The Day Jennifer Disappeared

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Speaker 1 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 4 You don't go without your children. She would never leave her children.

Speaker 1 What do you think happened to her?

Speaker 5 I'm scared to just even say.

Speaker 6 When people have power and money, you get afraid.

Speaker 7 You could see the blood spatter. Very, very compelling.

Speaker 1 What do you think happened in that garage?

Speaker 7 A serious violent assault occurred in that garage.

Speaker 8 Finger pointing started immediately. Was her husband involved?

Speaker 9 I have nothing to hide.

Speaker 1 Did you have anything to do with Jennifer's disappearance?

Speaker 9 I did not.

Speaker 1 What are the zip ties?

Speaker 10 Our theory is that they were used to incapacitate Jennifer.

Speaker 8 This is an effort to leave no stone unturned.

Speaker 7 Someone has information, someone knows something.

Speaker 7 We are going to find Jennifer.

Speaker 1 Here's Dennis Murphy with The Day Jennifer Disappeared.

Speaker 1 It's one of those places where the very wealthiest of Americans stroll charming, boutique-fronted downtown streets and make their homes in lavish estates set on meticulously landscaped grounds.

Speaker 1 New Canaan, Connecticut, the Gold Coast of the New York City commuter belt.

Speaker 11 It's about 18,000 people, very wealthy, and it's a great community. Great schools.
Great schools, exceptional schools,

Speaker 11 very low crime rate.

Speaker 1 It's a town where husbands aren't often escorted in orange jumpsuits, handcuffed with ankle bracelets, where the lush acreage of Waveney Park is for peaceful strolls, not CSI teams looking for bodies.

Speaker 1 But in the spring of 2019, the park was teeming with police officers searching for Jennifer Doulos, a mother of five. New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski.

Speaker 11 We've identified it as a missing person case combined with a criminal investigation.

Speaker 1 The well-to-do town became the setting for a mystery that captured the nation.

Speaker 8 We spoke with this sergeant hoping the mother is found safe.

Speaker 1 And the beautiful, glamorous people at the heart of the story pushed it to front-page news.

Speaker 8 Jennifer Dulos was last seen taking her kids to school.

Speaker 1 Shannon Miller is a reporter with our NBC station in Hartford, Connecticut. And it was a story of privileged people and big money in some of the wealthiest towns in the country.

Speaker 8 You're talking about people who have known affluence their entire lives. A woman who seemingly had everything.

Speaker 1 The early thumbnail of the missing mom was this. Jennifer Dulos was 50 years old, a one-time New Yorker married to a luxury homebuilder named Fotis Dulos.

Speaker 1 They had five children together, but in 2017, she took the kids and left the marriage, moving from the family home in suburban Hartford, Connecticut to a rental house in New Canaan, about 70 miles away.

Speaker 1 Two years later, just before Memorial Day, no one knew where she was.

Speaker 8 We start to learn that she had several appointments in New York that she didn't make. So her friends start to get concerned and make a call to police.

Speaker 1 In those early moments, there wasn't much to go on. It was an overcast Friday morning, May 24th.
Jennifer Doulos dropped her kids off at their exclusive private school at 8 a.m.

Speaker 1 and seemingly walked off the face of the earth. When Jennifer's friend Ronna Marie Giuliano heard what was happening, she had trouble coming up with a harmless explanation.

Speaker 4 One thing about Jennifer is you don't go without your children. She would never leave her children.

Speaker 1 But I thought that was the part of the story that made no sense. Exactly.

Speaker 1 It didn't make sense to the New Canaan police either. After the call came in from Jennifer's worried friends, officers fanned out.
One of the questions early on, where's Jennifer's suburban?

Speaker 1 She takes the kids to school in. Sure.
What happened to it? It wasn't at the house.

Speaker 11 We located that near one of our parks, Waverney Park, and it was parked on the side of the road there.

Speaker 1 Does that tell you a story, just it being there?

Speaker 11 It was unusual, and certainly that caused us to search the park there.

Speaker 1 Big place, a lot of acreage.

Speaker 12 About 300-acre park, beautiful jogging trails. There's a mansion there.

Speaker 1 And a lot of places for your people to look.

Speaker 11 Lots of places to look, and that involved multiple canine teams.

Speaker 1 It was an exhaustive search, but no sign of Jennifer. There were also no security cameras in the park to check.

Speaker 1 So police canvassed joggers, motorists, young moms with kids in tow to see if they'd seen Jennifer or anything unusual.

Speaker 10 Did you happen to see anything weird or anything like that?

Speaker 1 Um, no.

Speaker 1 No leads, but plenty of compassion for a neighbor.

Speaker 8 I mean, my heart goes out to those five kids that she has, so it's really devastating for our town.

Speaker 1 Just a few miles from the park, New Canaan police officers checked on Jennifer's rental home.

