When Jennifer Farber Dulos, a Brooklyn-raised daughter of great wealth and privilege, a member of the Brown Class of 1990 and once a member of the New York’s downtown literary elite, vanished after dropping her five kids off at the New Canaan Country School on the morning of May 24, 2020, people in Fairfield County — especially those familiar with the area’s thorny divorce court — entered a collective breakdown. The handsome husband and beautiful South American paramour, the failing marriage and business, the anxieties of the suburban sports parent, battles over money and status — the case, which made newspapers around the nation, touched on the fears of every parent. It was like a camera dropped into the subconscious of America’s wealthiest towns. At its core, Jennifer’s story — presumed dead, her body has never been found — personified every struggling mother’s worst nightmare. The language in the first police reports said it perfectly: “Lying in wait.”
That’s what Fotis Dulos, Jennifer’s estranged husband, was presumed to have been doing when his wife was idling through the drop off line at school: “lying in wait” for Jennifer, whose demise would be discerned in a handful of clues found in a dumpster fifty miles north — a bloody Vineyard Vine’s T-shirt, bloody zip ties, a bloody bra. What follows is a section from my book, Murder in the Dollhouse: the Jennifer Dulos Story, that details the first hours of the investigation, the moves the small town police department made after the panicked calls arrived from Jennifer’s friends. Fotis would be charged with her murder and die by suicide while awaiting trial; his girlfriend would later be convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Jennifer’s story remains a fixation not because it’s unusual or strange, but because it’s so familiar. It illuminates a dark river that flows beneath our everyday lives.
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The New Canaan Police station is in a brick building at 174 South Avenue. There are columns in front and a sign over the door. If the department seems small, with just forty-five officers tasked with protecting more than twenty thousand residents, that’s because New Canaan has always been one of the safest towns in Connecticut. It’s where New York City police go when they ascend to cop heaven. The citizens are rich, the kids future-oriented, the domestics documented. Now and then, an entire year goes by without a single violent episode.
The stories of murder in New Canaan are legends because there have been so few of them. In 1969, a ten-year-old named Mary Mount vanished off her New Canaan street, sparking a manhunt unmatched in town until the search for Jennifer Dulos. Mount’s body was found in the South Norwalk Reserve shortly after her disappearance. The killing remains unsolved. On December 10, 1970, a New Canaan father returned from his job at Hi-Standard Manufacturing in Hamden, Connecticut, to find four members of his family — wife, daughter, son, and mother — slaughtered in their house at 93 Millport Avenue. The murder weapons included dagger, hatchet, hammer, necktie. A surviving son, seventeen-year-old John Rice, was the only suspect. “The youth, an avid outdoorsman who was to be promoted to Eagle Scout last night, is about 6 feet tall and weighs 200 pounds,” the Hartford Courant reported. “He has dark brown hair, wears glasses and has a severe case of acne.” Rice turned himself in on December 16, 1970. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. In 2021, seventy-seven-year-old Albert Kokoth killed his seventy-five-year-old wife. He said he shot her by accident. Though the first shot might have indeed been a mistake, the second, third, and fourth shots probably weren’t.
All to say, when the missing persons call came for Jennifer Dulos, the entire department took notice. The investigation, which would be the most expensive in Connecticut state history, started with a re- quest to Verizon. The police wanted information on Jennifer’s phone: When had it last been used? What cell tower had it “pinged”? When you make a call, the signal bounces off the nearest tower and up into space, reaches a satellite, and then rebounds to the phone of the person you dialed. With basic geometry—these three points (tower, satellite, receiver) describe an immense triangle — you can determine the location of any cell phone, present or past.
According to Verizon, Jennifer’s phone last pinged a tower near Waveny Park in New Canaan at 11:09 Friday morning, May 24, 2019.
Captain Andrew Walsh and Sergeant Kenneth Ventresca of the New Canaan Police Department went to Waveny Park on the night of the disappearance in search of Jennifer’s Chevy Suburban. They found it on Lapham Road near the edge of the park at 8:00 p.m. “The tailgate was backed up against this tree,” Sergeant Ventresca reported. “The Suburban was not running; keys were not in the ignition. The gear le- ver was actually stuck in reverse. The doors were locked . . . You could see the cleanup of the blood-like substance all over the passenger side under a flashlight.”
Two different New Canaan cops, Officer Matthew Blank and Sergeant Aaron LaTourette, had gone to Jennifer’s house at 69 Welles Lane at around 7:00 p.m. They knocked on the door, heavy service belts creaking. Leaf shadows, night noises. No answer. They phoned the Dulos’ nanny, Lauren Almeida, who gave them the garage door code. They typed the numbers by the glow of the pad. The door opened. The search began by flashlight. There was what looked like blood on the floor and what looked like blood splatter on the Range Rover.
