Fotis Dulos told Jennifer his paramour Michelle Troconis was moving in when confronted about affair: New docu
NEW CANAAN, CONNECTICUT: Fotis Dulos, the estranged husband of Jennifer Dulos, the 50-year-old Connecticut woman, who vanished in New Canaan amid a contentious divorce case and child custody battle, maintained that he was innocent till he committed suicide despite the police charging him with murdering the missing victim and never revealing where he had hidden his body.
In a new documentary called, 'Vanished in New Canaan: An ID Mystery' that aired on June 1 at 9 pm on Investigation Discovery, experts and close acquaintances of the soon-to-be-divorced couple weighed in, uncovering new details about Jennifer's alleged killer that were not known before in the case that became national interest after the mother-of-five disappeared on May 24, 2019.
Jennifer met Fotis, a Greek-American in 2003, at an airport. Although both had attended Brown University, up till then they had just been familiar acquaintances as Fotis was Jennifer's senior in the university. After their chance meeting, both of them started dating each other and ended up having an opulent wedding in August 2004. Soon their home was brimming with five children.
"Fotis had an attractive personality. He was kind. He was worldly. He came to the United States as an immigrant from Greece. He didn't come from money. He dressed well. He was good looking. He had this sort of way about him that made you wanna hang out with him," Rich Rochlin, Fotis' divorce lawyer said in the documentary.
But while their marriage seemed perfect to the outsiders, the inside story was quite different. Jennifer soon discovered that Fotis had a mean streak due to which they often ended up having fights. At one point Jennifer even started fearing for the safety of herself and her kids after she learned that her husband had bought a gun.
According to her divorce filing in state Superior Court in Stamford on June 20, 2017, her husband had “exhibited irrational, unsafe, bullying, threatening and controlling behavior.” She also requested the court for an emergency order of custody, saying her husband’s behavior, “significantly intensified in the last three weeks and I am afraid for my safety.” Apparently Fotis had “made a specific threat to kidnap the children,” and take them to Greece or another country, she said.
"I am afraid of my husband. I know that filing for divorce, and filing this motion will enrage him. I know he will retaliate by trying to harm me in some way. He has the attitude that he must always win at all costs. He is dangerous and ruthless when he believes that he has been wronged. During the course of our marriage, he told me about sickening revenge fantasies and plans to cause physical harm to others who have wronged him. For example, flying a plane over an ex-client’s home and dropping a brick on his house. I fear for my family’s safety and I believe him to be highly capable and vengeful enough to take the children and disappear," her statement in the legal papers read, Heavy reported.
Her divorce papers also revealed that her husband was having an affair with Michelle Troconis, who was a mother and a former TV host and producer for ESPN in Argentina, and that Fotis had threatened to take their children to Argentina, “to be with his paramour." The documentary revealed that Fotis even offered to move Michelle into his Farmington home where he was living with Jennifer and his kids while being married to her.
Investigative journalist M. William Phelps said in the documentary: "When Jennifer confronts Fotis about the affair, what does he do? And this shows his character. He had the nerve to say to her, I am moving Michelle and her daughter into the home."
Legal analyst Ashleigh Banfield added: "So that they can all live together. Jennifer, the kids, Michelle, and her daughter, all one big happy family. It was preposterous. Jennifer refuses."
One day when Fotis got back home, he found Jennifer and his children were gone from the house. Jennifer moved to New Canaan with their children. This left Fotis in a bit of a pickle since he was already embroiled in civil cases with his mother-in-law, Gloria Farber, and the estate of his father-in-law, Hilliard Farber, since 2018. Apparently Fotis Dulos had borrowed $2.3 million from a bank to buy his home in Farmington, for which Jennifer’s parents put up security. After her father died, Fotis stopped making payments on the loan, causing the bank to charge Gloria Farber’s collateral with the payments.
But there was no way Fotis could make the payments as his real estate company was already running a total of $7 million in debt. It was one of the reasons the investigators believed that Fotis had a motive to kill his estranged wife because their five children had a $2 million trust fund in their name, put up by Jennifer's parents. With Jennifer out of the picture, it was most likely that Fotis would have sole custody of the kids.
After failing to locate Jennifer's body for months and finding evidence of blood in her garage and her clothing in some trash bags that Fotis had personally discarded in garbage bins on the day she went missing, Fotis was charged with capital murder, murder and kidnapping on January 7, 2020.
While on house arrest following the posting of bail, on January 28, 2020, Fotis tried to commit suicide by attaching his vacuum cleaner hose from the exhaust pipe to the inside of the car and rolling up his windows. He was initially declared dead at the scene before being revived and taken to the hospital. He eventually died on January 30, 2020. He left a note saying he was innocent without providing any details about where Jennifer could be.