Juxtaposing sections from the beginning and end of today’s Part III Air Mail story below (part IV coming next Saturday at 6am). Because it is still irking me.
sds71 already posted sections about MT earlier today which I vented about in an earlier post.
Here you can see how FD is made out as the victim, hoping his divorce could be handled amicably, driven back to his “familiar fishing hole” where he caught MT (the author imagines it might have been the same fishing hole where he reencountered JD, Aspen airport) because he had a wife and 5 kids in a big house in CT. Or maybe, according to the author, it was the employees and cars, you know, the Raptor, all those serial Suburbans? And that untrustworthy PG/EE who would rat on him several years into the future when he spilled “coffee” on his truck seat. Yeah, life was bad for FD so no wonder he went off to the “green sea of resort life where the rich and eligible and recently divorced swim by in teeming schools” to find some fun AKA MT (apparently the author got a glimpse of MT flashing a smile going in to court that demonstrated to him how much fun MT could have offered FD. The author puts that observation in there too.)
And then, after a couple years at least of hanging with the rich and eligible and recently divorced, suddenly FD was losing it all- you know, all that bad stuff that had driven him away in the first place? His wife, kids, the CT life, his business? And, he “had to pay all kinds of fees”-lawyers, psychiatrists, social workers. Dang, he just wanted an amicable divorce is all. And GF was suing him over money she and HF had lent him to buy a house. “Here was a man known to erupt that was being pressured from every side.” Tsk tsk. No wonder your daughter disappeared.
Eagerly await Part IV. In the meantime, here’s how the article is framed:
Murder in Fairfield County
Fotis Dulos hoped his divorce from Jennifer could be handled amicably. Instead, it was one of the most litigious in Connecticut’s history
Fotis was nearly 50 when he met Troconis, a dangerous age for a certain kind of man. To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, he had seen the moment of his greatness flicker, had seen the eternal Footman hold his coat and snicker. Was it his wife in Connecticut, the five kids, the house, the business and debt, the employees, cars, and trucks that sent him back to this familiar fishing hole, this green sea of resort life, where the rich and eligible and recently divorced swim by in teeming schools?
....
In short, Fotis was losing on every front. He was losing his wife, his kids, his business. He had to pay all kinds of fees—lawyers, social workers, psychiatrists. The debt, which accumulated day after day, was pushing him toward insolvency. Gloria Farber, who with her now deceased husband, Hilliard, had loaned Fotis millions over the years, was suing for the repayment of one particular loan, $1.5 million the Farbers had fronted their son-in-law so he could buy a house, which he renovated and put back on the market. Even after it was sold, Fotis only repaid a fraction of the loan (he claimed these were gifts). By the spring of 2019 he owed more than $4 million to banks and mortgage companies.
Here was a man, known to erupt when pressed and pressured, being pressed and pressured from every side.
@sleuth66, all I have to say about this series of articles is Grrrr and I can say with 99.99999999999999999999% certainty that this writer shares more than a couple of sources in common with our resident 'reposter' at the HC IMO. IMO this writer had the benefit of writing many months after the start of this case and could have spent time doing the research involved on source documents and sadly it looks like this kinda/sorta/maybe/most likely didn't happen unfortunately. Huge missed opportunity IMO as the writer IMO had the opportunity to move coverage of the case forward and instead seemed IMO to fall prey to manipulation perhaps?
Grrrrrrrrrr.
I read Article 1 today in this series and it then set me down the path of watching the Fd Dateline interview and the interview I refer to as the Sarah Wallace/ Atty. P. 'interview' of Fd. IMO if you follow the narrative that Atty. P. and Fd were trying to put forward during this period it seemed very much that they were trying desperately to reinvent history that had been going on Family Court between Fd and JFd for over 2 years. Atty. P. no doubt felt this period of interviews helped his client (I don't see it this way at all) counter the 'negatives' of the Family Court file. I bet they felt that the Greek Interviews were a 'home run' to hammer home the idea that Fd was forced via circumstance into cheating on JFd for many years. The Rena Letters reinforced the 'blaming others' theme and now we have a new writer that seems to seamlessly fit in with all that we have seen before in terms of recharacterizing Fd and MT.
I'm yawning because its boring and its not relevant reporting iMO because so much of it simply isn't supported by verifiable fact. Sadly, IMO its not even worthy of the National Enquirer.
I'm not going to link to the article because IMO it suffers badly for its research on Fd and IMO also greatly mischaracterises the Fd/JFd/MT relationships but I think its fatal flaw is portraying Fd in a sympathetic light in many circumstances and making it seem as if he was a non-participant in his own life and was rather the victim of circumstances that befell him and the domestic violence that he inflicted on JFd for years along with the 5 children.
Article 1 starts with this GEM (not) of quote at the tippy top lead in to the article:
"I never wanted Jennifer out of the way".
—Fotis Dulos
REALLY? I believe this quote came from the Dateline interview and was repeated somewhat differently in the Sarah Wallace / Atty. P. interview. Every time I read this quote I have to wonder how stupid Fd and Atty. P. think the rest of the world just might be. The only answer I can come up with is that they both think the rest of the world are morons. This quote IMO is right up there with Fd stating that he had a 'cordial relationship' with JFd and that 'they never fought' - again, these came from Dateline. Why would a writer who is claiming to be following the story of this horrific crime lead into his article with this sickly ironic and IMO absolutely false statement by Fd which was made at a time when he was being crushed by information coming out about the Family Court case?