They continued into the house. The record from their police body cam, which was shown at the Stamford courthouse in 2024, resembles footage taken of the interior of a wrecked ship, the ghostly halls and haunted rooms suggesting sudden disaster. There’s an Andy Warhol silkscreen of Jackie O. — Jennifer fetishized America’s fashionable wives — a picture of the Dulos children, and, on the second floor, closets filled with children’s shoes and clothes. A silver C-shaped Mylar balloon — possibly for Jennifer’s daughter, Clea-Noelle — is tied to a counter in the kitchen. Straining at its tether, this balloon functioned as a clock — according to a company called Balloon Party Palace, “In optimum environments, mylar (foil) balloons will remain full and taut for 3–5 days” — demonstrating the temporal closeness of zero hour.
“In addition to blood evidence in the garage, there was evidence that someone had attempted to clean up blood,” the state police detective John Kimball, who helped oversee the investigation, said later. “There were what appeared to be swirl marks on the sides of the vehicles.”
Officer Thomas Patten, who examined the garage more thoroughly the next day, cataloged additional evidence:
• Blood splatter found on the garbage cans
• Blood splatter on the driver’s side door
• Swipes where someone tried to clean up concrete floor
• Partial bloody shoe prints
• A quarter sized blood drop on the right fender on the range rover
• The left front fender had been wiped clean
At this point, per procedure, the New Canaan police called in the Major Crimes Unit of the Connecticut State Police, which had been created to work on just such cases. From there, it became a joint investigation, with the state cops supplying high-tech gadgets and expertise, and the local cops supplying on-the-ground knowledge of the town.
Within forty-eight hours, the investigators, using cell phone and internet data, had pieced together Jennifer’s last known whereabouts.
Friday, May 24, 2019:
7:50 a.m.: Jennifer Dulos is seen on neighborhood security cameras driving Chevy Suburban down Welles Lane in New Canaan.
7:58 a.m.: Jennifer Dulos is seen arriving in Chevy Suburban at New Canaan Country School.
8:05 a.m.: Jennifer Dulos is seen on surveillance driving toward her house on Welles Lane.
10:25 a.m.: Jennifer Dulos’ Chevy Suburban is seen leaving Welles Lane.
10:38 a.m.: Jennifer Dulos’ Chevy Suburban is seen on camera near Waveny Park on Lapham Road in New Canaan.
11:09 a.m.: Jennifer Dulos’ phone goes dark.
“DID YOU EVER HEAR OF something called luminol?” an investigator asked Michelle Troconis later.
No.
“Luminol is something we use to look at evidence,” said the cop. “To see if blood was somewhere. When it hits blood, it illuminates.”
For example, said the cop, we covered the inside of Jennifer’s garage on Welles Lane with luminol.
Handing Michelle a photo of the garage, the cop pointed out illuminated patches, saying, “It’s all that.”
“That’s blood?” asked Michelle.
Yes, said the cop. “And who do you think that [blood] belongs to?” In an interview, Kathryn Pinneri, who in 2022 served as president of the National Medical Examiners Association, told me: “When luminol touches a place blood has been, even if the blood’s been cleaned up, it turns fluorescent. If there’s been hemoglobin on a surface, the luminol turns blue. You have to turn the lights off to see it. There’s an eerie glow. It can also show how much blood has been spilled.
“It depends on the age and size of the person, but, on average, we have about five liters of blood in our body. Most people can tolerate losing as many as two liters of that blood. If you lose three liters and don’t replace it immediately, you’re going to die.”
According to Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, James Gill, who worked the case, the amount of blood seemingly spilled in the garage probably means Jennifer Dulos sustained an injury or injuries that would have been “non-survivable” without medical intervention.
Courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
FOTIS SEEMED DETACHED WHEN the police got him on the phone that first night. Maybe it was his Greek accent, or all that Ivy League education, but his demeanor was strangely disengaged. You’d expect a man whose estranged wife had just gone missing to be emotional, confused. But no, nothing. “Mr. Dulos never seemed concerned about his wife,” an officer on the call said later.
Officer Thomas Patten asked Fotis to come by the New Canaan police station the next day. There was nothing accusatory in this request. It was standard. The police were trying to find Jennifer, and wanted the husband’s help. Fotis said he’d be there at around 12:00 p.m., Saturday, May 25.
Fotis did not arrive until 2:47 p.m. He’d asked his lawyer Jacob Pyetranker to go with him. Like many of Fotis’s decisions, this one was halfway smart. “Halfway” because when the police call you into the station a day after your estranged wife has vanished, it’s smart to have an attorney, but only “halfway” because Jacob Pyetranker is not a criminal attorney. He’s a divorce lawyer, and he seemed beyond his depth from the start. He got in and out of the criminal case fast, but not before watching his client make a critical mistake.
Fotis arrived before Pyetranker. He should have waited for his attorney in the parking lot, but, because he was an arrogant man who believed he had everything under control, he went into the station by himself. The New Canaan police officer Thomas Patten and the Connecticut State Police officer Christopher Allegro met him in the lobby. Detective Patten later said Fotis seemed flustered. He had a look that cops recognize — a person trying to maintain composure, trying to hide out in the open.
Fotis spoke first, another mistake. If you are meeting with police, you should volunteer nothing; even your tone of voice can give you away. Let the police start by telling you what they know.
Fotis asked if there’d been any news about his wife. One cop said no.
The other said that’s why Fotis was there; they needed his help finding her.
