The girlfriend of missing Connecticut mom Jennifer Dulos’ estranged husband turned herself in Thursday to face an additional charge, state police said.
Michelle Troconis, 44, surrendered to Connecticut State Police detectives but walked out of the station with her attorney after posting bond, authorities told The Daily Beast.
“We have a judicial system in this country, which is the foundation of our democracy. The most important parts of that system are the presumption of innocence and trial by jury, so I’d like you to remember that Michelle is presumed innocent and she should be,” Andrew Bowman, her attorney, said outside court Thursday. “We are prepared to let judgement rest in a jury’s hands.”
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Troconis was hit an additional charge of tampering with evidence—a day after state police arrested Jennifer’s estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, on the same charge. Dulos, 52, is currently out on a $500,000 bond and is expected to return to court on Sept. 12.
“It’s an exhausting fight. I love my children, that’s about it,” Fotis Dulos told reporters as he left the Connecticut State Police station on Wednesday.
Jennifer Dulos, 50, was last seen on May 24 after dropping off her five kids at school. Authorities later found her car abandoned on a New Canaan road. Inside her house, investigators found “multiple stains” on the floor and a car inside her garage that “tested positive for human blood,” court documents said.
“Investigators came to the consensus that a serious physical assault had occurred at the scene, and Jennifer Dulos was the suspected victim,’’ the June court affidavit said, adding that there were “multiple areas of blood splatter” and other “evidence of attempts to clean the crime scene.”
At the time, authorities said, Troconis was Fotis Dulos’ live-in girlfriend as the couple was in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody battle over the children. Prosecutors previously alleged the couple dumped several trash bags containing items soaked with Jennifer’s blood in the hours after she was reported missing.
Dulos and Troconis were arrested and pleaded not guilty in June to hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence charges.
On Wednesday evening, Fotis Dulos was re-arrested for allegedly cleaning up a red Toyota pickup truck, belonging to one of his contracting employees, five days after his wife went missing.
Authorities allege the father of five was “lying in wait” at Jennifer’s home before the crime was committed between 8:05 a.m. and 10:25 a.m. on May 24.
“It is difficult to see why the state waited for months to serve this warrant. It was unnecessary,” Dulos’ lawyer Norm Pattis said in a statement. “We wish the state police spent more time looking for Jennifer and less trying to build a case against Fotis.”
According to an arrest warrant obtained by The Daily Beast, Troconis met with investigators for a third time on Aug. 13, at which point she admitted “she had not been truthful” in her prior two interviews.
She told investigators that Fotis had the truck washed because “Jennifer at some point was in there” and had seen the “stained towel he had been using to clean the truck,” according to his arrest warrant. State police confirmed the truck had a “blood-like substance” that contained Jennifer’s DNA.
The 44-year-old also told police that she did not see her boyfriend when she woke up around 6:40 a.m. the day Jennifer went missing—despite previously saying the coupled shared a shower that morning.
The new arrest warrant also reveals state police found handwritten notes inside their home two days after their arrest which specified times and activities the couple were allegedly doing the day on May 24. The notes included specific activities, times, incoming and outgoing phone calls and alibis that were later proven incorrect, the warrant said.
