Jennifer Dulos, a mother of five, disappeared in May. Her husband and his girlfriend created fake documents listing their activities that day, the police charge.
Image
Long before Jennifer Dulos went missing from her home in an affluent Connecticut suburb, her estranged husband’s girlfriend, Michelle C. Troconis, had moved into the Dulos home and had become ensnared in the couple’s turbulent divorce battle.
Dulos disappeared more than three months ago, her husband, Fotis Dulos, 52, became a target of the criminal investigation, but so did Ms. Troconis – with prosecutors charging her with hindering the investigation and tampering with evidence.
On Thursday, Ms. Troconis, 44, turned herself in on a new charge of evidence tampering in connection with the case, officials said, just one day after thepolice arrested her boyfriend, Mr. Dulos, and released a warrant filled with dramatic details implicating him in his wife’s disappearance.
The new charge marked a significant development in the lengthy investigation into Ms. Dulos’s whereabouts, which has mesmerized people across Connecticut and led to a huge search that involved drones, dogs and helicopters.
Throughout the investigation, detectives had kept a focus on Ms . Troconis, whose affair with Mr. Dulos began at least a year before Ms. Dulos filed for divorce in June 2017, according to court documents in thebitter custody caseinvolving the couple’s five children.
She and Mr. Dulos were botharrested in early Juneand charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence.
Officials said that onthe night of Ms. Dulos’s disappearance, Mr. Dulos’s disappearance Dulos and Ms. Troconis drove to Hartford and dumped trash bags filled with evidence, including clothing and a kitchen sponge stained with Ms. Dulos’s blood.
The same evening, thepolice found blood stains and spatters at Ms. Dulos’s homethat led them to conclude that she had been the victim of a serious physical assault.
In the recent warrant for Mr. Dulos’s arrest, the police said they believed he was “lying in wait” for Ms. Dulos at her home the morning that she disappeared and that he carried her body out of her home.
The police have not directly implicated Ms. Troconis in Ms. Dulos’s disappearance. After her arrest in June, she gave at least three interviews to investigators, appearing to be cooperative.
In her third interview, on Aug . 13, she admitted to not being truthful in previous conversations and provided information that led to a new evidence-tampering charge against Mr. Dulos: He cleaned up a red Toyota truck believed to have been used in Ms.
According to the warrant, Ms. Dulos’s disappearance, a warrant said. Troconis told the police that on the afternoon that Ms. Dulos, then 50, disappeared, she saw Mr. Dulos cleaning what he said was spilled coffee in the truck. When he handed her a stained rag, it did not smell of coffee, she said.
Under pointed questioning, Ms. Troconis ultimately admitted that she placed one of the stained rags into a black garbage bag similar to the ones later discovered to have been tossed out in Hartford.
Ms. Troconis also told the police that days later, she followed Dulos to a carwash where he had the Toyota truck detailed and washed, according to the warrant.
Surveillance footage showed her in the passenger seat of another vehicle with Mr. Dulos at a nearby bank where he withdrew cash to pay for the detailing, the warrant said.
When questioned, Troconis initially said she had “no idea” what Mr. Dulos was doing, according to the warrant. But investigators pressed her, asking why she thought Mr. Dulos had the Toyota cleaned.
Her reply, according to the warrant: “Well obviously… all the evidence says because… you showed me the picture of the blood in the door it’s because the body of Jennifer at some point was in there.”
During the interviews, Ms. Troconis said she could not account for Mr. Dulos’s whereabouts the morning of Ms.
She also admitted that she and Mr. Dulos’s disappearance, according to the warrant. 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 Ms.
The notes included events that Ms. Dulos disappeared. Troconis later admitted had never happened and alibi witnesses who were “determined to be false,” the warrant said.
In a statement Wednesday night ,Dulos’s lawyer, Norm Pattis, said that Ms. Troconis had “changed her tune” on the case. In a separate email to The Times, he referred to her as a “lying lover.”
But on Thursday, with Ms. Troconis facing a new charge, Mr. Pattis expressed his support.
“Our hearts go out to Ms. Troconis, ”he said in a statement.“ We are confident that she will, in the end, tell the truth at trial. ”
The State Police said Ms. Troconis posted bond and had been released from custody.
Her lawyer, Andrew Bowman, told reporters “to remember that Michelle is presumed innocent and she should be.”
By the time Ms. Troconis began her relationship with Mr. Dulos, she had traveled the globe and worked at a variety of jobs. For close to a decade, she worked as a publicist for Cerro Castor, a ski resort in Argentina run by the father of her 10 – year-old daughter.
At some point while she was there, she also worked with a local production company, helping coordinate a TV show about winter sports that was broadcast on ESPN in 2004.
Before moving to Connecticut, Ms. Troconis lived in the Miami area, where several of her family members also live, according to public records. At one point, she was involved in a company now run by her sister that sold chic covers for shoes to protect them from puddles.
In a court filing, Ms. Dulos said that she first became aware of Mr. Dulos’s affair in March 2017. Nearly a year later, Ms. Troconis had moved in with Mr. Dulos, according to court documents and public records.
Ms. Troconis’s move into the Farmington home was a major point of contention in the Dulos’s court battle. Ms. Ms. Dulos called Ms. Troconis a “paramour” and said her presence was emotionally damaging to the Dulos’s children.
She also amended her filings to document seemingly every occasion the children spent time with Ms. Troconis.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings