Fotis Dulos, 52, was arraigned on a murder charge on Wednesday in Connecticut
Fotis Dulos has been arraigned on the charge of murdering his wife Jennifer Dulos, eight months after her disappearance in Connecticut.
Dressed in a dark sports coat, Fotis, 52, was arraigned on charges of murder, felony murder, and kidnapping on Wednesday afternoon in Stamford, after spending the night at the Macdougall-Walker Correctional Facility.
His girlfriend Michelle Troconis, 45, and his friend and civil attorney, Kent Douglas Mawhinney, 53, were also arraigned on charges of conspiracy to murder, for their alleged roles in assisting the plot.
Jennifer was last seen alive dropping the couple’s five kids off at school on May 24, amid a contentious divorce and custody battle with her husband. Her body has never been found.
On Wednesday, Mawhinney was the first to be arraigned, wearing a dirty white T-shirt as his attorney pleaded in vain for his $2 million bail to be reduced.
The lawyer is accused of securing a location to dig a grave, which was discovered filled with lime days before Jennifer disappeared, but never used after it was stumbled upon.
Michelle Troconis, 45, and Dulos’ former attorney, Kent Mawhinney (right), are charged with conspiracy to commit murder
Fotis Dulos’ attorney Norm Pattis, center, arrives at Connecticut Superior Court for his client’s arraignment, Wednesday in Stamford. Dulos is charged with murder and kidnapping
Troconis was next to face the judge, wearing a yellow inmate jumper after spending the night at the York Correctional Institution for women. The judge reduced her bail to $1.5 million, from the prosecution’s requested $2 million.
She is accused in warrant documents of traveling with Fotis to Hartford, some 70 miles from the crime scene, to dispose of evidence in public trash cans and dumpsters.
A native of Argentina who is not a U.S. citizen, Troconis was warned that criminal conviction could result in her deportation from America.
Fotis Dulos, who was born in Greece, was given the same warning by the court.
He looked confident in a dark blue blazer and light blue button-down as he heard the charges against him, telling the judge ‘I do’ when asked if he understood his rights.
Defense attorney Norm Pattis argued that Fotis’ bail should be reduced to $1 million, saying the state has a weak case and that he is not a flight risk. The court denied his request and bail remained at $6 million for Fotis.
Despite the decision, Fotis may walk free as soon as this afternoon, after his attorney said that he expected to raise the roughly $200,000 cash needed to make an installment payment to a bail bondsman on his $6 million bail.
The judge ordered that as a condition of bond, Fotis is to have absolutely no contact with his five children, who are staying with Jennifer’s mother at her Manhattan apartment.
At a press conference after the arraignment, Pattis said that a jury would hear an explanation for the state’s forensic evidence — including bloody zip ties, gloves and other items — ‘from Fotis himself’, implying that the accused murderer plans to testify in his own defense at trial.
Fotis is due back in court on February 28. Troconis is due in court on February 7, and Mawhinney is set to appear on February 20.
The family of Jennifer Dulos (above) expressed their gratitude for the arrests in a statement
Cops reveal Fotis Dulos’ dire financial situation
Court documents reveal Fotis’ desperate financial state in early 2019, stating that he was lapsing on loan interest payments and funneling money from his and his wife’s joint checking account into his own personal account.
Fotis met Jennifer when they were students at Brown University, and the couple married in 2004. Fotis went on to complete an MBA in finance at Columbia University, and works as a builder and developer of luxury homes in Connecticut’s Farmington Valley, where the couple raised their five children.
He operates his company, Fore Group, from his own massive $4.2 million mansion in Farmington – a palatial 15,000-square-foot residence with six bedrooms and 7.5 baths.
But behind the opulent facade lurked dark secrets, investigators say. Jennifer filed for divorce in 2017 and moved out of the Farmington mansion. The divorce battle turned ugly, as the pair battled for custody of their children.
Fotis operates his company, Fore Group, from this massive $4.2 million mansion in Farmington, a palatial 15,000-square-foot residence with six bedrooms and 7.5 baths
Meanwhile, Fotis’ financial situation was turning increasingly dire, according to court documents.
By the end of May 2019, when Jennifer disappeared, Fotis’ total outstanding debts at added up to $4.5 million, in addition to mortgages taken out on his various properties, the documents say.
As well, he faced crushing lawsuits from Jennifer’s own mother, Gloria Farber, the widow of a prominent New York banker and philanthropist.
