As police officers knocked on Jennifer Farber Dulos’ front door the evening of May 24, hoping to find the mother of five safe at home, Dulos’ bloody clothing and other items stained with her blood were being dumped in more than two dozen places about 75 miles away.
Dulos, 50, of New Canaan, never answered the door that night, and police have since arrested Dulos’ estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, both of Farmington.
Credit: New Canaan Police Department
Credit: New Canaan Police Department
Fotis Dulos, 51, and Troconis, 44, are charged with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution in Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance, according to arrest warrants from the Connecticut State Police. The pair were arraigned on the charges Monday.
Additional charges are expected against Fotis Dulos and Troconis, according to The Hartford Courant. Troconis, who was released on $500,000 bond Monday, is required to wear a GPS ankle monitor while awaiting trial.
Fotis Dulos was unable to post his own $500,000 bond and remained in custody Tuesday, the Courant reported. Both he and Troconis were ordered to surrender their passports.
Jennifer Dulos' mother, Gloria Farber, has asked a family court judge to grant her temporary custody of her daughter's children, who range in age from 8 to 13, the Courant reported. The newspaper said the same judge who increased Fotis Dulos' visitation with his children a few months ago revoked his access to them on Monday.
"There shall be no contact between the defendant and the minor children until further order of the court," Judge Donna Nelson Heller wrote in an emergency order, according to the Courant.
According to The New York Times, the couple has three sons and two daughters, including two sets of twins.
The Times reported that FBI agents, along with state and local investigators, spent Monday searching Waveny Park, a 300-acre park in New Canaan where Jennifer Dulos' 2017 Chevy Suburban was found shortly after she was reported missing.
Jennifer Dulos, who was last seen alive when she dropped her children off at school, was reported missing by friends after she failed to turn up for several doctors’ appointments scheduled for May 24 in New York City.
New Canaan police officers went to her home -- located on a cul-de-sac in the affluent town about 15 miles outside of Greenwich -- around 7 p.m. that night, but found no one there. A state police detective wrote in the arrest warrants that the family’s nanny let officers into the house.
The investigators found stains consistent with blood on the floor of the garage and on a vehicle parked in the space. Suspected blood spatter was found inside the house, the warrants say.
A search was launched around Jennifer Dulos’ home on Welles Lane and, a short time later, her Suburban was found parked along Merritt Parkway, on the perimeter of Wavenly Park.
“A check of the vehicle and subsequent exhaustive searches of Wavenly Park using (New Canaan Police Department) and Connecticut State Police personnel and canines did not locate Jennifer,” the arrest warrant for her husband states.
Meanwhile at Jennifer Dulos’ home, investigators found evidence that someone tried to clean up the blood at the scene, the warrant states.
“Based upon the crime scene processing, investigators came to the consensus that a serious physical assault had occurred at the scene and Jennifer Dulos was the suspected victim,” the document says.
A search of vehicle records showed multiple vehicles registered to the Fore Group LLC, a company owned by Fotis Dulos. One such vehicle was a 2014 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor pickup truck.
Fotis Dulos, with whom Jennifer Dulos has been embroiled in a divorce and custody battle, lives with Troconis in Farmington, the warrant states. Both have been uncooperative with the investigation into Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance, investigators said.
Read the arrest warrants for Fotis Dulos and Michelle Troconis below.
New Canaan investigators met briefly with Fotis Dulos the day after his estranged wife vanished. At that time, they seized his iPhone, for which they had obtained a warrant to conduct a forensic search.
Fotis Dulos’ cellphone records showed that around 1:30 p.m. the day Jennifer Dulos disappeared, her estranged husband left his home and drove about 2 miles to a Farmington property belonging to his company. After a couple of hours, his cellphone showed he returned home.
Fotis Dulos returned to the company property around 5:20 p.m., about 90 minutes before officers first showed up at Jennifer Dulos’ home. The cellphone returned to his and Troconis’ home a few minutes later, and then records show it traveled to the area of Albany Avenue in Hartford, where most of the evidence against the couple was found.
Troconis’ cellphone also traveled to Hartford, the arrest warrants state.
Credit: Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP
Credit: Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP
“Investigators obtained surveillance footage from the Hartford Police Department Capital City Command Center (C4), which operates surveillance cameras at various Hartford locations, including the Albany Avenue area,” one of the warrants states. “C4 documented a black Ford Raptor pickup truck stopping at over 30 locations along a more than 4 mile stretch of Albany Avenue between Biltmore and Edward streets.”
Still images from the surveillance footage showed the Raptor truck matched the one belonging to Fotis Dulos, including a sticker on the rear window and a light-colored mark on the black truck’s front bumper. The front license plate of the vehicle also matched that of his truck.
A man matching Fotis Dulos’ description was seen getting out of the truck and dumping multiple trash bags into trash bins along the route, as well as tossing something into a storm drain.
Credit: New Canaan Police Department via AP
Credit: New Canaan Police Department via AP
“In some cases, the C4 video showed items being discarded which appeared to be stained with a substance consistent with the appearance of blood,” the arrest warrant states.
A woman matching Troconis’ description was seen leaning out of the passenger seat of the truck in one video clip, the document says.
When investigators checked the storm drain, they found a FedEx box containing license plates that were traced back to a 2007 Suburban belonging to Fotis Dulos, the warrant states. The plates had been altered to change the tag number, authorities said.
Inside the trash bins where the driver of the Raptor discarded the bags, detectives found clothing and at least one kitchen sponge, among other items, that were stained with blood.
“On (Saturday), items submitted to the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection Forensic Laboratory were tested and found to contain Jennifer Dulos’ blood,” the arrest warrant says.
Fotis Dulos’ cellphone records indicated he left the Hartford area around 7:40 p.m. the night his wife was reported missing and returned to his home in Farmington, the document states. In surveillance footage from outside his neighbors’ homes, he is seen checking his mail as he arrived.
He was wearing clothing similar to that seen on the man who dumped the evidence in Hartford, the document says.
Fotis Dulos and Troconis were arrested Saturday at a hotel in Avon, the Times reported.
Fotis and Jennifer Dulos were in the middle of a bitter divorce that she initiated in 2017, according to the newspaper. In the two years since the court battle began, the case has seen more than 400 filings, much of the documentation involving custody of their children.
According to The New Canaan Advertiser, Fotis Dulos was also the subject of a lawsuit filed by his mother-in-law related to $1.7 million in loans from her late husband she said he failed to repay. Hilliard Farber died in January 2017.
Jennifer Dulos claimed in family court documents that her estranged husband was verbally abusive, and she said she feared he might try to kidnap the children and take them to his native Greece.
Since Jennifer Dulos' disappearance, Fotis Dulos submitted a court filing claiming the children were being held under armed guard at their maternal grandmother's New York City apartment, the Times reported.
Following Fotis Dulos’ and Troconis’ arrests, the attention of investigators returned to Farmington, where searchers converged on the couple’s home, as well as on the nearby property belonging to his company.
Investigators have narrowed the time frame during which they believe Jennifer Dulos met foul play, the Courant reported. She dropped her children off at school around 8 a.m. the morning of May 24.
A cleaning woman who entered the home around noon that day found no one there, the newspaper said.
Jennifer Dulos missed appointments at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., the paper reported. Her cellphone and credit cards have not been used since she vanished.
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