almeida, the children’s nanny, arrived at the house at 11:30 am that day, told detectives she was surprised to see Jennifer’s Range Rover in the garage because she had planned to take it to her doctor’s appointments, instead of her Chevy Suburban, which was nowhere to be seen.
Detectives arrived at the house and found blood spatter in the garage on the floor, a door, the wall and on the exterior of the Range Rover parked in the garage. Blood was also found in the kitchen.
DNA tests revealed most of the blood to be Jennifer’s, apart from blood on the kitchen faucet, which was a mixture belonging to both Jennifer and Fotis.
Police also found other evidence of Jennifer being the victim of a serious assault.
Jennifer’s black Chevy Suburban had been captured on the neighbor’s security camera leaving her home at around 10:25 am that morning. It is believed Fotis was the one driving with Jennifer’s body and items he used to clean up in the vehicle.
That same evening around 7:30 pm, Fotis and Michelle were captured on video dumping garbage bags in 30 bins in Hartford, Connecticut. The trash bags were found to contain various pieces of bloodied clothing, as well as blood-stained cleaning items.
The blood was determined to be Jennifer’s and Fotis’ DNA was found on the inside of a glove in one of the trash bags and on one of the trash bags.
Jennifer’s Chevrolet Suburban was later found on the road side, near Waveny Park in New Canaan, just over 3 miles away from her home.
At the time Jennifer went missing, she and her husband were still engaged in a tumultuous divorce and custody battle.
Police searched numerous properties around Farmington, near Fotis’ home and in Fairfield County around Jennifer’s home without success.
Investigators believe Fotis drove a truck used by one of his construction employees to New Canaan on May 24 to lay in wait for Jennifer after she returned home from dropping the kids off at school. They believe he attacked her in the garage and put her body in the truck and drove away.
According to one of his arrest warrants, Fotis had the employee’s truck washed and detailed without telling the employee and pressured the employee to change the seats in the truck.
Police later found Jennifer’s DNA in the truck
Helicopters were used to look for signs of Jennifer, as well as canine units on the grounds and divers used to search the local ponds.
There has been no activity on her credit cards and no calls made from her cell phone as of May 24.

2019 Arrests

On June 1, 2019, Fotis and Michelle were arrested at a hotel in Avon, Connecticut, and charged with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution. Not enough evidence existed at that time to warrant any more severe charges.
The Dulos’ five children, then aged between 8 and 13, moved to live with Jennifer’s mother in New York City, to whom a judge granted temporary custody.
Fotis Dulos hired attorney Norm Pattis to represent him. In an interview, prior to being hired by Fotis, Pattis had appeared convinced that Jennifer was dead.
Fotis and Michele both pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In September 2019, both Fotis and Michele were again arrested for tampering with evidence.
According to the arrest warrant, police asked Michelle why she thought Fotis had the truck cleaned, and she said, “Well obviously … all the evidence says because … you showed me the picture of the blood in the door it’s because the body of Jennifer at some point was in there.”
Michelle isn’t suspected of being involved in the killing because they verified her alibi for that morning.
Fotis appeared in court on October 4, 2019 to seek a dismissal of the charges against him. The judge said he would review arguments by the defense and prosecution.
In late October, it was reported Michelle, along with her 10-year-old daughter, had moved out of the $5 million home in Farmington, Connecticut, that they had been living in with Fotis. This video shows the Dulos property.

2020

On January 7, 2020, Fotis was arrested at his home by Connecticut State Police and charged with capital murder, murder, and kidnapping in relation to the disappearance of Jennifer. His former girlfriend, Michelle, was also arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Fotis’s friend and former attorney, Kent Douglas Mawhinney, was also detained on January 7 and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Despite these arrests, the body of Jennifer was still not found
Following the arrests, court documents released highlighted the backgrounds of Fotis, Kent and their friendship.
- Kent became estranged from his wife after being accused of spousal rape. His wife went to South Windsor police and told authorities that she feared Fotis and Mawhinney were working together to kill her.
- After Jennifer disappeared, a shallow grave was discovered at a secluded property that Kent owned, filled with two bags of lime and a blue tarp. Authorities and Police dog discovered the grave in August 2019, but no body was found in the grave, and said items were found to have been removed.
Jennifer’s family issued a statement after the arrests; “Although we are relieved that the wait for these charges is over, for us, there is no sense of closure. Nothing can bring Jennifer back. We miss her every day and will forever mourn her loss.”
On January 8, Fotis’ bond was set at $6 million. He was released the following day and was due to return to court on February 28, 2020.
In a statement issued in May 2020, Michelle said it was a “mistake” to have trusted Dulos. However she still maintained that she does not know what happened to Jennifer or of her whereabouts.
Michele, out on bail, was next scheduled to appear in court on August 6, 2020 to face the charges.
Kent is being held in lieu of $2 million bond and is scheduled to appear in court on September 3, 2020.

Fotis’s Suicide

While out on bail, Fotis failed to appear at Stamford court house on January 28, 2020, for an emergency bond hearing.
He was found in an unresponsive state by police at his $5 million home in Farmington, Connecticut, after intentionally poisoning himself with carbon monoxide by running a vacuum-cleaner hose from the exhaust pipe of his SUV into the interior of the car while it was parked in the garage.
Initially, it was reported by some news outlets that Dulos had been found dead, but responders had performed CPR and restored a faint pulse.
They transported him by ambulance to UConn Medical Center in Farmington, Connecticut, and from there he was airlifted to Jacobi Medical Center in The Bronx, New York, to undergo hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
His five children visited him at the medical center before he was taken off life support. This marked the first time they had seen their father since he was accused of murdering their mother.
Fotis was pronounced dead at Jacobi Medical Center on January 30, 2020.
He left a suicide note in his car that read “I refuse to spend even an hour more in jail for something I had NOTHING to do with”.
In the police report, it states that Fotis’s ‘ new girlfriend, Anna Curry, was at his home the morning of his suicide. They had planned to drive to the court house together, but Fotis said that they should drive separately. On the way to the court house Anna received a call from Fotis’s attorney, asking where his client was.
She told him that they were driving separately, but the lawyer informed her that Fotis’ GPS tracker showed that he was still at home, at which point Anna said that she knew Fotis must have done something to harm himself and asked his lawyer to call 911.

2021

On January 19, 2021, Connecticut State Police visited property on Mountain Spring Road in Farmington, which was once owned by Fotis Dulos’ Fore Group, Inc. State police said they were at the property to follow up on “old leads.” Several authorities could be seen behind the property digging up the yard.
Police also brought in Bob Perry, who is nationally known as “The Bone Finder,” though he would not say what, if anything, had been discovered.
The next day, police once again returned to the property on Mountain Spring Road in Farmington. An excavator and septic tank was brought in and seen behind the former Dulos-owned property. Police briefly spoke with the media but said they did not have any updates.
March 2021 – https://www.westport-news.com/news/article/Family-agreement-avoids-judge-from-declaring-16034576.php
- The deal means that the missing mother-of-five will not have to be declared dead by a probate judge for the estate to access funds.
- Jennifer’s family waived their rights to his $194,000 IRA to avoid having to declare her dead in probate court – not worth the hassle I’m assuming.

Sources –

The disappearance of Jennifer Dulos

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