The lawsuits claimed that Fotis had failed to pay back various loans from Farber and her husband — loans that Fotis said were gifts he was not obligated to repay.
Mawhinney, the attorney charged with conspiracy to murder, represented Fotis in his divorce as well as the lawsuits from the mother-in-law.
In early 2019, Fotis began scrambling to inject cash into Fore Group’s main bank account, opening a new line of credit with People’s United Bank as he maxed out an existing credit line with the Savings Bank of Danbury, investigators say.
In March, April and May, he missed interest payments on the People’s United Bank loan, which totaled about $530,000, according to documents.
A breakdown of the bank account for Fore Group shows that most of the money coming in was from loans and cash advances in April and May 2019
Fotis Dulos faced crushing lawsuits from Jennifer’s own mother, Gloria Farber (above), the widow of a prominent New York banker and philanthropist
Then in April 2019, he received a wire for $149,500 from a cash advance operation based in Utah — the type of high-interest loan that businesses turn to in moments of desperation.
It was during this time period that Fotis received three checks from Chubb Insurance Group totaling $193,610.50 and made out to ‘Fotis and Jennifer Dulos.’
Bank records show that all three checks were deposited into a joint checking account held by Fotis and Jennifer, but that Jennifer did not sign any of the checks.
Following each deposit, the funds were immediately withdrawn and deposited into Fotis’ personal bank account, some of which was then transferred to the Fore Group account, according to investigators. None of the insurance money went to Jennifer.
Investigators say that each of the Dulos’ five children had a trust fund established by Gloria and her late husband, Hilliard Farber.
‘In the event of Jennifer’s disappearance, and in the subsequent event that Dulos gained custody of his children, Dulos would have expected some level of access to the children’s trust funds,’ cops wrote in the warrant affidavit.
Jennifer’s mother, Gloria, currently has full custody of the five children and is caring for them in her Upper East Side apartment on Fifth Avenue.
Shocking alleged role of Dulos’ civil attorney in ‘digging grave’ before Jennifer disappeared
Fotis Dulos’ friend and attorney Kent Mawhinney allegedly dug a makeshift grave before the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos, his arrest warrant suggests.
Mawhinney, 53, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
It has now been alleged that on May 18, about a week before Jennifer disappeared, members of the Windsor Rod & Gun Club in East Granby came across a hole two feet wide, six feet long and three feet deep in a restricted area of the grounds.
Witness Jay Lawlor said he uncovered an ‘area of disturbed ground’ while walking through woods with his friend Lee McKay during a hunting trip for his birthday.
He described the hole – which was covered by ‘two barbecue grill grates’, small branches and leaves – as ‘100 per cent a human grave’, arrest warrants state.
Inside the ditch, Lawlor found a blue tarp and two unopened bags of lime. Lawlor and his friend, worried that someone would fall into the concealed hole, moved the leaves and grill covers hiding it so that it was clearly visible.
According to the warrant, Lawlor ‘shrugged off’ the strange find until he heard that Mawhinney, who helped found the hunting club and purchase the land it owned, was ‘involved in that Dulos case’.
In Mawhinney’s arrest warrant, Jay Lawlor claims he and his friend came across a hole which was ‘one hundred per cent a human grave’ a week before Dulos’ disappearance
Mawhinney, who at that point was no longer a member of the hunting club, allegedly asked a member about accessing the property, which is secured by fencing and a logging chain, in March and April. The warrant claims he was then told of a hidden key.
Cellphone records are said to place the lawyer near the site of the hole on March 29 and May 31.
Lawlor went back to the site in June and discovered the hole was filled in and covered ‘as neat as a pin’.
Investigators searched the area, and found evidence that the hole was filled in, but a thorough search revealed no human remains.
Mawhinney had represented Fotis in both his divorce and civil lawsuits from Jennifer’s mother — and Fotis allegedly played a role in the lawyer’s own failing marriage.
In August, Mawhinney was charged with violating the terms of a protective order by using Fotis Dulos to contact his own estranged wife in an attempt to arrange a meeting with her.
Mawhinney’s wife told police she believed Dulos was working with her estranged husband ‘to get rid of her,’ according an August arrest warrant.
Dulos briefly met with Mawhinney’s wife in West Hartford on May 19, according to the warrant, and then contacted her on May 20 and May 21 — three days before Jennifer vanished.