Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - SHOCK CHARGE! Missing-Mom-Hubby Fotis Dulos trade murder for alibi? DULOS LAWYER CHARGED RE: MURDER

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Did alleged wife killer Fotis Dulos plot to also murder his civil lawyer's wife? Bizarre voicemails are revealed following Dulos' arrest for the kidnapping and murder of his presumed-dead wife, Jennifer Dulos. Joining Nancy Grace to discuss the case: Troy Slaten: Criminal Defense Attorney  Bobby Chacon: Former Special Agent FBI & current star of FB Watch Series "Curse of Akakor"  Dr. Caryn Stark: Psychologist Laura Ingle: Fox News National Correspondent Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. A Connecticut mother of five goes missing, her car found splattered with blood not too far from her home. In the garage, more blood, also found discarded in multiple locations, a bloody bra, a bloody t-shirt, bloody sponges, rags, even a bloody mop. Now, finally, an arrest of Fotis Doulos, his mistress, and amazingly, the lawyer. Did the lawyer have a deal to provide an alibi for the time of the murder in exchange for his own wife's murder? Bombshell now in the Jennifer Dulos case. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

It was a Friday morning in late May, almost the end of the academic year, when Jennifer Dulos dropped off her five children for school. Surveillance cameras show she returned to her rented home around 8 o'clock, then vanished. We love you, and we are doing everything we can to bring you home. Hours later, worried friends called the police after she missed several appointments. Her disappearance sparked an intense search, stretching across state lines, making headlines in the national news. New developments in the case of that missing mother of five. Overnight, her estranged husband speaking in a new interview. Her estranged husband and his live-in girlfriend appearing in court.

Cops immediately start with a timeline and trying to figure out if she left on her own. But then they discover her SUV seemingly abandoned. Drones, canines, and a helicopter scoured the area. Her vehicle found near a wooden park. But key evidence discovered inside her rented home. A police affidavit released back in June, revealed that authorities found numerous blood stains on the garage floor, multiple areas of suspected blood spatter, and evidence of attempts to clean the crime scene.

At the affidavit, it says blood spatter, spatter. That's significant. That affidavit showing that Jennifer was the suspected victim of a serious physical assault. You're hearing our friends at ABC, that was Whit Johnson and others, stunning developments in the case of missing Connecticut mom of five, Jennifer Dulos, last seen by objective witnesses when she drops her children off at a ritzy day school there in New Canaan. New Canaan, a wealthy enclave, not too far out of New York City. Beautiful area, manicured lawns,

mega mansions, the works. Definitely a low crime area. What happened to Jennifer Dulos? With me, an all-star panel. Troy Slayton, renowned criminal defense attorney. Bobby Chacon, former special agent. FBI, star of Facebook, Curse of Akakor. Laura Engel, Fox News national correspondent who has spent time interviewing Dulos at his home. On the story from the beginning, I'm Nancy Grace.

This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Straight out to Laura Engel, Fox News national correspondent. Laura, I can't believe the latest developments. You kick it off. Nancy, this has been an incredible story from the start. With the recent arrest of Fotis Doulos, his girlfriend Michelle Triconis, and his original civil attorney, Kent Mawinney, we are getting an awful lot of information through these arrest warrants. As you mentioned, we've been talking about the blood evidence that was found in the

garage, but now with these new arrest warrants finally made public, we see what the state of Connecticut police and New Canaan police have been working on all these months. They have kept this investigation so close to the vest, they have not given us an inch of what they had found. We found a little bit out during the original arrest warrants in June when Michelle and Fotis were arrested on tampering with evidence charges. We know that they were spotted throwing out those plastic garbage bags in Hartford, Connecticut. But what we found out with this recent arrest is just how much more was inside those garbage bags that tie both Fotis Dulos and Michelle Triconis to the

crime that investigators believe that Fotis Dulos was lying in wait inside his estranged wife's garage. We're talking about clear ponchos, zip ties, garbage bags, gloves, mop handles, sponge, blood-like stains on paper towels, all of it found in these garbage bags. A lot of it has a combination of Jennifer Dulos' DNA matching the blood, Fotis Dulos' DNA and fingerprints, and Michelle Triconis' DNA on the knot. You know when you tie a garbage bag off and you're going to throw it out, her DNA is found inside that knot. Remember she said, I had no idea what Fotis was doing that day, the night of jennifer's