Speaker 11 Officers went to the home, started looking around, trying to investigate.

Speaker 1 Did anything jump out at the officers right away at the house?

Speaker 11 Yeah, the officers on scene saw a substance in the garage, which they believed to be blood-like,

Speaker 11 and subsequently alerted to their chain of command, including myself. And then we got our major crime squad involved.

Speaker 1 So that's a bad fact to come across. Blood in the garage.
Huge concern.

Speaker 1 Police would not say publicly what they believe that evidence meant. Jennifer's friend, Ronna Marie had her own reasons for not jumping to conclusions.
What do you think happened to her?

Speaker 1 Let's call it your speculation.

Speaker 5 I'm scared to just even say.

Speaker 1 When we come back, an urgent call to 911.

Speaker 3 911, what's location of your emergency?

Speaker 1 I'm worried about my wife and kids. The collapse of a marriage and the start of a mystery.
There's some things which are very tough to read. Talking about how she's frightened of him.

Speaker 1 Did he literally frighten her?

Speaker 5 I think she was frightened of him.

Speaker 1 A big one.

Speaker 11 We leveraged every resource that we had.

Speaker 1 At Waveney Park, next to where Jennifer Doolis' SUV was found, canine units combed through the woods. woods.
Divers scoured the ponds. Helicopters crisscrossed the 300-acre park.

Speaker 1 Jennifer's smiling face seemed to be everywhere. Missing person posters, newspapers.

Speaker 7 The latest leads in the case case.

Speaker 1 TV newscasts.

Speaker 8 That image of this woman, we were finally able to put a face with this name. That immediate day after, it was the lead story on every single newscast.

Speaker 1 The news stood in stark contrast to the image on that missing poster, that big, beautiful smile, Jennifer in happier days. Reporter Shannon Miller looked into the woman behind the picture.

Speaker 8 She grew up in New York City, off Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village.

Speaker 1 She's from Big Money.

Speaker 8 She lived a very privileged life.

Speaker 1 A privileged life, but Jennifer's friend Rana Marie says money didn't spoil her.

Speaker 6 Jennifer was not that way.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 6 Jennifer would love to just curl up on a sofa and watch TV and have french fries and dye Coke.

Speaker 14 Jennifer is the same person that she was in the early 90s.

Speaker 1 Carrie Luft, one of her closest friends, met Jennifer in graduate school at NYU, where they both studied writing. What are her passions? What does she want to put on her blank piece of paper?

Speaker 14 I think her writing really centers around a need to be loved and a need to be seen as one's true self.

Speaker 1 And she did find love. In 2004, Jennifer married Photos Doulos, a classmate from Brown University who was raised in Athens, Greece, a second marriage for him.

Speaker 1 Jennifer and he had five children together, including two sets of twins, all athletic like their parents.

Speaker 1 Even as toddlers, they were daredevils on the scariest black diamond slopes of Aspen, Colorado.

Speaker 1 And with their dad as coach, the boys became national champion water skiers. Impressive.
Angelica Kirami is Fotis' niece. Tell me about your uncle's personality.
What do you like about him?

Speaker 13 His never-ending energy and his positive way of looking into life. He never stops trying.

Speaker 13 He's a fighter.

Speaker 1 In some of the most upscaled communities of Connecticut, Fotis established himself as an award-winning builder of custom luxury homes and appeared in online ads showing off his work.

Speaker 11 I'm Fortis Doulos and I'm the owner of Four Group.

Speaker 1 The family settled in Farmington west of Hartford, living in a spectacular six-bedroom, seven-bathroom home built by Fotis.

Speaker 1 In a blog, Jennifer posted stories about the joys and trials of being a wife and mother, mostly the joys.

Speaker 14 She started writing lighthearted, kind of whimsical anecdotes about being the mother of five young children.

Speaker 1 From the outside looking in, a great life. But inside the walls of their 14,000 square foot mansion, the Doulos marriage had become a fixer-upper, if not a teardown.

Speaker 1 Jennifer discovered Fotis was having an affair. And who is the girlfriend?

Speaker 8 This is a woman named Michelle Traconis. She's a 44-year-old international businesswoman working at this Argentinian ski resort.
This is a place where politicians go to ski, celebrities go to ski.

Speaker 8 She's with the movers and shakers.

Speaker 1 After learning about Michelle, Jennifer stayed with Fotis for a few months, but eventually decided her marriage was broken beyond repair.

Speaker 1 And so on June 19, 2017, after 13 years of marriage, Jennifer packed her five kids into her car and left home. She did not tell Fotis.
He called 911 that night.

Speaker 3 911, what's the location of your emergency?

Speaker 1 I'm worried about my wife and kids. I haven't been able to get in touch with her.
How are my kids? Hi. Five kids.

