Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Missing Mom Murder Trial - Blood Evidence

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

When Connecticut mother-of-5 Jennifer Dulos suddenly vanished, the world stopped to look. While the world was looking for the missing mom, her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, drove around town dropping off bags of trash in public trash bins. Join Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack as they break down the story of the missing mom and the people who betrayed her. Transcript Highlights   00:02:29 Joe shares childhood memories  00:05:55 Talk about family   00:06:41 Discussion of Troconis trial   00:08:37 Discussion of Dulos marriage  00:12:18 Discussion of what the Nanny notices  00:14:21 Talk about paper towels used to clean  00:18:56 Talk about police body cam footage  00:21:30 Discussion of testimony  00:23:13 Talk about several types of tests  00:25:51 Talk about stains and what they mean  00:27:31 Discussion of blood drops  00:29:42 Description of different cast-off blood trails  00:31:21 Joe talks about blood  00:35:17 Discussion about determining death  00:40:35 Talk about blood and DNA locations  00:45:21 Discussion of amount of blood  00:50:38 Joe talks about suicide   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. There are not too many things in this world that are more tragic than a motherless child. It's really hard to fathom that for those of us that grew up with a mama. Um, and, but, and it's hard, I think for anyone that grew up with that level of normalcy in your world to appreciate, um, to appreciate what life might hold for these individuals moving forward that no longer have a loving mother. And then to compound that with the absence of a father. Wow. There's so much to learn in this world.

There's so many things to experience. So many lessons to be taught. But we have a case that has been in the news now for several years that is finally, after all this time, moving forward. And the case is that of Jennifer Dulos. It's Jennifer Dulos and the tragedy that befell this vibrant mother, mother of five, and not really knowing what the future of those children is,

but in the immediate, we don't really know what the future is of the trials that But in the immediate. We don't really know. What the future is of the trials. That we have at hand. I know this. I know that Foytis Dulos. Her former husband.

Is no longer in the picture. Because he took his life. And they are no more. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan. And this. Is Body Balance. I think Dave some of the great memories I have from childhood actually stem from nightmares and the nightmares, um, after I shook myself awake as a small child, I used to always have a nightmare involving falling. And I even fell out of a, out of my bed as a young child and struck the floor and fractured my collarbone. And I kind of,

without verbalizing it, um, walked around to my mother, for a couple of days just with my right arm just kind of hanging and not using it. But through all of those nightmares that I went through as a child, my mother was there to comfort me. That's not the case with the Dulos children. That, that part, as hard as that is to swallow, that part of their life is gone, literally, literally. And they don't have a father to assuage any kind of fears or terrors that they might have at night. As a matter of fact, I think that when they look back in the rear view mirror, they're going to look back and they will see terror in their rearview mirror going back with this family. I don't know how any family recovers from this kind of trauma. You know, we've covered so many stories over the years that ended up in death that started with a marriage that fell apart due to cheating and in the case of well the trial of michelle traconis she was the other woman

but to back up to find out how we got here you mentioned five children jennifer dulos and fotis dulos were married they had five children to help along with this, they hired a nanny, Lauren Almeida. I'm mentioning her now because as we go through this from here on out, Lauren Almeida is the source of a lot of information that we get about the inner workings of the family dynamic. And Lauren Almeida, at 32 years old, has been with these children for 13 years pretty much. And she is, or or 12 years and she's still with them joe as we as we talk about all of this lauren almida began as a babysitter for the delos children when she was in college she and her sister were part-time nanny babysitter slash nanny and when she got out of college jennifer dulos asked her to remain on as the

nanny and she did so when i think about the five children of jennifer and potus dulos i think thank god for lauren almeida the nanny yeah i don't think that i don't think that we would um we would have the level of info that we have right now. If it wasn't for Lauren, the Traconis trial as we're taping this is actually going on. And I was a bore witness to, to her testimony and it was powerful. I think that it was powerful Dave, because it's,

God, there's not a, it sounds, I know this sounds horribly salacious, but to have her on the stand was kind of voyeuristic, I think, relative to the Dooliff's family lives and kind of the inner workings. Just the, I can't imagine, this is the thing that struck me, the logistics of moving five kids around to all of their activities and school and all this stuff. And this became a point of contention because Foytus actually got rather belligerent and argumentative and threatening, according to Jennifer. And she was accused of making things more difficult than they should be because she had scheduled activities for the kids on Saturdays. Well, I got to tell you, you know, that's what happens. I mean, kids have soccer.

