Missing mom Jennifer Dulos was ‘afraid for her life’: friend
Jennifer Dulos “was afraid for her life” before she went missing, a friend told The Post.
The mom of five was a “nervous wreck” after filing for divorce from Fotis Dulos, her husband of 13 years, in June of 2017. “She knew how enraged he was that she took this step,” the friend said.
In an email to her friend that summer, Jennifer expressed relief after successfully lobbying for a court-appointed guardian to get involved in her custody battle.
“I tell myself to breathe easier, even in times of conflict and uncertainty,” Jennifer wrote.
Now it’s a seemingly endless period of uncertainty for those close to the 50-year-old mom, who was last seen on May 24 after dropping her kids off at school in New Canaan, Conn. — where she had rented a home after leaving Fotis.
She was reported missing that night. Investigators found Jennifer’s bloodstains in her garage and determined she was the victim of a “serious physical assault.”
On June 1, Fotis, 51, and girlfriend Michelle Troconis, 44, with whom he had a yearlong affair while married to Jennifer, were arrested for allegedly tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, and for hindering prosecution.
Surveillance footage caught the couple making 30 stops at trash receptacles in Hartford the night Jennifer went missing — disposing of bags filled with items, including Jennifer’s bloodstained garments and bloody sponges. Fotis’ DNA was also found mixed with Jennifer’s blood on the kitchen-sink faucet in her home.
Both Fotis and Michelle pleaded not guilty and are now out on bail.
They are also broken up, according to Fotis’ attorney, Norm Pattis.
“I don’t know how [a relationship is] possible with these circumstances,” he told The Post.
The friend remains immensely concerned about what Jennifer’s husband might have done.
“She said he was verbally abusive and maniacal and implied that he was physically abusive, too.”
Fotis’ team is on the attack, suggesting that Jennifer’s disappearance might have come from the pages of “Gone Girl–” the 2012 novel about a woman who fakes her own murder and elaborately frames her husband.
The lawyer told The Post that Jennifer penned a 500-page “Gone Girl”-esque manuscript years ago (which he admits he has yet to read himself).
“This is a person who has a pretty florid imagination and motives to use it to hurt Mr. Dulos,” said Pattis.
He added, without producing any documentation, that Jennifer had a “troubled past” and “struggled with heroin her whole life.” He claimed she “had a relationship with a person who would import heroin from Cambodia” prior to dating Fotis.
Pattis alleged Jennifer once disappeared from New York and “lived for years under a false name” after an “intrafamilial dispute about money.”
The attorney said Jennifer had “severe psychiatric problems,” was on anti-depressants, and “a custody study was prepared to give [Fotis] unsupervised access to the children.”
Additionally, he said Fotis received a $14,000 bill in April for unknown blood work Jennifer had done.
“From our perspective this is a perfect storm: a mysterious illness we don’t know about, a history of substance abuse, and a history of having disappeared,” said Pattis.
“If she were critically ill, thought she was about ready to lose control of her children, disappearing in such a way that made it look as though [her husband] were the culprit is the best piss off you can give somebody.”
A family source laughed at Pattis’ claims.
The source said Jennifer did not have severe psychiatric issues and that she read a 500-page manuscript Jennifer wrote in the early 2000s and it “has nothing in common with “Gone Girl.” Jennifer’s novel, like most of her writing, has at its core a search for connection and a loving relationship, for being understood and accepted as one’s true self.”
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The family source explained that Jennifer moved to Aspen and Los Angeles for a few years to write under a pen name, Jennifer Bey, and that she “has no history of substance abuse and rarely drank two glasses of wine out at night.”
“It’s a classic act of desperation to slander the victim,” Anne Dranginis, attorney for Jennifer’s mother, Gloria Farber, told The Post.
Friends and court documents from Jennifer and Fotis’ divorce proceedings paint a portrait of a potentially dangerous man.
A classmate of Jennifer’s from Brown University, where both she and Fotis studied, saw Jennifer for lunch a year ago and said she expressed concern that Fotis — who Jennifer said had a Greek passport — would “abscond with the kids.”
In a motion seeking custody of their children, now ages 8 to 13, Jennifer wrote: “I know that filing for divorce, and filing this motion will enrage [Fotis]. I know he will retaliate by trying to harm me in some way . . . 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.”
She said Fotis had recently smuggled a handgun from Florida and that he spoke of flying a plane over an ex-client’s home and dropping a brick on it.
“I am terrified for my family’s safety,” Jennifer wrote in court documents. “Especially since discovering the gun, since my husband has a history of controlling, volatile and delusional behavior.”
Jennifer added that when she confronted Fotis about the gun, he became “enraged” and “trapped her in a bedroom, physically intimidating her.”
Jennifer also wrote that her estranged husband threatened to take two of their kids to Argentina, where Michelle’s ex owns a resort, and hide out on the slopes — “where everyone wears masks every day and are indistinguishable from one another.”
In her suit, Jennifer alleged that in April 2017 her husband told her that Michelle and her 10-year-old daughter would be moving into the Farmington, Conn., home he and Jennifer had shared.
“He informed me that our children and I will continue to reside in the marital home every weekend and during the summer, so that we all (his paramour and her daughter included) would be together,” Jennifer said in her affidavit.
