Jennifer Dulos Case: New Canaan Mother Who Vanished

At 8:05 a.m. on May 24, 2019, a home security camera in New Canaan, Connecticut, recorded Jennifer Farber Dulos walking up to her house. She had just dropped her five children at school. According to the arrest warrant later described by CBS New York, it is the last known image of her. After about 10 hours without contact, friends reported her missing. Her black 2017 Chevrolet Suburban turned up on a road beside Waveny Park, a short drive from home.

A Writer From New York

Jennifer was 50. She held a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s in writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and had worked in New York as a writer of journalism, essays, plays and screenplays. Her online biography said she was finishing a novel. She and Fotis Dulos had both studied at Brown, a year apart. They had been married about 13 years when she filed for divorce.

She filed in June 2017 and moved with the children from Farmington to New Canaan. The children were then between 8 and 13. In court papers she described what she called irrational, bullying, threatening and controlling behavior by her husband. She wrote: “I am afraid of my husband.” Fotis denied her allegations in his own filings. A judge denied her request for sole custody. When she vanished two years later, the divorce was still not final.

The Garage and the Truck

Police who answered the missing-person call found blood in the garage of the New Canaan house. Investigators reported bloodstains, spatter and signs of a cleanup. According to the warrant, state police believed the assault and the cleanup took place between 8:05 a.m. and 10:25 a.m., and that her Suburban left the property in that window with Fotis at the wheel and her body inside.

Her DNA was later found on the garage wall and door, and in a bloodlike substance in a pickup Fotis had access to that day. The truck’s owner, an employee, said Fotis had its interior cleaned without his knowledge. The state’s chief medical examiner later concluded that her injuries would not have been survivable without medical care. Her body was not in any of those places.

Albany Avenue, That Evening

At about 7:31 p.m. that evening, Hartford city cameras recorded a pickup on Albany Avenue. Prosecutors said Fotis was driving and Michelle Troconis, his girlfriend, sat in the passenger seat. The driver stopped and dropped black garbage bags into city trash bins. Then the couple drove to a Starbucks at Bishop’s Corner.

Investigators pulled items from those bins. Court testimony listed a bra and a shirt with blood on them, zip ties, a sponge, a mop handle and garbage bags. The blood matched Jennifer. Troconis later told police she thought they were going for coffee, was on her phone and did not ask questions.

In the first days of June 2019, state police arrested Fotis and Troconis on charges of tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution. Both pleaded not guilty. Fotis was arrested again on September 4, 2019, on additional tampering and hindering charges.

Three Arrests, One Death

On January 7, 2020, Fotis Dulos was charged with murder, felony murder and kidnapping. His bond was set at $6 million. The same day, Troconis was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. So was Kent Mawhinney, a lawyer and friend who had represented Fotis in unrelated civil cases. State police alleged in court papers that Fotis had been lying in wait for Jennifer in the garage. He denied killing his wife.

On January 28, 2020, the day of an emergency bond hearing he did not attend, police found Fotis in a running car inside the garage of his Farmington home. He died on January 30. His death by suicide ended the case against him before any jury heard the evidence. Like the Susan Powell case, the man at the center of the investigation died without ever facing trial. That left two co-defendants.

The Trial of Michelle Troconis

In October 2023, a probate court declared Jennifer legally dead at her mother’s request. Jury selection in Troconis’s trial was already under way in Stamford. Testimony began on January 11, 2024. The state’s case leaned on the Albany Avenue footage and on written alibi scripts that, police said, Fotis and Troconis prepared together.

On March 1, 2024, the jury convicted Troconis of conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of tampering with physical evidence, two counts of conspiracy to commit tampering with physical evidence, and hindering prosecution. She maintained her innocence.

On May 31, 2024, Judge Kevin A. Randolph sentenced her to 20 years, suspended after 14.5 years, followed by five years of probation. At sentencing he vacated one of the two conspiracy-to-tamper counts on double jeopardy grounds. The state appealed that ruling, then withdrew the appeal. The total time did not change.

A Plea, an Appeal and a Petition

Mawhinney’s case dragged on for more than five years. On June 13, 2025, in Stamford Superior Court, prosecutors dropped the conspiracy-to-murder charge. Stamford State’s Attorney Paul J. Ferencek said the state did not have enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Mawhinney entered an Alford plea to a misdemeanor, interfering with an officer, and received 11 months, already served. Asked if he knew where Jennifer was, he said: “No. If I did, I would tell them.” Jennifer’s family said the outcome did not clear him.

In an 86-page brief reported in November 2025, Troconis asked the Connecticut Appellate Court to vacate her convictions. It argues the state never proved she knew of any plan, and challenges the searches of the Farmington home and the exclusion of custody-case evidence. Separately, News 12 Connecticut reported that a judge denied her habeas petition on May 18, 2026, rejecting her claim that her first lawyer was ineffective. In August 2026 she asked an appellate court to review a ruling that denied her release while she fights the conviction. As of that report, her appeal remained pending.

Why This Case Still Matters

In 2021, Connecticut lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1091, known as Jennifer’s Law, and Gov. Ned Lamont signed it. It added coercive control, meaning threats, humiliation and intimidation that strip a person of freedom, to the state’s definition of domestic violence in civil cases. It also created a program to give lawyers to victims seeking restraining orders, and let them testify remotely.

Jennifer had put her fear in writing two years before she vanished. The family court had her words on file. The new law lets courts treat that kind of non-physical abuse as domestic violence, with or without a bruise to show.

More than seven years later, Jennifer’s remains have not been found. One person has been convicted of conspiring to kill her. The only person ever charged with her murder is dead. Her children, now young adults, still do not know where she is.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. If you are experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.

Related Cases

The Susan Powell case — a Utah mother vanished in 2009, and her husband died before he was ever charged.
The Suzanne Morphew case — a Colorado mother disappeared on Mother’s Day 2020, and her husband became the focus of the investigation.
The Laci Peterson case — a pregnant California woman vanished on Christmas Eve 2002, and her husband went on trial.

Sources

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Header photo: Rockwell Swamp in Mead Memorial Park, New Canaan, Connecticut (October 2011) by Carol M. Highsmith, no known restrictions on publication (Carol M. Highsmith Archive), via Library of Congress.

Enigma True Crime

The Jennifer Dulos Case: A Connecticut Mother of Five, a Bloody Garage and No Body

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