They have dance. I mean, you name it. And certainly my family's been involved in all of it. And it's hectic. And then you put that extra pressure of a separation that's going on, and particularly a separation that is involving infidelity. Right. Oh, my God.

You talk about adding spice. To get right down to it, Jennifer Dulos and Fotis Dulos went on vacation with the children, all five children, in March of 2017. They spent one week out in Aspen, Colorado, doing snow skiing, and they spent the second week in Florida, you know, water skiing. And it was a fantastic journey for a vacation. But it was during that time in March of 2017 that Jennifer Dulos went to Lauren Almeida, the children's nanny, and said, I believe Fotis is cheating on me and I have the proof. And Lauren Almeida thought a lot of Fotis. She thought a lot of him as a man. She had not seen different sides of him at that point, but she was just shocked. But that's

where everything changed in the doulos family that led to what we're talking about today so think march 2017 may of 2019 right jennifer doulos and photos doulos were separated jennifer doulos was living had the five children with her and they had rented a house uh fotis doulos uh the woman that jennifer thought he was having an affair with michelle traconis actually was living with fotis doulos in may of 2019 so jennifer was right in her suspicions now what happened on the day that jennifer doulos went missing and you mentioned the getting the children from here to there and different things and meetings and it was a busy schedule and it was busy enough that people kind of knew what her schedule was her friends lauren almida the nanny

knew jennifer dulos schedule during the day because of the five children that needed to be, you know, here and there. So on this particular day, Jennifer Dulos dropped the children off at school, went back to the house, and that's it. That is all we know based on the evidence we have right this minute. She that morning she didn't show up at any of her planned appointments later that day lauren almida the nanny picked the children up and kept moving she had texted because they had a a journey planned they had to go to new york they had to go traveling to a number of different places and lauren had texted jennifer about one thing he came it was an ipad uh one of the children was was not allowed to use their iPad for Instagram because they had gotten on restriction over it. And the nanny was saying, can we take this?

You know, I know it's been taken, but it's a long drive. And I think that if I remember correctly, they couldn't find the child's iPad. And they were going to have to utilize according to low, uh, sorry, Lauren used the family iPad. And that was her thing. She wanted to know if they could bring that with them and because it had Instagram going into the city. Right.

And, and when she didn't get a reply, it was funny because on the stand, you know, one of those little things, a little slice of life that we all have gone through, but on the stand, Lauren Almeida, you know, they asked her, well, what did you do? Well, when I didn't hear back from her, I made the decision. It was a long drive. We took the family iPad. Anyway, that was the beginning of realizing that something's not quite right. Jennifer wasn't replying to text messages, couldn't get her on the phone. And so by that evening, when nobody had heard from her, and by then Lauren had talked with, you know, Jennifer's extended family and friends, and it was Lauren Almighty that called police

and said, I don't know where she is. And so as police came to investigate, there were a number of red flags fairly early on in their investigation. One was the fact that there was a vehicle in the garage and there was one missing. Michelle wasn't there, but her purse was there. Her keys were there. Items that if she was going somewhere, she would normally have. Didn't she leave, she left a cup of tea too, I think, that she commonly carried with her to drink. Right. Yeah, why would you leave a location like this?

And, you know, look, we look for patterns in investigations and things. If anybody deviates from a norm, we are, I think as investigators, we are cynical. We assume, you know, because we're requested out at something like this, you know, we assume that the worst has happened most of the time and we start to dig into those spots. It goes back to the old adage, you know, uh, where, and they didn't know at this time if this was a death or not, but you know, we, when we work deaths as death investigators, we assume that every death is a homicide until proven otherwise. And so when you start to see as an investigator and look, Lauren would have truly had the insight into this. Look, you know, she's saying she would

have never left the house without these items. And why are they here? And she's not here. And this other vehicle is not here. I think it was her Suburban. Right. Uh, that was actually missing, but the, the Land Rover. Yeah.

