Dulos lawyer files motion to block caretaker for home
A lawyer for Fotis Dulos, the luxury home builder charged with murdering his estranged wife, has filed court papers seeking to block the appointment of a caretaker for his Farmington home, saying Dulos’ family plans to remain there while dealing with the fallout of his death by suicide.
“They are ... a family in mourning, and their safe haven to mourn is Mr. Dulos’ home at 4 Jefferson Crossing,
Farmington, Connecticut,” a motion filed in Superior Court in Hartford on Friday reads. “As they put his final affairs in order and prepare to honor his memory, his home is their safe haven.”
The home has fallen into foreclosure, and the request for a caretaker of the property was made as part
of that case, at the behest of a lawyer for Dulos’ mother-inlaw, Gloria Farber. The request was filed Thursday, hours before Dulos died at a New York hospital, where he had arrived two days earlier in critical condition after a suicide attempt.
“The plaintiff is greatly concerned about maintaining the property in its present condition, preventing waste, vandalism, looters and preserving the mechanicals within the house, including plumbing and heating systems so that the pipes do not freeze and the property does not deteriorate while the present situation remains for an indefinite period of time with no one maintaining the subject property,” Richard P. Weinstein, an attorney for Farber, wrote.
Latest legal maneuver
The request for receivership on the Jefferson Crossing property is the latest legal maneuver in a monthslong battle between Farber and Dulos over whether Dulos failed to pay back millions of dollars in loans.
Weinstein wrote that Farber, who has been granted custody of the couple’s five children, has a $2.3 million mortgage on the property and is required to pay $21,000 in property taxes that Dulos has not paid.
The filing Friday objects to the person Farber’s lawyer had identified as a potential caretaker of the property and accuses him of attempting to “make a self-aggrandizing grab at Mr. Dulos’ home ... at the expense of his grieving family, who are already bearing the added pressure of intense public and media scrutiny.”
Dulos’ lawyer has requested a court hearing to sort the matter. The filing says his attorney would like to see the home eventually sold, “which will benefit all of the parties.”
Dulos’ attempt to take his own life came hours after he learned his $6 million bond was in jeopardy and that he could head back to prison. He faced a first-degree murder charge in connection with the death of his wife Jennifer Farber Dulos, who had not been seen or heard from since May 24.
Police responding to the home late Tuesday morning to conduct a well-being check after Dulos failed to show up for a court hearing found him in his garage, in the front seat of his SUV. The garage doors had been closed and a vacuum cleaner hose had been clamped onto the tail pipe and run into the interior of the vehicle, sources said. Dulos was unconscious and later would be diagnosed as suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Suicide note
A handwritten note police found in the SUV proclaimed Dulos’ innocence and that of his two co-defendants. It offered no clues as to Farber Dulos’ whereabouts.
“If you are reading this I am no more,” the note starts. “I refuse to spend even an hour more in jail for something
I had NOTHING to do with. Enough is enough.”
“If it takes my head to end this, so be it,” Dulos wrote in the letter, obtained Friday by The Courant.
Dulos was accused of murdering Farber Dulos by “lying in wait” for her in the garage of her New Canaan home after she dropped off her children at school, according to court records. Police believe Dulos attacked her in the garage of her home and drove off with her body.
Surveillance video from Albany Avenue in Hartford on the night of May 24 shows Dulos dropping garbage bags into trash cans in the area, court records say. State police recovered some of the bags and found the bloody, cut up Vineyard Vines shirt that Farber Dulos was wearing the day she disappeared as well as other items like sponges and paper towels that had Farber Dulos’ blood on them, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Dulos’ girlfriend at the time, Michelle Troconis, was in the vehicle with him on Albany Avenue, according to court records. She has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution.
The case, which included tales of a bitter and contentious divorce, the compilation of evidence from surveillance video and a high-stakes battle over real estate, has sparked widespread interest and attention.