Accused in wife’s murder, US luxury homebuilder is dead
>>Fotis Dulos, the Connecticut man accused of murdering his estranged wife, Jennifer Dulos, last May in a case that received national attention, died on Thursday, his lawyer said, two days after he attempted suicide at his home.
Dulos, 52, had been in critical condition after suffering carbon monoxide poisoning on Tuesday, when police found him unresponsive in a vehicle in his garage in Farmington, Connecticut, a suburb of Hartford, officials said.
The lawyer, Norm Pattis, told reporters outside the Jacobi Medical Centre in the Bronx that Dulos was declared dead at 5.32pm.
“Mr Dulos was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion,” Mr Pattis said on Thursday in a text message. He added: “We remain committed to demonstrating that he did not murder Jennifer.”
A spokeswoman for Jennifer Dulos’ family, Carrie Luft, said: “This is a horrific tragedy all around.”
Fotis Dulos’s death was a sobering turn in a grim case that for months riveted the public with a central mystery: What happened to Jennifer Dulos, a mother of five from an affluent Connecticut community who was last seen taking her five children to a private school not far from her home on May 24?
Despite extensive searches across Connecticut that included helicopters being flown over a sprawling park and dogs rooting through a trash plant, the police have yet to find Jennifer Dulos’ body. All the while, their suspicions focused on Fotis Dulos, with whom she had been ensnarled in a bitter, yearslong custody battle.
It was only this month, more than seven months after Jennifer Dulos was reported missing, that the authorities said they had concluded that Dulos was dead and charged Fotis Dulos with kidnapping and murdering her.
On the last morning that Jennifer Dulos was seen alive, Fotis Dulos was lying in wait at her home in New Canaan, Connecticut, officials said. They believed that he attacked her in a bloody assault and then attempted to clean the crime scene that morning before driving her body out in her own car.
That evening, officials said in court documents, he and his girlfriend at the time, Michelle C Troconis, disposed of bloodied evidence from the crime scene in rubbish bins in Hartford.
Police later charged Ms Troconis, 45, and a friend of Fotis Dulos,’ Kent D Mawhinney, with conspiracy to commit murder. It was unclear how Fotis Dulos’ death might affect the cases against the two.
Police began to investigate Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance after she missed appointments in New York City, and did not answer multiple text messages and calls.
When they went to her home in New Canaan, a town about 80km north of New York City, they found a bloody crime scene suggesting that she had been violently attacked. Her car was found, seemingly abandoned, miles away.
Officials later said they found Fotis Dulos’ DNA in blood found on a faucet and a doorknob inside Jennifer Dulos’ home, as well as evidence of an attempt to clean up the scene.
As they investigated, detectives learned about Jennifer Dulos’ custody case, in which she said that she worried that her husband might hurt her or their children and that he had displayed “irrational, unsafe, bullying, threatening and controlling behaviour”.
The day after beginning their investigation, the police seized Fotis Dulos’ cellphone and discovered that he and Ms Troconis had travelled to Hartford, where surveillance cameras captured them dumping items into rubbish bins.
When investigators rummaged through the bins they found several bloodstained items with Jennifer Dulos’ DNA, including her clothing, paper towels and a number of cleaning supplies. At least one black garbage bag had traces of Fotis Dulos and Ms Troconis’ DNA.
After Dulos and Ms Troconis were arrested in June and charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence, Ms Troconis began meeting investigators. The authorities said that she offered false alibis, one involving Mr Mawhinney, before eventually telling the police she could not account for Fotis Dulos’ whereabouts on the morning of the suspected murder.
The police later determined that Dulos had borrowed a truck from an employee of his luxury homebuilding company. Using surveillance footage, they tracked him from his home in
Farmington to Jennifer Dulos’ home, about 120km away.
They said that he then drove the borrowed truck back to Farmington, where he eventually met Ms Troconis. Days later, he took the truck to be washed, the vehicle’s owner, Pawel Gumienny, told the police.
He also insisted that Mr Gumienny swap the vehicle’s seat covers, court documents said. Mr Gumienny ultimately did so but was suspicious enough of Fotis Dulos’ persistence to keep the originals. Investigators later found Jennifer Dulos’ blood on one of the seats.
Throughout the investigation, as investigators charged him twice with evidence tampering and then with murder, Fotis Dulos maintained his innocence. He pleaded not guilty on all charges and was free on a $6 million (187 million baht) bond on the day of his suicide attempt.
On that day, Dulos was expected to appear in court for a hearing on whether the bond would be revoked after the company that insured it raised questions about the value of the collateral used to cover it. Had the bond been revoked, Dulos could have been sent back to jail.
When Dulos did not appear in court, officers were sent to his home for a well-being check, officials said. Through a window, they saw him in his garage in apparent medical distress. They forced their way in and tried to revive him. Dulos was taken to a nearby hospital with a faint pulse, then transferred to Jacobi Medical Centre for more specialised treatment. On Wednesday, Mr Pattis, his lawyer, called his medical condition “dire” and said the situation was “grim.” Dulos had been on life support since Tuesday.
On Thursday, Fotis Dulos’ relatives arrived from Greece, where he was raised, and went to the hospital, Mr Pattis said.
“It’s been a truly horrific day for the family, filled with difficult decisions, medical tests and meeting the requirements to determine death,” he said while speaking to reporters outside the hospital.
Mr Pattis, who has insisted repeatedly that Dulos played no part in Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance, said he had submitted a motion on Thursday asking that prosecutors continue the criminal case so that Fotis Dulos’ name could be cleared.
He also asked in the motion that the court substitute Fotis Dulos’ estate as the defendant in the case.
When the police investigated Dulos’ home after the suicide attempt, they found a note in which he professed his innocence in Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance and said that his lawyers had the evidence that would prove it. The state police confirmed they had executed a search warrant at Fotis Dulos’ home related to their investigation into Jennifer Dulos’ but declined further comment.
The Dulos’ five children remain in the custody of Jennifer Dulos’ mother, Gloria Farber, who has cared for them since her daughter was reported missing.