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Ten Paper Towels and the Dulos Murder · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: Picture this. It's the morning of May twenty fourth, twenty nineteen.
0:04
Speaker 1: You are in this ultra wealthy, super quiet suburb in Connecticut.
0:08
Speaker 2: Right, a very idyllic, picturesque.
0:10
Speaker 1: Place, exactly, and a full time nanny arrives at the sprawling,
0:14
Speaker 1: seven bedroom mega mansion to start her day. It's a Friday,
0:18
Speaker 1: the weather's crisp. I mean, everything about this morning should
0:21
Speaker 1: be completely normal, but it isn't. Now the moment she
0:25
Speaker 1: walks through the door, this overwhelming sense of dread just
0:28
Speaker 1: hits her because the mother of the five children she
0:31
Speaker 1: cares for, Jennifer Farber Dulos, is nowhere to be found.
0:35
Speaker 2: And you know what makes those first few moments so
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Speaker 2: chilling isn't just that she's gone, but it's the presence
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Speaker 2: of the things she left behind in a hurry.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the mundane stuff exactly.
0:44
Speaker 2: You have this morning mug of tea sitting in the
0:46
Speaker 2: kitchen counter, completely untouched, and there's an incredibly expensive designer
0:50
Speaker 2: purse just you know, dropped haphazardly on the floor between
0:53
Speaker 2: the mud room and the kitchen, right.
0:55
Speaker 1: And then there's the pantry because the night before, the
0:58
Speaker 1: nanny had just restocked a brand new twelve pack of
1:01
Speaker 1: paper cowls, but this morning, ten of those roles are
1:04
Speaker 1: completely gone. Ten missing rolls of paper towels. I mean,
1:09
Speaker 1: it sounds like a weird, mundane household detail. But today
1:12
Speaker 1: we're going to show you how that single detail unraveled
1:15
Speaker 1: one of the most meticulously planned, chilling mysteries of the
1:18
Speaker 1: twenty first century.
1:19
Speaker 2: It really is a masterclass in how modern investigators build
1:22
Speaker 2: a murder case and actually secure a conviction without ever
1:26
Speaker 2: finding a physical body.
1:27
Speaker 1: Welcome to today's deep dive. Our mission today is to
1:31
Speaker 1: unpack this incredible true crime story, and we're going to
1:35
Speaker 1: see how, like a patchwork of digital breadcrumbs and sheer
1:38
Speaker 1: arrogance unraveled a massive conspiracy.
1:41
Speaker 2: Because when a person vanishes, it's those mundane details of
1:44
Speaker 2: their routine that freeze time. The untouched tee, the dropped purse.
1:48
Speaker 2: They become the loudest witnesses in the room.
1:50
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, And in this.
1:51
Speaker 2: Case, those details set out a chain reaction that exposed
1:54
Speaker 2: a terrifying web of psychological abuse and coercive control.
1:58
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this and get into the macare ax
2:00
Speaker 1: of that very first day. Because the nanny is frantically
2:03
Speaker 1: trying to make sense of all this. She's juggling this
2:05
Speaker 1: incredibly complex schedule for five.
2:07
Speaker 2: Kids, which is a huge task on a normal day.
2:10
Speaker 1: Right, and she immediately notices Jennifer's rang drover is still
2:13
Speaker 1: parked in the garage. That makes zero sense because Jennifer
2:17
Speaker 1: had a very specific, scheduled plan to drive that exact
2:22
Speaker 1: car into Manhattan for a doctor's appointment.
2:24
Speaker 2: Right, she wouldn't just leave it exactly.
2:27
Speaker 1: Instead, her other car, a black Chevy Suburban, is the
2:30
Speaker 1: one missing from the driveway.
2:32
Speaker 2: And you know, the human brain naturally tries to rationalize anomalies.
2:36
Speaker 2: The nanny assumes, well, maybe there was a last minute
2:39
Speaker 2: change of plan.
2:40
Speaker 1: Sure, you don't immediately jump to murder.