Well, Range Rover was there, uh, and parked in the garage. And that's where there were just red flags. Like I said, now the first officer arrives on scene and this is where Joseph Scott Morgan, you got a lot of explaining to do, boy, because I'm going to tell you,

right off the bat, when the first officer is on scene, to get you up to speed, Jennifer Dulos has not been seen since she dropped the children off early that morning. She missed all of her appointments. Nobody that normally has contact with her has had contact and now the police officer arrives and he starts looking around now there was something that Lauren Almeida noticed in the kitchen and she had the day before placed a number of paper towels in a cabinet in in the kitchen and when she saw the tea she was cleaning up she had brought subway

home for the children to eat because they had the long drive to new york and so she was just looking for basic stuff to clean up before they left and realized that she had loaded like 10 paper towels in this cabinet and they were gone they were like two left there were two i think it was actually 12 and there were 10 missing 10 that's the thing that just, gross, I guess that's what that is. I don't know. It's like 10 paper. Who uses that many paper towels in a day? I know. I know. And I'm going to get to that from a forensics perspective because that's got, that has got,

that's a big tell, you know, when you begin to think about this person, Lauren, who has, you know, like we've established, Dave, she's got this inside look at what's going on within this family dynamic, and down to, you mentioned those little slices of life, and the devil is in the details. The explanation is actually in the details, because within this environment, within this environment, Lauren understood schedules. She understood logistics. She understood, this sounds like a military operation, she understood planning. She understood what it took for this family to live the life that they were living, she understood the stressors. And the one big thing that she understood is that Jennifer Dulos would never, ever abandon her child. I think the older I've gotten, the more clumsy I've gotten, Dave.

It seems like there is not a day that goes by in my life now that I don't spill something. And by the way, I meant to tell you this. My refrigerator here at home, I've got an ice maker, I think, that is possessed. Because every time I open the door to the freezer, ice falls out that's caught in the tube and I can't get the problem resolved. And of course that winds up, you know, my wife, Kim saying, what's going on? And it's always the same thing. Ah, the ice fell out of the freezer, you know, and there I am, I'm down on my hands and knees trying to pick up the ice because we've got these hardwood floors in the kitchen and I'm worried about stains and all that stuff on them and are slipping.

I have to find the ice. But Dave, I don't. And the one thing I'm always asking my wife, and of course, my wife, God bless her, she always knows what supplies are on hand and she knows where the paper towels are. And I'm always looking for them. And I think it's because I'm the chief among sinners. I'm the one that's using all of them all the time, and I expect there to be an unending supply. But when you think about 10 rolls of paper towels, how, you know, you go back and look,

all these paper towel companies, how do they sell paper towels? Well, they, you know, they tell us how absorbent they are, you know, what, what you can clean up and man, those tests that they show on TV, Lord have mercy. It looks like when they take their brand and they wipe it across the surface, they want you to think you can do surgery on that spot without applying anything else. All it takes is one of their paper towels. And of course, we know that that's not the reality. There's always some residual amount that's left behind. And I think that that's key in Jennifer Dulos' case, Dave. Well, when the first police officer shows up, he comes in and there were two officers. One had a body cam, one didn't. The first officer on the scene is Lieutenant Aaron Latourot.

And he explains what he is seeing as he walks through. He walked into the garage. He went through the entire house. But I want to go to the garage because that was where the Range Rover is there. But her Chevy Suburban is not. Talking about Jennifer Dulo's Chevy Suburban is not in the garage. And that was the car they would have expected her to normally drive. And she's hauling around an army of kids.

Right. And so as the officer arrives on scene, he and the other officer, officer black, who has the body cam, we actually have a chance to watch this. The body cam footage lasts about 20 minutes. And in it, you actually see the garage and you see things that they really stand out, Joe. And you showed me some of the pictures and explained what they meant. Because while Lachereau, the officer, didn't know exactly what he could not say. Well, I see blood in here.

He said, I see things that could be, might be, are... And one of the things that was suggested early on in the garage, and Latreau, he said on the tape, or during testimony, he said, while we waited, I looked at the vehicle.