Speaker 1 The next day, Jennifer filed for divorce. This was a high-stakes case with five children and a lot of assets hanging in the balance.
And things got ugly. There were hundreds of motions filed in court.

Speaker 1 In many of them, the vitriol jumps off the pages. Jennifer described Fotis' behavior as irrational, unsafe, bullying, threatening, and controlling.
She said, I am afraid of my husband.

Speaker 1 I know that filing for divorce will enrage him. She said Fotis would retaliate and allege that he had described sickening revenge fantasies.

Speaker 1 There's some things which are very tough to read, talking about his scary revenge fantasies, how she's frightened of him. Do you hear your friend Jennifer's voice in that?

Speaker 6 Yes, and it resonates with me.

Speaker 1 Did he literally frighten her?

Speaker 5 I think she was frightened of him.

Speaker 1 Fotis emphatically denied Jennifer's accusations and said his wife was taking medication for mental health issues.

Speaker 1 A spokesperson for Jennifer's family told Dateline that Jennifer always took excellent care of her mental well-being. The divorce proceedings dragged on for almost two years with no resolution.

Speaker 1 It was bitter and expensive. But the couple did seem to move on with their lives.

Speaker 13 Well, it didn't last forever, no.

Speaker 13 It happens in life that sometimes couple have to take their different paths.

Speaker 1 Fodus' new path was to start living with his girlfriend Michelle at the house in Farmington. For Jennifer, it was building a new life with her kids in New Canaan.

Speaker 1 And then on that cloudy Friday morning, she disappeared. All over the state and beyond, police were working around the clock.
The sense of urgency was palpable.

Speaker 1 And the hard work was about to pay off with a big clue and a big turn in the investigation.

Speaker 1 Coming up.

Speaker 1 Caught on camera, something suspicious. What did the pictures show?

Speaker 11 The pictures show folks dropping off garbage bags.

Speaker 1 Was someone dumping evidence.

Speaker 8 You start to wonder, why would anyone put altered license plates?

Speaker 1 Dummy them up and then trash them.

Speaker 8 Exactly.

Speaker 1 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 1 Police focused the search for the missing mother of five on her lavish new Canaan home, the place where they'd found bloodstains and blood spatter in the garage.

Speaker 1 And they scoured the park nearby where they discovered her SUV. But a week after Jennifer Dulos disappeared, NBC Connecticut reporter Shannon Miller says all that changed.

Speaker 8 This investigation takes a major turn. That's where we learn for the first time that police are really invested in the Hartford area.

Speaker 1 Miller says police had descended on Hartford, Connecticut, 70 miles away from New Canaan, a place not far from where Jennifer's estranged husband, Fotis Doulos, lived with his girlfriend, Michelle Traconis.

Speaker 8 We see state police, New Canaan police, searching downtown Hartford.

Speaker 1 So what's that about? Why is the scene moved to Hartford?

Speaker 8 At that time, they're not telling us. All they're saying is that this is connected to the disappearance case of Jennifer Dulos.

Speaker 1 By now, New Canaan Chief of Police Krolikowski had called in the cavalry, from state police to U.S. Marshals to the FBI, all trying to find Jennifer.

Speaker 1 Why do your investigators start concentrating on Hartford Streets?

Speaker 11 That was as a result of Mr. Doulos' cell phone that was seized and a warrant was obtained and it was analyzed.
And that identified some information that he was traveling in the area of Hartford.

Speaker 1 As part of the early investigation, police had asked Jennifer's estranged husband to turn over his phone. He agreed.

Speaker 1 Quick forensic analysis showed Fotis Doulas's cell phone pinging along a busy street in Hartford at around 7 p.m. the night Jennifer disappeared.
And when you go to those streets, where are you?

Speaker 1 Where did investigators find themselves?

Speaker 11 Specifically, I believe it was Albany Avenue in Hartford. And the investigators

Speaker 11 looked through there and then they contacted the Hartford Intelligence Center who provided some video.

Speaker 1 The video came from the Capital City Command Center, this high-tech facility that captures feeds for more than 700 cameras placed on busy streets and intersections throughout Hartford.

Speaker 1 As luck would have it, some of those cameras were positioned on Albany Avenue. What do the pictures show?

Speaker 11 The pictures show folks we believe were Fotus Dulos and Michelle Traconis dropping off garbage bags and variety containers along that whole stretch.

Speaker 1 A potentially huge break in the case. And police believe the vehicle in the video, like this one, was Doulas' Blackford F-150 Raptor.
Doulos was now the main focus in Jennifer's disappearance.

Speaker 1 The chief and his team declined to release the video to the public. A vehicle like Photos's.
Yes. A woman like his girlfriend, a guy who looked like him.
That's right.

Speaker 1 The media couldn't report this new information fast enough. Front page news.

Speaker 1 Besides video of garbage dumping, Miller learned police also had footage of someone they believe was Dulus stuffing a FedEx box down a storm drain grate.

