The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Judge warns Fotis Dulos to properly charge GPS device
STAMFORD — A judge issued a warning to Fotis Dulos on Monday: Properly charge your GPS device or face a higher bond.
Judge John Blawie threatened to increase Fotis Dulos’ bond if he does not charge the battery on the monitoring device, which has dipped below 25 percent at least four times in the past month. Fotis Dulos has been free on two $500,000 bonds.
“A low battery status is not a trivial condition,” said Blawie, who ordered Fotis Dulos to appear Monday at state Superior Court in Stamford. “In a very short period of time after lowbattery status, your GPS stops functioning and your movements would therefore be untrackable, and that’s not acceptable.”
Defense attorney Norm Pattis reiterated a point he made last week that the GPS monitoring is not necessary because his client is not charged with a violent crime.
Fotis Dulos, 52, and Michelle Troconis, 44, have each been charged with two counts of tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution in connection with the May 24 disappearance of Jennifer Dulos.
Troconis is scheduled to be deposed Wednesday in a civil lawsuit filed by Jennifer Dulos’ mother, Gloria Farber, who has accused Fotis Dulos of failing to repay $2.5 million in loans her family made to his real estate development company.
On Monday, Blawie denied Pattis’ request for Fotis Dulos to attend the deposition at the West Hartford office of Farber’s attorney, Richard Weinstein.
Blawie cited the nocontact order in the criminal case banning the defendants from having any interaction with each other. Blawie said Fotis Dulos could only view the deposition through closedcircuit monitoring.
During the hearing, Pattis also signaled his intent to appeal the gag order in the case. The order, he said, makes it impossible to defend his client in instances like last week, when he was “badmouthed” by friends of his estranged wife on talk shows Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. He questioned whether the the gag order would apply to them, or if the order only “flowed one way.”
“Is the court going to inquire them about whether they were aware of the order, or does the order flow one way?” Pattis asked.
While Blawie said he would not apply the gag order to friends of Jennifer Dulos’ family, he did agree to hear arguments at Fotis Dulos’ next court appearance on Oct. 4 for Pattis’ motion to dismiss the charges.
Following the hearing, Fotis Dulos spoke briefly outside of the courthouse and reiterated his gratitude for “those who have given me their support” and his love for his children.
As part of the conditions of their release on bond, Fotis Dulos and Troconis are required to wear GPS monitoring devices. The system is batteryoperated and must be charged at the same time each day. Concerns often come up when probation officials notice a system’s power dips below 25 percent.
Fotis Dulos has had at least one other issue with his GPS device. In June, he was alerted by Sentinel, the vendor for the state’s electronic monitoring program, that he had crossed into New York while driving around an accident in New Canaan, according to his attorneys.
Sources said he was on Silver Spring Road, which travels into Westchester County while connecting Wilton and New Canaan. The road is near one of the properties owned by Fotis Dulos’ real estate development company on Sturbridge Hill Road in New Canaan.
Blawie did not consider the incident a problem and it was never addressed in court.
The unit Fotis Dulos is wearing on his ankle tracks the movements of defendants 24/7, sending signals through cellphone towers to an outside vendor, which alerts probation officials of any problems, including when the battery runs low.
The units must be recharged at the same time each day, requiring the defendant to be tethered to an electrical socket for a minimum of two hours a day.
Last month, Blawie denied Fotis Dulos’ request to have his GPS device moved from his ankle to his wrist. Fotis Dulos had complained the device was irritating the skin on his ankle.
While authorities have been tracking Fotis Dulos since his arrest, police said they have also traced his movements — based on video surveillance — on May 24 when his wife vanished.
Jennifer Dulos, 50, was last seen on a neighbor’s security camera returning home around 8:05 a.m. that day after dropping off her five children at a nearby school.
Police believe Fotis Dulos was “lying in wait” when she arrived at her Welles Lane home, where they found evidence that she was the victim of a “serious physical assault” based on blood stains and spatter in the garage, according to arrest warrants.
Fotis Dulos and Troconis pleaded not guilty to the original tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution charges. The charges are related to video surveillance in Hartford that showed two people resembling Fotis Dulos and Troconis the night of the disappearance, according to arrest warrants.
The videos show them making a series of stops in a 4mile stretch with Fotis Dulos tossing garbage bags that were later determined to contain his wife’s blood and clothing, arrest warrants state.
Fotis Dulos has pleaded not guilty to the latest tampering with evidence charge. The charge is related to he and Troconis cleaning up a pickup truck — owned by a former Fore Group employee — that police say was involved in the disappearance, according to the arrest warrant.
Under the direction of Fotis Dulos, the employee later removed the seats from his truck, but he kept them and turned them over to investigators who found Jennifer Dulos’ blood on one of them, the arrest warrants state.
Troconis was arraigned last week on the charge during a brief appearance in state Superior Court in Norwalk. Troconis will be back in court on Oct. 10.