disappearance throwing out all these garbage bags i was on the phone well it turns out that her dna is on there whoa whoa wait wait wait laura engel laura engel i'm drinking from the fire hydrant did you just say that video cameras caught the husband photos doulos and his lover michelle traconis in a car we together, making 20 plus stops. When the police went to those stops, they found bloody sponges, bloody bra, bloody shirt, bloody mop. And she, the mistress says, oh, I don't know what he was doing. I was on my cell phone. Whoa, did I just hear that, Laura Engel? That's correct. They swabbed one of the bags at the opening and separate bag portion, and they find, and it's highlighted in the arrest warrant, three things. DNA match to Jennifer Dulos, DNA match to Fotis Dulos, DNA match to

Michelle Triconis. It's all at the bag opening and separate bag portion. Hold on just a moment with me. Laura Engel, Fox News national correspondent, who's been on the story from the get-go. We now know in the last hours, Fotis Dulos arrested for murder one, along with his girlfriend, Michelle Tricotis. And not only that, his former lawyer, Kent Mawinney, has been arrested in connection with this case. Troy Slayton, you know what? You're a great lawyer. I like you as a person. I may someday sit down and have another cup of tea with you, but Troy, how do you do it? No offense, but this guy, did you just hear Laura Engel? She just said that on these things, does these items disposed in 20 plus stops. And I haven't even gotten to ripping out the back seat of the car yet that was covered in Jennifer's blood, the mother of his five children. How do you

go in court and actually say the words not guilty? How do you do it? Because all that's needed to make the arrest, Nancy, is probable cause, which is the lowest standard in the law. It just means that somebody, a reasonable person, could think that a crime was committed. And so it's not surprising that DNA from a husband would be near DNA of the wife. Oh, you mean a bloody bra? Don't talk about it like that, near DNA. I mean, I guess if you looked in my bathroom or the kitchen, you'd find mine and my husband's DNA. But it ain't blood on my bra. They've been trying to connect him.

With his and the mistress's DNA on it. They've been trying to connect him for months. So? And at this point, all they have for her and for this attorney is conspiracy. And on him, they don't have an actual direct connection to doulos you know see that is why you make all that money because you can actually say that kind of thing with a straight face i mean you know laura engel there's the issue as how the police have to make a no body murder case and i guess the blood on her range rover was the very first clue Dulos was dead.

Go ahead and outline the evidence, Laura Engel. Well, the other thing that's interesting about this case is, so we know that Fotis Dulos and Jennifer Dulos have been in a two-year-long, bitter, horrifying custody and divorce case. And I say that because there are nearly 500 court filings in family court between these two, between the parents of the five children, two sets of twins, all under the age of 13, all these children, they are fighting for custody. And in that fight, we learned through court documents that when she found out about the affair with Michelle Triconis, she took her

children and left. She went and rented this home in New Canaan, which is miles away from her family and marital home that she shared with Fotis. Once inside this rental home, that is, as you described, this is a wealthy affluent area. I believe the rent was $18,000 a month for this house. Gorgeous. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Laura. I'm sorry. You know, Laura, if you don't know before, you're going to know now. I grew up on a red dirt road. My grandfather dug our well to our home. Yes, the water was sometimes red, but we knew that was just fine.

There was a tree growing up in the middle of the road at the foot of our driveway. And I got to go to the library because a bookmobile would come out to the rural needy children. I didn't think I was needy. I was perfectly happy. But when you just, did you just say $18,000 a month for the house? That's correct. Okay. All right. Go ahead. I know dead air is just lethal. So go ahead. I understand that she came from money. Her parents were very wealthy, which gets into a whole other subset of the story about the money that was exchanged. This is, you know, Fotis Doulos has been a luxury home builder for a long time. Nonetheless, what I want to let you know, and I'm sure that your audience may have heard, is that Fotis Doulos

was never allowed inside that home. He was forbidden from stepping foot inside the house. Two days before Jennifer Dulos went missing, he had a visitation set up. And by the way, visitations with his children required a court-appointed guardian to watch, to be present at all times. And he did go to the house two days before Jennifer went missing, but she put food out. The nanny put food out in the backyard for the children to have with their father, but he was forbidden from coming inside the house. Everyone present that day will say that he was never in the house. Fast forward to the evidence presented by state police that his DNA was mixed in with Jennifer's blood, a sample found on the kitchen faucet. His DNA also found