Speaker 8 The FedEx box that's got two license plates inside that have been altered.

Speaker 1 Associated with cars with the Dulos family, huh?

Speaker 8 Cars that have been registered at one point to Votus Doulos.

Speaker 1 Investigators fished the box out of the drain and inside found two license plates that had been doctored using tape.

Speaker 1 The original license plate, 516WDJ, had been modified to read 5T6WBU.

Speaker 8 You start to wonder why would someone, why would anyone, put altered license plates?

Speaker 1 Dummy him up and then trash them.

Speaker 8 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Detectives got to work searching the trash receptacles seen in the videos and collecting the garbage bags. But they weren't quick enough to get all of them.

Speaker 1 So the garbage has been picked up and taken someplace. Right.

Speaker 8 At least some of it.

Speaker 1 The bags they missed were taken to a large Hartford trash facility where police began sifting through tons of garbage.

Speaker 8 Investigators at this point are trying to figure out: is there anything that's been collected here that might lead us to learning about what happened to Jennifer Dulos?

Speaker 1 What a down on your hands and knees job.

Speaker 8 Absolutely. We're talking heat.
We're talking stench. We're talking piles of trash that these investigators are searching through.

Speaker 1 While detectives were busy at the dump, the Connecticut State Lab was examining the contents of the recovered garbage bags and the blood found in Jennifer's garage.

Speaker 1 The bombshell results would lead to allegations and arrests. What are you doing?

Speaker 1 Coming up, two new clues. A red truck and a man in black.
A guy on a bike.

Speaker 7 You know, black hoodie, black clothing. It looks like the Grim Reaper on a bicycle.

Speaker 1 State police speak out. What do you think happened in that garage?

Speaker 7 A serious violent assault occurred in the garage.

Speaker 1 The search for Connecticut's missing mom continued to lead the local 11 o'clock news throughout the summer of 2019.

Speaker 8 Anyone with any information is asked to visit findjenniferdulos.com.

Speaker 1 Every branch of law enforcement worked on a particular piece of the puzzle. Forensics focused on what was found in Jennifer's garage.
The blood in Jennifer's garage, Chief, can you quantify it?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, it was a substance that appeared like blood in the garage, and subsequently there was a presumptive test on that it was human blood.

Speaker 1 DNA tests revealed the human blood belonged to Jennifer Dulos and the chief says there were more clues about that blood.

Speaker 11 There was an appearance that it was tried to be cleaned up.

Speaker 1 Reports from the Jennifer Dulos missing person case continued to drop on the chief's desk and the news was grim.

Speaker 1 The state crime lab sent over the results from those garbage bags dumped police believed by Fotos Doul and Michelle Triconis. Through court documents, Shannon Miller learned what was in those bags.

Speaker 8 Clothing, sponges,

Speaker 8 and later mops that we learn from testing at the state crime lab contained Jennifer Dulos' blood.

Speaker 1 So these are bloody artifacts.

Speaker 8 Bloody artifacts in the middle of downtown Hartford.

Speaker 1 And we think they found a bloody shirt, like one she's believed to have worn that day.

Speaker 8 It was a Vineyard Vines t-shirt that she loved to wear and a bra that was actually found in that trash can.

Speaker 1 Police were not calling this a homicide, but they were convinced crimes had been committed, and they were pointing fingers at Fotis Doulos and Michelle Trconis.

Speaker 1 Nine days after Jennifer went missing, detectives tracked the pair to a hotel in Avon, Connecticut, and arrested them both.

Speaker 11 On June 2nd, they were arrested for hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence.

Speaker 1 They appeared in court the next day. Triconas still wearing the clothes she was arrested in.

Speaker 8 She immediately comes out of the squad car with her head ducked. This is not someone who wants to be seen at all on camera.

Speaker 1 Fodis was in an orange jumpsuit.

Speaker 18 Fotis, do you know where your wife is anything to say?

Speaker 1 They both pleaded not guilty and were held on $500,000 bond. The judge ordered them not to have any further contact with one another.

Speaker 1 Sharconis put up the money that day and was released, but not Dulos.

Speaker 7 What happened to dinner for Michelle?

Speaker 8 We learned that Fotis doesn't have enough money to bond himself out.

Speaker 1 He should have a lot of money. All he needs is $50,000.
Right.

Speaker 8 But apparently that was too much.

Speaker 1 In fact, there were other signs Dulos was having money troubles. Jennifer's mother filed a lawsuit claiming he owed her close to $2 million.

Speaker 1 In court filings, she indicated it was money he borrowed to fund his luxury homebuilding business. So money is certainly an issue in the dynamics of this family.
Right.

Speaker 1 A week later, Dulos was able to come up with the cash and got his own ankle bracelet. At his bond hearing, the prosecutor delivered another gut punch.