I noticed that there was what appeared to be red blood on the front of that vehicle. There was a red mark on the grill area. It drew his attention because it didn't match the color of the grill, didn't match the color of the vehicle. There was no damage to the vehicle that he could see, and he and the other officer discussed, maybe hit a deer.

Maybe they hit, you know, maybe the driver hit a deer, but there were no, there was no hair. There was no indication that a deer was hit. So they have what they both believe to be blood on the vehicle and other places as well. And you cannot say it. I don't know how this works. I mean, do you guys not have like a wink and a nod to one another when you're on scene?

You know, it's blood, but you can't say it's blood. You have to be vague about it. Yeah. I'm so glad you brought this up because I know a lot of people have questions about this. I have people that are asking me that ask me this question all the time.

Uh, we will couch. we being investigators, we will couch in our reports prior to presumptive testing being conducted at a scene, we will say things like, let me see, how can I phrase it? This is a blood-like substance, you're in a report, you'll hear that or see it. And then you'll see, um, a red substance or a red dried substance. Um, and you, you never want to paint yourself into a corner because let me tell you how this happens. If there's not a presumptive test that takes place, and I'll explain that in just a second, and you're a police officer and you write in your report that that is blood, when they get you on the stand, if that's in your official report, the defense attorney is going to rip you to shreds. And this is the way the

conversation is going to go. They say, you know, gee, Investigator Morgan, I noticed here that you said that you found blood staining the floor or you found blood staining the side of the vehicle. I was wondering, are you a serologist? No, sir. Well, are you a trace evidence specialist? No, sir. Are you a physician? Yeah, you must be a physician. Tell us where did you go to medical school? And you see what they're doing here. That's why we frame things this way, Dave. Even in forensics, you know, unless we can confirm it, because what they're doing is when the defense says this, and look, you know, when we get up on the stand as investigators and experts, they ask us to read off the list. They say, you know, they ask us where all our credentials are, how many other times you've been qualified as an expert, and that validates you. Well, all the defense has to do, they can validate you all they want to in voir dire, but all the defense has to do is to look and say, oh, so you didn't go to medical school? So you're not actually a blood expert now, are you? And by the way, you're calling this blood. You didn't even confirm that it was blood. Let me ask you something.

Can rust look like blood? Under certain circumstances, that's a yes or no question, Investigator Morgan. Yes, it can. Can dry chocolate look like blood? Well, yes or no. It's simple yes or no. Aren't you capable? And what they're saying by doing that is that they're diminishing you in the eyes of the jury. They're trying to make you look like a fool. And trust me, chief among sinners, I've looked like a fool up on the stand. You learn these lessons. So when the officers are looking at this and they have to do an official report, they cannot say that this is definitively blood. But yeah, we do wink and nod about it, but that doesn't mean that we're going to include it in

an official report until we get somebody out there that can do a presumptive test. And the most, probably the one that people are most familiar with is something called the Castle-Meyer test. It's been around for years and years. So if you have an area that you suspect is blood, you can essentially treat that area and make an application there. And you'd simply look at it. It's what's called a qualifying test. You can say, yes, definitively, this is blood. I can't say necessarily whose blood it is, but I can say this is blood at that point in time. And then there's like multiple different steps that you go through.

You can go all the way to blood typing and take that all the way out to DNA, which eventually happens in this case. But you have to be very, very careful. Here the officer notices things that he believes could be blood. And what else did they find, Joe? Forensically speaking, what else did the officer observe? Well, obviously you have these red stains that are about, and these are, and this is the first blush of the officer. This is before the, let's see, how can I frame this?

