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As the search for a missing Connecticut mother of five hit the two-week mark Friday, investigators have been focusing on homes owned by her estranged real estate developer husband.
When New Canaan police searched Jennifer Dulos' home after she went missing May 24, they found blood and "evidence of attempts to clean the crime scene." Her blood was also found on items that her husband, Fotis Dulos, was seen on surveillance footage shoving into trash cans in Hartford with his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis
Fotis Dulos, 51, and Troconis, 44 were arrested Saturday on charges of evidence tampering and hindering prosecution.
Troconis has since been bailed out and police said she and her attorney met with investigators Thursday. Meanwhile, Fotis Dulos remained at Bridgeport Correctional Facility on $500,000 bond, according to jail records.
By Thursday, New Canaan police had received 225 tips regarding Jennifer Dulos' disappearance and 70 responses to a call they put out Monday for private surveillance video taken from homes and businesses between May 22 and May 25.
Police said they were continuing to search a waste-to-energy plant in Hartford and had obtained warrants to search properties Fotis Dulos owned.
Fotis Dulos lives in Farmington, but five additional properties — in Avon, New Canaan and Farmington — are listed on the website for his custom home building company, the Fore Group.
A neighbor of one of the New Canaan houses, listed at $4.8 million, told the Stamford Advocate that he heard loud metal-banging sounds from the property May 25, the day after Jennifer Dulos vanished. Police searched there Wednesday, but said details of the searches won't be released so as not to "compromise this very active criminal investigation."
It's not clear which other multimillion-dollar Fore Group properties police had searched.
One of the Avon plots was the scene of what police determined was a fatal accident in 2010 — the family's 24-year-old nanny ran over Fotis Dulos' mother with a car.
According to an Avon Police Department report from the time, Kleopatra Dulos, 77, asked the nanny to move the Land Rover since the older woman had a broken arm. The nanny told police that she asked Kleopatra Dulos to move away from the car so that she wouldn't strike her, and when the nanny didn't see her anymore, she assumed the woman had moved.
But Kleopatra Dulos had fallen, and the nanny ran over.
Kleopatra Dulos suffered internal bleeding at the hospital and died. Fotis Dulos told police he was in Italy at the time, but his mother had been in poor health before she was run over, and he "had no reason to suspect that the incident was anything but an accident."
Fotis Dulos and Jennifer Dulos, 50, had been married for about seven years at the time of the tragic incident in the driveway of the house they lived in at the time. Seven years later, Jennifer Dulos filed for divorce.
“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,” she wrote in her application for custody of their five kids, ages 8 to 13, including two sets of twins.
“He has the attitude that he must always win at all costs. He is dangerous and ruthless when he believes he has been wronged. During our marriage, he told me about sickening revenge fantasies and plans to cause physical harm to others who have wronged him,” she wrote.
The couple's children were taken by their nanny to the apartment of Jennifer Dulos' mother in New York City the day she went missing. Before his arrest, Fotis Dulos accused his mother-in-law, Gloria Farber, 85, of keeping the kids under armed guard.
Farber was involved in a lawsuit against Fotis Dulos for $1 million she said she loaned him for his business in 2004 and never got back. On Tuesday, she filed for custody of the children.