on the inside doorknob of the mudroom in the back. So those are two things that no way should be there. Now, his attorney will say, but he was at the house. Sure, it makes sense. But everybody that was there said, but he never made it inside the house, that he never went inside. So why is his DNA on the inside doorknob? Why is his DNA on the kitchen faucet sink? Another thing about what you just said, Laura Engel, is the mixture of blood. Correct. What exactly was on that kitchen faucet sink, Laura Engel, Fox News? It was a sample taken. They swabbed everything. They found a match to Jennifer Dulos' DNA, which came back as a blood-like substance, mixed in with DNA matching for Dulos. And it was actually an argument made last summer. I was in court when Colangelo,

the prosecutor, said, we want to hold him. They didn't want to let him go on another bail for tampering with evidence. And he thought that that was kind of a smoking gun. It was a smoking gun moment in the courtroom where he said, well, what do you think about this? The judge again said, not enough. We're going to let him go on bond and bail at that point. And then they put a GPS tracking device on him and he was free to go home. So they had tried to use that to keep him incarcerated back in the summer, but it wasn't enough. So we knew about that last year, but now in this new arrest warrant, we're learning that his DNA was also on the inside doorknob of the mudroom. So is that how he got in and out? And, you know,

there were gloves that were found, Nancy, inside a black garden glove, black husky glove. Those are DNA matches to Fotis Dulos on the interior of the black garden glove. They found his DNA on the inside of the glove. On the black husky glove, they found a DNA match to Jennifer Dulos on the exterior. So they've got her DNA on the outside, his DNA on the inside of the glove. In those bags, deposited the night that Jennifer Dulos is reported missing. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Police still have not found Jennifer Dulos' body, but based on the evidence and the amount of blood loss, the medical examiner has considered this a homicide. Fotis, why'd you do it? THE MEDICAL EXAMINER HAS CONSIDERED THIS A HOMICIDE. FOTUS DULOS IN HANDCUFFS, HAULED OUT OF THE CONNECTICUT STATE POLICE BARRACKS IN

BRIDGEPORT. DULOS ARRESTED AND CHARGED TODAY WITH MURDERING HIS WIFE JENNIFER NEARLY EIGHT MONTHS AFTER HER DISAPPEARANCE. POLICE REVEALING AN ARREST WARRANT TODAY. THEY BELIEVE FOTUS DULOS RODE A

VINTAGE BICYCLE TO JENNIFER'S HOME, KILLED HER, COVERED UP THE CRIME AND DISPOSED OF HER BODY. THE WARRANT DETAILING SEVEN LOCATIONS IN THE HOMICIDE CENTER. THE WARRANT SAYS THE

DULOS WAS ARRESTED IN THE HOMICIDE CENTER IN BRIDGEPORT AND IS IN THE HOMICIDE CENTER IN BRIDGEPORT. They believe Fotis Dulos rode a vintage bicycle to Jennifer's home, killed her, covered up the crime, and disposed of her body. The warrant detailing seven locations where blood-like stains matching Jennifer's DNA were found at her new Canaan home. You are listening to our friends at NBC News 4, Mark Santia. To Bobby Chacon, former FBI star of Facebook series Curse of Echicor. Bobby, here's my theory. Then I'll let Troy Slayton shoot holes in it. Bobby Chacon, I believe she dropped the children off because it would have been too much of a red flag for her not to show up with the children. Dropped them at school.

Comes back. I don't believe she ever made it into the home. She did get out of the vehicle because her blood is spattered in multiple places within the garage. On her car. On the wall. On the floor, on the other car in the garage. Interesting, when her car is taken away, I believe her cell phone was in it. That's what I think happened. I think he ambushed her there. After he did the deed, murdered her, he and his mistress, Michelle Traconis, went and got rid of the evidence.

