Prosecutor: Dulos’ body not at dump
Investigators found no evidence that the body of Jennifer Dulos was at a Hartford trash plant after an extensive search that lasted nearly three weeks last spring, according to the lead prosecutor in the case of the death and disappearance of the New Canaan mother.
“We didn’t find any evidence of that,” Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo said in an interview Friday on WPLR’s Chaz & AJ show.
Jennifer Dulos is presumed dead after she was last seen on a neighbor’s security camera returning home after dropping off her five children at school around 8:05 a.m. May 24. Police believe her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, was waiting and attacked her in the garage, according to arrest warrants.
Colangelo said finding Jennifer Dulos remains a priority.
“That has been our No. 1 focus since Jennifer went missing back in May,” Colangelo said in the radio interview. “We’ve unturned every stone that we possibly could, we’re still looking.”
It was the first extensive interview Colangelo has given about the case since his request for a gag order in the case was granted in September. The gag order, which the defense has appealed to the state Supreme Court to overturn, prohibits anyone involved, including witnesses, from speaking publicly about the case.
Colangelo was the state’s attorney in charge of the Judicial District of Stamford and Norwalk when Jennifer Dulos was reporting missing on May 24. He was appointed chief state’s attorney, overseeing the Division of Criminal Justice, on Jan. 30 — the same day Fotis Dulos died from an apparent suicide.
Colangelo said he was with attorney Kevin Smith, one of the members of the Dulos defense team, when Farmington police found the 52-year-old inside his running SUV in the garage of his home on Jan. 28. Colangelo and Smith were waiting for
Dulos at the Stamford courthouse for an emergency bond hearing where a judge could have sent him back to jail.
It was “real sad,” Colangelo said. “I was sitting with Kevin Smith when it was happening in real life.”
Fotis Dulos maintained his innocence in his estranged wife’s death and disappearance. In a note left in his car, Dulos said he was not involved and his former girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, and his friend, Kent Mawhinney, were also innocent.
Dulos and Troconis were charged last year with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution. In January, Dulos was charged with murder, felony murder and first-degree kidnapping. Troconis and Mawhinney were charged the same day with conspiracy to commit murder.
Mawhinney is also facing charges of sexual assault and violating a protective order for alleged incidents involving his own estranged wife. A Hartford judge on Friday said Mawhinney could be near a deal for those charges pending “discussions” in the Jennifer Dulos case.
Mawhinney has not entered a plea in the Dulos case and is next scheduled to appear Thursday in state Superior Court in Stamford.
When asked if he believed Troconis and Mawhinney could reveal information shedding light on the disappearance, Colangelo said, “that’s always the hope.”
“We are open and willing to get that information and see where it takes us,” Colangelo said of the possibility of prosecutors cutting a deal with the defendants in exchange for information in the case.
Colangelo said it’s unknown if anyone else will be charged.
“I don’t know where the investigation will take us,” he said.
Most of the evidence investigators have gathered was released in the arrest warrants and dozens of search warrants unsealed in January, Colangelo said. However, he said there is some video and DNA evidence that has not yet been made public.
One key video police found was of a man riding a bicycle from a red pickup truck believed to have been used by Fotis Dulos to get to New Canaan the day his wife vanished, Colangelo said.
“You can’t tell it’s him, but we found the bike (on video) in the pickup truck driving back up from the parkway,” he said.
Through videos provided by neighbors, businesses and state transportation cameras, police said they believe they traced Fotis Dulos’ path leading to and from his estranged wife’s home that day, according to arrest warrants.
Police believe Fotis Dulos was “lying in wait” when she arrived at her Welles Lane
home, where they found evidence that she was the victim of a “serious physical assault” based on blood stains and spatter in the garage, according to arrest warrants.
Fotis Dulos and Troconis were initially charged a week after the disappearance when police discovered video footage of two people resembling them in Hartford around the time Jennifer Dulos was reported missing, according to arrest warrants. The footage showed Fotis Dulos dumping bags that were later determined to contain his wife’s blood and clothing, arrest warrants state.
Fotis Dulos and Troconis were arrested in September on a second tampering with evidence charge related to cleaning up a pickup truck police say was involved in the disappearance, according to arrest warrants.
According to the warrants, Fotis Dulos drove a Toyota Tacoma belonging to one of his employees to and from New Canaan on May 24. Police said Dulos and Troconis took the vehicle to be washed in the days after the disappearance. Fotis Dulos also urged the employee to remove the seats, which the man did and turned over to investigators who found Jennifer Dulos’ blood on one of them, according to arrest warrants.