I think where I fall down the rabbit hole on the Press coverage is presumably smart people (such as some Dateline Producer for example) listening to those words come out of the mouth of Fd and/or repeated by Atty. P. and not making the connection to the many hours of testimony provided by JFd and many motions filed in Family Court that precisely refute the Fd statement. YET, over and over we see no questioning, no followup and we see other writers starting their articles with nonsensical and delusional Fd quotes about how Fd, "...never wanted Jennifer out of the way". Perhaps the writer was making a feeble attempt at 'irony' given the fact that LE put on a technicolor display of evidence to explain that YES, Fd and MT and KM did want JFd 'out of the way'. IDK, but such a quote is IMO highly misleading as to the reality of circumstances surrounding this case as it becomes crystal clear IMO that Fd and MT very desperately want JFd 'out of the way' and 'gone'!
But, then the Press coverage gets worse and we start seeing references by DA in the HC to "White Suburbans" when no such vehicle ever existed and endless months of repeating the 'alibi scripts' spouted by Fd and Atty. P. and never doing a retraction or article update to make corrections for misstatements of fact (ie. LIES!). It goes on and on. We see Lisa Backus trying to follow the story of the Glock 19 which Farmington Police gave to 'someone' and we get 'crickets' and ditto for South Windsor PD doing zero about 'gas can crowbar' guy who did a good job terrorising KM STBX and did zero when KM was allegedly driving his car up and down past KM STBX street (while there was a no contact order in place no less) for hours at a time and told KM STBX that this was a 'public road and they could do nothing'.....Mmmmm. We see Farmington PD supposedly undertaking an investigation into the 'death of Fd' or perhaps 'suicide investigation' and then again its 'crickets'. Do LE think that folks aren't watching along? But, we never see the Press writing about all these 'open loops' from LE and this is when things get murky IMO because who is in place to provide a 'check' on government if not the Press? Sadly in CT this doesn't appear to ever happen and its so disappointing. IDK if the Press are 'afraid' of the CSP or whether its just that there is no $$$ in news and so they don't devote resources to following stories? Or, is it worse in that the reliance on 'inside sources' makes them subject to manipulation? IDK, but the process of whatever is going on makes it super hard to have any reliable sources in the Press IMO.
It's exhausting when you can't depend on a print reporter to get the basic facts down, but we have seen it over and over unfortunately. And now we get another GEM from a new writer who makes the claim (without attribution BTW) that Fd and MT,
'...spent the night apart from his paramour' on the night before the murder date.
OK, got the statement and understand the claim. BUT WHAT IS THE SOURCE? Is this some new plot by Atty. P. to now disconnect Fd from the source of the claim that she didn't see him on the morning of the murder 5/24/19, namely Michele Troconis???? LE HAS NEVER MADE THIS CLAIM AS LE IMO HAS NEVER CORROBORATED A TIMELINE FOR MT ON THE DAY BEFORE, DAY OF OR DAY AFTER JFD MURDER. LE has Fd on camera leaving 80MS but we don't know how he ended up there on the Murder Date. YET, this writer is claiming to absolutely 'have the answer'. Yep, right....
Gotta love the persistence of Atty. P. and Pattisville OR, did it all perhaps come from MT NEW ATTY who realises that any distance he can create in the relationship between Fd and MT will most likely help his client? In any event this writer made the claim with zero attribution and yet expects us to believe it? Sorry, we have been down this path with DA for nearly 8 months now and it simply won't fly...
Nope, not buying it for one second. IMO even with the MT "3 Alibis" in her 3 AWs which all slightly differ, there was never any suggestion that Fd wasn't present with her all night after the dinner party at 4Jx. MT IMO danced around the location of Fd on the murder date but never suggested he hadn't spent the night with her at 4Jx.
Here is what the writer wrote and expects us to believe:
"He woke at 4:20 A.M., about an hour before sunrise. He had spent the night apart from his paramour, a 44-year-old Venezuelan publicist and ski bum named Michelle Troconis, who was back in the master suite of Dulos’s 14,000-square-foot mansion, at 4 Jefferson Crossing in Farmington, Connecticut. He was behind the wheel of a red Toyota Tacoma pickup truck by 5:35, the early-morning sun turning everything into its shadow. At 6:36—scattered clouds above the highway now, fair-weather cumulus—the red pickup was recorded as it sped past the Fairfield rest stop on the Merritt Parkway".
What is so disturbing about all of this in terms of these new articles is that it seems like a continuation of the 'alibi scripts' and IMO it also seems like a violation of the 'gag order' as well, depending on the sourcing. The thing though is that once you read a statement where the sourcing is quite clearly suspect then its hard to take much else that is written as anything other than 'pure fiction'.
So, these new articles IMO get filed as "Only in CT - in the Fiction Category" and so disappointing as I expected better of Graydon Carter given his long history with Dominick Dunne following True Crime for years.
Very disappointing. Will keep reading as much as I can and commenting where I believe manipulation to exist but it makes me sad that this is how we are having to waste our time rather than sleuthing and trying to put the puzzle pieces together in this complex and tragic case.
MOO