2:42
Speaker 2: Right, But as the morning hours tick by, the silence
2:46
Speaker 2: shifts from confusing to just outright alarming.
2:50
Speaker 1: She's texting Jennifer, getting absolutely nothing back. Eventually, she grabs
2:54
Speaker 1: one of the kid's iPads, which is synced to Jennifer's
2:56
Speaker 1: Google account, just to check her calendar. She sees that
2:59
Speaker 1: we're the dawn disappointment in New.
3:01
Speaker 2: York, so she coordinates getting the kids there.
3:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, she gets them there, calls the receptionist and finds
3:06
Speaker 1: out Jennifer never showed up, and I think at that
3:08
Speaker 1: point the rationalizing just stops. She calls one of Jennifer's
3:11
Speaker 1: close friends and they immediately dial nine to one one.
3:14
Speaker 1: And when the Farmington police arrive at that mansion, they
3:17
Speaker 1: walk into a scene that looks normal to the naked eye,
3:20
Speaker 1: but sets off every single alarm bell for a trained investigator.
3:24
Speaker 2: Because to the average person, the garage just looked spotless.
3:28
Speaker 2: But crime scene investigators, they're trained to look for what
3:31
Speaker 2: isn't there or you know, what has been altered.
3:33
Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: They immediately noticed this faint chemical smell of bleach and
3:37
Speaker 2: cleaning agents, and when one officer crouches down near that
3:41
Speaker 2: parked range rover, he spots these tiny, almost microscopic specks
3:46
Speaker 2: of red blood spatter on the bumper.
3:48
Speaker 1: Which of course leads them to pull out the heavy
3:50
Speaker 1: forensic tools, right. I mean, they don't just rely on
3:53
Speaker 1: what they can see under the overhead lights.
3:54
Speaker 2: Precisely, they use a chemical cold liminal and luminol is
3:57
Speaker 2: fascinating because it reacts specifically to the iron found in hemoglobin.
4:02
Speaker 1: That's the protein in our red blood cells.
4:04
Speaker 2: Right, Exactly when you spray luminol on a surface, that
4:07
Speaker 2: has been wiped clean of blood. It undergoes this chemoluminescent reaction.
4:12
Speaker 2: It literally glows with a bright blue light in a
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Speaker 2: dark room. And when investigators sprayed the floor of Jennifer's garage,
4:20
Speaker 2: it just lit up. It revealed a massive, frantic cleanup.
4:24
Speaker 1: Effort, which brings us right back to those ten missing
4:26
Speaker 1: rolls of paper towels. I mean, unless your kids spilled
4:29
Speaker 1: a soccer field sized cooler of kool Aid, ten rolls
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Speaker 1: of paper towels is a crime scene level amount of
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Speaker 1: clean up material.
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Speaker 2: It's an unbelievable amount.
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Speaker 1: It clearly indicated a violent, chaotic struggle. And the police
4:42
Speaker 1: quickly find the missing Chevy suburban too. It's parked about
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Speaker 1: ten minutes away at a place called Waveny Park, backed
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Speaker 1: up against the tree line.
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Speaker 2: Locked and what do they see inside.
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Speaker 1: Well, there is no sign of Jennifer, but they look
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Speaker 1: through the windows and see the distinct smeared remnants of
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Speaker 1: a blood like substance on the interior.
5:00
Speaker 2: And you know, when investigators are faced with a violently
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Speaker 2: scrubbed crime scene and an abandoned vehicle, statistics dictate an
5:07
Speaker 2: immediate pivot.
5:08
Speaker 1: You look at the spouse exactly. Y.
5:10
Speaker 2: You don't start by looking for a random stranger lurking
5:12
Speaker 2: at the bushes. You look at the closest personal relationships, and.
5:16
Speaker 1: That leads them straight to Jennifer's estranged husband, Photos Dulos.
5:20
Speaker 1: But to understand why he became the prime suspect, like instantly,
5:25
Speaker 1: we really have to look at the deeply toxic dynamics
5:27
Speaker 1: of this marriage.