This is before the actual forensic scientists get out there to do their thing in CSI before they get out there. And look, if I'm a police officer and I've been tasked with going into a house, maybe on a welfare check, you know, you're looking for a missing person. Look, that's what this is about at this point in time. In this case, you've got a missing mother out there. You want to find her. And if you take a look, a gander around the house, if you will, you look around. If you've got what appears to be blood, you know that something dynamic happened there. And, and when you see the patterns that are left behind,

I think that one of the, one of the, the real tremendous pieces of evidence here that they were able to kind of identify, there was actually a blood spot on a faucet. And I think that's in the kitchen, if I'm not mistaken. Um, and why would there be blood on a faucet. And I think that's in the kitchen, if I'm not mistaken. Um, and why would there be blood on a faucet? Well, do people just bleed in homes? Yeah. People bleed all the time in homes. The trick is you have to determine whose blood is that and who, you know, who, who does it actually track back to? Um, but here, here's the thing, Dave, and this is specifically what we were talking about earlier. You can have blood, like contact trace blood, where if you, if you get blood on your hand, anybody that's ever had blood issuing from your body. I'll give you an example. I get,

I get bloody noses all the time. All right. And particularly this time of year when it's really cold out, dry air. And I might wake up in the middle of the night, my nose is bleeding. I've got blood, you know, on my pillow. Well, that's not a real dynamic deposition of blood. That's, that's a transfer. And so it'll be smeared. The droplets will have no evidence of real velocity to it. But in Jennifer's case, there is an image that was put up by Daily Mail. And when Daily Mail put that image up, I had this light bulb that went off and I knew that something horrific had happened in that garage. And this is why. There are two droplets that are on the floor, and these are dynamic droplets. That means that there is movement with them. If you will just think about

almost like a teardrop shape. When you think about a teardrop, kind of how it falls, free falls, you know, like this, and you get this image. I think it's more art than it is science, but it's because liquid falls through the air in a perfect sphere. I don't know if people realize that. Blood in particular does. When it falls, it's falling in a perfect sphere before it strikes the ground and it makes this pattern. But with this, it's got a teardrop pattern and there's two blood droplets that are lying parallel to one another. The more narrow end of the blood droplet gives you the indication of movement. It's almost like you have got an arrow pointing in the direction of which the blood was flying. And Dave, on the floor of that garage, there were two blood droplets,

and they are pointing in one particular direction. To me, that's an indication of violence because those blood droplets are what we would classify as low velocity blood spatter patterns. And, you know, and the way we classify these, these patterns is that low velocity is like hands, feet. Just imagine how much energy could you generate with your bare hands if you're striking somebody. Okay. Um, you could do it with a knife that would be cast off. Medium velocity, maybe a bat or lead pipe, you generate that kind of velocity. In high velocity, the particulate bits of blood that are left behind, that's going to happen with a firearm. It almost becomes like an aspirate. It's very tiny. So this is low velocity that you're seeing in this image. And Dave, I think, I think that something violent happened to Jennifer Doulos on the floor of that garage.

And something generated that blood and deposited it on the floor, perhaps adjacent to where she had been laying. If you figured that the human body holds, I don't know, and a lot of it's dependent upon the size, your size, and the age, development, male versus female, but roughly perhaps just under two gallons of blood. If you are traumatized and your heart continues to beat, you're going to have a huge amount of deposition on whatever surface you're lying upon or standing upon. But here's the thing. When, if you sustain a head strike, the head is probably the most vascular area. It is the most vascular area in the human body.

That's why, you know, like if we popped in the mouth and get a bloody lip or a nose, it seems like it won't quit bleeding. And for anybody out there that's ever had blunt impact to your head, and you've, you know, down here in the South, they, you know, my granny would say, boy, you're going impact to your head and you've you know down here in the south they uh you know my granny would say boy you're gonna bust your head wide open and if you split your head open you bleed profusely it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a lethal trauma but your head is so vascular if you don't stem that bleeding you're going to bleed all over the place um but in the case of what they found in the garage, Joe, can you tell how long the blood has been there? Yeah, you can. And one of the fascinating things about blood is that when you

first come upon it, if you have a wet sample out there, and particularly when you see a big pool of blood, one of the fascinating things that happens is this is before the blood actually dries. You'll begin to see the blood and the serum separate from one another. And so you'll have on one side, you know, blood is not a, it is a multi-component substance. So, you know, you've got a lot of ingredients that go into blood. You've got RBCs, red blood cells, you've got white blood cells, you've got plasma.

