Husband of Missing Connecticut Mom Is Charged With Murder

The husband, Fotis Dulos, 52, was charged with two counts of murder and kidnapping, the Connecticut State Police said in a statement.

Fotis Dulos’ girlfriend, Michelle C. Troconis, 44, and his friend and former attorney, Kent Mawhinney, were also arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, the state police said.

Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance in May led to a statewide search that had law enforcement agencies looking for her across much of Connecticut last year.

Police flew helicopters and drones over a sprawling suburban park, solicited private surveillance footage and spent weeks rooting through a trash facility looking for evidence. Her remains were never found.

All the while, people across the country were drawn in by the disappearance of Dulos, who had been in the middle of a volatile custody battle with her estranged husband when she was reported missing.

The case received national media attention and spurred a host of armchair sleuths to search online for clues and post frequently about them on social media.

“Although we are relieved that the wait for these charges is over, for us there is no sense of closure,” said Carrie Luft, a longtime friend of Dulos’ who has been speaking on behalf of her family, in a statement.

“Nothing can bring Jennifer back,” Luft said. “We miss her every day and will forever mourn her loss.”

For months, investigators had been focused on Fotis Dulos. He and Troconis were charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence in June. Another evidence tampering charge was later added, in September.

The two have pleaded not guilty to the previous charges against them and have been free on bond.

Jennifer Dulos, 50, was last seen May 24. That morning, law enforcement officials said, she drove her children to a private school in New Canaan, Connecticut, a wealthy community located about 45 miles north of midtown Manhattan.

Authorities began investigating Dulos’ disappearance after she failed to make several appointments in New York City that day, and her friends grew concerned.

Investigators went to her $3.5 million home that night and found blood stains and spatters that led them to conclude that she had been the victim of a serious physical assault. They also discovered Jennifer Dulos’ blood mixed with Fotis Dulos’ DNA on a faucet, as well as evidence of an attempt to clean up the scene.

As they widened their search, investigators also found Jennifer Dulos’ car abandoned about 3 miles away near Waveny Park, a vast expanse that was initially the focus of the search for her remains.

Fotis Dulos was arrested and taken into police custody around 11 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday, according to Pattis.

Fotis Dulos and Troconis were sent to separate Connecticut jails before their arraignment hearings. He was being held on a $6 million bond, and Troconis was being held on a $2 million bond, officials said.

Officials said in an earlier arrest warrant that they believed that Fotis Dulos had been “lying in wait” for Jennifer Dulos in New Canaan and that he carried her body from her home in her own car.

Police first spoke with Fotis Dulos the day after his estranged wife was reported missing. The two had been locked for years in a bitter divorce battle that involved hundreds of court filings in which the two exchanged accusations as they argued about visitation rights and custody of their children.

The couple had been married for 13 years when Jennifer Dulos initiated divorce proceedings in June 2017. At the time, she immediately asked for an emergency order that would give her sole custody of the couple’s three sons and two daughters.

In an affidavit, Jennifer Dulos said that she was worried that Fotis Dulos would kidnap the children and take them to Greece, where he was raised. She also said she feared that Fotis Dulos, who had recently purchased a gun, might hurt her or their children.

Fotis Dulos denied the allegations. In the time that followed, the two of them traded accusations, with court proceedings in the custody case turning into a ceaseless litany of complaints, both deeply serious and seemingly mundane.

In an arrest warrant from September, police said they believed that Fotis Dulos had borrowed a red Toyota truck from a work colleague on the day that Jennifer Dulos was reported missing. The car was later found to contain traces of her blood.

Through surveillance footage, police traced the truck traveling to New Canaan, where it was parked just 100 feet from the spot where Jennifer Dulos’ car would later be discovered, the warrant said.

Cellphone records would show that later that evening, as authorities were investigating Jennifer Dulos’ home, Fotis Dulos and Troconis had driven to Hartford, Connecticut, according to arrest warrants. Officials have said that the pair dumped trash bags filled with evidence there, including clothing and a kitchen sponge stained with Jennifer Dulos’ blood.

In August, Troconis admitted to police that she placed a stained rag into a black garbage bag similar to the ones found in Hartford, according to an arrest warrant. She also told police that she believed Fotis Dulos cleaned up the borrowed truck believed to have been used in Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance.

During a number of police interviews, Troconis said she could not account for Fotis Dulos’ whereabouts on the morning of Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance, according to the warrant.

She also admitted that she and Fotis Dulos provided false alibis on handwritten documents in their Farmington home, the warrant said.

The pages, which detectives referred to as “alibi scripts,” outlined their supposed activities and phone calls on the day that Jennifer Dulos disappeared.

The notes included events that Troconis later admitted had never happened and alibi witnesses who were “determined to be false,” the warrant said.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

When Fotis Dulos and Troconis were first arrested, the charges were viewed as a major break in the investigation. But the months that followed brought no news of Jennifer Dulos’ whereabouts and no indication of whether she was dead or alive.

All the while, detectives searched for evidence. They searched properties owned by Fotis Dulos’ luxury real estate development company, as well as a pond where Jennifer Dulos said in court filings that Fotis Dulos had taken their children water skiing.

State police and a number of cadaver dogs spent close to a month searching a Hartford garbage facility for clues with no apparent breakthrough.

Fotis Dulos has been free on two separate $500,000 bonds and has repeatedly denied any involvement in his wife’s disappearance.

Since Jennifer Dulos was reported missing, her five children have been in the care of her mother, Gloria Farber, who has filed for custody of the children.

Farber and Fotis Dulos also have been locked in a custody battle for months as the investigation into Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance continued.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .