The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘I have no idea where Jennifer is’
Videos show interrogation of Michelle Troconis in Dulos case
STAMFORD — A distressed Michelle Troconis repeatedly insisted during interviews with state police investigators that she was not involved with the death and disappearance of Jennifer Dulos, according to video excerpts her attorney has filed as exhibits in the case.
The video clips, filed with a motion last week seeking to have some of Troconis’ charges thrown out, offer a glimpse into hours of interviews she had with state police detectives after Jennifer Dulos vanished in May 2019.
“I have no idea what happened to Jennifer. I have no idea where Jennifer is and that’s 100 percent.” Troconis told state police detectives during an Aug. 13, 2019 interview.
Troconis, 46, is free on $2.1 million bond after pleading not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution charges.
Her former boyfriend, Fotis Dulos, died from a suicide last January while facing murder, kidnapping and other charges in connection with his estranged wife’s death and disappearance.
Fotis Dulos’ longtime friend and former attorney, Kent Mawhinney, has also pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in the case. Mawhinney was released on a reduced bond in October and prosecutors announced last week that he will likely testify against Troconis if her case goes to trial.
Troconis’ attorney, Jon Schoenhorn, has filed more than a half-dozen motions since taking the case last February, with one directly calling on Judge John F. Blawie to dismiss the evidence tampering charges.
Schoenhorn submitted the video clips in an effort he said to show state police detectives had a “reckless disregard” for facts and evidence when they drafted the arrest warrant affidavits used to charge Troconis.
Troconis was first arrested on evidence tampering and hindering prosecution charges on June 1, 2019 — one day after police said they discovered videos of her with Fotis Dulos in Hartford as he dumped bags that contained his estranged wife’s blood and clothing the night of the disappearance, according to arrest warrants.
With her former attorney, Andrew Bowman, by her side, Troconis was interviewed by police on June 2, June 6 and Aug. 13, 2019. In the video excerpts that Schoenhorn submitted, Troconis can be seen shaking and crying at times during the tense interviews with state police detectives.
One of the video excerpts Schoenhorn submitted appears to contradict the way state police investigators quoted Troconis in arrest warrants.
In the video clip, Troconis denied smelling the paper towel that police inferred in arrest warrants that Fotis Dulos used to clean an employee’s Toyota Tacoma the day his estranged wife vanished. The warrant alleges Troconis said the towel did not smell like coffee. In the video, however, Troconis denies knowing what it smelled like at all.
“I hold the paper towel, but I didn’t smell it,” Troconis said in the video.
It is unclear, however, if the exchange between Troconis and the investigators — outlined in arrest warrants about a paper towel stained with dark liquid — occurred during a portion of the interview that was not released by Schoenhorn.
Another video clip shows a compilation of Troconis insisting throughout interviews that she did not know what happened to Jennifer Dulos. However, the clips exclude much of the back-and-forth between
Troconis and the detectives. Schoenhorn has said his client told state police at least 18 times she did not know what happened and was not involved.
When asked where Jennifer Dulos was located during a June 6, 2019 interview, Troconis replied that she thought she was “hiding.” Later in the interview, Troconis claimed she feared Jennifer Dulos after she went missing.
“I didn’t want to stay in the house, that’s the truth,” Troconis told investigators.
Troconis said she was “scared” and “worried.”
When asked what she was worried about, Troconis replied, “Jennifer disappeared and maybe she was going to come and kill me and Nicole (her young daughter).”
But arrest warrants indicate Jennifer Dulos did not survive her estranged husband’s attack that occurred in the garage of her New Canaan home when she returned from dropping off her five children at school on May 24, 2019. Jennifer Dulos has been presumed dead, although her body has never been recovered.
Schoenhorn included video clips in the recent motion that he believes refutes accusations that Troconis actively participated in discarding key forensic evidence in Hartford’s North End the night of the disappearance.
Two videos submitted by Schoenhorn show a man parking his black Ford Raptor on Albany Avenue that evening. State police believe the man was Fotis Dulos, according to arrest warrants.
The clips show the man in a white T-shirt getting out of the truck to discard items, including a trash bag and what appears to be a large section of rug from a car that he leaned against Milagro’s restaurant. A similar rug was missing from Jennifer Dulos’ Chevy Suburban when it was found abandoned the night she was reported missing.
Troconis was in the vehicle, police allege, but could not be seen on the excerpts released by Schoenhorn.
Similar to the interview clips, these videos show brief sections of the footage obtained by investigators.
The judge has not ruled on many of Schoenhorn’s motions. Troconis is next scheduled to appear in court on March 16.
Gov. Ned Lamont is expected to propose a lean budget Wednesday that averts tax hikes while closing a major deficit and positions Connecticut’s economy to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
But some of the governor’s fellow Democrats fear “lean” really means austere — and that the plan will lack targeted tax relief and expanded investments in health care, social services and transportation — without which, they say, a recovery that includes all classes is impossible.
“At the end of the day, the governor will be focused on preparing Connecticut for recovery and growth,” Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw said of the biennial budget Lamont will unveil on Wednesday.
That includes maintaining services, protecting taxpayers — particularly in distressed municipalities — and ensuring Connecticut continues to defeat the coronavirus, she said.
But officials cannot escape the fact that state finances face steep challenges for years to come, even given a robust stock market that has — for now — mitigated the recession’s impact on Connecticut’s budget.
Analysts say state finances, unless adjusted, will run about $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in the red, both in the fiscal year that begins July 1 as well as in 2022-23.