And so, you know, you've got all of these elements of blood, but the serum will actually separate off of the blood. So you'll have this kind of clear yellowish liquid on one side of a pool of blood, and then you'll have what looks like the RBCs have migrated to one side. You see that that's generally with like a really big grouping, and that takes, that would take a couple of hours for that to actually begin to occur. But as the blood dries, it takes on a specific appearance depending upon how long it's been out all right now the reason we're talking about jennifer dulos disappearance

and the trial of michelle traconis because they believe that they being uh officials believe that there was enough evidence to prove that jennifer dulos died and that it, Fotis, that they, they believe that Fotis Dulos planned it all out, rode his bike to Jennifer Dulos' home, waited, lied in wait in her garage, beat her to death at her home, and then loaded her body, either dead or dying, into her Suburban, drove the Suburban a couple of miles away near a lake, where he then transferred her body from the Suburban into a truck he borrowed without permission from a co-worker, or one of his employees, rather, and then threw the bike in the back of the truck he put the the bike that he rode to jennifer dulo's house he put it in

the suburban with her body he transfers her body and the bike leaves the suburban park to abandoned he then drives in the truck the pickup truck to wherever it is that he is going to dispose of Jennifer Dulo's body. And I have to say they, we have not located her body at this point. And so police are utilizing, they're, they're getting information from the house, from the garage. Um, they're the 10 rolls of, uh, unaccounted for paper towels. They also have been able to look at the seat in the truck that he borrowed without permission from an employee. And forensically speaking, Joe, I'm asking, can they, they being investigators, they're using everything from, you know, blood testing and all these

different areas, but they're also investigators have been able to track his movements, uh, that of photos, Dulos using cameras all around town, security cameras and things like that. And that's why Michelle Triconis is on trial, because later in dropping off bags of trash in public trash cans, receptacles. And as police were investigating, they went and found some of these trash bags and determined that they had Jennifer Dulos DNA. I'm speed dialing this because that's what the that's what police say happened. And that's what they're trying to prove in court that Michelle Tricones was, she's seen on video with Fotis Dulos dropping these bags of trash. But how are they going to prove, Joe, that it was Fotis Dulos that did the killing in the garage,

that it was Fotis Dulos that transported her body, that it was Fotis, I mean, was it not his employee? What if his employee, who, by the way, Fotis Dulos had a haircut, had a shaved head, similar to the employee who owned the truck that he borrowed? I mean, is it not possible that an employee of Fotis Dulos had a thing for Jennifer, and he went and killed her? Yeah, I think that if Fotis Dulos, who has deprived us of his presence now in his life, if we were having his trial, I think that that's one of the points that would be argued.

They arrested Dulos, Fotis. Yes. He committed suicide the day after he was charged with her murder. He did. One of the things that's really fascinating, Dave, that you don't see a lot, they consulted the medical examiner to render an opinion about this. And it was fascinating. And here's essentially what the medical examiner came up with.

Keep in mind, this is absent a body. Is this something that only happens where they consult? No, they do. They will, but it's really hard for an ME to make a determination. But my God, Dave, they were so specific. This is what they actually said. The medical examiner, now this is the medical examiner stating this, categorized the incident involving Jennifer as homicidal violence and also stated that would likely include some combination of traumatic blunt force trauma or blunt force injuries, such as you ready for this bludgeoning, beating and, or sharp force

injuries such as stabbing or slashing. So that brings us to, how do you draw that conclusion? I go back to the blood deposition. If, if you're talking about dynamic blood deposition, the only thing that would be, in my estimation, the only thing that the ME could draw upon, unless they have evidence of how much or what volume of blood was spilled on the scene and then attempted to have been been cleaned up because you remember i talked about the volume of blood that we carry around in our bodies um there's a term and i may have said this before but there's a term that that's used in forensic pathology that states the volume of blood is income the volume of blood that is deposited at the scene is incompatible with life. So if you show up at a scene and you've got a huge volume of blood at the scene,

the medical examiner could opine that if this much blood is outside of somebody's body, they ain't with us anymore. That makes sense. But how do they know that here we got two droplets? I know, exactly. So that brings us to this idea that perhaps they have evidence have this kind of deposition that is, from a velocity standpoint, is consistent with low velocity. Because that's the only way you come up with this idea of slashing. If you draw a knife across somebody, if you plunge a knife into somebody and you draw it back off, you cast it off.

