The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
⏩ School official remembers Jennifer Dulos as committed parent.
NEW CANAAN — Jennifer Dulos was considered an active parent at New Canaan Country School since she arrived in town with her five children three years ago.
The 50-year-old Dulos rented a home on Welles Lane, just around the corner from the school, when she left her husband and filed for divorce in June 2017.
Dulos was “very present” at the school, often attending meetings and joining groups, according to Aaron Cooper, head of school.
Cooper described Dulos as “funny, committed, really insightful and unbelievably loving to the kids.”
“That’s why she made such strong relationships in a relatively short period of time — because of who she was,” Cooper said in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media.
But as popular as she became, Cooper said, “nobody had a clear memory of seeing her” as she pulled up in her black Chevrolet Suburban amid a line of about 400 other cars to drop off her children around 8 a.m. on May 24, 2019.
Moments later, a neighbor’s security camera captured an image of her Suburban returning home where police say her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, was “lying in wait” and attacked her in the garage. A little before 10:30 a.m., the Suburban was spotted again on a security camera, but police say this time Fotis Dulos was behind the wheel as he transported his wife’s body from her home, according to arrest warrants.
About an hour later, the Dulos children returned home with their nanny to eat lunch before heading to New York to see their grandmother for Memorial Day weekend.
Cooper soon hit the road himself, heading to North Carolina to celebrate his grandmother’s 90th birthday. During his drive, he received a series of texts: Jennifer Dulos was missing.
“It was horrible thing,” Cooper recalled.
When Cooper returned to school after Memorial Day, “we were very cooperative with the detectives who were coming by looking for information on Jennifer” on such things as “who dropped the children off that morning,” he said. “We gave any information we could.”
The school also continued to support the children, who ranged in age from 8 to 13 when their mother disappeared.
“We did our best to support the children in the moment of true crisis,” Cooper said.
The “focus was about the children and their ongoing needs given the possibility of what was happening,” he added.
The teachers visited the kids at their grandmother’s home where “they offered the valuable sense of routine” with people whom “they felt familiarity.”
“I think it was a moment of deep trauma,” Cooper said. “I don’t know how they did it.”
Cooper said the school gave the children flexibility as they continued to do their work from their grandmother’s home. The Dulos children returned to school for one day last June to attend field day with their friends, Cooper said.
In the two years the Dulos children attended the school, they “made really good friends when they were here and the children maintained them,” Cooper said.
The five children, including two pairs of twins, had been the focus of a heated custody dispute during their parents’ divorce. Since their mother’s disappearance, they have remained with their grandmother, Gloria Farber, who is seeking permanent custody of them.
Cooper praised the children’s resiliency after losing their mother and then their father, who died from an apparent suicide in January as he faced murder and other charges in connection with Jennifer Dulos’ death and disappearance.
The Dulos children visited their father in a New York hospital before he died on Jan. 30.
The kids are “strong and resilient individuals — it’s unbelievable,” Cooper said. “We want people to know that the children are loved and cared for.”
Cooper said Jennifer Dulos and her three boys and two girls remain on the minds of those at the school.
“We won’t forget Jennifer and her children,” he said.