Seven months after Connecticut mom Jennifer Dulos disappeared after dropping her children off at school, her estranged husband has been charged with her murder, authorities said Tuesday.
Fotis Dulos, 52, was taken into custody by Connecticut State Police after several police vehicles swarmed his Farmington home at about 11 a.m. He’s been charged with capital murder, murder, and kidnapping, authorities confirmed to The Daily Beast. His bond was set at $6 million.
“Justice!” the New Canaan Police tweeted on Tuesday shortly after the arrest.
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Dulos’ former live-in girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, was also charged on Tuesday with conspiracy to commit murder. Her bail was set at $2 million. The former couple previously pleaded not guilty to tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution in connection with Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance.
An attorney who previously represented Dulos, Kent Mahwinney, was also charged Tuesday with conspiracy to commit murder, authorities said at a Tuesday press conference.
Carrie Luft, a spokeswoman for Jennifer Dulos’ family and friends, thanked authorities for their “diligent, painstaking work” in a statement to The Daily Beast.
“Although we are relieved that the wait for these charges is over, for us there is no sense of closure,” Luft said. “Nothing can bring Jennifer back. We miss her every day and will forever mourn her loss.”
Dulos’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, told reporters on Tuesday that while he is not surprised by the new charges, he welcomes “this fight because we think we will win it.”
“In fact, we are confident we will. And now we won’t have to speculate what it will look like,” the lawyer said. He added that Dulos “contends that he was not involved, and I think the evidence won’t show he was.”
In a new, 35-page arrest warrant for Troconis, authorities revealed there are “indications that Jennifer Dulos is not alive.”
“Jennifer Dulos had sustained an injury, or multiple injuries, which we would consider ‘non-survivable’ without medical intervention,” the chief medical examiner concluded, categorizing the incident as a “homicide of violence.” He added the mother died due to “some combination of traumatic, blunt-force injuries such as a bludgeoning/beating, and/or sharp-force injuries such as a stabbing/slashing.”
On May 24, 2018, Dulos, 50, was last seen dropping off her five kids at school. Authorities later found her car abandoned on a New Canaan road “in reverse” with its “lights on,” according to the arrest warrant. Blood spatter was also found on the passenger side of the car.
Investigators alleged Fotis Dulos, a luxury home builder, was “lying in wait” near his estranged wife’s New Canaan home the day she vanished—and used a vintage bicycle to get to the home from his car, which was parked ten minutes away, according to the new arrest warrant.
At the house, authorities found “multiple stains” that “tested positive for human blood” on the floor and in a car inside the garage, prompting authorities to say the mother of five was the victim of a “serious physical assault.”
Zip ties were recovered at the scene, which authorities believe were used to “secure and incapacitate” Jennifer Dulos when she was alive, according to the arrest warrant.
A previous warrant alleged that after the attack, Dulos and Troconis dumped several trash bags with bloody items. Evidence at the house also suggested there were “attempts to clean the crime scene,” authorities said.
Investigators found DNA belonging to Dulos and Troconis on a bag, shirt, mops, gloves, a sponge, a bike, and zip ties that were tossed in Hartford. The items also contained Jennifer Dulos’ blood. The family nanny revealed in a police interview she noticed 10 rolls of paper towels and two camping pillows were missing from Jennifer Dulos’ home.
Despite initially telling police that she and her boyfriend shared a shower the morning of the murder, Troconis, 44, later recanted and said she did not see Dulos that morning. The 44-year-old also told investigators Dulos borrowed a truck from one of his employees just before his wife’s disappearance.
Troconis said she believed he had the truck washed because “Jennifer at some point was in there,” police said. She also told authorities Dulos and his wife were in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody battle over the children at the time she went missing.
In one interview, according to her arrest warrant, Troconis said Dulos often complained about his estranged wife, once telling her, “Sometimes I hope she disappears.” Later, the 44-year-old said the couple’s ongoing divorce caused tensions in her own relationship with Dulos and caused them to “fight all the time.”
In a July interview with NBC 4 New York, Dulos vehemently denied his involvement in his estranged wife’s death.
“I know what I’ve done, I know what I haven’t done,” Dulos said at the time. “I have to stand and fight and hope the truth is going to come out.”