You can cast off. Just imagine sticking a paintbrush into a paint can and throwing it over your shoulder, you know, flipping the brush over your shoulder. That's cast off. Or if somebody is being impacted where they're down on the floor and they're being beaten or kicked. Okay. Which is horrific to think about this mother of five, you know, in this position on the floor, it's, it's quite, it's, it's, it's quite the thing when you begin to, you know, kind of consider what are they going to do with this case with Traconis? Because they're talking about her trial really at its core comes down to her aiding Feudus Dulos in destruction of evidence. And that's what they're actually kind of saying here. So I don't know how I'm hoping that as this trial progresses, we're going

to hear more about the bloodstain evidence and not just in, we've already had a DNA expert that has come onto the stand, has talked about probability and they've excluded everybody. They did cheek swabs on all of the kids. Uh, Foytis Dulos, uh, your, the employee that you mentioned, they got him, they've got Lauren. They had to do, because you have to exclude, you know, the blood that you have present. I mentioned that employee, uh, just because those, as Joe and I both are told you earlier, the, the trial is ongoing of Michelle Traconis, uh, the employee that owned the truck that

did not give Dulos permission to use the truck. Uh, Dulos actually to use the truck. Dulos actually took it twice. He took it two separate times. And police have said that Dulos cut his hair to match this employee. So as to see if on cameras around town, they actually see Dulos. But from a distance, hey, man, that could be the employee. That's why I said that earlier.

You know, the defense is going to hang on that. But, Joe, would they be able to get, they being investigators, are you going to be able to get, I know we have blood in the garage, are we going to have blood or some type of DNA in the Suburban that's going to be traceable? Are we going to have it in the front of the truck? Because we know that Dulos actually took the truck that he borrowed without permission and washed it out, scrubbed the floor, the seat. Would DNA or would some type of genetic material from the victim here, Jennifer Dulos, rest in that passenger seat if he put her

in there? Would they be able to find out? Well, they could. The most essential thing from a forensic standpoint is that you categorize that deposition. Was it something that was generated? If they come across DNA there, okay, what type of DNA sourcing are you referring to? Is it blood deposition, like from a blood droplet? Was it a sneeze? Was it hair?

Was it touch DNA where you've got partial strand that's left behind? I don't know. Maybe Jennifer Dulos was prone to nosebleeds for all we know. We don't know, but you can, if it is her DNA that is there, you can specifically identify it to exclude all others. Even her children, you can do that. So they'll be able to trace her from the time that allegedly, well, no, Dulles is dead, but the police saying that he loaded her into the Suburban, they'd be able to find out where he laid her in the suburban, right? They could, and a lot of that would have to go to a, if you take a body that is producing or has produced and is wet from blood, I have been on scenes before where bodies have been moved from their initial position. And you can actually see, you can at least project in your mind that this looks like this person may have been laying in

a fetal position. There's a huge deposition up here in a smaller area that might be where the head rested. There's an absence of blood here, but down here there's more and you can kind of visualize in your mind what position the body would, but it would have to be such a copious amount of blood in order to make a determination like that. Um, and, and, you know, you have to look at also a typical, why would, okay. I understand your blood could be in the front seat of a vehicle. Going back to my example of a nosebleed. Yeah, I've had a nosebleed driving down the road.

Is it beyond the realm of possibility? I could have it on an armrest. Even on the steering wheel, you know, it's reactive. You touch it like that. But why, if it's, say for instance, if it's in the back of the truck, why would blood be there? Why would her blood be there and why would it be this huge volume of it? How can you tell the volume of it? That's what I'm getting to, the volume.

