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Search For Jennifer Dulos Expands To Reservoir Near Her Estranged Husband's Mansion
The search comes just hours after Fotis Dulos proclaimed his innocence in his first sit-down interview.
The search for Jennifer Dulos, a Connecticut mother of five who has now been missing for more than a month, moved to the West Hartford reservoir on Wednesday, located not far from the Farmington mansion where her estranged husband Fotis Dulos lives.
State police dogs and investigators searched the reservoir but it’s not clear if anything was found, the Hartford Courant reports. A wooded area, about a half-mile in length, separates Fotis’ home and an edge of the reservoir. His mansion was searched back in June.
There are six large reservoirs on the reservoir property. A dive team searched one of the reservoirs for several hours, an unnamed source told NBC Connecticut. That source claimed they didn’t find anything there.
The new search comes just hours after Fotis Dulos did his first sit-down media interview, in which he proclaimed his innocence.
“I know what I’ve done. I know what I haven’t done,” he told NBC New York Tuesday. “I have to stand and fight and hope that the truth is going to come out.”
In a statement released on Wednesday, the day the reservoir search was conducted, Fotis said, “My children are the center of my world. I worry about them and Jennifer, and I would tell them that I know it is hard now but everything IS going to be alright eventually. I understand the public’s perception of me as a monster given the little they know about the case, but I trust the system and the process and ask the public to do the same. 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.”
Jennifer disappeared on May 24 not long after dropping off her kids at New Canaan Country School. Two of her friends reported her missing after she didn't show for appointments and wasn't heard from for about 10 hours.
Both Fotis Dulos, 51 and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, 44, have been charged with evidence tampering and hindering prosecution. They can allegedly be seen on video disposing of garbage bags, some of which contained bloody clothing, in trash receptacles. Police also said they found blood spatter and evidence of cleanup attempts at Jennifer's New Canaan home, according to the arrest warrants. They have pleaded not guilty and have since made bond.
Dulos told NBC New York that he is aware that the public thinks he’s guilty but maintains that he is not. He acknowledged that in most cases of this nature, the spouse is the culprit. He even gave a number: “Ninety or 95 percent [of the time], it’s the spouse." However, he claims that he’s part of that “5 or 10 percent” who are innocent.
“I had my differences with Jennifer like many people do when they go through a marriage. It didn’t work out for us, but that doesn’t mean that I wish her ill in any way,” he said.
Jennifer filed for divorce from Fotis in 2017. The couple had been married for 13 years and have five children who range in age from 8 to 13. Jennifer moved out after finding out about the affair that her husband was having with Troconis, CNN reports.
In court filings for the divorce, she expressed fear of her husband.
“I am afraid of my husband,” she wrote in an affidavit tied to an order of custody filed in June 2017, according to the Stamford Advocate. “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.”
Fotis told WNBC he has thoughts as to what happened to Jennifer, but he wouldn't say more.
His lawyer Norm Pattis — the same lawyer defending controversial radio show host Alex Jones in his Sandy Hook defamation case — recently suggested to the New York Post that Jennifer may have staged her disappearance, claiming she once wrote a book manuscript with a similar plot to Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel “Gone Girl.” That novel, which was also turned into a movie, is about a writer who fakes her own death to frame her husband. Pattis admits he never read the supposed 500-page manuscript. but said “this is a person who has a pretty florid imagination and motives to use it to hurt Mr. Dulos.”
A spokesperson for Jennifer’s family and friends denounced the suggestion.
Fotis is scheduled to appear in court again Aug. 2.
