TWO CASES, NO BODY
Supreme Court decision recalls crime with parallels to Dulos
STAMFORD — The case of April Dawn Pennington bears little resemblance to that of missing New Canaan mother of five Jennifer Dulos. But it does show that the state is capable of successfully prosecuting murder cases without producing for a jury what is legally referred to as the “corpus delicti” — literally “body of the crime.”
The murder conviction of lobsterman George Leniart, who killed a 15yearold girl 20 years ago in eastern Connecticut, was upheld last week by the Connecticut Supreme Court.
The court ruled the jury that convicted Leniart in 2010 had been presented with enough evidence to decide Pennington had been murdered, even though no trace of her has been found since she disappeared in 1996, 23 years
ago. The decision stays a state Appellate Court ruling that called for the case to be remanded for a new trial.
Leniart, now 53, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the Cheshire Correctional Institution.
Jennifer Dulos has not been found since she was reported on May 24. Her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, has pleaded not guilty to tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution charges in connection with his wife’s disappearance.
But one striking parallel to the two “no body” cases is criminal defense attorney Norm Pattis, who is vigorously representing Fotis Dulos, also defended Leniart.
“The Leniart case was a difficult trial and I was hopeful that the Supreme Court would order a new trial,” Pattis said of the court’s latest decision. “Socalled nobody murder cases present unique dangers, giving the state free rein to substitute speculation and belief for proof. In Mr. Leniart’s case, jurors were not permitted to see behind the screen of circumstantial evidence. The state fought hard to make halftruths into the whole story. I am surprised the Supreme Court let the state get away with it.”
If the Pennington case demonstrates it is possible to convict without a body, it also shows how long prosecutors can take to charge someone with murder when that crucial piece of evidence is missing. Although Pennington disappeared from her Montville home on May 29, 1996, Leniart was not charged with the murder until 12 years later.
According to witness testimony, Leniart bragged that he would never be charged with murder because no one would ever find the body. “No body, no murder,” he was quoted as saying.
According to testimony in Leniart’s trial, Pennington snuck out of her home on the May night 23 years ago to meet a teenage friend named Patrick Allain.
Allain, the state’s key witness, testified the two met with Leniart, who was 30 at the time. Allain said he and Leniart raped the girl and he left her with the older man. Leniart told him the next day that he choked Pennington to death and put her remains in a lobster trap that he dropped to the bottom of the Thames River, according to Allain’s testimony included in a summary of the case contained in the Supreme Court decision.
Three inmates who had been jailed with Leniart at various times gave similar testimony. One said Leinart told him that he cut the girl up and put her remains in lobster pots in Long Island Sound. Another testified that Leinart told him the girl was “in the river” and they would never convict him because they would never find her body.
Yet another man, who was not a jailhouse informant, testified that Leniart admitted to killing a 15yearold girl and dumping her body in Long Island Sound.
Howard Ehring, senior public defender in the Stamford courthouse, said the Leinhart case illustrates the wellknown legal principal that there is no statute of limitations on a murder case, that prosecutors can wait a long time to charge someone with murder.
In the Dulos case, police have said video surveillance in Hartford showed two people resembling Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend Michelle Troconis, who also has been charged with tampering, dumping garbage bags on the night of the disappearance, according to arrest warrants. The bags were later determined to contain Jennifer Dulos’ blood and clothing, arrest warrants state.
Authorities also say Dulos and Troconis cleaned a pickup truck — owned by a former Dulos employee — that was involved in the disappearance, according to the arrest warrant. Under Dulos’ direction, 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.
“They can prosecute on the trifecta of the blood at the scene, the blood in the trash bins in Hartford and
in terms of the blood in the back seat of the car,” Ehring said. “They can consolidate a lot of their circumstantial evidence without a corpus delicti.”
But he said cases like these aren’t easy to prosecute. “They take a long time to put together. But without the clock ticking and since they already have Fotis Dulos charged with allegations of hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence, they can keep track of him and keep an eye on where he goes,” Ehring said.
Thomas “Tad” DiBiase, a former federal prosecutor who tracks nobody murder cases, said they are more difficult to prosecute.
“When you don’t have the body you don’t have the key piece of evidence in a murder case,” he said. “The body can tell you when the murder happened, how the murder happened and where the murder happened. Those are all key things you can tell with a body that you can’t necessarily tell without one.”
But the Jennifer Dulos case is different, he said, because prosecutors and police have established a pretty tight timeline as to when Dulos disappeared and who was around at the time of her disappearance — facts that many nobody cases cannot offer a jury at trial.
While there are no shortage of missing person cases around the United States, DiBiase said nobody murder cases are rare and he has found just 532 taken to trial since the early 1800s in the United States.
“You are always better off finding the body,” DiBiase said.