Michelle Troconis claimed Jennifer Dulos, a missing mother of five, was alive and in hiding as detectives confronted her about discrepancies in her story.
Troconis, 49, is facing trial over allegations that she helped her late boyfriend Fotis Dulos cover up the murder of Dulos, who disappeared in May 2019 and whose remains have never been found.
Jurors were shown footage of the Venezuelan native’s second interview with Connecticut police on Friday, which took place in June 2019.
In the interview, Troconis laid out his theory about Dulos’ whereabouts after police asked him what he thinks happened to Fotis’ ex-wife.
“I think she’s still hidden somewhere,” Troconis replied.
Michelle Troconis claimed Jennifer Dulos, a missing mother of five, was alive and in hiding as detectives confronted her about discrepancies in her story.
Troconis at one point became exasperated as the interrogation continued and said, “I didn’t do anything!” before putting his head in his arms
“What Fotis has told me is that in the past, before she was married, she quarreled with her parents and disappeared and moved to Aspen.”
Troconis continued: “And he received an inheritance from an aunt of 3 million dollars and lived for three years in Aspen and changed his name.”
The detectives then ask her if she would ever leave her own daughter and not tell them where she is, before Michelle admits that she wouldn’t, and “it doesn’t even cross her mind.”
However, he adds: “As I understand it, he has borderline personality disorder.”
Troconis then becomes more exasperated as the interrogation continues, at one point saying, “I didn’t do anything!” before resting his head between his forearms on the table.
Throughout the entire interview she repeats that she doesn’t know what happened to Dulos, but she realizes that he is in trouble and at one point says that “she’s going to prison because of him.”
The ‘Gone Girl’ theory, in which a wife fakes her murder to get revenge on her husband, was previously raised by Fotis’ lawyer, before the alleged killer committed suicide while awaiting trial for murder.
Prosecutors allege that Fotis brutally attacked Jennifer at her rental property in New Canaan as she returned home from school for her five children.
The ‘missing girl’ theory was previously raised by Fotis’ lawyer, before the alleged killer committed suicide while awaiting his murder trial.
Fotis’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, alleged that Jennifer wrote years ago a 500-page ‘Gone Girl’-style script, a book in which a wife fakes her disappearance to try to frame her cheating husband.
Pattis also said Dulos had disappeared from New York once before and “lived for years under an assumed name” after an “intra-family dispute over money.”
However, nothing has ever emerged to support the claim that Jennifer is alive and her family has repeatedly denied this.
‘Jennifer’s novel is not a mystery. “It’s a character-driven story that follows a young woman through her relationships and self-discovery over a period of years,” her friend Carrie Luft said in the statement on behalf of the family.
“Like all of Jennifer’s writing, it expresses a deep longing for human connection and the need to be accepted as oneself.”
On Thursday, former Connecticut State Police Detective John Kimball told the court that he interviewed Troconis on three occasions: June 2, June 6 and August 13, 2019.
Jurors were shown footage of the first interview, where Troconis told police he woke up on May 24, 2019, went to the bathroom and then “Fotis jumped in the shower with me.”
State prosecutors paused the footage to ask Kimball if Troconis “always stood by his story that he showered with Fotis Dulos” that morning.
“He didn’t,” Kimball said.
Troconis’ attorney, Jon Schoenhorn, speaking to reporters outside court Thursday, said police interviews actually clear his client and will show she was not deliberately changing her story.
“You have to watch the full videos and judge for yourself whether the things that were said supposedly changed, whether things were clarified or whether she was interrupted,” the defense attorney said.
Prosecutors allege that Fotis brutally attacked Jennifer at her rental property in New Canaan as she returned from school for her five children, who were then ages eight to 13, on the morning of May 24, 2019.
The state claims he cleaned up the evidence at his home before putting her body in his Chevy and driving about three miles away, where the abandoned truck was found. Jennifer’s body was never found.
Fotis and Troconis are accused of dumping trash bags containing bloody evidence, including the bra, T-shirt and razor, into several dumpsters around Hartford in their Ford Raptor.
Jurors were presented with some of the bloodstained items in the courtroom, while the Chevy Suburban was shown on screen along with surveillance footage of Fotis and Troconis disposing of the items on Albany Avenue in Hartford.