As we see on surveillance video, 20-plus stops, Bobby, ditching evidence. Well, I think that that theory is certainly supported by what we know and even by some of the physical evidence. I think you're right. I think it's entirely possible he was laying in wait in the garage. And that supervised visit to the children days before the murder was probably a way to case the joint, to look at the physical layout, to get a little more information about how he was going to carry this attack out, and also give him a plausible reason why his DNA might be there. Because as we heard, that he was not supposed to be ever inside that house. Well now, this is all part of the premeditation. He has a plausible reason, or his attorney can now have a plausible reason to say, of course,

his DNA was there. He visited the children just days before. So, so all of this goes to premeditation. All of it goes to the fact that, you know, clearly this, this was a planned attack. We have several other people involved in both the planning, the carrying out, and the covering up of the crime. You know, I think there's strong, strong evidence to tie him to it. I think that there's past behavior that lends itself to understand how and what he did. The investigators did a tremendous job at tying him to certain places at certain times during the morning of her going missing. I think this is an incredibly strong case. I think they have spent the last several months tying him and in fact now have tied him to the murder. You know what's also extremely interesting and I think incredible

police work to Laura Engel, Fox News national correspondent, is the degree of video surveillance law enforcement has managed to amass. I'm talking about neighbors, burglar systems. I'm talking about video surveillance, security surveillance at places of business like the car wash. Even school buses, when they open their door, they have a camera trained on children getting in and out of the school bus. And they catch doulos driving by at that moment through the open school bus doors. Laura Engel, it is amazing the way they put together his movements. Please explain what police believe are Fotis Dulos' movements that morning after his wife Jennifer has been murdered.

I'm glad you brought up the school bus video surveillance because I think that is one of the most interesting parts of how they track them. Of course, we know that many people have videos, you know, nest cams and all of that. But I got to say, I'm surprised that Jennifer Dulos didn't have any security cameras. That, I mean, it would have been,

that would have been such a huge piece of this, of course. And perhaps if Fotis is in fact guilty, he knew that and was able to get in through the back. So the school bus cameras, they have gone through dozens and dozens and dozens. And I believe that there are still more school buses that they're tapping video surveillance. They have been able to lay out like a jigsaw puzzle, video surveillance of the neighbors in the court, of the businesses nearby, on cameras that go over bridges on parkways. Trying to track the different vehicles used, and there were a couple, in what police investigators believe is the movements of photo stuos leaving his home in Farmington, driving, not his car, the vehicle of one of his workers.

He works in construction. He had a company called Four Group. So he uses the truck of an employee named Powell. Hey, Laura. Yes. Laura, please give this a lot of attention because I want Troy Slayton to be able to marinate in this for a few moments. And this is one of my favorite parts of the story, the car. Sorry, Laura. Go ahead. That's all right. Well, it's like following the bouncing ball because what we learn in these arrest warrants, Fotis Doulos borrows the vehicle of an employee, a truck. He drives the employee's truck and puts a bicycle, his childhood bicycle,

which is very distinctive, in the back of the truck. He drives it. This is all the investigator's idea. He drives the truck to Waveney Park, parks outside of the park where he's going to drive Jennifer's truck. He then gets on his bicycle, according to investigators, and rides about three miles with a hooded sweatshirt on, we believe, to the back of Jennifer's home. If you saw somebody riding a bicycle up to the front of her house, the neighbor's cameras are going to get it. So they believe he went through the woods, into the backyard, into the garage, and was lying awake. Then he's there for two hours in the garage doing all the things that are laid out. You know, the evidence points to a bloody, horrifying homicide of violence. He takes the bike, and he puts his bike into Jennifer Dulos' vehicle, puts her into her vehicle.

The vehicle is seen leaving her house, going out of the court, and then it is found, as you know, at the park. What's at the park? His employee's truck. So the idea of the investigators is that he then transfers the body from Jennifer's truck into his employee's truck with the bike, leaves her truck empty and outside of a park. Then he drives away. And where the body is still nobody knows. That's the biggest mystery of it all. But back to the jigsaw puzzle, this is where they get this information. They see her vehicle leaving. They see the other truck at the park. They're still piecing it together. There's still more work to be done on tying it all together. But they felt at this point when they made the arrest that they had enough to stitch together the timeline

