‘Truth will prevail,’ Michelle Troconis’ sister says
Family insists on her innocence despite conviction in Jennifer Dulos case, says Fotis ‘fooled us’
Prior to visiting Michelle Troconis for the first time since her conviction last month for conspiring to kill Jennifer Dulos, her father said he was struck by memories from her childhood.
“We’re going to visit Michelle at the prison,” Carlos Troconis said Thursday in an interview. “For many years, she hated to go to the zoo, because she said that was injustice for the animals to be in jail while other people were outside making fun of them and giving them peanuts and things like that. Those animals should be in their natural habitat and not in the zoo. Now we’re going to visit her in just a situation, in a prison, she should be outside.”
Afterward, one of Troconis’ three sisters, Claudia Troconis-Marmol, described the visit to the York Correctional Institution in East Lyme as “very emotional.” She didn’t elaborate further.
The Troconis family remains steadfast in their belief she is innocent and say they pray daily for Jennifer Dulos’ five children and that she will one day be found.
“We’re in pain for them, too, because their lives have been devastated,” Troconis-Marmol said Thursday in an interview before visiting her sister in prison for the first time.
Troconis has a daughter of her own who is now a “very strong” 17-yearold, Troconis-Marmol said. Troconis’ daughter is a professional skier who represented the United States last month at the Youth Olympic Games in South Korea, Troconis-Marmol said.
“She was separated from her main person in life and the person that she’s devoted her entire life to, which is my niece,” Troconis-Marmol said of her sister’s incarceration after a six-person jury found her guilty March 1 of conspiracy to commit
murder, two counts of conspiracy to tamper with physical evidence, two counts of tampering with physical evidence and one count of second-degree hindering prosecution.
Troconis was living with Fotis Dulos when his estranged wife vanished from her New Canaan home on May 24, 2019. In a case that has drawn international attention and has been the subject of numerous documentaries and a Lifetime movie, Fotis Dulos died by suicide in January 2020 while facing murder and other charges. Co-defendant Kent Mawhinney, who has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, is taking his case to trial.
Troconis faces up to 50 years in prison when she is sentenced May 31.
Troconis-Marmol said the family is “hoping for the best” for the sentencing and subsequent appeals, and intends to speak during the proceedings to show “who Michelle truly is.”
Now 49, Troconis was born in the United States while her father, a pediatric cardiovascular surgeon, was a resident physician at a hospital in Memphis, Tenn. The family moved to Venezuela when Troconis was 6.
She earned a degree in special education after forming a bond with an aunt who was developmentally disabled, and later founded an equine therapy facility in Venezuela for special needs children, according to Troconis-Marmol.
“My sister is a loving human being with amazing qualities,” TroconisMarmol said, becoming emotional while describing her sister’s relationship with others. “Even going through these horrible last five years, she would enter a room and she would brighten it up because that’s her spirit. She’s beautiful.”
Stamford Superior Court Judge Kevin Randolph last week denied post-trial motions for acquittal and a new trial filed by Troconis’ lawyers, but indicated he could vacate one of the two conspiracy to tamper with evidence convictions because they may have been duplicative and violated double-jeopardy laws.
Troconis also faces a contempt charge related to images of a sealed report she is accused of having on her computer screen at one point during her two-month trial. Her family declined to answer questions about the charge, because a hearing hasn’t taken place yet.
Despite the verdicts, and what the judge characterized last week as “inconsistencies about material matters” in Troconis’ hours of interviews with police investigating the disappearance, along with a “cascade of circumstantial evidence” presented at trial, her family said they still believe in her innocence.
Troconis-Marmol said her sister’s conviction was “fueled by emotion” and dismissed the state’s case as “inconsistencies and mere speculation.”
‘More questions than answers’
While asserting her sister didn’t intentionally mislead investigators during her interrogations, Troconis-Marmol said there are many aspects of the case that “we will never know.”
During her trial, prosecutors told the jury how
Troconis changed her story during her three interviews with investigators, including admitting she didn’t see Fotis Dulos the morning of the disappearance after initially telling police she showered with him.