5:28
Speaker 2: It's crucial part of the story.
5:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they met at Brown University, reconnected years later,
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Speaker 1: and went through this long, grueling, IVF journey to have
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Speaker 1: their five children. Photos ran a luxury real estate and
5:41
Speaker 1: construction business. He built them the stunning four million dollar
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Speaker 1: mega mansion in Farmington.
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Speaker 2: But there's a massive catch there, a huge catch.
5:50
Speaker 1: That entire lavish lifestyle was funded by Jennifer's incredibly wealthy family, and.
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Speaker 2: That financial dependency that is the critical mechanism of this tragedy.
6:00
Speaker 2: The marriage began to fracture, It wasn't just a breakdown
6:02
Speaker 2: of a romantic relationship.
6:03
Speaker 1: It was a business crisis.
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Speaker 2: Right for a man like Photus, it was a looming
6:07
Speaker 2: economic catastrophe.
6:08
Speaker 1: And he had become completely brazen in his behavior by
6:11
Speaker 1: this point. He actually moved his mistress, a woman named
6:14
Speaker 1: Michelle Traconis, who he met through of all things competitive
6:17
Speaker 1: water skiing. R Yeah, he moves her and her daughter
6:21
Speaker 1: right into the Farmington home while Jennifer was still trying
6:25
Speaker 1: to hold her family together. It's insane, and Jennifer was terrified,
6:28
Speaker 1: so terrified of his erratic, controlling behavior that she literally
6:32
Speaker 1: fled to a New York hotel, hired armed bodyguards, and
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Speaker 1: filed for divorce.
6:38
Speaker 2: The ensuing two year custody and divorce battle was just brutal.
6:42
Speaker 2: And this is really where the motive crystallizes. Because Photos
6:45
Speaker 2: was in an absolute financial free fall.
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Speaker 1: Fhowed a lot of money millions.
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Speaker 2: He had racked up millions of dollars in debt. Furthermore,
6:53
Speaker 2: Jennifer's father had passed away and her family's estate was
6:56
Speaker 2: aggressively suing Photos to get their loan money back. OK.
7:00
Speaker 1: I got a pushback here because that makes zero sense
7:02
Speaker 1: to me. Fotus is living in a four million dollar mansion,
7:05
Speaker 1: he has his new girlfriend there, He's living the high
7:08
Speaker 1: life of a luxury real estate developer on paper, sure, right,
7:11
Speaker 1: So why on Earth risk a first degree murder charge
7:15
Speaker 1: when you are already living comfortably It's like a cornered
7:18
Speaker 1: chess player who, instead of just accepting he's losing the game,
7:21
Speaker 1: decides to just flip the entire board over.
7:23
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy, because the comfort was a complete illusion.
7:27
Speaker 2: He was standing on the edge of a financial cliff.
7:30
Speaker 2: The impending divorce meant he was going to lose the house,
7:33
Speaker 2: the business, funding, his social status, everything.
7:36
Speaker 1: Ah. So it was all crumbling right.
7:38
Speaker 2: But if Jennifer were to permanently disappear, the legal dynamics
7:42
Speaker 2: shift overnight. As the surviving parent, he believed he would
7:46
Speaker 2: gain sole custody of those five children.
7:49
Speaker 1: And their trust funds.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, he would gain access to their trust funds, which
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Speaker 2: totaled around ten million dollars. So in his twisted mind,
7:57
Speaker 2: eliminating Jennifer wasn't a risk. It was a necessary business
8:01
Speaker 2: transaction to wipe out his debt and maintain his facade.
8:04
Speaker 1: The arrogance of that is just staggering, and that exact
8:08
Speaker 1: arrogance takes us right to the evening of the very
8:10
Speaker 1: day Jennifer disappeared. Investigators know they need to track Photos' movements,
8:15
Speaker 1: so they pull his cell phone records.