Speaker 1 Fodus's DNA was found mixed with Jennifer's blood on the the faucet in her kitchen.

Speaker 1 Is that in itself incriminating?

Speaker 11 It's certainly a big part of the puzzle.

Speaker 1 By the end of summer 2019, police had gathered enough evidence to arrest Dulos and Michelle Triconas on another charge of tampering with evidence.

Speaker 1 In the arrest warrant affidavit, detectives outline more evidence against Dulos.

Speaker 1 In May 2020, Sergeant Kenneth Ventresca of the Connecticut State Police, in his first network interview, took us inside the investigation, revealing new details of what happened the day Jennifer disappeared.

Speaker 1 He says very early that morning, Fotis Doulos was seen on video leaving one of his properties in Farmington, about two miles from his home. He was driving a Red Tacoma pickup truck.

Speaker 7 And you see him pulling out of the residence in the Red Tacoma at 5.22 in the morning.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 7 A little bit weird, right?

Speaker 1 Why is a Red Tacoma pickup interesting? This is not his vehicle.

Speaker 7 No, it wasn't. We had spoken with his worker.
He said, hey, I had Photos' raptor with me that day, and I left my Tacoma with him.

Speaker 1 The sergeant and his team searched surveillance videos for that truck and spotted it in several places along the 70-mile stretch from Farmington to New Canaan.

Speaker 7 We pulled school bus video, which is how we were able to capture it on Lapham Road in New Canaan.

Speaker 1 The truck was parked three miles from Jennifer's house. So how is he going to get theorizing from the vehicle to his ex-wife's house?

Speaker 7 So initially, maybe he jogged over there.

Speaker 1 But an eagle-eyed detective spotted something that gave them a new theory. In one of the more than 200 videos the police had gathered, he noticed a bike tire in the back of the red truck.

Speaker 1 An aha moment. Doulos on a bike.

Speaker 7 So we just went back to the video and we reviewed all the houses of a path of travel we could think one would take on a bike from Lapham Road to 610 Wells.

Speaker 1 And lo and behold, a guy on a bike.

Speaker 7 You know, he's wearing all black, you know. black hoodie, black clothing.
It looks like the Grim Reaper on a bicycle. And keep in mind, it's May and it's very warm out.

Speaker 1 The videos continued to tell police a story. At 7.30 a.m.
the man on the bike is seen headed towards Jennifer's house. Police believe it was Dulos who then sneaked into the garage and lay in wait.

Speaker 1 At 8.05 a.m. Jennifer Suburban is captured on video returning to her home after dropping off her kids at school.
What happened next? The sergeant could only speculate.

Speaker 1 What do you think happened in that garage? What do you led to believe?

Speaker 7 My personal beliefs, based on the blood spatter, a serious violent assault occurred in that garage.

Speaker 7 Whether she was bludgeoned to death, you know, standing up and then fell on the floor between the vehicles. I mean, you could see the blood spatter underneath the vehicles.

Speaker 7 I mean, up to the driveshaft, underneath the passenger floorboards.

Speaker 1 Two hours later, at 10.25 a.m., Jennifer's SUV is spotted again. This time leaving her house.
So the body you assume then is moved in her suburban?

Speaker 7 Correct. In the back cargo area, yes.

Speaker 1 The sergeant believes photos doulos made the short drive in Jennifer Suburban back to the park and then transferred the body and cleanup bags into his employee's pickup truck.

Speaker 1 Did he get incredibly lucky in not being seen at that point?

Speaker 7 Incredibly lucky. Incredibly lucky.

Speaker 1 Broad daylight. It's a park.
Everybody's up for daylight. It's morning exercise, right? Yes.
The sergeant reveals something we hadn't heard before.

Speaker 1 By tracking Jennifer's cell phone from her house to the park, Police established what they believe was a suspicious window of time for Doulos.

Speaker 7 From 10.30 to 11.09, her phone stayed stayed at Waveney Park on Lapham Road. It stayed there, didn't move.

Speaker 7 And then at 11.09, her phone gets powered down, and you see him traveling in his workers to Coma North. So it's safe to say he spent about 40 minutes in that area.

Speaker 7 We don't know what he was doing in that area for 40 minutes.

Speaker 1 Was he disposing of Jennifer's body? Police do know he was next seen about an hour and 15 minutes later back at that property in Farmington, where he started off his morning.

Speaker 1 That's an investment property he's been working on?

Speaker 7 Yes, owned by the Four Group house was for sale at the time. I think luckily for us, the neighbor across the street had amazing surveillance of the property.

Speaker 7 So that's how we were able to see him get back to 80 Mount Spring at 1222.

Speaker 1 As the weeks passed, police continued to search for Jennifer with no luck. And Fotis Doulos continued to proclaim his innocence.
When we come back, you'll hear from the man himself.

