The estranged husband of a Connecticut mother who has been missing for nearly eight months was arrested Tuesday and charged with murder, according to police.
Fotis Dulos was jailed in connection with the death of his wife, Jennifer Farber Dulos, despite authorities being unable to find her body since she went missing in May 2019.
Dulos is expected to be held on a $6 million bond, his attorney, Norm Pattis, said.
“I haven’t seen the warrant yet, but it is my understanding that Mr. Dulos was just arrested and was charged with the crime of murder as to his wife, Jennifer Dulos. It is my understanding ... that arrests are simultaneously taking place and that two other individuals are being arrested,” Pattis said.
Credit: New Canaan Police Department
Credit: New Canaan Police Department
The arrest Tuesday capped months of searches by police for Farber Dulos, who was last seen dropping off her children at a school in New Canaan on May 24.
Authorities have searched woods, ponds, trash plants and houses from New Canaan to Farmington but have been unable to find any trace of the 51-year-old Farber Dulos other than a blood-stained shirt — found in a Hartford trash can — they believe she was wearing the last time she was seen alive.
Pattis said he pulled up to Dulos' house at Jefferson Crossing in Farmington at 11 a.m. Tuesday, 10 minutes before a convoy of five unmarked state police cruisers, one with flashing red and blue lights, swept into the residential compound. The state police cars surrounded the front entrance to the house and left after about 15 minutes with a handcuffed Dulos in one of their vehicles.
Credit: Mark Mirko
Credit: Mark Mirko
“Today is a somber day,” Pattis said while standing at the entrance to Jefferson Crossing after the vehicles had departed. “I’m not surprised that the state decided to bring the charge. I'll be surprised if they can win it. Mr. Dulos contends that he was not involved, and I don't think the evidence will show that he was.”
He said it was his understanding that the court put a $6 million bond on Dulos with the condition that he cannot post it until after he is arraigned.
“You can imagine what it's like to say to someone, prepare for the bottom to fall out of your world. In a paradoxical way, we welcome this fight because we think we will win it. In fact, we're confident we will. And now we won't have to speculate about what it looks like any longer,” Pattis said.
New Canaan Police tweeted shortly after Dulos' arrest.
More about Fotis Dulos
Dulos, 52, a Farmington luxury homebuilder, has been arrested twice and charged with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution in connection with the disappearance of Farber Dulos. He has been free on two separate $500,000 bonds.
Dulos has steadfastly maintained he had nothing to do with his wife's disappearance, and Pattis has suggested a variety of theories of what happened to her — from a “Gone Girl” scenario where she faked her own death and is still alive to a "revenge suicide” theory speculating that she killed herself and made it look like Fotis Dulos was involved to keep their children away from him.
Credit: Mark Mirko
Credit: Mark Mirko
The couple has been going through a long, bitter divorce since June 2017 with a judge severely limiting Dulos' access to his five children over the last year.
Dulos was first arrested in early June. Police in court documents said surveillance video from the Albany Avenue area in Hartford showed Dulos dumping two black trash bags into garbage cans on that street. The cameras also showed him putting a FedEx package into a storm drain right in front of Michelle Troconis, his girlfriend at the time, police said.
Investigation and evidence
Police later retrieved the FedEx package, which had an old license plate belonging to a car Dulos no longer owned in it. They have never explained what connection, if any, the old license plate has to the case.
State police detectives also recovered a shirt with blood on it that they believed Farber Dulos was wearing the day she disappeared, a bloody mop and some towels from the trash. DNA testing revealed the blood on those items belonged to Farber Dulos.
Two days after the trash bags were dumped on Albany Avenue, a homeless man found one of them and inside he said he found a bloody pillow and a knife that he later sold for $5 for a rock of crack cocaine to a man named Fudge.
Fudge said he later sold the knife to a man for $10 to buy food. He was unable to identify the man to police, and the knife has never been found.
The girlfriend
Michelle Troconis, who was referred to as the “Argentinian paramour” in court papers by Farber Dulos' divorce attorney, also has been arrested twice on tampering with evidence charges. She is free on a $500,000 bond and a $150,000 bond, respectively.
Troconis has told state police in multiple interviews that she doesn't know where Farber Dulos' body is located.
The bond after her second arrest in September was lower because she has cooperated with state police detectives. She recently also moved her remaining belongings from the Farmington home she shared with Dulos. She now lives in Avon.
What’s in the arrest warrant
It was after the second arrests that Norwalk/Stamford State's Attorney Richard Colangelo released a 43-page detailed arrest warrant affidavit that laid out the case against Dulos.
State police obtained video surveillance from gas stations, home security systems and New Canaan school buses to document the trail of a red Toyota truck as it drove from Farmington to New Canaan earlier on the morning of May 24.
The truck belonged to Pawel Gumienny, an employee of Dulos' home building company, The Fore Group Inc., who had let Dulos use it while he drove Dulos' black Ford Raptor to a job site in New Canaan. Gumienny is expected to be a key witness for the prosecution.
The arrest warrant affidavit said the truck is first seen on a gas station surveillance camera along the Merritt Parkway in Fairfield at 6:36 a.m. that day. The truck is captured parked on Lapham Road in New Canaan at 7:40 a.m. by a school bus camera. The truck is parked less than 100 feet from where Farber Dulos' white Chevy Suburban was found later that same night.
Police believe that Dulos left his truck there and went to his estranged wife's home about 3 miles away and waited for her to return from bringing the children to school. The white Suburban can be seen returning to her Welles Lane home at 8:05 a.m.
It is seen leaving at 10:24 a.m., and police allege Dulos was driving it and the body of his wife was inside of it. They theorize that he was lying in wait for her in the garage and attacked her there, according to court documents.
About the Author
