Continuing a monthslong effort to clear his client’s name, an attorney for Michelle Troconis, a former girlfriend of Fotis Dulos, has asked a Stamford judge to toss out evidence tampering charges connected to the disappearance of New Canaan mother Jennifer Farber Dulos.
The motion filed by Attorney Jon L. Schoenhorn, one of a number filed since he took the case over last year, calls into question whether state police actually had probable cause to arrest Troconis, 46, with tampering with evidence and conspiracy to commit tampering with evidence.
It does not address the conspiracy to commit murder charge filed against Troconis on Jan. 7, 2020, in connection with Farber Dulos’ presumed death.
The motion was one of three filed by Schoenhorn Thursday and came after a two-day search this week of a property associated Dulos’s building company in Farmington.
The 19-page filing draws on accusations in an arrest warrant affidavit that a woman, believed by investigators to be Troconis, assisted Dulos in disposing of evidence in Hartford’s North End following Farber Dulos’s disappearance. Dulos was charged with his estranged wife’s murder and died by suicide in January 2020.
In the motion, Schoenhorn writes: “Traffic videos showed that the [Ford] Raptor’s female passenger (believed by the affiant to be the defendant) never exited the vehicle and did not assist the driver in the disposal of garbage bags.”
The warrant alleges that Dulos and Troconis drove through Hartford in Dulos’ Ford Raptor disposing of evidence the night that Farber Dulos went missing on May 24, 2019. State police investigators later recovered some of the evidence and found items containing Farber Dulos’ blood, records show.
Investigators left out of the warrant that surveillance video obtained from the Hartford Police Department shows the male driver, believed to be Dulos, getting out of the truck and disposing of items, not the female passenger, Schoenhorn writes in the motion.
The motion then alleges that state police investigators lied in the arrest warrant affidavit when they swore that Troconis was not cooperating with investigators, yet they knew that she had retained counsel.
Based on those issues, Schoenhorn wrote: “It is readily apparent that the affidavit lacked probable cause to support the issuance of an arrest warrant even assuming that such cause existed on the face of the affidavit.”
In a second motion filed Wednesday, Schoenhorn asked the judge to potentially preclude evidence or dismiss charges for what he believes is a failure by the state to provide information and materials to the defense.
Schoenhorn refers in that motion to a nearly three-hour video interview with Kent Mawhinney, a friend and lawyer of Dulos’ that was also charged in the disappearance, conducted by state police at the agency’s polygraph unit in August of last year. Schoenhorn said he has not received answers on why the interview was conducted at the polygraph unit or what promises were made to Mawhinney, who was subsequently released on a lower bond following the interview.
And in the third motion he filed Wednesday, Schoenhorn asked the judge to reconsider the conditions of Troconis’ release from custody and remove her round-the-clock GPS monitoring. Troconis has been out on more than $2 million bail and in September of last year, Judge John Blawie lifted restrictions that she submit to house arrest and curfew.
“In particular, the defendant is an internationally-related competitive water skiier and has been prohibited from participating in that sport because the bracelet is not waterproof,” Schoenhorn wrote in the motion. “In addition, the defendant’s minor daughter is a competitive Alpine Slalom ski athlete and the defendant is unable to accompany her daughter to the race location or ski with her because a ski boot will not fit over the bracelet.”
It is unclear when a judge will address the motions, but Troconis is scheduled for a hearing in Superior Court in Stamford on Feb. 2.
Nicholas Rondinone can be reached at nrondinone@courant.com.
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