Speaker 1 Coming up. The interview that got everyone talking.
Do you believe Jennifer is alive? I do.

Speaker 9 I wish she were here to sort this mess out.

Speaker 1 What did Fotis Dulos know? And when did he know it? Did you have anything to do with Jennifer's disappearance? When dateline continues.

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Speaker 1 Fotis Doulos and his girlfriend Michelle Traconis stood before a judge and pleaded not guilty to the latest charge of tampering with evidence.

Speaker 11 He asked me to make the request.

Speaker 1 By Fotis's side stood his tenacious defense attorney, Norm Pattis. We spoke to him a few months after his client was arrested.
Why'd you take the case?

Speaker 21 Well, why wouldn't I? Every man, woman, and child in Connecticut seemed to hate the guy. If ever there were a case made for a criminal defense lawyer, this is it.

Speaker 1 Pattis made a point to publicly raise doubts about his client's guilt, making splashy headlines that incensed Jennifer's loved ones. One claim was a narrative he says she authored herself.

Speaker 1 Jennifer was a writer.

Speaker 21 Correct.

Speaker 1 Pattis says Jennifer wrote an unpublished novel which echoes the plot of the popular book Gone Girl.

Speaker 1 The twisted tale of a woman who vanishes, leaving a trail of evidence to frame her husband for her murder. So what are you arguing about this manuscript in her state of mind?

Speaker 21 Desperate, frantic, concerned that Fotis might be having more time with the children, willing to do just about anything to prevent that. Creative, had the ability to think outside the box.

Speaker 21 We don't know where she is. She may well have killed herself.
We don't know. We are investigating that.

Speaker 1 No surprise that Jennifer's camp was outraged by the attorney's gone girl theory.

Speaker 14 I think it's irresponsible. It's untrue.

Speaker 1 Her friend Carrie Luft became the spokesperson for Jennifer's family. She says the novel is not at all what Pattis describes.

Speaker 14 It has nothing to do with her relationship with Fotis or her marriage. It has absolutely no parallel with the plot of Gone Girl.
None.

Speaker 1 Written before Gone Girl.

Speaker 14 The draft was finished 17 years before she disappeared and 10 years before Gone Girl was published.

Speaker 1 Not only that, she said the Gone Girl scheme would be virtually impossible to carry out. And she said none of it comports with Jennifer's character as a mother.

Speaker 14 There is absolutely no way that Jennifer Farber-Doulos would ever have left her children. It's just unfathomable that this woman, in particular, of all people, would have disappeared voluntarily.

Speaker 1 As the case moved forward, Carrie believed the investigators were right to focus on that messy divorce and Fotis Dulos.

Speaker 1 If he were sitting down opposite you as I am now to you, what would you ask of Fotus?

Speaker 14 Where she?

Speaker 1 We got the chance to ask him just that. While out on bail for the tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution charges, Fotis agreed to speak with Dateline.

Speaker 1 We asked him about his 13-year marriage to the mother of his five children. How is she as a mother?

Speaker 9 She was a great mother. I think she was an excellent mother, and I hope that she continues to be an excellent mother.

Speaker 1 You use the present tense. Yes.
Do you believe Jennifer is alive? I do. Against all circumstantial evidence or common understanding of the...

Speaker 9 I'd like not to discuss this. But in your mind,

Speaker 9 per my attorney's advice, so I can't.

Speaker 1 I understand. But in your mind, she's alive.
Yes. On the advice of his attorney, Doulos would not address the details of the criminal case against him.

Speaker 1 But he did discuss their acrimonious divorce proceedings before she disappeared.

Speaker 1 It seemed as though you and Jennifer had everything going as a couple. What happened? What went catastrophically wrong in the marriage?

Speaker 9 Nothing went catastrophically wrong. It's just people sometimes grow apart.
And I'm not putting the blame in

Speaker 9 her or me. It just happens, and it happens all the time.

Speaker 1 But it never did get settled, did it? The divorce?

Speaker 9 No, it didn't. And that was going to be an amicable divorce.

Speaker 9 And then one day she just took the children and disappeared. She hired bodyguards and she ran to New York.

Speaker 1 Some very harsh documents, words from her in the court records. He frightens me, his sense of revenge.

Speaker 9 There was never, never, never any violence,

Speaker 9 any abuse in any way. Jennifer and I didn't even really argue all these years.

Speaker 1 He also disputed the claims from Jennifer's mother in that lawsuit against him. He said the money his in-laws provided was a gift, not a loan.

Speaker 1 They say you owe them $2 million, a loan that wasn't paid back? Is that the picture?

Speaker 9 Well, that's laughable. There's any documentation.

Speaker 1 The divorce remained unresolved, but Dulo said he tried to build a new life.

Speaker 1 Michelle Traconas, the woman with whom he'd had that affair, moved into his house in Farmington with her 12-year-old daughter.

