The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘We’re coming after you’
Legal experts: Prosecution signaling charges to come for Fotis Dulos
NEWCANAAN — In an extensive arrest warrant served last week, State Police provided a detailed timeline of when they believe Fotis Dulos attacked his estranged wife on the day she disappeared.
But within the affidavit charging Fotis Dulos with evidence tampering, investigators from the state police Western District Major Crimes Unit didn’t answer the one question that would have likely elevated the charge to murder: Where is Jennifer Dulos?
“If he did it, they appear to have narrowed down his whereabouts to a very tight timeline,” said attorney Lindy Urso, who represents a former employee of Fotis Dulos’ real estate development company who provided key evidence in the most recent tampering charge.
“Based on the timeline, I’d imagine she’d be in New Canaan,” Urso speculated about where the 50yearold mother could be located.
Michelle Troconis, 44, who had been living with Fotis Dulos at the time of the disappearance, turned herself in Thursday on the same tampering with evidence charge.
But unlike Troconis, who was offered the opportunity to turn herself in, Fotis Dulos was arrested Wednesday at his Farmington home even though his movements are being tracked by a GPS monitoring device. He was taken to the state police barracks in Bridgeport, where he was processed before being released on $500,000 bond.
One attorney not connected to the case says the prosecution is sending a clear message to Fotis Dulos and his defense team.
“They are putting Fotis Dulos on notice that ‘we’re not messing around and we’re coming after you,’ ” New Canaan defense attorney Matthew Maddox said.
Fotis Dulos’ defense attorney, Norm Pattis, is known for his flamboyant style and has routinely sparred with the prosecution and drawn criticism for his theories about the disappearance.
State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo has called for a gag order in an effort to control Pattis’ comments and to avoid the case from further becoming a “media sideshow.”
As news spread of Fotis Dulos’ latest arrest on Wednesday, the media flocked to the Bridgeport state police barracks where he and his attorney addressed reporters upon being released.
“It was quite a production,” Maddox said. “It was very deliberate and spawned by the adversarial relationship between law enforcement and his attorney.”
Urso said the state appears to be making a pretty convincing case.
“It looks as though this could form the basis of a murder warrant against Fotis Dulos,” Urso said. “A strong case could be made that there is enough circumstantial evidence to charge Fotis with murder.”
Former worker and his truck
Some of that evidence was provided by Urso’s client, Pawel Gumienny, a former project manager for Fotis Dulos’ company, Fore Group.
Gumienny usually left his red 2001 Toyota Tacoma pickup at Fotis Dulos’ Farmington home during the week while using his employer’s vehicle to drive to New Canaan to work on one of the company’s homes.
According to the lastest arrest warrants, police traced Gumienny’s pickup truck to and from New Canaan on the morning Jennifer Dulos vanished.
The arrest warrant stated Gumienny was ruled out as a suspect, and police believe Fotis Dulos used the vehicle in connection with his wife’s disappearance.
Urso said his client has fully cooperated with the investigation.
“He’s very upset that Fotis dragged him into this mess,” Urso said. “He quit when Fotis was arrested.”
Still images from surveillance video footage taken from highways between Farmington and New Canaan and from local school bus cameras were included in the arrest warrants that show the pickup truck, but do not reveal the driver.
But police said they “believe” Fotis Dulos parked the pickup truck on Lapham Road near where his estranged wife’s Chevrolet Suburban was later found abandoned. According to the warrant, Fotis Dulos was “lying in wait” at Jennifer Dulos’ home until she returned from dropping off their children at school.
“The crime and cleanup are believed to have occurred between 8:05 and 10:25 a.m,” according to the warrant.
Police also said “Dulos is believed” to be driving Jennifer Dulos’ Suburban — with his wife’s body inside — when it was captured on a neighbor’s security camera leaving her Welles Lane home at 10:25 a.m. that day, the warrant said.
However, there is an unexplained gap in the police timeline.
The Suburban is pictured leaving Jennifer Dulos’ home at 10:25 a.m., and the Tacoma is seen passing the New Canaan rest stop on the Merritt Parkway at 11:12 a.m. The distance between the two locations is about 10 minutes plus the time it would have taken to switch vehicles at Lapham Road.
“I hate it when law enforcement says ‘we believe,’ ” Maddox said. “That’s useless; we want to know the facts. Here it sounds like the facts because it’s surrounded by facts. They have an unfair advantage. This is a public document. It’s sensationalizing what they have.”
The initial charges of tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution stemmed from Hartford video surveillance that police said showed two people resembling Fotis Dulos and Troconis making a series of stops along a 4mile stretch of Albany Avenue the night of the disappearance.
The video showed Fotis Dulos tossing bags that were later determined to contain his wife’s blood and clothing, the warrant said.
The recent charges are related to Fotis Dulos and Troconis cleaning the Tacoma, according to the warrant.
Troconis told investigators she helped Fotis Dulos clean what he called “spilled coffee” out of Gumienny’s truck at Fore Group’s Mountain Spring Road property in Farmington the afternoon of the disappearance, the warrant said.
“Troconis told investigators at one point (Fotis) Dulos handed her a stained towel he had been using to clean the truck and told her to place it into a plastic garbage bag,” the warrant said. When questioned about the towel, Troconis claimed she could not remember the color of the stain, but admitted the towel “did not smell like coffee,” the warrant said.
According to the warrant, Fotis Dulos tried to keep the Tacoma by repeatedly offering Gumienny to take his Ford Raptor for the weekend. After Gumienny refused, Fotis Dulos eventually took the Tacoma for a car wash and interior detail five days after the disappearance without his employee’s knowledge, the warrant said.
Even after the truck was washed, the warrant said Fotis Dulos continued to pressure Gumienny to remove the seats and offered to swap them with ones from his Porsche. Out of fear of losing his job and to get Fotis Dulos “off my back,” Gumienny told investigators he switched the seats but kept the old ones even though his boss instructed him to get rid of them, the warrant said.
On June 6, five days after Fotis Dulos and Troconis were originally arrested, Gumienny turned over to police the seats he had removed from the Tacoma, the warrant said. Tests revealed Jennifer Dulos’ blood was found on one of them, the warrant said.
Enough evidence for murder charge?
Police had the information about the apparent attempts to clean the pickup by early August, but the arrest warrant was not obtained until Tuesday — 10 days before Judge John Blawie is expected to consider Pattis’ request to dismiss the original charges.
Maddox said the new warrant could be an attempt to get the police narrative about the investigation out to the public. He concedes it reads like a murder warrant, but without the homicide charge.
“Why deliver this warrant now?” Maddox said. “I can’t think of a procedural reason for doing it. My guess is that the state is waiting for more forensic evidence before they charge him with murder. In the interim, with so many people clamoring for information, they wanted to put their side out there.”
John “Bob” Gulash, a Bridgeport criminal defense attorney who has represented clients in several highprofile cases, declined to speak specifically about the Dulos case, but said it’s not uncommon for police and prosecutors in general to wait as they gather more information before filing a murder charge.
“Speaking in general terms in situations where, for a number of reasons, the police or state felt comfortable that there was not a risk of flight or the chance the suspect was a danger to the community, there is no need to act at any particular pace,” Gulash said.
And he said unlike other felonies, which have a fiveyear statute of limitations, there is no ticking clock on a murder charge.