Attorney may get plea deal in sex assault case
HARTFORD — A judge said Friday an attorney accused of sexually assaulting his wife has been offered a deal that’s pending “discussions” in the Jennifer Dulos homicide case.
Kent Mawhinney, who is accused of helping Fotis Dulos in the death and disappearance of his estranged wife, has been offered a plea deal in the sexual assault and violation of a protective order cases related to alleged incidents involving his own wife, Judge Laura F. Baldini said.
The terms of the potential deal were not revealed in court and the judge said it could be held up pending “discussions” in the Jennifer Dulos case. It was the first time the two cases were mentioned together.
Wearing a tan prisonissued jumpsuit with his hands and ankles cuffed, Mawhinney appeared in state Superior Court in Hartford on Friday for the first time since he was arraigned last month in Stamford on a conspiracy to commit murder charge in the Dulos case.
Mawhinney is being held on $2 million bond and is next scheduled to appear for the charges related to
his estranged wife on April 23. The woman reported to police in January 2019 that Mawhinney sexually assaulted her as “payment” for allowing her to live in his home as the two were divorcing, according to his arrest report.
Baldini agreed to set Mawhinney’s bond at $500 in the two cases so that he could receive credit for any jail time served. He previously was free on bond prior to his arrest on the conspiracy to commit murder charge.
Mawhinney has requested an extension in the divorce case to May 14 so he can respond to 103 questions and 25 document requests made by his wife’s Stamford attorney, Zenas Zelotes. Mawhinney’s motion seeking the extension states he is incarcerated and does not have access to any records.
Mawhinney was charged in January 2019 by South Windsor police with spousal sexual assault, disorderly conduct and second-degree unlawful restraint. Mawhinney was then charged in June with violating a protective order after his estranged wife reported to police a series of incidents involving Fotis Dulos that occurred in the days before Jennifer Dulos went missing.
Jennifer Dulos was last seen on a neighbor’s security camera returning to her New Canaan home after dropping off her five children at a nearby school around 8 a.m. May 24.
Police believe her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, was “lying in wait” and attacked her in the garage of the Welles Lane home, according to arrest warrants.
Fotis Dulos is considered a close friend and former client of Mawhinney, who represented him in a $2.5 million lawsuit filed by Jennifer Dulos’ mother, Gloria Farber.
Mawhinney is accused of conspiracy in the Jennifer Dulos case by attempting to provide an alibi for Fotis Dulos on the morning of the incident and was also linked to what a witness described as a “human grave” at an East Granby gun club, according to his arrest warrant.
According to the warrant, Mawhinney’s cellphone pinged off a tower near the Windsor Rod & Gun Club around 11 p.m. on May 31 — hours after police visited Fotis Dulos’ Farmington home and conducted an intense search in Hartford where they say clothing and other items were found in the trash containing Jennifer Dulos’ blood. The next day, Fotis Dulos and his then-girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, were arrested on tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution charges.
Dulos, 52, was additionally charged Jan. 7 with felony murder, murder and kidnapping in his estranged wife’s homicide. Troconis, 45, and Mawhinney, 54, were charged the same day with conspiracy to commit murder.
Since Fotis Dulos died Jan. 30 from an apparent suicide, the dynamic of the prosecution’s case has changed, shifting the focus to Mawhinney and to Troconis, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder last week. Mawhinney has not entered a plea and is next scheduled to appear in the case on Feb. 20.
Mawhinney was considered a flight risk after he tried to avoid being arrested and was eventually taken into custody at gunpoint in Tolland.
Mawhinney lost custody of his children from a previous marriage and had his license to practice law suspended because he was unable to serve his clients while incarcerated.
In Mawhinney’s June arrest warrant, police said his wife believed Fotis Dulos was working with her husband “to get rid of her.”
“She stated that she believed that Mawhinney wanted her dead,” police said in the arrest warrant.
According to the woman’s affidavit in a court filing for a restraining order against Mawhinney, Fotis Dulos first contacted her on May 16 and then reached out several more times before arranging to meet at a bar on May 19.
The woman refused Fotis Dulos’ offer to come back to his Farmington home, where he said she and Mawhinney could use a room to be “intimate,” the affidavit said.
The woman said her last conversation with Fotis Dulos, whom she had only met once before in her husband’s office in 2014, occurred on May 22 — two days before Jennifer Dulos vanished, according to court documents.
Around the same time, two members of the Windsor Rod & Gun Club discovered a large hole near the woods on the 25-acre property that Mawhinney helped acquire more than a decade ago, according to his arrest warrant in Jennifer Dulos’ homicide.
In early June, one of the men noticed the hole was gone, covered “as neat as a pin” with leaves and sticks, the warrant said. When state police searched the property in August, no human remains were found.