8:18
Speaker 2: Because digital forensics is the backbone of modern policing. The
8:22
Speaker 2: moment a person is reported missing, police get emergency warrants
8:25
Speaker 2: for cell tower pings.
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Speaker 1: They don't even need the physical phone, do they.
8:28
Speaker 2: No, they just need to see which towers the phone
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Speaker 2: is talking to.
8:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Potus's phone pings a tower on the grimy,
8:35
Speaker 1: busy streets of Albany Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, which is
8:39
Speaker 1: just this stark juxtaposition. You have these wealthy, manicured suburbanites
8:43
Speaker 1: driving down a high crime city street.
8:46
Speaker 2: But a high crime area means one specific thing for police,
8:50
Speaker 2: massive municipal surveillance.
8:52
Speaker 1: Yes, so police analysts pull the city camera footage and
8:55
Speaker 1: they spot photos driving his black Ford Raptor pickup truck
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Speaker 1: with his girlfriend Michelle in the passenger seat.
9:01
Speaker 2: And the footage they uncover is macabre, it really is.
9:04
Speaker 2: It shows a man methodically attempting to erase a human
9:07
Speaker 2: being from existence on a public street.
9:09
Speaker 1: Corner over a four mile stretch. The cameras capture photos
9:12
Speaker 1: stopping at more than thirty different Citi trash cans.
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Speaker 2: Thirty It's unbelievable.
9:18
Speaker 1: He is pulling these heavy black garbage bags out of
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Speaker 1: his truck bed and dumping them into random municipal bins.
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Speaker 1: At one point, he takes a FedEx envelope and literally
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Speaker 1: forces it down a storm sewer grate.
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Speaker 2: And what is Michelle doing during all this.
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Speaker 1: Well, she occasionally opens the passenger door, leans out and
9:33
Speaker 1: touches the sidewalk. When police eventually ask her what she
9:36
Speaker 1: was doing, her excuse is that she was quote wiping
9:39
Speaker 1: gum off her shoe.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: Highly believable, Oh totally And the most baffling part after
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Speaker 1: this bizarre sinistered trash dumping spree, they just casually swing
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Speaker 1: by a local Starbucks to grab forrappuccinos.
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Speaker 2: The hubris is just astounding, but luckily the investigators act
9:57
Speaker 2: with incredible speed. They dispatch teas seems to Albany Avenue
10:01
Speaker 2: to physically intercept those trash bins before the municipal garbage
10:05
Speaker 2: trucks can empty them into the city incinerators.
10:08
Speaker 1: Thank goodness they did, because what they find in that
10:10
Speaker 1: Hartford trash completely shatters any hope that Jennifer is just missing.
10:15
Speaker 1: It is gruesome.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a turning point.
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Speaker 1: Inside those bags they find bloody ponchos, heavy duty zip ties,
10:21
Speaker 1: and perfectly matching the missing items from the mansion. Those
10:23
Speaker 1: bloody paper towels and clothing too. Yeah, they find Jennifer's clothes,
10:27
Speaker 1: specifically this Vineyard Vine's shirt, completely soaked in her blood,
10:31
Speaker 1: and the ship bizarrely has the slogan on it every
10:34
Speaker 1: day should feel this good.
10:35
Speaker 2: It's haunting, and down in the storm drain they actually
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Speaker 2: recover that FedEx envelope ye inside are altered license plates
10:43
Speaker 2: that trace right back to Photus's vehicle.
10:45
Speaker 1: Just a damning physical evidence.
10:47
Speaker 2: But the digital and documentary evidence they find back at
10:50
Speaker 2: Photus's mansion reveals a level of premeditation that is hard
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Speaker 2: to even fathom.
10:55
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. When police execute a
10:59
Speaker 1: search wark at his home office. They dig through the
11:02
Speaker 1: trash bin next to his desk and they find handwritten
11:05
Speaker 1: minute by minute.
11:06
Speaker 2: Schedules the alibi scripts.