Speaker 9 I would lie to you if I told you that I didn't have a very nice life. I had a beautiful life.

Speaker 9 I was with somebody that I was completely enamored with, Michelle. And

Speaker 9 the divorce was the only thing that wasn't a positive in my life, and I couldn't wait for it to be over with.

Speaker 9 But right now, my life is a mess, and

Speaker 9 I

Speaker 9 absolutely had no desire or interest to be in this mess.

Speaker 1 After his arrest, a court barred him from having any contact with his five children. You're now required to wear a monitoring device.
What is psychologically? What does that do to you, Flutters?

Speaker 9 I have nothing to hide. I gave

Speaker 9 the police says that I didn't cooperate with them. I actually went there and gave them my phone, willingly.
They've been in my phone.

Speaker 1 Which they got a lot of information, you know, now.

Speaker 9 Yeah, but nothing that I didn't want them to have.

Speaker 9 They have all my computers, so I have nothing to hide.

Speaker 1 And while he would not answer a number of our questions, he did address the critical ones. Fodis, did you have anything to do with Jennifer's disappearance?

Speaker 9 I did not, but I'd like to leave it at that.

Speaker 1 Right, but you can say that much. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And he said he continued to believe Jennifer was out there somewhere.

Speaker 9 I wish she were here

Speaker 9 to

Speaker 9 sort this mess out.

Speaker 9 And I'm still hoping that she's going to show up.

Speaker 1 That she's going to be at your door someday.

Speaker 9 Maybe not at my door, but at some door, yes.

Speaker 1 After this interview, everything changed for Doulos.

Speaker 8 Photos Doulos is charged with murder.

Speaker 1 And for investigators searching for Jennifer.

Speaker 1 Coming up.

Speaker 1 A new piece of evidence. What are the zip ties?

Speaker 10 Our theory is that they were used to incapacitate Jennifer.

Speaker 1 A new twist from Fotis Doulos and a new lead in this haunting case.

Speaker 10 Somebody reached out to us saying, hey, we came across this hole. It seemed to us to be like a grave.

Speaker 1 Four months after our interview with Fotis Doul, there was a knock on his door. Police arrested him for Jennifer's murder.

Speaker 1 In May 2020, in his first network interview, then state's attorney Richard Colangelo, the architect of the investigation, told Dateline he waited until he had an airtight case before filing the homicide charge.

Speaker 10 I wanted to make sure that we had all the information and we were able to prove the case when we went forward because I knew that, you know, Attorney Pattis is a great attorney and he's going to try and attack everything that we do.

Speaker 1 In addition to the mounds of evidence already disclosed, Colangelo revealed a new clue that he believes proved Dulos plotted his estranged wife's murder.

Speaker 10 Most telling, honestly, was the zip ties that were cut and had Jennifer's blood on them.

Speaker 1 This is a new element to a lot of us. What are the zip ties? How would they have been used in this?

Speaker 10 Our theory is that they were used to incapacitate Jennifer in the garage.

Speaker 1 Colangelo believes Dulos brought the zip ties with him, planning to control Jennifer. But things took an unexpected turn when she fought for her life.
And that explains all the blood in the garage.

Speaker 1 The zip ties were later found in those garbage bags police say Doul was dumping on Albany Ave.

Speaker 1 The prosecutor also had new evidence that he says indicates after the bloody battle in the garage, Doulos then put Jennifer's body in the back of her suburban.

Speaker 1 He pointed to a new Albany Ave video, one that, like all the others, has yet to be released to the public.

Speaker 10 One of the things that was pretty clear in the video was, you know, Mr. Dulos dropping off what appears to be kind of one of those

Speaker 10 WeatherTech mats that came from the back of Jennifer's suburban.

Speaker 1 As to motive, Colangelo had a theory. So with his wife Jennifer dead, how is his life better? At least when you're looking at the money trail?

Speaker 10 Well, you know, honestly, again,

Speaker 10 it's hard to speculate on our part. One working theory, if you looked at the warrant, was that, you know, the children came with money.

Speaker 1 He could access their money.

Speaker 10 Well, that was one of our working theories, yes, sir.

Speaker 1 With the help of a friend, Dulos posted a $6 million bond bond and was back home the same day, still under house arrest. How are you holding up?

Speaker 1 But the prosecutor soon learned there was an issue with Dulos' bond.

Speaker 10 The houses that he put up for collateral were under foreclosure.

Speaker 1 The prosecutor pushed to have Dulos's bond revoked, which meant he would be sent back to jail.

Speaker 10 I reached out to his attorney to bring him in. I talked to the judge and the judge wanted him brought to court that day.

Speaker 1 But Dulos never showed. Because of his ankle bracelet, Colangelo knew he was still at his house.

Speaker 10 I actually called the state police with his lawyer in my office to say, hey, you know what, reach out to Farmington and do a welfare check because he's still in Farmington.