Then Pyetranker came in. He told the police that his client would “not be cooperating.”
The officers said they were “surprised Dulos would not help.” Pyetranker said he and his client would be leaving.
Pyetranker handed something to Dulos.
“Is that your phone?” one of the cops asked. Fotis said, “Yes.”
The cop asked to see it.
As if subject to mind control, Fotis handed his phone to Officer Allegro.
The cop tapped the screen until the security prompt appeared. “What’s the code?” he asked Fotis.
“0—0—0—0.”
Officer Allegro typed it in.
Pyetranker protested, saying that the police officers were not al- lowed to look at Fotis’s phone.
“I’m not looking at it,” said Officer Allegro. “I’m securing the phone and data it contains.” He added that he was putting the phone in air- plane mode until he could get a search warrant.
Pyetranker stared at the cop. The cop stared back. Now and then, when someone is thinking very deeply, you can almost hear the gears turning.
Pyetranker said he needed to confer with his client alone. They went outside to talk. A moment later, without saying goodbye to the police, Fotis and his lawyer got in their cars and drove away.
WAS FOTIS DULOS CAPABLE of murder? That was a key question for the police and a stumbling block for friends. Here was a man who had never been arrested, who, as far as anyone knew, had never committed a violent act, not even during the most intense marital squabbles. How could he suddenly become a killer?
I asked professionals, criminologists, cops, and psychiatrists if a person who commits murder is on the same spectrum as everyone else. That is, can an otherwise healthy person become a person who kills, not in self-defense or in the heat of battle, but with cool premeditation? Or are killers different from the rest of us? There is no consensus, but, according to research, nearly 5 percent of the human population can be classified as psychopathic.
For those closest to Fotis, the best defense can be summed up in one sentence: He was simply not capable of murder. Ethan Fry, writing for the Stamford Advocate in July 2019, described his interview with Fotis’s sister, Rena Dulos Kyrimi: “[She] is an architect in Athens, where she said Fotis still has many friends and family members who do not believe he would be capable of harming his wife.” As Fotis was growing up, Rena, who was thirteen years older, had operated as something like a guardian. “I almost raised him,” Rena told Fry. “I know him so very well.”
Those who had seen Fotis and Jennifer argue in Farmington disagree. “I was there when they fought on the lawn,” a neighbor told me. “I was there when he got angry. I heard his sick revenge fantasies. I heard him say what he was going to do to this or that person. I don’t know what he did or did not do to Jennifer, but I did not consider him harmless.”
FOTIS LEFT MESSAGES FOR LAUREN Almeida, the nanny, on the afternoon of Jennifer’s disappearance, then left several more that night. He said he was merely checking in, but what he really wanted was the children. If step one had been “Disappear Jennifer,” step two was “Get the kids.”
Lauren texted back to tell him the kids were healthy and safe. “Thanks for your response,” wrote Fotis. “Please send me updates every three hours. I do not want to feel that I am pestering you, but please understand that I am the father and I am extremely concerned with the situation.”
He asked, for the second time, if everyone was together at his mother-in-law Gloria’s apartment in Manhattan. Lauren did not respond. Then, at noon on Sunday, May 26, Fotis showed up in Gloria’s Fifth Avenue lobby. He tried to walk straight to the elevators, but the doorman stopped him. He’d been told to watch for Fotis. If he turns up, the doorman was instructed, don’t let him in. “He is unwelcome in Gloria’s residence.”
For a moment, while arguing with the doorman, the glassy veneer that Fotis wore all through these tragic hours fell away. He must’ve known this was his best and possibly only chance: Get the kids and go. Argentina. Greece. The world has amnesia. If you stay away long enough, everything will be forgotten. But if you don’t escape now, you’ll be trapped like a fly in glue.
He and the doorman argued. Grunts and curses, the shuffle of loafers on waxed marble. Gloria was in the apartment with Lauren and the kids. Carrie Luft, Jennifer’s friend, was in the apartment with Gloria, Lauren, and the kids. What were the kids thinking? They loved their father. He was so close, an elevator ride away, and yet, though they could not know it, he was already gone.
Carrie called 911. Cops from the New York Police Department were there in minutes. They broke up the fight, talked to the doorman, talked to Fotis. He told them that his mother-in-law had abducted his children. He was there to take them home. The New York cops called the police station in New Canaan, where an officer said, “Fotis Dulos is prohibited by court order from visiting with his children unsupervised.”
The cops told Dulos to leave. Go away, cool off. According to the NYPD, “Dulos ultimately complied.” That “ultimately” suggests Fotis was not so quick to walk away.
On Tuesday morning, May 28, Fotis’s new divorce lawyer — Michael Rose, the third man on the case —filed papers asking that Fotis Dulos be given full custody of the Dulos children.
The timeline:
Jennifer disappears on Friday, May 24.
Fotis shows up at Gloria’s building on Sunday, May 26. Fotis files for full custody on Tuesday, May 28.
Why full custody?
Maybe because he knew Jennifer was never coming back.
Adapted from MURDER IN THE DOLLHOUSE: The Jennifer Dulos Story by Rich Cohen. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2025 by Rich Cohen. All rights reserved.
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