Using surveillance video from several locations, police believe they’ve been able to track the red Toyota Tacoma pickup they say Fotis Dulos used the day his wife Jennifer was killed in 2019. The Tacoma was owned by one of Fotis’ employees, Pawel Gumienny, who a state police sergeant says appeared nervous as he was questioned outside the Farmington home shared by Fotis and Michelle Troconis, who remains on trial in Stamford.
Fotis Dulos was charged with murdering Jennifer at her New Canaan home in May, 2019. He took his own life before he could be tried. Troconis, Fotis’ live-in girlfriend, is accused of helping him cover up his role in Jennifer’s killing. She’s pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, evidence tampering and hindering prosecution.
Tuesday’s testimony at the courthouse in Stamford focused on the location of the Tacoma on May 24, 2019, when, prosecutors say, Jennifer Dulos was fatally attacked in her garage after dropping her five kids at school. Connecticut State Police Sgt. Michael Beauton testified that video from a neighboring home in Farmington showed a red pickup truck leaving a Dulos property on Mountain Spring Rd. at about 5:30 am.
Connecticut State Police Sgt. Michael Beauton testified that video from a neighboring home in Farmington showed a red pickup truck leaving a Dulos property on Mountain Spring Rd. at about 5:30 am.
State Trooper Gregory Lebeau, who scanned video from Merritt Parkway rest stops, found a similar pickup heading southbound in Fairfield at about 6:35 am and New Canaan at about 7:05 am. The New Canaan rest stop is near Waveny Park, near where Jennifer Dulos’ Chevy Suburban was found abandoned.
Using school bus surveillance video, New Canaan Police Officer Kelly Coughlin said that a truck similar to the Tacoma was seen on Lapham road in town at about 7:40 am.
There were later sightings on the route back to Farmington. A red pickup was seen heading northbound on the Merritt Parkway in New Canaan at about 11:10 am. Lebeau said the video did not identify what the pickup was carrying in its trunk, nor did it confirm a license plate number. State Police Sgt. Kenneth Ventresca said video from a business on Rte. 8 in Derby found a similar truck at about 11:30 am.
At about 12:10 pm, a similar vehicle arrived back at the Fotis Dulos property at 80 Mountain Spring Rd. in Farmington.
Ventresca explained, “It’s like a puzzle, right? You take a piece and you put it in the puzzle. That’s basically it.”
The jury also heard about a police encounter with the Tacoma’s owner, Gumienny, on May 31, one week after the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos. Sgt. Beauton met with Gumienny as police were about to search the Jefferson Crossing home shared by Fotis Dulos and Michelle Troconis.
Beauton described Gumienny, who had been driving, as sweating heavily, saying, “He appeared to me to be very nervous. I noticed that his breathing rate was elevated… I also observed the carotid artery in his neck was pulsating, indicating that his heartbeat was beating pretty fast.”
Police seized Gumienny’s cellphone and the Jeep Cherokee he had been driving, which was owned by Fotis Dulos’ company, the Fore Group.
Gumienny has been granted immunity in the case, and is expected to testify in the coming days.
Also on Tuesday, Sgt. Beauton described a tense, but non-verbal, exchange between Troconis and Fotis Dulos at state police barracks in Litchfield, where the couple had driven as officers searched their home:
“(Troconis) was seated in a chair. Her head was between her legs, head in hands and just was rocking back and forth… At some point, she looked over at Fotis with what I would describe as a stern look… shaking her head back and forth at him… He made an even sterner look back toward her.”