For years, Jennifer Dulos lived in fear of her husband, according to her own statements in divorce documents and information police have obtained since she was killed in May.
Lauren Almeida, the family’s longtime nanny, told police she witnessed some of the alleged domestic abuse, according to search warrants unsealed last week in the New Canaan woman’s homicide.
In the days following Jennifer Dulos’ disappearance, Almeida
provided critical information to police as investigators tried to determine what happened inside the Welles Lane home on the morning of May 24.
Almeida pointed to the
contentious two-year divorce between Jennifer and Fotis Dulos as a potential cause for the gory scene — bloody footprints and splatter, and signs the 50-year-old mother of five was the victim of a “homicide of violence” — that investigators discovered inside the garage, according to arrest and search warrants in the case.
On the day of the incident, Almeida became concerned when she could not reach Jennifer Dulos.
“My first thought was that Fotis did something,” Almeida told police, according to arrest warrants.
In the search warrants that were
unsealed last week for the first time since the investigation began nearly eight months ago, Almeida supported her theory by describing two instances of alleged domestic abuse that she said occurred in recent years.
There was the time in August 2017 — a few months after Jennifer Dulos left for New Canaan with the children and filed for divorce — when Almeida heard commotion outside a short-term rental home where they were staying on Chichester Road.
Almeida said she found Jennifer Dulos crying in the driveway, saying her estranged husband tried to run her over with their children in the car, according to the search warrants.
Jennifer Dulos told Almeida she had to “jump out of the way” to avoid being hit, the search warrants said.
But Rena Dulos Kyrimi, Fotis Dulos’ sister who was in the car that day, said the incident unfolded differently.
“I was in the car with him and the kids that day,” Dulos Kyrimi said in a phone interview Friday from Greece. “She threw herself in front of the car to stop us from coming near the house. The kids thought it was a joke and were all laughing.”
Jennifer Dulos did not report the incident, but notified New Canaan police later that day when she claimed her husband called her names and degraded her in front of their children, the search warrants said. No arrests were made.
Dulos warrants cite years of fear