that they believe supports their theory. And then you mentioned the car seat. I think that the biggest hero of this story, when we finally get to court, will be a man by the name Powell Gimini. He was a full-time employee, and that's whose truck he used. And he's the guy that told police about the seats that Fotis Doulos wanted him to remove out of that vehicle. Fotis Doulos, after Jennifer disappears, says, you got to get rid of the seats in the car. And he found that very strange. He said, you got to get rid of them, replace them with anything else you can find. So he replaces the seats. What does he do? He saves them. He hides them and he gives them to police. They swab it. They find her blood.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. In a new 38-page arrest warrant, police say they found Jennifer's DNA on the seats of a work truck Dulos had been driving. According to the warrant, police asked Draconis why Dulos would wash the truck after Jennifer disappeared. She told them, well, obviously, all the evidence says because you showed me the picture of the blood in the door. It's because the body of Jennifer at some point was in there. In June, we sat down with Doulos' attorney, Norm Pettis, who told us the case against his client was built on speculation and hysteria. Jennifer is an extremely sympathetic person right now. The nation has rallied behind her because she's a missing mom of five beautiful children.

That doesn't mean my client's the villain. Dulos' attorney told CBS News in a statement he wishes the state police spent more time looking for Jennifer and less trying to build a case against his client. You are hearing CBS reporter Michelle Miller. You know, that's just usual. That's SOP, standard operating procedure. Look here, not there. Why aren't you looking for her body? Why are you looking at my client? Well, the reality is, is law enforcement and so many others have been looking for Jennifer Dulo's body. There is no doubt in my mind that she is dead.

Detroit's late criminal defense lawyer, renowned criminal defense attorney, Troy, here's the thing. You may, a defense attorney at trial, can argue about the DNA belonging to both of them. It should have been there, although we know he was not allowed in that rental home. But you can argue that. But when you have a real live person, not just a DNA result. And that person, his employee says, he borrowed my vehicle without asking me. I never told him he could take my car. That Dulos takes the car and then asks him to change out the back seat. Something tells him no. He saves the back seat secretly, doesn't tell

Dulos, his boss. Then Jennifer's blood is found on that back seat. I mean, listen, I'm just a trial lawyer, but two and two is for Slayton. Sounds to me like that employee may have had something to do with the murder, possibly himself.

No! Who knows? One of the reasons we love you, Troy Slayton. I never saw that coming out of your rear end. Go ahead. What we do know is that there's no there's no body. We don't even know at this point if Michelle Dulos is deceased. OK, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Laura Engel, we've got a Fox News national correspondent joining us who spent

hundreds of man hours on this case. Laura Engel, we have so many choices to pick from. Let's see. At the beginning, Dulos' lawyer said, she's not dead. She just took a powder. She probably went off with some man. Then he said, hey, you know she was writing a novel like Gone Girl, right? So she's just living out her dream and trying to frame my poor client, Fotis Dulos. She's not dead. She faked her own death with all that blood, that crazy, hysterical woman. Then I really love this one, Laura Engel, revenge suicide. That she hated Dulos so much she killed herself, leaving her children without a mother in order to get back at him.

Laura, help me. Well, all those things have been floated by the defense. It's true. What we did learn in the arrest warrants when Fotis Dulos, Michelle Draconis, and the attorney are arrested is for the first time we are hearing from Connecticut's chief medical examiner, Dr. James Gill, who determined that all the evidence found in the garage that Jennifer Dulos had sustained, quote, an injury or injuries that would have been non-survivable without medical intervention and categorized her death as a homicide. He went on to detail the amount of blood that was found and picked up and surveyed that she died most likely from blunt force trauma and or stabbing and slashing of some kind. This is the medical examiner's conclusion to the evidence presented to him. We have been waiting months for his review of the evidence and all that was happening forensically, and that is his conclusion. With me, Troy Slayton, renowned criminal defense

attorney out of L.A., Bobby Chacon, former FBI star of Facebook, Curse of Accor, and special guest Fox News national correspondent Laura Engel. Laura Engel joining us right now with breaking news in the case. Laura, what do you know? So this goes to his original attorney, Kent Mawini. This is the guy that he first became friends with Kent when he, you know, he's a luxury home builder. So Kent would come in and help him close on the sales of property. They became friends. He became his lawyer. Then, you know, backing up to if you take the record back two years before Jennifer goes missing. I mentioned the bitter divorce and custody battle. But there was also a civil case going on with Gloria Farber, who is Jennifer Dulos's mother, about money that the family had loaned photos to build these luxury homes that were, some of the loans were paid back.

