Troconis’ dad: ‘Looks like a trial for Fotis’
Investigators testify about gathering evidence from garage
STAMFORD — During the second day of the trial for Michelle Troconis, jurors were shuffled in and out of a Stamford courtroom as the court decided how to proceed with testimony about certain pieces of evidence. Two investigators took the stand Friday and talked about gathering evidence from Jennifer Farber Dulos’ New Canaan garage in the days after she disappeared.
Troconis, the former girlfriend of Fotis Dulos, is standing trial at Stamford Superior Court on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence in connection with the 2019 disappearance and presumed death of Farber Dulos, Dulos’ estranged wife.
After the stop-and-go testimony about alleged blood-like substances in Farber Dulos’ garage and on a paper towel roll in the kitchen dominated most of the day, Troconis’ father, Dr. Carlos Troconis, said outside the courthouse that “this looks like a trial for Fotis, and Fotis is no longer with us.”
Dulos died on Jan. 30, 2020 after attempting suicide at his Farmington home while charged with murder in Farber Dulos’ presumed death.
“None of this points to my sister,” said Claudia Troconis-marmol, Michelle Troconis’ sister.
In a separate statement outside the courthouse Friday evening, Troconis’ defense attorney, Jon Schoenhorn, echoed a similar sentiment.
“This has nothing to do with Michelle,” he said, adding that whether the evidence the prosecution brings forth connects to Dulos is yet to be seen.
He said that so far he is not surprised by the prosecution’s case against his client.
“This is about as unsurprising as one can imagine in a case,” Schoenhorn said.
On Friday, the jury that will decide Troconis’ fate entered the courtroom about 10:20 a.m. and began hearing testimony from Connecticut State Police Sgt. Jamie Pearston, the state prosecutors’ first witness of the day.
Two witnesses were called Friday, Pearston and retired Connecticut State Police Sgt. Matthew Reilly. Pearston, a supervisor of the crime scene van with the Connecticut State Police Western District Crime Squad, testified about state police mapping of the garage at Farber Dulos’ home at 69 Welles Lane in New Canaan.
Investigators allege that Dulos was lying in wait in that garage on May 24, 2019, and that he violently attacked her there when she returned home from dropping their five children off at school that morning.
On Thursday, the first day of the long-awaited trial, other investigators were called to the witness stand and walked the jury through body camera footage from the New Canaan Police Department and a walk-through video filmed by state police. Much of both videos centered on talking about, or zooming in on, stains on the garage floor and spatter on a black SUV in the garage that appeared to be blood.
Following Pearston’s testimony Friday morning, prosecutor Michelle Manning said the state planned to call one more witness Friday.
Ahead of testimony from Reilly, Schoenhorn argued a motion regarding evidence that would likely come up during Reilly’s testimony, in which photographs in which alleged blood stains are illuminated. But the jury hasn’t seen those yet, as much of Friday’s court proceedings involved breaks to dismiss the jury so the court could discuss the evidence when they weren’t in the room.
Before a lengthy break from late morning through the afternoon, Manning said that Reilly was an evidence officer who wrote a report about evidence from Farber Dulos’ garage. Part of his role was to decide which pieces of evidence in the garage to examine.
Manning said the detective’s testimony would involve what items were seized from the garage. Some of the evidence surrounding his testimony was set to include photographs of the garage, including some in which stains from a blood-like substance were illuminated.
Schoenhorn argued that those images might confuse jurors and questioned the science of the substance that illuminates blood, saying case law shows that it may also illuminate certain types of cleansers or rust.
“There’s such danger with the misapprehension or misunderstanding of what is essentially junk science,” Schoenhorn argued.
Speaking outside the courthouse Friday afternoon, Schoenhorn said he felt prosecutors were introducing the evidence to create the impression that there was more blood at the scene than there was and would confuse the jury.
More than once, he called the blood testing “junk science” and said that it didn’t need to be introduced into evidence by the detective “any more than if he said he used a Ouija board to choose where he was going to choose this samples.”
The trial was put on pause for almost two hours Friday afternoon as Judge Kevin A. Randolph reviewed case law related to Schoenhorn’s motion.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Randolph ruled to allow the presumptive blood testing. Reilly took the stand shortly after. By 3 p.m. the jury was dismissed again.
Later, Reilly’s testimony went on to include photos taken of Farber Dulos’s purse and the contents of her purse, including cash and some credit and debit cards.
The jury then saw a photo of a kitchen counter in Farber Dulos’s home. There were five fishbowls, fruit baskets and a roll of paper towels on the counter.
Prosecutors zoomed in on the paper towel roll, where Reilly said he spotted what appeared to be blood stains.
Reilly said he conducted a presumptive field test to check if the stain was blood. Schoenhorn objected to the discussion of the presumptive blood test and the jury was dismissed so the topic could be discussed.
Reilly said he has conducted similar presumptive blood tests thousands of times. He noted that the testing doesn’t differentiate between human blood and animal blood and that certain items, like turmeric or horseradish, could cause a false positive on the testing.
Randolph said he will rule on that at a later date.
“In certain matters, the court plays slow pitch,” Randolph said.
Mcguiness said that the prosecution plans to present DNA evidence next week, and noted that the defense has requested a Porter hearing regarding that evidence.
The purpose of a Porter hearing in Connecticut is to determine what evidence is reliable and relevant.
Courts are closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday. The trial, which is expected to take about six weeks, will resume Tuesday weather permitting.
“We do not know what the weather report will be on Tuesday,” Randolph said.
He advised jurors to check the judicial branch website to see if jurors were being called to court Tuesday, based on the weather.