The True Story Behind the Disappearance of Jennifer Dulos
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To outsiders, Jennifer Dulos (née Farber) seemed to lead a charmed existence. She was an Ivy League-educated mother of five and an aspiring writer living in a gated mansion in tony New Canaan, Connecticut, her enviable lifestyle cushioned by a substantial trust fund. But, as the world would come to discover in the spring of 2019, behind that perfectly polished exterior was an entirely different story.
On May 24, 2019, Jennifer vanished after dropping her kids off at school. It didn't take long for all suspicions to point to her charming, if mercurial, ex-husband, real estate developer Fotis Dulos, with whom she had been in the midst of a contentious divorce and custody battle. But shortly after being charged with her murder in January 2020, Dulos committed suicide. Jennifer still hasn't been found.
Hollywood was quick come up with its own spin, as it is with many true crime tales. On June 5, Lifetime will air its own dramatized take, called Gone Mom: The Disappearance of Jennifer Dulos, with Annabeth Gish (Sons of Anarchy, The West Wing) in the title role. While most work in this genre tends to adopt a more sensationalized, ripped-from-the-headlines tone, the all-woman team behind Gone Mom was careful to steer clear of that approach. "We wanted this to be through a female lens with that sensitivity, and to not make it exploitative," says Gish. "My intention throughout has been to honor Jennifer. It's delicate."
For Gish, reading the script was a chilling moment. "In an odd sense she felt like a peer of mine," she says. "I'm also 50 and have children. I was at Duke at the same time Jennifer was at Brown. It's a resonant topic and a very compelling example of how when you pull the curtain back life is not what it seems."
Ahead of the film's premiere, here is everything we know about the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos—and its aftermath.
Jennifer filed for divorce in 2017 and a bitter custody battle ensued.
Jennifer Farber and Fotis Dulos, who both knew each other from Brown but didn't cross paths again until 2003, were married in 2004 and had five children. Strains in their marriage were hinted at in the blog Jennifer began writing for Patch.com in 2012. Her husband's controlling and violent behaviors were also well-documented. In 2017, she learned that he was having an affair with Michelle Troconis. In June of that year, Jennifer took her children and moved out of their home in the middle of the night, and later served Dulos divorce papers.
A very expensive divorce and custody battle followed—there were more than 300 motions filed. What's more, Jennifer's mother sued her son-in-law for failing to pay back the $1.5 million she and Jennifer's late father had loaned for his business.
"I am afraid of my husband," Jennifer said. "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."
Jennifer was last seen on May 24, 2019.
The divorce proceedings were still ongoing by the time Jennifer disappeared that morning. A neighbor's security camera captured her pulling her Chevrolet Suburban into her driveway at 8:05 am, after dropping her children off at New Canaan Country School. When the kids' nanny Lauren Almeida arrived at the house three hours later, she saw that the Suburban was gone but Jennifer's Range Rover was still in the garage. She later told detectives she found that odd, given Jennifer intended to take the latter SUV to her doctor's appointments that day, which she never showed up for. Later that evening, Almeida and Jennifer's friends filed a missing persons report. When police arrived, they found blood spatter in the garage and kitchen, indicating that an assault had taken place.
Dulos and Troconis were captured on cameras that same night disposing garbage bags.
At 7:30 pm on May 24, Dulos and Troconis were captured by security cameras 70 miles away in Hartford, dumping dozens of garbage bags into 30 trash bins. Inside them police found zip ties, duct tape, and clothes stained with Jennifer's blood, plus traces of Dulos's blood. The missing Suburban was found on the side of a road in New Canaan.
On June 1, 2019, Dulos and Troconis were arrested and charged with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution. They pleaded not guilty, and did so again when they were arrested for the same charges in September of that year.
In July, Dulos issued a statement claiming his innocence. "I understand the public's perception of me as a monster given the little they know about the case," he said. "I believe I have been and will continue to be treated fairly by the criminal justice system. Please keep my children and Jennifer in your thoughts."
Dulos was charged with murder in January 2020.
Police arrested Dulos from his home on January 7, 2020 and charged him with capital murder, murder, and kidnapping. Troconis was charged with conspiracy to commit murder as was Kent Mawhinney, an attorney and a friend of Dulos. In August 2019, Troconis had walked back her earlier alibi, in which she alleged she had been with Dulos all morning the day Jennifer disappeared.
Despite the fact that extensive police searches around Connecticut had still not located Jennifer's body, prosecutors went ahead with the murder charges. They believe that Dulos arrived by bicycle to Jennifer's home the morning of May 24, 2019 and waited for her in the garage. When she arrived, he bound her hands and feet with zip ties and stabbed her (the weapon has not been found). Then he loaded her body—and the bicycle—into her Suburban (the neighbor's security camera caught the car leaving the driveway at 10:25 am), dumped the car on the side of the road, and moved her body into an employee's car, which he borrowed that morning.
Jennifer's family spokeswoman Carrie Luft released this statement following Dulos's arrest: "Although we are relieved that the wait for these charges is over, for us there is no sense of closure. Nothing can bring Jennifer back. We miss her every day and will forever mourn her loss."
Dulos committed suicide later that month.
On January 28, 2020, after Dulos failed to appear in court for an emergency bond hearing, police found him unconscious in the garage of his home—he had attempted suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. He was transferred to a hospital where he died a few days later. In his suicide note Dulos wrote: "If you are reading this I am no more. I refuse to spend even an hour in jail for something I had NOTHING to do with. Enough is enough. If it takes my head to end this, so be it. Please let my children know that I love them, I would do anything to be with them, but unfortunately we all have our limits.”
Troconis is still awaiting trial.
Troconis's trial has been inevitably delayed numerous times due to the pandemic. It's expected to begin next year. At a recent court hearing, the judge ordered her to continue wearing her GPS ankle bracelet.
Last May, around the one-year mark of Jennifer's disappearance, Troconis released a statement maintaining her innocence and expressing regret for being involved with Dulos. "Despite the way I have been treated by the police, I know nothing about Jennifer Dulos' whereabouts or what may have happened to her. I know that under American law, I don't have to prove my innocence, but actually, to me it feels that way during all this time of public scrutiny," she said. "Whether or not Fotis Dulos was capable of doing the things the police and prosecutors accused him of doing, I do not know. But based on what I have learned in the last year, I think it was a mistake to have trusted him."
A new law has been proposed to protect victims of domestic violence.
Last month, the Connecticut State Senate near-unanimously passed a new domestic violence bill, called Jennifer's Law, which would broaden the legal definition of what constitutes domestic violence and include in its scope both physical and non-physical forms of coercive control, including psychological, emotional, financial, and legal abuse.
“I know how true crime can be exploitative but I really hope we haven’t made this a salacious thing,” Gish says. “With all that is happening, like this law, I just want to raise awareness of the story.”
Check your listings for Gone Mom: The Disappearance of Jennifer Dulos here. The movie premieres on Lifetime Saturday, June 5 at 8/7c.
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