They found a pit covered by branches and leaf litter on the steel slits of several grills for roasting meat. The hole had the dimensions of a body: two feet wide and six feet long. "100% a human grave ," Jay Lawlor, one of the people who discovered it, told police.
Lawlor and his friend Lee McKay strolled through the fields of an exclusive shooting club in Windsor, Connecticut, when they made the strange find in the middle of the forest. Inside the pit they found a blue canvas and two bags of unopened lime.
McKay asked him: "What is lime for?"
- "To try to get rid of a body," Lawlor replied.
Then, they noticed a fact that made them call the police. His friend and founder of the club, lawyer Kent Mawhinney , 54, had been linked by the authorities to the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos , 50, the mother of five children who has not been seen since late May 2019.
A review of the tracking club with tracking dogs, however, found no traces of the woman or incriminating evidence.
Authorities suspect Mawhinney helped his close friend Fotis Dulos , 52, to get rid of his wife, Jennifer Dulos.
This week Fotis Dulos was charged with the murder of his partner, mother of five children. He had already been arrested in June for interfering with a police investigation and manipulating evidence, but was released on bail.
Among the defendants is also Michelle Troconis , 45, for conspiring to commit a homicide, reported the NBC network affiliate in Connecticut.
This Thursday, Dulos and Troconis left prison after paying a bail of six million dollars and 1.5 million, respectively. They were allowed to continue the process under householding with a satellite tracking device. Dulos also had to turn in his passport, NBC reported.
Mawhinney was also accused of conspiring to commit murder.
Missing
The Dulos marriage was separate and in a legal process to divorce: a contentious dispute involving child support and child custody money.
Jennifer Dulos was last seen on May 24 while driving her black Chevrolet Suburban truck. He was returning from leaving his children between 8 and 13 years of school. Connecticut police found the car later that day, abandoned with apparent bloodstains.
That day, Fotis Dulos borrowed a pickup truck from an employee of his company. After using the car he was taken to a $ 250 cleaning service. And convinced the owner to change the seats. Although he paid attention, he decided to keep the old seats. Something that allowed the police to link the man with his wife's DNA in a bloodstain.
The red Toyota pickup that Mr. Dulos had borrowed the day his partner disappeared was captured by security cameras moving between Farmington, where his job was, and New Canaan, where Jennifer Dulos lived.
Investigators then discovered another surveillance video in which Dulos employee's red car was seen 100 feet from his wife's car.
“It is believed that Dulos operated the victim's vehicle, which was carrying Jennifer Dulos's body and other objects associated with the cleaning that occurred in the residence's parking lot,” reads the arrest warrant.
Authorities ruled out that the owner of the red van was involved in the homicide: data from his cell phone indicates that he was elsewhere. But forensic tests on the old seats he kept revealed that Jennifer Dulos's DNA was contained in a bloodstain on the passenger's seat, local media Stamford Advocate reported.
Additionally, Fotis Dulos DNA mixed with Jennifer's blood was discovered in her home.
A neighbor of Fotis Dulos told police that he had lent him an ax to cut wood, a month before his partner disappeared. Forensic experts recovered the cutting instrument and are in the process of examining it, the New York Post reported Wednesday .
Defense attorney Norm Pattis undermined the discovery of the ax, claiming that it would not have been left "in plain sight" for the police to find if it had been used to commit a crime.
Jennifer Dulos's family reacted with mixed emotions after the news of the arrest of her husband and her lover.
"Although we are relieved that the wait for these charges is over, there is no sense of closure for us. Nothing can bring Jennifer back. We miss her every day and regret her loss forever," they said in a statement.
"Justice!", Wrote the New Canaan Police Department on the social network Twitter after the news of the arrests.
Troconis admitted in August that he went with Fotis Dulos to wash the Toyota, according to the arrest warrants. When the police asked her why she thought that her boyfriend borrowed her employee's truck and paid him a $ 250 service, she replied: "Well, obviously ... all the evidence says that ... you showed me the image of blood at the door, it 's because Jennifer's body was there at some point. "
He also said that he had been lying when he previously said he was with Fotis Dulos on the morning of May 24 and that, in fact, he did not know where he had been.
An incriminating book
His initial claim was found in "alibi scripts" at the home of Fotis Dulos. Troconis admitted that she and her boyfriend had prepared the notes to account for their actions the day Jennifer Dulos disappeared.
The notes omitted "all incriminating behavior." Investigators have previously said that Fotis Dulos and Troconis were seen in a surveillance video on May 24 in Hartford hiding items that were later determined to have the victim's blood.
In these apparently incriminating writings the name of the lawyer Mawhinney also appeared. Troconis said he had met with Fotis Dulos the day his wife disappeared. And although he denied it, data on the location of his phone shows that he was in the house from 7:30 am to 8:20 am, the NBC affiliated station in Connecticut reported.
The court hearings of Fotis Dulos have been mostly brief. In interviews with the media, he talked about how much he loves and misses his five children, who are in the custody of Jennifer Dulos's mother, Gloria Farber.
Farber has requested sole custody of the children. Fotis Dulos has fought against and recently tried to dissolve his divorce case, arguing that he should not proceed since Jennifer Dulos has not been present at the hearings.
See also:
Dramatic turn in the case of Jennifer Dulos