Investigators question Troconis’ accounts as state plans to call Farber Dulos’ mother to stand

As the state plans to rest its case in the criminal trial for Michelle Troconis, jurors on Tuesday saw the last part of a video of her third interview with investigators in August 2019.

Tuesday marked the 24th day of the trial for Troconis, who is charged with conspiring with her former boyfriend Fotis Dulos to kill his estranged wife, Jennifer Farber Dulos, and cover up his crimes.

State prosecutors have called dozens of witnesses so far, including detectives, forensic examiners, a Fore Group employee, DNA experts and the Dulos children’s nanny. They are expected to rest their case on Wednesday morning after calling one last witness: Gloria Farber, Farber Dulos’ mother.

In the part of Troconis’ interview seen Tuesday, detectives called Dulos’ character into question and asked Troconis, again, about her whereabouts on May 24, 2019. Troconis maintained that she did not know what had happened to Dulos’ estranged wife, who disappeared that day, and said she was not trying to protect him.

“I have no idea what happened to Jennifer. I have no idea where Jennifer is. And that’s 100%.” she said.

CT prosecutors expected to rest case in Troconis trial this week. Defense reveals its tactics.

Retired Connecticut State Police Det. John Kimball was back on the witness stand in Stamford Superior Court on Tuesday. In the video, he asked Troconis about her visit to a Fore Group property at 80 Mountain Spring Road in Farmington and a trip she took with Dulos to Albany Avenue in Hartford the night of Farber Dulos’ disappearance.

Troconis told detectives that Dulos had asked her to clean ahead of a meeting at the home and that she was with Dulos on Albany Avenue because she thought they were going to Starbucks.

“I just know that I went as the stupid girlfriend to help him out, because he told me, ‘Come and clean the house,’ and I did. He told me, ‘Come, let’s go to Starbucks,’ and I did,” she said.

Kimball and Detective Corey Clabby — who both conducted the third interview — also asked Troconis about an intimate moment with Dulos that she said was interrupted by Dulos’ employee Pawel Gumienny as he arrived at 80 Mountain Spring Road.

They suggested that Dulos was trying to have sexual relations with her near a part of his Gumienny’s Toyota Tacoma pickup truck that investigators told her had his wife’s blood on it. Clabby, pointing to a photograph of the truck’s interior lit up by Luminol, asked Troconis, “That’s where you boyfriend wanted to have sex with you, on the side of the door of the car, who do you think that belongs to?”

“Jennifer,” Troconis replied.

“That’s the man you’re protecting,” Clabby said. “That’s sick (expletive).”

Troconis said she wasn’t protecting him.

Kimball testified on the stand Tuesday that the area on the interior of the door did light up when sprayed with Luminol, a presumptive blood test, but a DNA profile was not developed to determine who the blood belonged to. He explained to prosecutor Sean McGuiness that was an example of an interrogation tactic designed to get an emotional reaction from Troconis.

In the video, Clabby can be heard saying, “You only seem to give us information when you’re mad, so you’re about to be mad.”

“That statement was basically designed to get a strong emotional reaction out of her, and she did, in fact, give us more information following that statement,” Kimball said, adding that at the time they “absolutely” had concerns that Troconis was withholding information from them.

During three interviews with Troconis in 2019  — on June 2, June 6 and Aug. 13 — investigators pointed out discrepancies in her statements to investigators, and evidence, like surveillance video footage, that contradicted a timeline she wrote out of her day.

Investigators dubbed the handwritten timelines “the alibi scripts,” and Troconis was questioned about them during the interviews.

In earlier interviews, Troconis said she had seen Dulos the morning of May 24 and taken a shower with him. She later said she didn’t see him in the house at all that morning.

“I still don’t feel like you’ve given a valid reason as to why you followed Fotis’ script when we first sat down,” Clabby said in the third interview. “I want you to explain to me why did you tell us things that you knew were false?”

“Ok I was in shock, I was nervous,” Troconis said. She said that since they spoke earlier, she had been racking her brain.

“I’ve been going through it, trying over and over to try to remember every detail and I’ve been getting more of a better sense of what I did,” adding that she used a backup of her phone to help her figure out what she did that day.

“I was in shock, John,” she said to Kimball after he asked her about a few things she left out like a coffee spill and having the keys to Gumienny’s Toyota. “This is not an easy thing to be sitting here with you. I’m trying my best. If I remember something that I haven’t said I tell you.”

