New Canaan Police Department(NEW YORK) — Connecticut mom of five Jennifer Dulos, who vanished last month amid a custody battle with her estranged husband, may have disappeared intentionally in a “‘Gone Girl’-type case,” her husband’s attorney alleges.
But Dulos’ decades-old friend has shut down that theory.
Dulos was last seen on May 24, police said. Investigators believe she suffered a “serious physical assault” in the garage at her New Canaan home, where bloodstains were found, according to arrest warrants.
Clothes and sponges with Dulos’ blood were found in trash cans in Hartford, where surveillance cameras captured a man appearing to be her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, disposing of garbage bags, according to the documents. A woman in the man’s car fit the appearance of his live-in girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, according to the documents.
Fotis Dulos and Troconis are charged with tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and hindering prosecution. Both have pleaded not guilty.
More charges are likely, prosecutors said.
Fotis Dulos’ attorney, Norm Pattis, insists his client didn’t kill his wife and doesn’t know where she is.
Pattis told ABC News this week that he’s “investigating the possibility that this is a ‘Gone Girl’-type case and considering the possibility that no third party was involved in foul play.”
In the “Gone Girl” book-turned-film, a wife fakes her own disappearance, framing her husband.
Carrie Luft, a spokeswoman for Jennifer Dulos’ family, called the defense’s “Gone Girl” theory a “smokescreen.”
“I think that drawing any comparison to a work of fiction does an incredible disservice to the family,” Luft told “Good Morning America” on Sunday. “This is not a film, this is not a novel, this is our real life.”
“Someone we love is missing,” said Luft, a friend of 28 years. “This is about someone who is missing following a violent attack and people are doing everything they can to solve the mystery.”
Luft described the missing mother as stable, responsible and reliable and “not a woman that would ever, ever leave her children.”
“She loves them more than anything in the world,” she said.
The five kids are in the custody of Jennifer Dulos’ mother.
“The kids are well cared for and are surrounded by people who love them,” Luft said.
Luft said she’s holding out hope that Jennifer Dulos survived and can be rescued.
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