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Speaker 1: Yes, literal timelines of exactly what photos and Michelle were
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Speaker 1: supposed to be doing and saying on the day Jennifer vanished.
11:15
Speaker 1: It included scheduled phone calls they were supposed to make
11:18
Speaker 1: to each other simply to trick the cell towers into
11:20
Speaker 1: creating a fake digital footprint.
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Speaker 2: To map out a murder conspiracy, execute it, and then
11:26
Speaker 2: throw the physical blueprint of your alibi into your own
11:29
Speaker 2: office trash can. I mean, it defies logic.
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Speaker 1: It's like they're terrible community theater actors who not only
11:34
Speaker 1: forgot their lines, but left the photocopied script at the
11:37
Speaker 1: scene of the crime.
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Speaker 2: It speaks to a profound narcissistic delusion. He genuinely believed
11:42
Speaker 2: that the police were simply not smart enough to look
11:45
Speaker 2: in his garbage.
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Speaker 1: It is baffling. So, with all this evidence, investigators finally
11:49
Speaker 1: pieced together the timeline of terror. How did the murder
11:52
Speaker 1: actually go down? While Potus went to extreme lengths to
11:56
Speaker 1: ensure his own vehicles were nowhere near Jennifer's house.
12:00
Speaker 2: He used a decoy vehicle.
12:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a project manager who worked for his
12:04
Speaker 1: construction company, a man named Paul, and.
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Speaker 2: Photos utilized this tactic of layered deniability. He actually shaved
12:10
Speaker 2: his own head to perfectly mash Paul's distinct buzz cut.
12:13
Speaker 1: That is so creepy.
12:15
Speaker 2: Then he took Paul's vehicle, a red Toyota Tacoma pickup truck,
12:19
Speaker 2: without Paul's explicit knowledge of what it was going to.
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Speaker 1: Be used for, and security cameras along the Connecticut highways
12:25
Speaker 1: stitched this nightmare together, they spot the red Tacoma driving
12:29
Speaker 1: toward Jennifer's town early that morning. But here is the
12:32
Speaker 1: detail that just gave me chills. In the bed of
12:34
Speaker 1: the truck is a vintage childhood bicycle. Later, neighborhood residential
12:39
Speaker 1: cameras capture a figure in a dark hoodie riding that
12:42
Speaker 1: exact bicycle toward Jennifer's house.
12:44
Speaker 2: Because he used the bicycle to close the final distance
12:48
Speaker 2: a truck would trigger license plate readers and driveway sensors,
12:51
Speaker 2: so he rode in, slipped into her garage, and simply
12:55
Speaker 2: waited in the shadows for her to return from dropping
12:57
Speaker 2: their kids at school.
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Speaker 1: Just a horrific ambush exactly.
13:01
Speaker 2: And after the attack, police believe he used those zip
13:03
Speaker 2: ties found in the Heart for Trash to bind her,
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Speaker 2: placed her in her own suburban, and drove it to
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Speaker 2: Waveny Park, where that red Tacoma was stashed.
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Speaker 1: But here is where the cover up spirals completely out
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Speaker 1: of control. Fotus returns the tacoma to his employee, Paul,
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Speaker 1: and over the next few days, Fotus aggressively hounds Paul
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Speaker 1: to get the truck professionally detailed. He's panic king, total panic,
13:26
Speaker 1: and when washing it isn't enough. Fotos forces Paul to
13:29
Speaker 1: completely remove the front seats of the Tacoma and swap
13:32
Speaker 1: them with seats from erect Portcha that Photos owned.
13:35
Speaker 2: He even gives them a code word.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he tells Paul when we text about this, use
13:39
Speaker 1: the code word hardware instead of seats.
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Speaker 2: This introduces a really fascinating dynamic of power and coercion
13:45
Speaker 2: in the workplace. Yeah, because Potus was actively conscripting an
13:49
Speaker 2: employee to destroy a homicide crime scene.
