Michelle Troconis claimed that missing mom-of-five Jennifer Dulos was alive and hiding as detectives confronted her about discrepancies in her story.
Troconis, 49, is facing trial over claims that she helped her late boyfriend Fotis Dulos cover up the killing of Dulos, who vanished in May, 2019 and whose remains have never been found.
On Friday the jury was shown footage from the Venezuela native’s second interview with Connecticut police, which took place in June, 2019.
In the interview, Troconis laid out her theory of Dulos’s whereabouts after police asked her what she thinks happened to Fotis’ ex-wife.
‘I think that she’s still somewhere hiding,’ Troconis answered.
Michelle Troconis claimed that missing mom-of-five Jennifer Dulos was alive and hiding as detectives confronted her about discrepancies in her story
Troconis at one point became exasperated as the questioning continues, saying ‘I didn’t do anything!’ before putting her head in her arms
‘What Fotis has told me that in the past, before they were married, she fought with her parents and she disappeared and she moved to Aspen.’
Troconis continued: ‘And she got an inheritance from an aunt of $3million and she lived for three years in Aspen and she changed her name.’
Detectives then ask her if she would ever leave her own daughter and not tell her where she is, before Michelle concedes that she wouldn’t – and ‘it doesn’t even cross her mind.’
However, she adds: ‘From my understanding she has a borderline personality disorder.’
Troconis then becomes more exasperated as the questioning continues, at one point saying ‘I didn’t do anything!’ before putting her head in her forearms on the table.
Throughout the entire interview she repeats that she does not know what happened to Dulos, but realizes she’s in trouble and says at one point that she is ‘going to prison because of him.’
The ‘Gone Girl’ theory, in which a wife fakes her murder to get back at her husband, was previously floated by Fotis’ lawyer, before the alleged killer died by suicide as he awaiting his murder trial.
Prosecutors allege that Fotis brutally attacked Jennifer in her rented New Canaan property when she returned from the school run for their five kid
The ‘Gone Girl’ theory was previously floated by Fotis’ lawyer, before the alleged killer died by suicide as he awaiting his murder trial
Fotis’ lawyer Norm Pattis alleged Jennifer wrote a 500-page ‘Gone Girl’ style script years ago, a book in which a wife fakes her disappearance to try and frame her cheating husband.
Pattis also said Dulos had disappeared from New York once before and ‘lived for years under a false name’ after an ‘intrafamilial dispute about money.’
However, nothing has ever come up backing the claim that Jennifer is alive, and her family has repeatedly denied it.
‘Jennifer’s novel is not a mystery. It’s a character-driven story that follows a young woman through relationships and self-discovery over a period of years,’ her friend, Carrie Luft, said in the statement on the family’s behalf.
‘Like all of Jennifer’s writing, it expresses a deep longing for human connection and the need to be accepted as one’s true self.’
On Thursday, former Connecticut State Police Detective John Kimball told the court 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 cops she woke up on May 24, 2019, headed to the bathroom and then ‘Fotis jumped into the shower with me’.
State prosecutors paused the footage to ask Kimball whether Troconis ‘always maintained her account that she showered with Fotis Dulos’ that morning.
‘She did not,’ Kimball said.
Troconis’ lawyer Jon Schoenhorn, speaking to reporters outside court on Thursday, said the police interviews actually absolve his client and will show she was not deliberately changing her story.
‘You have to watch the whole videos and you have to judge for yourself if things that were said were allegedly changed, whether things were being clarified, whether she was being cut off,’ the defense attorney said.
Prosecutors allege that Fotis brutally attacked Jennifer in her rented New Canaan property when she returned from the school run for their five kids, who were then aged between eight and 13, on the morning of May 24, 2019.
The state claims he cleaned up the evidence at her home before putting her body in her Chevy and driving around three miles away, where the SUV was found abandoned. Jennifer’s body was never found.
Fotis and Troconis are accused of dumping garbage bags containing bloody evidence, including the bra, t-shirt and razor, into various trash cans around Hartford in his Ford Raptor.
Jurors were presented with some of the blood-stained items in the court room, 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.