How do you tell how much? You really can't. There's no way, and people have tried to do this before because a lot of it is dependent upon how degraded the sample is, the surface that it's on. Because if you're talking about carpet, for instance, if you're on a carpeted the sample is, the surface that it's on. Because if you're talking about carpet, for instance, if you're on a carpeted surface, dude, there's no way to assess a volume of blood in carpet. There's, I don't know, because it would leach through,

it would stain the top, the actual carpeting, then the underlying, not the mat below it, but just where the carpet is woven through, then to the underneath mat, and then onto whatever subflooring there is beneath the carpet. So you couldn't assess it that way. And even with dried blood, let's say if it was on concrete or on hardwood, I don't think that you could arrive at a reasonable volume. The one way you could actually have a guess at it, and maybe this is what the ME was doing in

this particular case, was to say, okay, they have got enough blood stains or they have, there's an indication that this blood was widespread. Given that, I can kind of get an idea that this was a lot of blood and there's a high probability that it would in fact be incompatible with life. But you know, we don't, we're at a distinct disadvantage here, Dave, because Boitus Dulos is dead. And you know, we don't, we're at a distinct disadvantage here, Dave, because Boydus Dulos is dead. And, you know, he, and for folks that are not that familiar with the case, we have to understand, he took his own life by carbon monoxide asphyxiation. He was found within a garage and in the front seat of a vehicle, slumped over. And here's something that the listeners might not know. He left a note.

And it's not that you don't know that he left a note. It is, did you know that notes in suicides and in the medical legal world, we investigate more suicides than we do homicides. They outpace homicides. So generally two or three to one. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, yeah, there are more suicides that occur than homicides. We never have guessed that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know. Wow. Do they all leave a note? No. That's what I was going to say. In my experience, I can't speak to all of my colleagues all over the country. This is my little slice of the pie, Joe Scott's, I'll own it. Um, it is the exception as opposed

to the norm. And I've often, when I teach suicide investigation, I tell the investigators or students I'm teaching, I say, it would seem to me at least that with this idea of taking one's life, it's almost like you're standing over on a big rock ledge over a river. And you're either going to do it or you're not going to do it. And some people just take the jump and they have to build up the courage. And, you know, I've had people that have gotten really drunk before they did it that were high on drugs. Many of them will not write a note. But then again, I actually had a lady many years ago that had those, do you know those black and white composition notebooks that you can buy that are actually bound with a spine? fine. Dave, she had 13 of those, 13 front and back page, and they were all a suicide note that had gone on and on and on and on and on. It would seem, you know, she's just pouring her soul out

in these things. And I read through the entire, you know, through this entire collection. I did have that happen several times, but to have someone leave a note many times, it's like they've been, the psychiatrists refer to it as suicidal ideation. They will have this ideation, this thought of suicide, and finally they decide to act on it. But Dulos took the time to write the note, and I find this is really, really interesting. In the note, he actually talks about how, and this is paraphrasing, that Tricona's had nothing to do with Jennifer's disappearance. But he's saying that he's not guilty of this. Right. And he's also saying that his lawyer friend, who, by the way, has apparently been caught up in this and is charged he allegedly dug a grave dave yep as part of this little confederacy that they're alleging took place um he says he had nothing

to do with it and that they are not to harass his family or his friends and all this stuff and so by virtue of that bit of knowledge you began to think about this and it's okay. Well, you're saying that Tricona's had nothing to do with Jennifer's disappearance. How do you know? She's the other woman for all I know. She's jealous.

And we have her on video dropping trash that night that we know had some of her DNA, Jennifer's DNA on these rags that had blood on them that were dumped in trash. Yeah. Yeah. Video in trash. Yeah. Got video of that. Yeah. And he, you know, he takes his life, uh, by carbon monoxide asphyxiation, which, um, again

is, is it happens. It's, it's something that's common or for over the years, particularly in urban areas where you have a garage, um, garage, this happens. I've had people that have run pipes into cars. I had a guy that actually had a car, had a truck. He went to great lengths in a tragic case, but he had a truck that was up on blocks, Dave, that was outside of his window and the engine ran. And he used a glass cutter to cut a hole in his bedroom window ran a dryer vent pipe a really long one the kind of expandable ones into the hole in the window and taped off his his uh tailpipe with this thing sealed it

went into this home laid down on the bed with the cremains, which are the cremated remains of both his wife and daughter, laying on the bed next to him, and asphyxiated himself on the bed. So I've seen this before. Some people choose to go out this way. But here's the problem. Any knowledge that we might have of what actually happened to Jennifer Dulos, I think at least, may have died along with Freudus Dulos. My hope is, is that through forensics, perhaps,

we can resurrect her and have Jennifer tell her story. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.