Relatives of a Connecticut mother of five who has been missing for a month are criticizing her estranged husband's lawyer for suggesting she staged her own disappearance in a plot similar to the novel "Gone Girl."
Jennifer Dulos vanished in New Canaan, Connecticut, on May 24. Her husband, Fotis Dulos, and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, are charged with evidence tampering and hindering prosecution — accused of discarding evidence containing Jennifer Dulos' blood.
Fotis Dulos' lawyer, Norman Pattis, told the New York Post on Sunday that Jennifer Dulos once wrote a novel similar to "Gone Girl," the 2012 book and 2014 movie in which a wife stages her own disappearance to frame her husband for murder.
A spokeswoman for Jennifer Dulos' family on Monday called Pattis' suggestion "false and irresponsible."
Statement by Carrie Luft on Behalf of the Family and Friends of Jennifer Farber Dulos
I read Jennifer’s novel in installments as she was completing the manuscript. She finished the draft around 2002. (This was before she was dating Fotis Dulos.) Her book has nothing to do with Gone Girl (published in 2012). Jennifer’s novel is not a mystery. It’s a character-driven story that follows a young woman through relationships and self-discovery over a period of years. Like all of Jennifer’s writing, it expresses a deep longing for human connection and the need to be accepted as one’s true self.
Trying to tie Jennifer’s absence to a book she wrote more than 17 years ago makes no sense. Evidence shows that Jennifer was the victim of a violent attack in her New Canaan home. As of today, she has been missing for a month. This is not fiction or a movie. This is real life, as experienced every single day by Jennifer’s five young children, her family, and her friends. We are heartbroken. Jennifer is not here to protect her children, and these false and irresponsible allegations hurt the children now and into the future.
Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis have been charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence in connection with the case.