A 51-year-old man and his girlfriend have been arrested on charges of evidence tampering and hindering the prosecution in the case of his missing ex-wife and mother of their five children.
New Canaan Police have taken Fotis Dulos and Michelle Troconis, 41, in custody on charges with tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and hindering prosecution concerning the case of Jennifer Dulos, Fotis Dulos’s ex-wife, who has been missing since Friday. Police reportedly consider the case a homicide, according to the New York Post.
Dulos’s estranged wife, Jennifer Dulos, disappeared on May 24 after she had dropped their five children, aged 8 to 13, off at their private school in New Canaan. Later that day, her black Chevy Suburban was found.
The couple has been involved in a hostile child custody battle since Jennifer Dulos filed for divorce from her husband of 13 years in June 2017.
The couple used to live in Farmington until Jennifer Dulos left with the children abruptly and rented a residence in New Canaan, some 70 miles from her former home.
In 2017, Jennifer Dulos had filed in vain for an emergency order for full custody over their five children, claiming their children were not safe in the care of their father, according to a request from the court filed in July 2017.
But according to an order from the court, “The plaintiff has not established by a preponderance of the evidence that there is an immediate and present risk of physical danger or psychological harm to the parties’ children. As a result, the request for emergency relief is denied.”
Fotis Dulos recently claimed in a filing that their five children were being kept under armed guard at their grandmother’s apartment in New York.
According to Jennifer Dulos’s wording in her divorce petition, her ex-husband—who reportedly owed $2,5 million to his mother-in-law, Gloria Farber—is a “volatile” cheater and someone who lodged “sickening revenge fantasies” against those who oppose him, New York Post reported.
Immediately after Jennifer was reported missing, police set up an intensive search, spending three hours on Friday night handing out flyers with a picture of Jennifer and of the black Chevy.
NEW INFORMATION: New Canaan Police are asking the public for help as their search for a missing woman enters its fourth day.https://t.co/Sai5QJZUtz
— Stamford Advocate (@StamAdvocate) May 28, 2019
Reportedly, on the night of Wednesday, May 29, Dulos tried to visit his children at his former mother-in-law’s Upper East Side home but was bounced by a private security team on behalf of Farber.
On Friday, May 31, the search continued and police were sifting through trash, dumpsters, and drains outside a Hartford bakery in New Canaan. Meanwhile, at Dulos’s Farmington home, detectives were interrogating the couple and state police obtained DNA samples from Fotis Dulos.
The couple was taken into custody in Avon, Connecticut, about 11 p.m. on Saturday. The next day state troopers continued their search, meticulously combing vast tracts of the manors owned by Fotis Dulos, apparently looking for more evidence.
Fotis Dulos is being held at the Bridgeport Correctional Center, Troconis is being held at New Canaan police headquarters, and both are being held on $500,000 bond. A court hearing was scheduled for 10 a.m. in Norwalk Superior Court today.
