HARTFORD, Conn. _ The attorney for Fotis Dulos challenged the state's latest criminal case against his client, telling a judge Thursday that evidence used to arrest Dulos a second time in connection with the May 24 disappearance of his estranged wife, Jennifer Farber Dulos, does not show he was anywhere near her New Canaan home on the day she went missing.
"We are eager for this fight," Norm Pattis said during a brief hearing in Superior Court in Norwalk where he entered not guilty pleas on behalf of his client.
Pattis criticized the state's case against Dulos but his comments were cut short by Judge Kevin Randolph who told Pattis, "This is not the time for final arguments. This court is not a highlight show for ESPN. "
Randolph continued the case to Oct. 4 and moved it to Superior Court in Stamford where more serious cases are heard and where Dulos' other criminal cases are on the pretrial docket.
Outside the courthouse, Pattis told reporters he had three words for the state: "Bring it on."
The state's newest charges of evidence tampering against Dulos were filed last week. Farber Dulos hasn't been seen since dropping off her children at school on May 24 in New Canaan and now Dulos is at the center of a wide-ranging criminal investigation led by the state police.
"We will have plenty to say about the evidence the state claims to have amassed when and if we get a chance to review it," Pattis said Thursday. "Mr. Dulos is not guilty and when you are ready to try a case by the appropriate evidentiary standards in a court of law, you know where to find me."
While investigators have said the case is still technically a missing persons case, language used in the 43-page arrest warrant affidavit for Dulos last week indicates that they believe she is dead and that Dulos was involved in her death, though he faces charges of hindering prosecution and evidence tampering.
In the most recent set of allegations, investigators say they believe Dulos drove to New Canaan on the morning of May 24 in a red Toyota Tacoma pickup owned by an employee of his home-building company, Fore Group Inc.
The employee told police that he often traded his older truck for Dulos' Ford Raptor during the week because he was working on finishing a New Canaan home the Fore Group is trying to sell.
Police captured surveillance video from at least eight different sources to track the trucks journey from Farmington to New Canaan and back.
The Toyota was first captured on video in Fairfield about 6:30 a.m. by a security camera at a gas station along the heavily traveled Merritt Parkway. The gas stations on the Merritt are right off the highway and have six cameras ostensibly tracking people pumping gas. But at least two of the cameras partially capture the cars going by on the highway, less than 100 feet away.
The truck was first spotted in New Canaan by a school bus at 7:40 a.m. parked empty on Lapham Road _ about 100-feet from where local police would find her black Chevy Suburban later that night.
Farber Dulos is shown returning to her Welles Lane home at 8:05 a.m. after dropping her five children off at school. It is believed to be the last known photo of her. State police believe at this point Dulos is "lying in wait" at her home, the warrant said.
The black Suburban is next captured on video leaving Welles Lane at 10:25. As in the other videos, there is no way to clearly see who is driving. But state police said in the arrest warrant that they believe Dulos is driving the car and that it is carrying the body of his estranged wife and evidence from a cleaned up crime scene. Investigators have said they found evidence of a violent crime scene at the home of Farber Dulos.
The red truck is then picked up on several videos heading North on the Merritt Parkway to Route 8 to Interstate 84. Finally, the truck can be seen on a residential security camera turning into the driveway at 80 Mountain Spring Road in Farmington, a property owned by the Fore Group, at 12:22 p.m. Six hours had passed from the time the Tacoma truck was first captured on the Merritt heading south.
The warrant released last week included other evidence against Dulos, including a statement from the truck's owner, who told state police that Dulos asked him to remove the seats from his truck and to replace them with seats from his Porsche.
Dulos told the employee he was concerned he had hugged Jennifer a few weeks before and that one of her hairs may that have gotten on the seat. The employee followed Dulos' request and took the seats out _ but didn't throw them away, as Dulos suggested. Instead, he kept them and gave them to state police detectives, who found blood belonging to Farber Dulos on them, the warrant says.
Five days later surveillance videos show Dulos taking the red Toyota truck to a car wash in Avon to be washed and detailed and then going to a bank and taking out $500 cash to pay for it. Dulos' girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, can be seen following him to the car wash in another car and later with him when he removes cash from the bank.
The video trail tracking the truck is the second time electronic surveillance has been a key issue in this case.
Police entered the Farber Dulos home at about 7 p.m. on May 24 after her friends reported her missing. They found evidence in the garage area of a "violent assault." At about the same time, police say, Dulos and Troconis were driving along Albany Avenue in Hartford dropping at least two garbage bags into trash cans along the way.
Sources said a man who resembles Dulos can be seen dropping a black garbage bag into a trash can near Garden Street and then going back to his black Ford truck and taking a carpet or mat and placing it against the outside wall of a restaurant.
Another video in front of Scott's Bakery shows the woman opening the passenger side door and leaning over to pick something up while the man comes around to her side of the vehicle and drops a large white envelope into a storm drain.
State police searched the trash cans along Albany Avenue and found several bloody items such as sponges and mops and a Vineyard Vines shirt with blood on it that sources believe Farber Dulos was wearing the day she disappeared. DNA tests showed that the blood belonged to Farber Dulos.
Dulos and Troconis were arrested on hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence charges based on the Hartford surveillance videos. They were both freed on $500,000 bonds after pleading not guilty.
Troconis' first court appearance on the new charged will also be on Sept. 18 in Norwalk. She has a pretrial hearing in the first case on Sept. 20 in Stamford Superior Court.