Speaker 10 I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 1 When police arrived, Dulos was in his garage in his vehicle. He'd attached flexible tubing to the exhaust pipe, sending carbon monoxide into his suburban.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Ventresca got a call from police on the scene saying Dulos was unresponsive.

Speaker 7 Initially, reports came in that he was pronounced deceased, but they did life-saving efforts. They got a pulse.

Speaker 1 Dulos was airlifted to a hospital in New York City and put in a hyperbaric chamber to treat the carbon monoxide poisoning. It didn't work.
Fotus Dulos is in a hospital lingering on life support.

Speaker 1 Did the children ever get to see him?

Speaker 7 Say goodbye. The children did visit him at the New York hospital when he was transported over there.
They did bring the kids to visit him, yes.

Speaker 1 Two days after attempting suicide, Dulos was taken off life support and died. Dulos left a suicide note.
What to you is of interest in it?

Speaker 10 You know, it's hard, honestly, in looking at that note.

Speaker 10 What

Speaker 10 struck me is him indicating that he had nothing to do with the crime that he was allegedly to have committed, and that the other people that he was charged with weren't involved either.

Speaker 10 So if he didn't do it, how would he know whether they were involved or not?

Speaker 1 The other people were Michelle Traconis, charged with conspiracy to commit murder, along with a new player in this murder mystery. Who's the man in this case who's charged?

Speaker 1 He's an attorney, someone who knows photos.

Speaker 10 Kent Mawini was charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

Speaker 1 Mawini, who had represented Doulas in a civil case, was in Doulas' office the morning Jennifer disappeared. He was also the founder of a hunting club nearby.

Speaker 1 Days before Jennifer went missing, a deep hole was discovered on the 25-acre hunting club property and was later reported to police.

Speaker 10 Somebody reached out to us saying, hey, we came across this hole. It seemed to us to be like a grave.
There was lime bags in it.

Speaker 1 Police searched the property with ground-penetrating radar and found the hole.

Speaker 7 We dig it up, and I mean, it's, you know, six feet long, you know, probably about four feet deep.

Speaker 10 And the outline of it was kind of in the shape of a grave, to be honest with you. It's hard to speculate on what they were going to do.

Speaker 1 Both Michelle Traconis and Kent Mawini have pleaded not guilty. Traconis' attorney told Dateline, not only is his client innocent, the evidence against her is misleading.

Speaker 1 In the videos where, according to police, Michelle helped Doulos dump those bloody garbage bags, bags, her attorney says he's seen them and she leans out of the truck for less than two seconds, never helping him.

Speaker 1 Colangelo wouldn't comment on this but says the case is far from over.

Speaker 10 Those cases are pending? And to be honest with you, even if those cases weren't pending, the case wouldn't be over until we find Jennifer.

Speaker 1 And the question, where's Jennifer Douls, is a painful one for her family and investigators.

Speaker 1 According to law enforcement's timeline, there were at least two windows of opportunity when Dulos could have disposed of jennifer's body the first was those 40 minutes unaccounted for in new canaan we don't know what he was doing in that area for 40 minutes the second occurred later in the day when he was back working at the farmington house at 2 24 p.m a white jeep registered to douse's company was seen on video leaving the property and wasn't seen again for 90 minutes until it returned at 3 55 p.m

Speaker 1 One theory, says the sergeant, Doul might have taken a 10-minute drive to this unoccupied 22,000 square foot mansion. Is it true that you were looking at a house in Avon, which is very near that area?

Speaker 7 That property came up because Fotis had apparently did some work. The house had flooded out.
He had done some work on the property.

Speaker 1 Dulos and Jennifer had also lived in the house for a short time in 2010.

Speaker 8 Connecticut State Police have not said how long they expect to be out here today, but again, they say this is an effort to leave no stone unturned.

Speaker 1 Using canine units, police searched the wooded area around the property and had the septic tank searched, but no sign of Jennifer.

Speaker 7 We're going to search everything and anything. And if someone calls us and says, hey, you know, I think I might have saw a photos on my property.
Can you guys just come take a look?

Speaker 1 Sure, we'll come out, absolutely. Do you think you'll find her?

Speaker 7 We're still actively investigating. We still have a lot of stuff we are doing, and I'm confident we are going to find her.

Speaker 1 On the three-year anniversary of Jennifer's disappearance, Carrie Luft released a statement. We feel the immeasurable loss of her person every day.

Speaker 1 We also delight in her presence and celebrate her spirit as they manifest in her five incredible children.

Speaker 1 Mawini's case is slated to go to trial, but a date has not yet been set. If Traconis' case goes to trial, the new prosecutor says Mawini could testify against her.

Speaker 1 For now, the fate of the missing mom of New Canaan remains enshrouded in mystery. One begging for a resolution yet to come.

Speaker 1 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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