Norm Pattis has experience with this type of case
When Fotis Dulos returns to court on Tuesday, he’ll be standing beside a new attorney.
But Norm Pattis, a controversial New Haven lawyer who represents Infowars host Alex Jones and was condemned for racial Facebook posts, is familiar with cases like the Jennifer Dulos disappearance.
The search for Jennifer Dulos has spanned more than two weeks in multiple towns around the state and her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, and his girlfriend, have been charged with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution. State police detectives continued to search a trash facility in Hartford on Sunday for evidence, the Hartford Courant reported.
“I defend people I trouble, and I cannot imagine doing otherwise,” Pattis said in an email.
He declined to comment further.
Pattis told NBC Connecticut he became Fotis Dulos’ attorney on Friday night. He said he has read the arrest warrant and supporting information and “look(s) forward to learning more about this unusual case.”
“I caution the world at large that things are rarely as they appear early on in a sensationalized investigation like this one,” Pattis told NBC Connecticut. “The rush to judgement stops now as does the conviction by innuendo. If necessary, we’ll let a jury decide what happened here.”
Pattis took on a similar case in 2015 when he represented Jennifer Valiante, the girlfriend of Kyle Navin, who is serving 55 years in prison for killing his parents, Jeffrey and Jeannette. Valiante cooperated with authorities and was sentenced to eight years for her role in the killings.
Like the Dulos case, authorities conducted a massive search for the Navins, including at landfills as investigators have been doing for the past week in Hartford.
“There is a body somewhere in Connecticut, and that body will tell a story,” Pattis told WSFB when interviewed as a legal expert about the Dulos case before taking Fotis Dulos on as a client.
As the search entered its third week, Troconis was seen Friday afternoon guiding investigators into the woods behind her boyfriend’s Farmington property.
While Fotis Dulos remains jailed on $500,000 bond, Troconis has been released on bail and is required to wear an electronic monitoring device.
Troconis met with state police investigators and the state’s attorney for several hours Thursday at her lawyer’s Westport office.
Investigators spent the past week at a Hartford garbage dump sifting through trash they say came from receptacles where Fotis Dulos was seen tossing bags containing his estranged wife’s blood the night she disappeared.
Recent searches have also focused on properties tied to Fotis Dulos’ custom homebuilding company, the Fore Group.
Police searched a metal dumpster this week outside a New Canaan home being developed by the company. Neighbors of 61 Sturbridge Hill Road said they were woken up by the loud sounds of metal banging in the predawn hours the morning after Jennifer Dulos went missing.
Police have also focused on Fotis Dulos’ primary residence on Jefferson Crossing in Farmington, where he has been living with Troconis and her daughter. Jennifer Dulos moved from the property with her five children when she filed for divorce in 2017.
Authorities spent last weekend searching the property and returned late Wednesday with an emergency search warrant. They were seen leaving that night with two boxes of evidence.
Authorities were back at the home on Friday when drone footage captured Troconis and her attorney, Andrew Bowman, leading investigators into a wooded area behind the property.
Police have declined to comment about the searches and what evidence they have recovered.
“She is still considered missing and, as stated previously, an active criminal investigation is occurring,” New Canaan Police Lt. Jason Ferraro said Friday.
Jennifer Dulos was last seen around 8 a.m. on May 24 after dropping her children off at New Canaan Country School.
After she was reported missing that night, police found Jennifer Dulos’ Chevy Suburban ditched on Lapham Road near Waveny Park and they discovered signs of a “serious physical assault” in the garage of her Welles Lane home. Police said there was blood spatter and evidence the area was cleaned up.
Around the time Jennifer Dulos was reported missing, Fotis Dulos and Troconis were seen on video tossing garbage bags into more than 30 trash receptacles along a fourmile stretch in Hartford, according to their arrest warrants. Police said the bags were discovered last Friday and contained Jennifer Dulos’ blood.
The Dulos children who range in age from 8 to 13 have been staying with their maternal grandmother under the watch of an armed guard in her New York City apartment. Their grandmother, Gloria Farber, is also seeking custody of them.