The opening moments of a murder mystery were presented Thursday to a Connecticut jury, which viewed crime scene video and heard a police officer testify about finding what looked like blood in the garage of a mother of five who was reported missing.
The missing person was Jennifer Dulos, 50, who vanished from the wealthy town of New Canaan after dropping her children at school on the morning of May 24, 2019. Although her body has never been found, police concluded she was killed and pointed the finger at her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, who died by suicide in early 2020 weeks after being charged with murder.
Fotis Dulos' girlfriend at the time, Michelle Troconis, went on trial Thursday in Stamford Superior Court. A six-member jury will determine whether she helped him cover up the killing after the fact. The 49-year-old denies the allegations and has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, evidence tampering and hindering prosecution.
Jurors watched police body camera footage of officers discovering what appeared to them to be blood in the garage of the multimillion-dollar home Jennifer Dulos was renting as they investigated the missing person report. New Canaan police Lt. Aaron LaTourette took the stand to describe what he saw.
“I looked at the vehicle and noticed that there was what appeared to be red blood on the front of that vehicle” inside the garage, said LaTourette, adding that officers first surmised it could have been a deer strike. But there was no damage and no hairs, he said.
The footage played to jurors showed many red specks on an SUV and on the cement floor, and a pinkish-reddish area on the floor that looked smeared. Footprints that looked pink and red also were found.
Police allege Fotis Dulos waited for Jennifer Dulos to return home that morning, attacked her in the garage and tried to clean up the scene. He then drove off with her body in another SUV she had, which was later found abandoned at a local park, they say. At the time, the couple was going through contentious divorce and child custody proceedings, with Jennifer Dulos saying in court documents she feared he would hurt her.
Police searched the park and several other areas, but did not find her body. Authorities said blood evidence found in the garage indicated she could not have survived.
Fotis Dulos, who was living with Troconis and her daughter at the time in Farmington, nearly 70 miles (113 kilometers) from New Canaan, denied having anything to do with Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance.
Troconis arrived at court with her lawyer, Jon Schoenhorn, and relatives. She sat at the defense table wearing a beige sweater, black turtleneck and black pants. The dual American and Venezuelan citizen wore earphones linked to a Spanish interpreter.
During a break in the trial, Troconis' family, including her father, Carlos Troconis, spoke to the media and said she was innocent.
The case drew widespread attention and was the subject of a made-for-TV movie. Jennifer Dulos was a member of a wealthy New York family whose father, the late Hilliard Farber, founded his own brokerage firm. She also was a niece by marriage of fashion designer Liz Claiborne. Fotis Dulos was a luxury home builder originally from Greece.
Troconis has described herself as a co-founder of horse riding therapy programs in different parts of the world who once had her own TV production company in Argentina and hosted a snow-sports show for ESPN South America.
The first day of the trial ended with jurors watching a state police video, more than an hour long, that documented Jennifer Dulos' entire home the day after she vanished, and brief questioning of the trooper who took the video. The trial was scheduled to resume Friday and is expected to last about six weeks.
Among the evidence expected to be shown to the jury is police surveillance video of Fotis Dulos and Troconis driving around Hartford later in the day that Jennifer Dulos disappeared. Fotis Dulos is seen getting out of his pickup truck and disposing of garbage bags at various locations as Troconis sits in the vehicle.
Police said they later recovered some of the bags and found clothing, zip ties and other items with Jennifer Dulos' DNA on them. Some items had Fotis Dulos' DNA on them, and one bag had Troconis' DNA on it, police said.
Troconis told police she did not know what was in the bags, according to court documents. She said she thought they were from a home Fotis Dulos was trying to sell.
Prosecutors Michelle Manning and Sean McGuinness are also expected to show the jury what police dubbed “the alibi script” — a document they say Fotis Dulos and Troconis prepared that detailed their actions and locations on the day of the killing and the day after. Troconis told police that Fotis Dulos' lawyer had asked them to list their activities on those days.
Fotis Dulos' friend and former lawyer, Kent Mawhinney, also was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. He has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial. He also is accused of helping to cover up the killing after the fact.
The Dulos children, who ranged in age from 8 to 13 when their mother disappeared, went to live with Jennifer Dulos' mother, Gloria Farber, in New York City afterward. Farber, now in her 80s, attended the trial Thursday.