The friend said Jennifer “was horrified at the idea of her kids having to be in a situation where they were cohabitating with Michelle’s daughter.”
Jennifer and Fotis met at Brown University, where they graduated in 1990 and 1989, respectively.
Jennifer, who grew up in New York City, went on to earn her masters in writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Fotis had a brief marriage to another Brown grad which ended in July 2004.
He and Jennifer eventually reunited and married in August 2004, staging an opulent wedding at the Metropolitan Club in New York.
According to the Brown classmate, “It was big and grand and it was old New York and that’s the way Hill [Jennifer’s late father] was. [He] had a big, generous personality and the wedding reflected that.”
According to the family source, Jennifer’s “family didn’t really know what to make of Fotis.”
“She seemed very happy and very excited that this very handsome and charming man — and this person she had known before, so there was familiarity and trust — had come into her life.
And at the perfect point,” the family source added. “She really wanted a family and a loving relationship and he seemed to embody all of these things.”
The classmate said Jennifer seemed content.
“I’m not sure he was her intellectual equivalent, but she set a very high bar, to be fair,” said the classmate.
In 2012 the couple moved to Farmington, where they resided in a 15,000-square-foot brick Colonial mansion built by Fotis’ development company, Fore Group Inc.
But family troubles brewed.
Fotis was hard on the children, pushing them to their limits, particularly when it came to water-skiing. Several of the kids were nationally ranked competitors.
“[Jennifer] said he was abusive to [one of their twin boys]. He would have [the children] water-skiing all day long and not give them a break . . . to the point where they were freezing out on the water. The kids could never prove themselves enough to him,” said the friend.
“Jennifer said the kids hated doing it but Fotis made them so afraid of him that they said, ‘Of course, I will do this for you, Daddy.’ ”
The family source said Fotis would frequently scream at Jennifer in long tirades, calling her “a terrible person, unpleasant, wrong, bad, a horrible wife, to tear her down … Then, on the heels of such a dressing-down, if she dared to appear less than happy and bubbly in public — even in front of a houseguest or one of his employees — he would berate for that as well.”
Pattis had no comment on the allegations regarding Fotis. Calls to Fotis were not returned.
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According to the family source, Fotis once punched a garage attendant at Jennifer’s parents’ Fifth Avenue apartment building.
“Certainly Fotis has demonstrated a public history of volatile and sometimes even assaultive behavior,” said the family source.
Fotis’ forceful nature was noted by others, too.
“He’s very controlling,” said a New Canaan-based architect who met with Fotis in 2014.
“I opted not to [work with him],” the architect said, noting that Fotis and Jennifer’s dynamic was peculiar.
“The first time I met Jennifer, she was summoned to come to the meeting. Fotis’ office was in the attic of his house. He introduced Jennifer . . . and said that she was in charge of the interiors and selection of the finishes and staging,” said the architect.
“She was summoned to come and dismissed to go. It was tremendously odd.”
There were also tensions between Fotis and his in-laws. In 2018, NBC News reported that Jennifer’s mother, Gloria Farber, filed a complaint claiming Fotis had repaid her just $500,000 of a $1.5 million business loan.
It took years for Jennifer to muster the courage to leave Fotis, according to the friend.
“Jennifer was very committed to her marriage and making it work,” added the family source. “They went to couples counseling a few sessions but quit at his behest.”
Jennifer had hoped that giving birth to the couple’s youngest daughter would turn their marriage around, the friend said.
But in addition to Fotis’ threatening behavior, Jennifer discovered her husband had “had serial affairs” after first learning of his relationship with Michelle in 2017.
“Jennifer had suspected possible infidelity for quite some time, especially given his very busy schedule and the fact that he would be away from the family for weeks at a time,” said the family source, who added that Jennifer became suspicious of Michelle’s presence on Fotis’ social media.
“He was a bit of a philanderer,” added the Brown classmate. “His last relationship [with Michelle] was not just a dalliance but seemed to have some import. She had enough.”
Jennifer moved into a rental home in New Canaan and basked in the simple tasks of motherhood, said the Brown classmate.
When the classmate met Jennifer for lunch, Jennifer confided that she was working on an autobiographical work, but hadn’t yet determined if it would be a play or book.
For now, Jennifer’s next chapter remains in limbo.
Her five children currently reside in Manhattan with Jennifer’s mother and Skyped into lessons with their Connecticut teachers during the last weeks of school.
On June 3, Michelle was freed on a $500,000 bond. Fotis followed suit eight days later. He has been seen shopping and jogging around Farmington.
“Jennifer can’t go for a jog right now. Jennifer can’t go to the grocery store. So yes, that makes it frustrating,” said the family source.
Pattis, who filed a motion Wednesday asking police to return Fotis’ belongings, lamented in a TV interview this week that, “People aren’t buying his properties right now, or if they are, they’re offering to purchase them at far lower rates . . . he’s back at work and trying to keep his business afloat amid tremendous public hostility.”
On Friday, Carrie Luft issued a statement on behalf of Jennifer’s family and friends: “Four weeks have elapsed since Jennifer Farber Dulos disappeared. None of this feels real. … but this situation is real, and it is dire.”