They say some of them weren't. Dulos said, I actually don't owe them any money. They owe me. It's been this whole fight about money. But back in the beginning, Kent was his lawyer. Kent also had a situation of his own. He was also embroiled in a bitter divorce battle with his own wife. He had been arrested

for abuse and his wife, she accused him of spousal rape, of choking, put a restraining order against him, wanted no contact with him. In the weeks before Jennifer Dulos goes missing, this woman, not identified by the press, but this woman is getting phone calls from Fotis Doulos out of the blue. And he says, hey, why don't you come over to my house? I'll get Kent over here. You guys can talk, talk some things out. And she doesn't know who this guy is. She doesn't, she's not friendly with him. They don't have a relationship. She found it odd. He kept calling saying, Kent really wants to talk to you. Remember, Kent has an order not to talk to his wife. But I think the idea is that if Fotis can talk to him, you know, that goes around the order.

She is afraid of her husband, tells police as such. She does end up meeting Fotis Doulos at a restaurant in the days before Jennifer goes missing because he's been relentless. And we'd heard about this, but our affiliate, Fox 61, got a hold of the voicemail tapes of Fotis Doulos leaving messages on the wife's machine saying, I want to talk to you. Can you please call me back? I want to set my schedule. I want to get this set up. So we're hearing that for the very first time. And backing up why Kent Mawinney was also arrested on conspiracy to commit murder. I, I'm just giving you the back story about what's happening in his personal life. He also was a founding member of a gun club out in South Windsor, an area in Connecticut, rolling hills, trees, branches, you know, big areas where people go and shoot pheasants. So he founded this club a long time ago, hasn't been a member in five to six years. A couple of weeks before Jennifer Dulos goes missing, he contacts the club and says, hey,

I'm interested in getting back involved in the club. Could I have access to the club? Could I come out and poke around and look at the ground of what you guys have done? Sure. Here's where you go. Here's where it is. Six days jennifer doulos goes missing two guys at the gun club are out sunset hunting they find a hole in the ground it's covered with barbecue grapes they're like this is weird they kick the barbecue grapes off they look in the hole it is six it's a six foot rectangle so six foot long three and a half feet deep, two feet wide, inside the hole is a tarp and two unopened bags of lime. They don't report it to police right away. We don't know why.

But eventually when Jennifer Dulos goes missing, they do call police. Police go out to check out the hole. It's been covered up. It's, quote, neat as a pin, according to the arrest warrant. And somebody has filled it up because they disrupted whatever had been dug before. So whoever dug the hole and came back to use the hole realized that somebody had discovered the hole because the grates had been removed and things had been kicked around. So somebody went back and filled the hole. That ties in to the conspiracy to commit murder charge. He also was supposed to be an alibi for Fotis and said he hit his head the day that Jennifer went missing and he can't remember anything. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. crime stories with nancy grace the police found handwritten notes detectives call them quote alibi scripts at bodice dulo's home that seem to show written out in handwriting both his and his

mistress michelle tricis, whereabouts and activities on the day Jennifer goes missing, May 24. Now, Traconis blurts out to cops that she and Dulos woke up together that morning, showered, and had sex, according to warrants. Evidence shows that's not true. And in later interviews, Traconis breaks down and admits the alibi quote scripts are false that she could not vouch for doulos whereabouts the morning jennifer is murdered and that's where the defense lawyer gets pulled into it troy slayton this is a a word of warning to you not

to get too involved with your creepy clients the, Mahaney, the third person charged in this case, is now believed to have been involved in an attempt on his own wife's life. What do you make of it, Slayton? Well, first to the, what you're calling the alibi scripts, I call that a timeline to help recollect everything that happened. When a client first comes to me, one of the very first things that I tell them to do is write out everything that you can remember. So that way, later on, we can refer back to it. So it may very well be, since he knew that he was being accused and a suspect in his wife's murder, that he and his girlfriend wanted to write out everything they could remember about their whereabouts. So that way, later on, when they couldn't remember as

well, because memory does not improve with time, that they'd be able to recollect where they were and have something to refer back to. Now, as far as the holes in the ground at the gun club where Kent Mulheny was a founding member, that doesn't prove anything. We've got holes in the ground that are not connected to any person, and then the holes are gone. No bodies were in there. No person was ever found in there. So that's proof of really nothing. Well, wait a minute, Troy Slayton, in your defense attorney world, your alternate universe, why would there be a hole dug in the ground the size of a human body with a tarp and lime? What do you think that was for? You think they were planting some tomatoes or some turnips out there? Who knows? There was also barbecue grates on there maybe someone was planning some sort of barbecue i have no idea what that was for or what somebody was doing

