Troconis statement
Says she knows ‘nothing about Jennifer Dulos' whereabouts' and that she shouldn't have trusted Fotis Dulos
Michelle Troconis issued her first statement about the disappearance of Jennifer Farber Dulos, saying that while she doesn’t know what happened to the missing New Canaan mother of five, she now realizes it was a “mistake” to have trusted her former boyfriend, Fotis Dulos.
Michelle Troconis issued her first statement about the disappearance of Jennifer Farber Dulos Thursday, saying while she doesn’t know what happened to the missing New Canaan mother of five, she now realizes it was a “mistake” to have trusted her former boyfriend, Fotis Dulos.
“To those who are quick to judge people they do not know. Let me say this: it is possible to misjudge others,” Troconis said, in a statement translated from the original Spanish.
“Whether or not Fotis Dulos was capable of doing the things the police and prosecutors accused him of doing, I do not know, but based on what I have learned in the last year, I think it was a mistake to have trusted him.”
Farber Dulos disappeared on May 24, 2019 — almost a year ago — and has never been found. Fotis Dulos was charged with her murder in January but died later that month in a New York City Hospital after he tried to kill himself by carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage of the Jefferson Crossing house he once shared with Troconis.
Troconis, Dulos’ girlfriend at the time that Farber Dulos disappeared, has been arrested three times in the past year on charges ranging from tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution to conspiracy to commit murder. She has pleaded not guilty and is free on a combined $2.1 million in bonds.
Her attorney, Jon L. Schoenhorn, said Thursday that Troconis released the statement because of her growing frustration with her criminal cases getting constantly postponed because courts are closed due to the coronavirus. She is now scheduled to appear in court Aug. 6.
Troconis is still wearing an ankle bracelet so that probation officials can track her whereabouts. Schoenhorn has been frustrated that with the courts closed he hasn’t been able to argue to have them removed.
Troconis issued her statement in Spanish,
along with a short video. It was translated into English by Schoenhorn’s office. One of Schoenhorn’s arguments has been that Troconis was interviewed three times by state police without a translator present.
“But despite the way I have been treated by the police, I know nothing about Jennifer Dulos’ whereabouts … what may have happened to her,” Troconis said. “I know that under American law, I don’t have to prove my innocence, but actually to me it feels that way during all this time under public scrutiny.”
Farber Dulos, 51, disappeared on the
morning of May 24, 2019, after dropping her five children off at their private school in New Canaan. Her Chevrolet Suburban was seen on security cameras driving on Welles Avenue as she returned home. The suburban was seen leaving a few hours later — believed to have her body in it and Dulos driving, according to arrest warrants.
In the weeks following her disappearance, state police conducted a massive search. They scoured Waveny Park in New Canaan, where Farber Dulos’ car was found that morning; homes in Avon, Farmington and New Canaan connected to the couple or Dulos’ Fore Group construction company; a pond in Avon where Dulos water skied with their five children; and vacant lots owned by Fore Group.
On Thursday the Courant published a story about renewed interest in another property — at 44 Sky View Drive in Avon —- where the couple lived years ago for a few months and where Dulos spent five months doing a demolition for the homeowner, David Ford, in 2017.
According to sources, police did not get a search warrant or bring cadaver dogs to search the large swath of woods behind the house or the septic tank, as they did at several other properties that Dulos owned.
State police obtained nearly 50 search warrants in the Dulos case covering cellphone records, property searches, bank records and more. They were all released last year and none of them were for the Sky View Drive property.
On Thursday, the state police put out a short statement saying “detectives are currently not searching this property. As part of the investigation, detectives searched this property in 2019.”
Ford, the property owner, said in an interview Thursday that a couple of state police detectives came to the house when his son was playing basketball there and asked if they could look around. They called Ford, who told them they could do whatever they wanted.
Ford said he was never asked to sign a consent form to search his property. He wasn’t there when the detectives were and said to his knowledge they never returned. If they did, he said, he wasn’t notified.
In the search for Farber Dulos, detectives also spent more than three weeks inside the MIRA trash plant in Hartford searching through mounds of garbage after Dulos was seen on video surveillance the night of May 24 throwing trash bags away on Albany Avenue.
Authorities said the bags contained evidence implicating Dulos in his estranged wife’s disappearance. Detectives retrieved two bags along Albany Avenue and found the Vineyard Vines shirt that Farber Dulos was wearing the day she disappeared, a black garden glove with Dulos’ DNA on the interior, a black Husky glove with Farber Dulos’ DNA on the outside of it, zip ties with Farber Dulos’ DNA and at least one garbage bag with the DNA of Dulos, Farber Dulos and Troconis, according to arrest warrant affidavits.
Troconis can be seen sitting in the passenger’s seat of Dulos’ black Raptor as he drives long Albany Avenue disposing of the trash bags, authorities said. At the last stop in front of Scott’s Bakery Troconis gets out of the vehicle briefly and appears to pick something up off the ground.
As she gets back into the car Dulos walks near her and drops a FedEx package into a storm drain, the warrants say. State police retrieved the package and found old license plates to a vehicle that belonged to Dulos years ago.
In his suicide note, Dulos specifically said that Troconis “had nothing to do with the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos.”
He also exonerated Bloomfield attorney Kent Mawhinney, who has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder and is currently being held on a $2 million bond after pleading not guilty to the charges.
By the time of Dulos’ suicide, Troconis had long moved out of the Jefferson Crossing home that she had shared with him for more than a year and Dulos had a new girlfriend, Anna Curry, a former co-worker at a New York financial company.
“If you are reading this I am no more,” the suicide note starts. “I refuse to spend even an hour more in jail for something I had NOTHING to do with. Enough is enough. If it takes my head to end this, so be it.”