“Maybe she did take a shower with him and then he left to commit the socalled crime that he’s been accused of,” TroconisMarmol said. “But again, we will never know. There’s more questions than answers at this point.”
Troconis-Marmol also brushed aside suggestions that her sister was burning evidence of the crime at the Farmington home she shared with Fotis Dulos the day of the disappearance. The prosecution presented the jury with a neighbor’s video footage showing smoke coming from the chimney of Fotis Dulos’ home that day.
Troconis-Marmol pointed out there was much more damning evidence found that Fotis Dulos threw away in Hartford — with Troconis riding along — like a bloodstained shirt and bra belonging to his estranged wife.
“Wouldn’t they have burned the shirt and bra?” she said. “The first thing they would have burned if anything would have been the shirt.”
But with Fotis Dulos’ death, she said some details may never be known.
“We don’t know,” she said. “I’m not saying he didn’t commit the crime. Unfortunately, (the evidence) points to the fact that he did.”
But Troconis-Marmol feels Fotis Dulos didn’t act alone.
“I think there’s another person out there that is free and my sister is paying for that person’s crime,” she said. “He couldn’t have done it by himself.”
“Just because she dated a criminal does not make her a criminal,” she said. “Just because she fell in love with the wrong guy does not make her a criminal.”
Troconis-Marmol said Fotis Dulos was considered a member of their family and they were stunned by the accusations when they surfaced.
“He became one of us,” Troconis-Marmol said after describing her first impressions of Fotis Dulos, who she said “presented himself as this charming guy.”
She said her sister admired Fotis Dulos’ parenting style and didn’t reveal he was going through a contentious two-year divorce and custody battle with his estranged wife even though Troconis was required to leave the Farmington home when his children visited.
“He completely fooled all of us,” Troconis-Marmol said. “He had told us it was an amicable divorce and it wasn’t.”
‘Papi, I think Fotis may have done this’
Troconis and her family believed Fotis Dulos was innocent even after they were both first charged with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution a week after the disappearance.
That changed after Troconis’ second police interrogation on June 6, 2019 at the office of her former lawyer.
“Once she came out of the second interrogation, she told my father, crying, ‘Papi, I think Fotis may have done this,’” Troconis-Marmol said. “My father was shocked. As a family we were still like, ‘What is going on?’ He fooled us. We’re smart people but he did.”
“Then she was scared,” Troconis-Marmol said. “She was like, ‘Wow, I put myself through danger, he could have done it to me, too, he could have done it to my daughter. It was scary and it’s been scary. It’s been the longest almost five years of our lives.”
Troconis-Marmol said her sister never met Jennifer Dulos and “never spoke poorly” of her.
However, Pawel Gumienny, a former employee of Fotis Dulos, testified that Troconis referred to Jennifer Dulos as a “b **** ” on multiple occasions. He also testified that after the disappearance, Troconis said she would kill the mother of five “when she turns up.”
Troconis-Marmol dismissed Gumienny’s testimony as self-serving, noting he had an immunity agreement with prosecutors and said he only remembered the derogatory comments in the run-up to the trial. But she also said Gumienney’s phrasing would exonerate her sister.
“That goes to show my sister didn’t conspire, because she said, ‘When she turns up,’” Troconis-Marmol said. “It contradicts the theory of the state.”
Troconis-Marmol said her family was rocked by the guilty verdicts and then watched as her sister, who had been free on bond, was handcuffed and taken into custody.
“None of us were prepared because that’s not the truth. It was very shocking,” she said, describing the family’s emotions in the courtroom. “We were all devastated and continue to be. That day will be unfortunately engraved in our minds and hearts.”
A gag order early in the case prevented Troconis and her family from speaking out publicly.
“We were unable to speak out on behalf of my sister,” Troconis-Marmol said. “And this at the beginning was a trial by media.”
Changing the public perception of her sister now is “like climbing a mountain,” she said.
Despite everything, she said the family believes Troconis will be set free someday.
“We’re a very faithful family,” Troconis-Marmol said. “I do believe the truth will prevail.”