Some key sources of state revenue are expected to remain sluggish well after that. And the University of Connecticut’s economic think-tank warned much of the economic damage caused by the coronavirus could linger well into the 2020s.
“Our challenges are not just limited to FY [fiscal years] 22 and 23,” McCaw added. “I think there’s a balance we’re going to strike here. … It’s not going to be all or nothing.”
Cracking open CT’s piggy bank
Part of that balance, she said, involves tapping Connecticut’s record-setting $3 billion-plus budget reserve, commonly known as the rainy day fund.
Using those dollars to help plug a massive budget gap over the next two fiscal years is one thing.
But because some economic challenges remain, state officials have to be cautious about also tapping one-time reserve dollars to launch many new programs — which will cost money every year and long after reserves are gone, McCaw said.
Connecticut struggled for much of the 2010s with huge projected deficits year after year, a disturbing trend that didn’t go unnoticed by Wall Street credit rating agencies. And if the state wants to ensure its ability to take advantage of the low borrowing rates currently being offered,
McCaw said, it can’t return to those days of doom-andgloom fiscal forecasts.
Health care may expand, but Medicaid eligibility won’t
The budget director declined to provide many details about the plan Lamont will unveil Wednesday. But she said one of the initiatives that many Democrats want won’t happen — at least in the way they’ve proposed.
Progressive Democrats are pressing Lamont to expand HUSKY A, Connecticut’s Medicaid-funded health insurance program for poor households with children.
“We are not contemplating Medicaid expansion, but there are some more proposals to make health care more affordable” being developed, she said.
That may not be enough for the “Recovery Champions,” a coalition of 30 Democrats from the House and Senate majorities who want Lamont to pump billions of dollars into services and tax relief for Connecticut’s low- and middle-income
households.
“Extreme conditions call for extreme measures,” said Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, who co-chairs the legislature’s Labor Committee. “It is time for us to think outside of the box.”
“The most recent election showed people really want a different direction, they want fairness, they want equity,” said Rep. Quentin Phipps, D-Middletown, co-chairman of the legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus.
According to the Department of Labor, nearly 200,000 individuals currently are receiving weekly unemployment benefits. By comparison, Connecticut lost 120,000 jobs in the last recession, which ran from December 2007 through mid-2009.
Many of those individuals lost health insurance along with their jobs. More importantly, because the federal government has enhanced state unemployment assistance for much of the pandemic — and because this aid counts as taxable income — many of these households don’t qualify for HUSKY A coverage.
This lack of coverage, progressives say, leaves thousands of Connecticut households just one serious health crisis away from economic catastrophe.
Besides expanding Medicaid eligibility, many from the party’s far-left also want to pump hundreds of millions of dollars annually into working class households through more generous state income tax credits, and by expanding municipal aid — and potentially enabling communities to lower property tax rates.
To pay for all this, progressive Democrats are pushing for higher income taxes on the rich and a statewide “mansion” property tax on high-value homes.
McCaw and Lamont both have hinted that expanded town aid is on the table, but any type of major tax hike is not.
Raising taxes on the wealthy would prompt them to flee Connecticut, according to the governor, who has said recently that it would be a particularly bad move now, while “we have the [economic] wind to our back.”
That last statement from the governor has frustrated many Democratic lawmakers who argue the chief executive is confusing the stock market with the overall economy.
And while Wall Street has recovered all of the value it lost in the first months of the pandemic and then some, much Connecticut’s working class and small businesses remain in rough shape.
That argument is supported by state revenue data.
Lamont warned back in early May that revenues for the first year of the new budget could come in $2 billion or more below original projections.
But by January, projected tax receipts had surged, eliminating roughly 80 percent of the problem.
Will Lamont try to stay at stringent, pandemic-level state spending?
And that’s not the only thing that’s changed since the pandemic began in March.
The co-chairwomen of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven and Sen. Cathy Osten, DSprague, both have expressed concerns over the hundreds of millions of dollars the Lamont administration has saved since COVID-19 hit Connecticut hard last March.
Connecticut’s rainy day fund actually stood at abut $2.2 billion when the last fiscal year began in July 2019 — $800 million below where it is now.
Lamont pumped up reserves, in part, by not spending $544 million last fiscal year. That’s two-anda-half times the savings target he was mandated by the legislature to reach.
And so far this fiscal year, with five months still to go, the administration expects to save $937 million. That’s three times the level directed by the legislature as part of the normal budget-balancing process.
A big chunk of those savings was due to enhanced federal Medicaid payments, which covered costs the state normally would have to pay.
And the administration also said the pandemic forced lots of savings. For example, offices had to be closed and certain programs couldn’t be offered to maintain social distancing and public health goals.
Still, some lawmakers fear Lamont will base his new budget on stringent, pandemic levels. What happens, they ask, when all services can safely operate again, or when enhanced federal Medicaid funding goes away?
In other words, is Lamont dressing Connecticut in a budget that is adequate during a pandemic but fits like a strait-jacket afterward?
Walker, who favors expanding Medicaid eligibility, joined Osten in pushing for more funding for the non-profit community agencies who deliver the bulk of state social services.
Walker and House Speaker Matt Ritter, DHartford, also want to repeal a statute that would effectively end Connecticut’s longstanding practice of trying to recover public assistance by placing liens on the homes of former welfare recipients.
Analysts say state finances, unless adjusted, will run about $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in the red, both in the fiscal year that begins July 1 as well as in 2022-23.