but there was no body there and there was no body connected with it and there's no proof of who dug it so i think that that's really a red herring just happened to be at mawini's gun club doulos and mawini close relationship through business dealings. Mawinney handled real estate closings for Dulos Luxury Home Building Company, the four-group, Inc. They got closer and closer, especially as they went through highly, highly contentious, bitter divorces. And Dulos playing what authorities, cops say, played an active role in a liaison, a connection between Mahwini and his wife, trying to set up a, quote, meeting with his, the lawyer's wife.

The lawyer's wife even said she was afraid they were going to kill her. Bobby Chacon, final thoughts. Yeah, I think we have a much clearer picture now than we did several months ago. I think the police work has been excellent in this case. And now with the addition of this civil lawyer that's been charged, I think we have both what happened before, what happened during, and what was planned after this crime was committed. So I think it's all supported by the physical and scientific evidence. And I think a jury will have no problem coming to a conviction in this case. I think despite what, you know, and Troy's a friend and it's his job to to create these really remote possibilities. I think that the theory of the prosecution is clear.

I think it's supported by the forensic evidence and the physical evidence. And so, you know, I think that the police work and the prosecution work has been really well done. It's been thorough. It's been patient. And I think they'll police work and the prosecution work has been really well done. It's been thorough. It's been patient. And I think they'll get a conviction. You know, to Laura Engel, Fox News national correspondent, Mahwini's wife, the lawyer, Dulos' lawyer's wife, says she felt she was being, quote, baited,

especially by the fact that Dulos kept inviting her back to his private home. She believed her husband wanted her dead. That's what she says. That's what she says. Yes. And, you know, to to play the other side of the coin, because that's what we do. You know, Norm Pettis, who is Fotis' attorney, has come out. He gave a lengthy press conference after Fotis was arraigned. He said that they feel confident whether or not that's bravado, but he said there is no body, there is no weapon. What they have here is largely a circumstantial case. We believe we can show that Fotis Doulos was not involved in his wife's disappearance. When I interviewed him in December, he couldn't speak to the criminal case because he was under

a gag order, but he has said previously numerous times that he had nothing to do with her disappearance. Michelle Triconis also has pled not guilty. And so there's a lot now on the plate, though, with this new information that has just come out. And I think we're going to continue to get more. We've got the stuff in the arrest forms with what they found in the garbage bags. We have these voicemail messages that back up what Kent Mawinney's wife said. She was terrified. We now hear these voicemail messages. There's a long road to go here. All are supposed to be back in court next month for the next court appearances. None of them have officially pled to these most serious charges, but we are expecting that to happen in February. Laura Engel, and then there's the, let me just say coincidence, that Mawinney's wife,

Dulos's lawyer's wife, had to call police just before this because there was an intruder with a gas can and a crowbar breaking in her home. Isn't it odd how the minute she files for this divorce and all that's happening, somebody tries to break in her home with a gas can and a crowbar. She's living there and she's the only adult living there. And then she's being lured by doulos to have a private meeting at his home. And they find a shallow grave dug at Mahwini's gun club. One last question. What about Mahwini's phone pinging off a cell tower near Mountain Spring Road. He was tracked, and they were able to get forensic evidence from all of their cell phones about their whereabouts, or at least where they had been close to.

And Mawinney's cell phone did, for that matter, ping near the gun club around the time that possibly something was done at the gun club at his hand. We don't know. But the 80 Mountain Spring Road was another house that was under development by Fotis Dulos. And there is a lot of action at that house that has been searched up and down, torn apart and looked through and tested. But there is a lot of activity at the 80 Mountain Spring Road around the time of Jennifer's disappearance that later that day, the next day, neighbors reported hearing some loud pounding noises that woke them up. They didn't know what it was. We can't, nobody has been able to discern what that noise was. But you're right there. He was picked up,

his cell phone at least was picked up in that area as well. That shallow grave measured six feet long and three and a half feet deep, according to state police, and was covered up by barbecue grates covered with leaves and branches. We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Gray's Crime Story signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.