In the turbulent marriage of the missing mother of Connecticut, 5 years old



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[Cequevousdevezsavoirpourbiencommencerlajournée:[Whatyouneedtoknowtostarttheday:[Cequevousdevezsavoirpourbiencommencerlajournée:[Whatyouneedtoknowtostarttheday:Receive New York today in your inbox.]

He threatened to abduct their children and take them abroad, she said. She threatened to break her legs with the mafia, he countered.

He drove a S.U.V. towards her, moving away at the last minute, she said. She had mental health problems and could not keep their children safe, he said.

The recent disappearance of Jennifer Dulos, a 50-year-old Connecticut mother who was reported missing shortly after leaving her five children at school on May 24, quickly highlighted her 13-year marriage with Fotis Dulos. and legal battle over two years to end it.

Authorities arrested Mr. Dulos, 51, and his girlfriend, Michelle C. Troconis, 44, last weekend, in connection with Ms. Dulos' disappearance, accusing them of obstructing the investigation and altered the evidence.

During the investigation, the police revealed details about the acrimonious nature of the couple's divorce proceedings.

But the court documents show that the discord was even greater than the one revealed before and describe a marriage that not only soured, but became downright toxic.

At one point, Ms. Dulos expressed concern about the "irrational, dangerous, intimidating, threatening and controlling behavior of Mr. Dulos".

As their judicial struggle continued, judicial proceedings became an endless litany of complaints, both serious and mundane.

Ms. Dulos 'lawyer, Wayne D. Effron, did not respond to e-mails or phone calls for comment, and Dulos' divorce lawyer, Michael Rose, declined to comment.

On Wednesday, 12 days after his wife's disappearance at home in New Canaan, Connecticut, we do not know where Ms. Dulos is. Investigators were looking for evidence more than 100 km from her home in a garbage treatment plant in Hartford, where they had previously found objects stained with blood in garbage cans.

Mr. Dulos, a luxury real estate developer, remained in detention in a state prison with a $ 500,000 bail.

Eugene Riccio, Mr. Dulos' lawyer in the criminal case, declined to comment.

Ms. Dulos filed for divorce in June 2017 and immediately applied for an emergency custody order for the couple's five children. She feared that Mr. Dulos would hurt her or the children, according to a court file.

She also said that Mr. Dulos, born in Turkey and raised in Greece, had threatened to abduct their children and take them abroad.

Mr. Dulos responded by calling his wife's accusations without foundation, saying that his wife seemed delusional and that her use of antidepressants made her unfit for sole custody of their children.

Thus began an acrimonious and prolonged end of a marriage begun almost 13 years ago. The couple was married in New York in August 2004, according to court documents. Both had attended the Brown University at Rhode Island; he graduated a year before her.

After graduation, Ms. Dulos returned to New York, where she was raised and where her parents lived. As a writer, she co-founded a theater troupe in the early 1990s and also earned a master's degree in writing from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, according to blog posts that she wrote about Patch.com.

The couple moved to Connecticut in 2004, according to public records. Between 2006 and 2010, they had two pairs of twins and a fifth child.

One year after the birth of their last child, Mrs. Dulos launched a blog. In 2011 and 2012 articles, accessible through an archived version of the site's RSS feed, she recounted the daily challenges of parenting, but also spoke fondly of her children and her husband.

In 2012, the Dulos family moved to Farmington, Connecticut. When Ms. Dulos filed for divorce, the family lived in a 15,000-square-foot house built by Mr. Dulos' company.

According to the court documents, while they were living in Farmington, the marriage was tense, and Mr. and Mrs. Dulos said in statements filed in 2017 that they had decided to separate .

In March of this year, according to court documents, Ms. Dulos allegedly discovered that Mr. Dulos had had an extramarital affair with Ms. Troconis for about a year, which Mr. Dulos had not contested.

The couple decided that Ms. Dulos and the children would move to her parents' home in Pound Ridge, New York, a small town in Westchester County, according to the court documents.

The couple plans to enroll their children in a private school in New Canaan, about 120 km from Farmington's home, according to court statements.

Disagreements soon followed.

According to this information, Ms. Dulos rented a house in New Canaan.

At the trials, Ms. Dulos said Mr. Dulos was hesitant to "tell me that our marriage is over" and threaten never to allow a divorce.

She also stated that she was concerned about the recent purchase of a handgun by Mr. Dulos, whom he kept at home; she feared that he was using it to harm her or their family.

In court documents, Mr. Dulos rejected Ms. Dulos' statements about her behavior. He never threatened her, he said, and intended to settle their divorce amicably.

He also stated that he had bought the gun to ensure the safety of his family, with his knowledge.

Mr. Dulos also denied ever threatening to kidnap the children. He said that it was Mrs. Dulos who had run away with the children and took them to New Canaan without telling him.

As the battle for child custody continued, both Mr. Dulos and Ms. Dulos filed numerous petitions and motions accusing them of ignoring court orders, denigrating in front of children and countless others. slights.

In one case, Mr. Dulos asked that Ms. Dulos be reprimanded for hiding information, such as choosing a new pediatrician for the children and having one of their sons enrolled in a hockey team. on ice.

In another case, Ms Dulos accused Mr Dulos of not having given the children bedtime proper. She also amended her documents to apparently document each time the children spent time with Ms. Troconis, which court orders had initially prohibited.

Both parents also filed numerous motions stating that the other was denigrating them. Ms. Dulos stated that her husband had treated her as mad in front of her children, claiming that she was a mother unfit to live who "should be locked up".

Mr Dulos accused him of having treated him as a "psychopath", who did not care about his children and did not work hard enough to make money for the family.

At one point, he said in court, Ms. Dulos told the children that "your father likes Farmington because he's not very smart; successful people live in New Canaan.

John Slowiaczek, a divorce lawyer and former president of the American Academy of Marital Lawyers, said the vitriolic language was typical of many divorce cases and that the high number of filings was not unusual in those cases. cases involving wealthy spouses.

"You can file as many pleadings as you want and no one can stop you," he added.

Even with Mr. Dulos in jail, the battle for custody between the two men was raging. On Monday, the same day Mr. Dulos was brought to trial, Justice Donna Heller of the Stamford Superior Court of Justice issued an emergency order revoking his access rights.

The next day, Ms. Dulos' mother, Gloria Farber, filed a motion seeking custody of her grandchildren.

According to court documents, the five children have been staying with Ms. Farber in New York since Ms. Dulos disappeared.

Nate Schweber and Susan Beachy contributed to the reports.

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