Troconis jury sees surveillance videos from Hartford, altered license plates pulled from storm drain
The trial for Michelle Troconis picked back up in Stamford Superior Court Monday with surveillance footage allegedly showing Fotis Dulos, with Troconis in the passenger seat of his Ford Raptor, driving around Hartford disposing of alleged evidence related to Jennifer Farber Dulos’ disappearance.
Among that evidence were two reportedly altered license plates that were found inside a FedEx envelope that was pulled from a Hartford storm drain after a man investigators believe was Dulos was seen on video dropping an envelope into that drain, Connecticut State Police Sgt. Michael Beauton testified.
Monday marked the seventh day of the trial for Troconis — Dulos’ former girlfriend — who is charged in connection to the disappearance and presumed death of the New Canaan mother of five, who vanished during a heated divorce and custody battle with Dulos.
Investigators allege that Dulos killed Farber Dulos in her garage in New Canaan after she dropped her children off at school on May 24, 2019. Her body has never been found, and Dulos died after attempting suicide at his Farmington mansion in 2020.
Troconis is charged with conspiring to commit murder, hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence. Investigators allege she conspired with Dulos to murder his estranged wife and was with Dulos when he allegedly dumped evidence connected with the crimes into trash cans along Albany Avenue in Hartford.
A Connecticut State Police investigator testified Friday that they were led to Albany Avenue after location data from Dulos’ phone reportedly showed that he was driving down that street that night.
Joshua Quint, an analyst who is now with Connecticut State Police, took the stand Monday morning and walked the jury through the surveillance footage from the more than 1,000 cameras that were surveilling Hartford in 2019.
Quint, who was working with the Hartford Police Department in 2019 in the Hartford Capital City Command Center (C4), was tasked with searching surveillance footage from the day Farber Dulos vanished for videos that captured vehicles that her estranged husband might be driving — the Raptor, a white Jeep Cherokee or a black Chevrolet Suburban.
Using a program that pulls out certain makes, models and colors of vehicles from video footage, Quint said they spotted what they believed to be Dulos’ Raptor.
On Monday afternoon, Beauton told the jury that after he saw a video reportedly showing the Raptor driving through Hartford, he zeroed in on a single storm drain in the city.
Investigators had the contents of that storm drain suctioned up because, Beauton testified, the video showed a man they believed was Dulos dropping what they thought was an envelope into the drain hours after Farber Dulos vanished.
Beauton testified that as sewer workers suctioned out the drain, they heard a “clink.” They pulled up a white envelope marked with a FedEx label. Inside were the two license plates.
Investigators ran those plates and “they came back as nonexistent,” Beauton said on the stand, meaning they didn’t match any vehicles registered in Connecticut.
That’s when he said investigators took a closer look and realized that some sort of adhesive had been used to alter the numbers and letters on the plates, he testified.
Jurors then saw a photograph of two license plates with the tag 5T6-WBU.
Beauton noted that in Connecticut, license plates are usually issued with three numbers, then three letters. On these plates, the pattern started with number, letter, number.
Beauton testified that another detective started to touch the plate and allegedly found that the original numbering and lettering had been changed. A 1 had been turned into a T, a D had been turned into a B and a J had been turned into a U, he said.
He said the plate originally read 516-WDJ and when they ran that plate it came back with a hit: Those plates were connected to a canceled registration for an older model Chevrolet Suburban that, at one point, was registered to Dulos.
Jurors on Monday also saw multiple videos that showed a man in a white T-shirt and black baseball cap, who investigators believe was Dulos, taking other things out of the bed of his pickup truck and placing them into garbage cans along Albany Avenue.
Beauton described the video as showing the man taking “contractor style black garbage bags” and what he said he would describe “to be a square or rectangular black rubber mat,” like one that would line a vehicle’s floor.
Troconis’ attorney Jon Schoenhorn repeatedly objected to investigators narrating the videos, saying the videos “speak for themselves.”
In one of the videos, Beauton said a woman matching the description he was given of Troconis can be seen leaning out of the Raptor and touching the ground. Schoenhorn told the Courant last week that Troconis was trying to get rid of a piece of gum by wiping it on the sidewalk.
Schoenhorn said Monday that Troconis has never denied being with Dulos on that trip to Hartford.
During a brief cross-examination of Beauton, Schoenhorn said Troconis admitted to investigators that she was with Dulos on Albany Avenue but has denied any involvement, or knowledge, of any crimes connected to Farber Dulos’ disappearance or death.
“We’ve never disputed the fact that Michelle was in that vehicle,” he said after court. “Bottom line is these are things Fotis Duols did. He’s not here to explain himself. I don’t think anybody is going to be able to explain what he was up to.”
In video recordings of Troconis being interviewed by investigators, she said that she did not know what Dulos was doing when he kept getting out of the truck. She said she was mostly on her phone sending messages during the trip.
The jury on Monday also heard about 20 more minutes of testimony from Sgt. Kenneth Ventresca from Connecticut State Police, who first took the stand on Friday afternoon and told the jury that location data from Dulos’ phone put him on Albany Avenue when they were first looking for a then-missing Farber Dulos.
During a short cross-examination, Schoenhorn focused his questioning on state police’s knowledge of a red Toyota Tacoma that belonged to one of Dulos’ employees. Schoenhorn asked Ventresca when he became aware of that Tacoma.
Ventresca said that on the weekend after Farber Dulos disappeared, detectives put all of Dulos’ employees on a whiteboard “and started looking into every employee.”
Schoenhorn asked Ventresca if he knew the Tacoma was about 20 years old and leaking oil.
Ventresca said he was “very aware” of that but said investigators were not specifically looking for an oil trail in the Albany Avenue area.
Schoenhorn also asked if Dulos had ever been known to dump construction garbage in places he should not have. Ventresca said no, not to his knowledge. He said he had never investigated instances of illegal dumping.
The state called other investigators to the stand for brief testimony Monday.
On Monday evening, Schoenhorn said the evidence presented by the state so far in this trial doesn’t point to his client’s involvement with the alleged crimes.
“The bottom line is I’ve yet to see anything to suggest that Michelle Troconis knew anything about what (Dulos) was up to,” he said after court on Monday.
He said that in the surveillance footage shown Monday, it is “absolutely clear that it was Fotis Dulos who dropped the FedEx envelope down” into the drain.
Court adjourned early at 4 p.m. Monday and is set to continue Tuesday at 10 a.m. in Stamford Superior Court.
