Family and friends of missing Connecticut mom Jennifer Dulos dismissed her estranged husband’s lawyer’s claims that she faked her disappearance in a fashion similar to the ‘Gone Girl’ style novel she wrote years ago.
Mother-of-five Dulos, 50, vanished after dropping her kids off at school on the morning of Friday, May 24.
Her estranged husband Fotis Dulos, 51, and his girlfriend Michelle Troconis, 44, have both been charged with evidence tampering and hindering prosecution in connection with her disappearance.
They both have pleaded not guilty and have since split, according to Fotis’ lawyer Norm Pattis.
He told The New York Post Jennifer wrote a 500-page ‘Gone Girl’ style script years ago, a book in which a wife fakes her disappearance to try and frame her cheating husband.
Pattis also claims she has a ‘troubled past’ and ‘struggled with heroin her whole life’ after a previous ‘relationship with a person who would import heroin from Cambodia’.
He even suggests she has disappeared from New York once before and ‘lived for years under a false name’ after an ‘intrafamilial dispute about money.’
Missing Connecticut mom Jennifer Dulos (pictured) wrote a Gone Girl style novel and has a history of disappearing her estranged husband’s lawyer claims
Fotis Dulos, 51, left, and Michelle Troconis, 44, right, have both been charged with evidence tampering and hindering prosecution in connection with Jennifer’s disappearance. They both have pleaded not guilty and have since split, according to Fotis’ lawyer
Pattis said: ‘This is a person who has a pretty florid imagination and motives to use it to hurt Mr. Dulos.’
After Fotis allegedly received a bill for $14,000 of blood work for Jennifer, Pattis added: ‘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.
‘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.’
But in a statement on Monday, Jennifer’s family and friends called the theory ‘false and irresponsible.’
They said her manuscript was written in 2002, before she started dating Fotis Dulos and before ‘Gone Girl’ was published in 2012.
‘Jennifer’s novel is not a mystery. It’s a character-driven story that follows a young woman through relationships and self-discovery over a period of years,’ her friend, Carrie Luft, said in the statement on the group’s behalf.
‘Like all of Jennifer’s writing, it expresses a deep longing for human connection and the need to be accepted as one’s true self.’
‘Trying to tie Jennifer’s absence to a book she wrote more than 17 years ago makes no sense. Evidence shows that Jennifer was the victim of a violent attack in her New Canaan home,’ the statement continues.
‘This is not fiction or a movie. This is real life, as experienced every single day by Jennifer’s five young children, her family, and her friends. We are heartbroken. Jennifer is not here to protect her children, and these false and irresponsible allegations hurt the children now and into the future.’
Mother-of-five Dulos, 50, pictured left and right, vanished after dropping her kids off at school on the morning of Friday, May 24. Pattis claims she has disappeared from New York once before and ‘lived for years under a false name’ after an ‘intrafamilial dispute about money’
Friends of Jennifer say she was ‘was afraid for her life’ and a ‘nervous wreck’ amid a bitter divorce and custody battle with Fotis, pictured
Jennifer’s friends have also said she was ‘was afraid for her life’ and a ‘nervous wreck’ amid a bitter divorce and custody battle with Fotis.
Anne Dranginis, attorney for Jennifer’s mother, Gloria Farber, said: ‘It’s a classic act of desperation to slander the victim.’
She filed for divorce in 2017 and had been locked in a bitter legal battle for custody of their twin boys, a twin boy and girl, and a daughter, all aged between eight and 13.
Jennifer wrote in court documents: ‘I am terrified for my family’s safety.’
It is understood the Brown graduate moved to Aspen and Los Angeles to write under a pen name, Jennifer Bey. They add: ‘She has no history of substance abuse and rarely drank two glasses of wine out at night.’
State police released footage from inside the search a Hartford trash facility
Investigators say they have a ‘good idea of what they’re looking for and where it came from’
On the day Jennifer vanished, Dulos and Troconis are believed to have stopped at more than 30 locations outside Hartford to dispose of items including clothing and a bloodied kitchen sponge, arrest warrants say.
Although the search for Jennifer’s body continues, cops allegedly found ‘multiple stains’ and traces of blood inside her New Canaan home as well apparent evidence that a crime scene had been cleaned up.
‘Investigators came to the consensus that a serious physical assault had occurred at the scene, and Jennifer Dulos was the suspected victim,’ reads a court affidavit.
State police also released footage from inside a Hartford trash facility in the search for Jennifer. Investigators say they have a ‘good idea of what they’re looking for and where it came from’ as they wind down the hunt at the plant.
In a statement four weeks after her disappearance her loved ones said: ‘Four weeks have elapsed since Jennifer Farber Dulos disappeared. None of this feels real. We tell ourselves that this kind of nightmare happens to people in stories, not to those we know and love.
‘But this situation is real, and it is dire.’