In the second part of the I-Team’s special focus on high-profile cases of women in the tri-state area who suddenly disappeared. The I-Team’s Sarah Wallace looks into the case of Jennifer Dulos, the Connecticut mom who vanished in May and whose husband Fotis has been a person of interest all along.
What to Know
- Jennifer Dulos went missing on May 24, 2019, after dropping her kids at school
- Blood spatter was discovered in her home as well as on items allegedly left by her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, whom she had been in the midst of a contentious divorce and child custody battle
- Fotis was arrested for Jennifer's murder but her body has never been found. He attempted to take his own life and died Thursday, leaving only a note declaring his innocence, his lawyer said
Following the news that Fotis Dulos, accused of murdering his long-missing estranged wife, was declared dead following his suicide attempt the question remains: what happened to Jennifer?
Dulos died Thursday, two days after attempting suicide in his Farmington home, his attorney Norm Pattis announced. And while this is the latest development in the mysterious Dulos saga, little answers have turned up in trying to determine where Jennifer is or what exactly happened to her.
The mystery surrounding the missing mother of five from a wealthy Connecticut suburb has stretched for months -- since she vanished on May 24, 2019 after dropping her kids at school.
Dulos was eventually charged with capital murder, murder and kidnapping in his estranged wife's disappearance, in January. His girlfriend and a friend were both charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
However, both Dulos and his girlfriend were initially arrested in June 2019 for tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and hindering prosecution in the first degree. Hours after arrest affidavits for her estranged husband and his girlfriend revealed disturbing details in the ongoing mystery.
U.S. & World
Jennifer's blood was found on various items tossed in different locations, and blood spatter was discovered in her home, the documents obtained by News 4 said. The items allegedly left by Fotis Dulos, who has been in the midst of a contentious divorce and child custody battle with Jennifer, were found inside five trash bins and tested positive for his wife's blood.
Surveillance video captured a man matching the appearance of Dulos placing garbage bags "at over 30 locations along a more than four-mile stretch of Albany Avenue" in Hartford, with his then girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, in a pickup truck.
Clothing and other items with "blood-like" stains were recovered inside the garbage bags and were submitted to the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection Forensic Laboratory and were found to contain Jennifer's blood, according to the affidavit. Still, there has been no sign of the mother.
Investigators have also searched a home in Farmington where Jennifer and her children, who range in age from 8 to 13 and include two sets of twins, had lived until about two years ago. She and the children left the Farmington home, about 60 miles north of New Canaan near Hartford, around the time Jennifer filed for divorce in June 2017. Dulos had continued to live at the Farmington house.
Court documents filed in the divorce case say Jennifer feared Dulos would harm her in some way in retaliation for her filing for divorce. Jennifer had primary custody of the children, with their father getting to see them every other weekend.
Dulos was asking the divorce case judge to grant him custody of the children.
In a subsequent and new state warrant released after the January charges, investigators revealed extensive DNA evidence, including Jennifer's blood found in various locations and Dulos' fingerprint on a garbage bag dumped in a trash receptacle in Hartford. They also found a logo from a bicycle police believe the 52-year-old took from his garage, brought to New Canaan and rode to Jennifer's house.
Investigators theorize that Dulos waited before going on the attack, then used zip ties to "secure and incapacitate Jennifer for some time" as he put her body in her SUV which he then drove to and left at a nearby park.
Law enforcement officials are under the belief that Jennifer is no longer alive, following a medical examiner's findings that "categorized the event as a Homicide of violence, to likely include some combination of blunt force injuries."
Through it all, Dulos had continuously and adamantly denied the charges against him.
The couple's five children have been living with Jennifer's mother in her Upper East Side townhouse, supposedly under armed bodyguard protection, since their mother went missing. Dulos was banned from any sort of contact with the kids.
Dulos was free after posting $6 million for bail. On Tuesday, the day he was found in his Farmington home's garage "in medical distress," he was scheduled to appear in court for an emergency bond hearing.
After first responders came across Dulos following a welfare check after missing the court appointment, he was transported to UConn Health Center to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning -- he was subsequently taken by air to a hyperbaric chamber at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx in "dire" condition, according to his attorney Norm Pattis.
During a press conference outside Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx Thursday evening, Pattis said Dulos died at 5:32 p.m.
"As for those who contend that Mr. Dulos' death reflects a consciousness of guilt — we say no," Pattis said. "We say it was more a conscious overborne with the weight of a world that was too busy to listen, and it wanted a story more than it wanted the truth."
His relatives asked that his name be cleared of the charges, and his legal team filed a motion in Connecticut court to substitute an estate for Fotis Dulos in for the defendant, which would serve as a means to continue the trial.
"Having maligned the man for all time from coast to coast ... we're asking for the right to clear his name," Pattis said, hoping to "vindicate" Dulos.
The day before, on Wednesday, police in Connecticut executed a search warrant at Dulos' Farmington home, a day after the man tried to take his own life.
It was not immediately clear what police were searching for in the home, or why the search warrant was executed after Dulos' attempted suicide.
While it wasn't clear what, if anything, was recovered from the home as of Thursday, Pattis said he had "been told by reliable sources there was a note left on the seat of Fotis' car saying he was innocent."
The attorney filed a motion on Thursday that the purported note and any other evidence found at the home be preserved as evidence.
Still, yet, Jennifer's whereabouts are unknown.