On Friday, Troconis’ defense attorney Jon Schoenhorn offered a glimpse at the defense’s case. He said memory is at the soul of the defense and that he plans to call two professors who have studied whether things like stress, sleep deprivation and language barriers can impact a person’s memory. On Tuesday, he said he plans to call those two professors from California and Chicago to the stand during his defense.

In part of the video shown to the jury on Tuesday, Troconis alluded to a “plan” hatched by Dulos. She said, “With all of this, everything, yes, of course Fotis was involved. But if I see something? No. If I knew, no. He made me do things that yes, it was maybe part of his plan, and I fell because helping him out.”

English is not Troconis’ first language. Her interviews were conducted in English and she is using a Spanish interpreter during the trial.

At another point in the third interview, investigators showed Troconis images of Dulos and someone they describe as “Michelle 2.0.”

“Who does she look like? She kind of looks like you,” detectives said.

The photo they showed Troconis wasn’t visible in court, but detectives asked if they knew who the woman was and who she looked like. Detectives said that Dulos either had a “specific body type that he likes” or that he was trying to set Troconis up or fool detectives. It was not made clear who the other woman was.

Troconis, in the interview, also brought up Dulos allegedly talking to other women, a point Schoenhorn circled back to during his cross-examination.

“(Troconis) also told you that Fotis disguised women’s names under men’s names … to hide that he was talking to other women?” he asked.

“She did tell us that,” Kimball said.

Part of the questioning Kimball answered on Tuesday also centered around Troconis answering a phone call that came into Dulos’ phone the morning of May 24, something she did not mention in her first interviews with detectives. The call, which investigators learned was prearranged, was from a friend of Dulos named Andreas Toutziardis in Greece. Also in the third interview, investigators asked Troconis about why, when she heard Farber Dulos was missing, she didn’t press Dulos more.

She said that Dulos had told her that Farber Dulos had “disappeared” in the past and that her family wouldn’t speak to him, so he couldn’t call them to find out more about her disappearance.

“At some point, he told me and my mom, Jennifer is a monster,” she said during the interrogation.

Detectives questioning Troconis also circled back to Albany Avenue. Troconis told them she saw the surveillance videos of their trip there and that in the videos it’s clear that Dulos is getting out of the driver’s seat, tossing items in the trash, which she said was out of her view.

“I wasn’t even paying attention,” she said, repeating that she was on her phone texting.

Clabbey said that they reviewed her phone records and that she had responded to a family group chat on WhatsApp only four times.

“It doesn’t show you on your phone texting, doing all this. It just shows your phone kind of stagnant,” Clabbey said.

Kimball told her to not make the argument that she was so distracted on her phone that she didn’t know what Dulos was doing.

“Michelle, you have to get off the phone stuff,” he said. “If this goes to a jury. If. You have to think about how this whole story is going to sound to 12 people sitting in a jury box. … How is that going to look?”

She said she thought he was just throwing construction away at the time but now knew there were no construction-related items in those bags. Detectives said someone like Dulos, who owned a construction company, should have access to dumpsters and not need to use trash bins in downtown Hartford.

“I consider myself a reasonable person and that sounds strange to me,” Kimball said.

Troconis said they’d thrown out construction-related trash in the past.

“The only part I did find weird was the area. And I did tell him, ‘What are we doing here?'” she said.

In earlier interviews, Troconis said she asked Dulos why they were there and he told her not to worry. She has maintained that she thought they were headed to Starbucks. The couple was captured on surveillance footage at a Starbucks in West Hartford after they were seen on Albany Avenue.

Detectives combed through trash bins along Albany Avenue and found blood-soaked clothes they believe Farber Dulos was wearing when she died and other items they allege are connected to the crimes and clean up, like zip ties, a boxcutter, a garbage bag with Troconis’ fingerprint on it and a sponge.

Troconis told detectives that Dulos called her earlier that day and told her to come to clean a property owned by Fore Group. During his cross-examination of Kimball on Tuesday, Schoenhorn asked the detective about whether investigators found any cleaning supplies at that property at 80 Mountain Spring Road.

“No cleaning supplies were found,” Kimball said.

Schoenhorn also brought forth receipts from Starbucks and Stop & Shop on May 24 that matched Troconis’ timeline.

Schoenhorn said outside the courthouse Tuesday afternoon that he plans to file for an acquittal before he begins his defense. He also said the defense plans to take up some matters outside the presence of the jury before launching their case.

Judge Kevin A. Randolph said the court will take up a motion first thing on Wednesday morning before the jury is brought in. The state is expected to call Farber to the stand and, after that, rest its case.