13:52
Speaker 1: Wait, I have to jump in here. If I'm Paul
13:55
Speaker 1: and my incredibly intimidating boss tells me to swap out
13:58
Speaker 1: truck seats right after his stranged wife makes national news
14:02
Speaker 1: for going missing. I am taking those seats to a.
14:05
Speaker 2: Bonfire, right, you'd want them gone?
14:07
Speaker 1: Why on earth would he keep the bloody truck seats
14:10
Speaker 1: instead of destroying them to protect himself?
14:12
Speaker 2: Because Paul understood his own extreme vulnerability. He was an
14:16
Speaker 2: immigrant from Poland and his immigration status was precarious.
14:20
Speaker 1: Ah, so Photos used that against him exactly.
14:23
Speaker 2: He weaponized it. He explicitly threatened Paul, implying that if
14:27
Speaker 2: a non citizen got tangled up with the police in
14:29
Speaker 2: a missing person case, he would be deported and his
14:32
Speaker 2: life would be.
14:33
Speaker 1: Ruined at a sickening.
14:34
Speaker 2: So Paul swapped the seats out of sheer terror, but
14:37
Speaker 2: his instinct for self preservation kicked in. He realized that
14:40
Speaker 2: if he destroyed the seats, he would have no proof
14:43
Speaker 2: of what Photos asked him to do. They were his leverage,
14:45
Speaker 2: The seats were his insurance policy, so he quietly kept them,
14:49
Speaker 2: and when the police eventually cornered him, he handed over
14:51
Speaker 2: the original seats in exchange for immunity.
14:54
Speaker 1: And thank god he did, because when forensic investigators sprayed
14:58
Speaker 1: those specific truck seats with uominol, they glowed bright blue.
15:03
Speaker 1: Jennifer's DNA had soaked deep into the fabric.
15:06
Speaker 2: Paul's insurance policy provided the exact forensic link the police
15:10
Speaker 2: needed to tie Photos to the transport of the body.
15:13
Speaker 1: But Fotis and Michelle weren't acting alone, were they. The
15:16
Speaker 1: investigation uncovered a sinister third character, Fotus's attorney and close friend,
15:21
Speaker 1: Kent Mawinney.
15:22
Speaker 2: Mowinni introduces a deeply dark psychological layer to this whole
15:26
Speaker 2: conspiracy because he was a man fighting his own bitter battles.
15:30
Speaker 1: At the time, and he brings us to one of
15:31
Speaker 1: the most spine shilling discoveries of the entire case. A
15:34
Speaker 1: few days before Jennifer vanished, two members of a local
15:36
Speaker 1: gun club, a club that Kent Oweeney had just mysteriously rejoined,
15:40
Speaker 1: were walking through the.
15:41
Speaker 2: Woods and they find something awful.
15:43
Speaker 1: They stumbled upon a hidden human sized pit. It was
15:46
Speaker 1: six feet deep, meticulously covered with grates and camouflaged with leaves,
15:51
Speaker 1: and inside the pit a large tarp and two heavy
15:54
Speaker 1: bags of lime.
15:55
Speaker 2: Now, lime or calcium hydroxide is a highly alkalined seubstance
16:01
Speaker 2: in the criminal underworld. It is historically believed to speed
16:05
Speaker 2: up the decomposition of organic matter and completely mask the
16:08
Speaker 2: smell of decay to throw off cadaver dogs.
16:12
Speaker 1: So a predug grave.
16:13
Speaker 2: Yes, the discovery of a predug grave with lime tied
16:17
Speaker 2: directly to Photus's lawyer, shifted the entire scope of the investigation.
16:22
Speaker 1: This immediately makes me think of that Alfred Hitchcock classic
16:25
Speaker 1: Strangers on a Train. I mean, you have these two desperate,
16:29
Speaker 1: angry men who feel wronged by the women in their lives.
16:32
Speaker 2: Because Kent was also going through a divorce.
16:34
Speaker 1: Right, yes, both men were going through incredibly contentious divorces.
16:37
Speaker 1: Kent's wife even had a protective order against him. It's
16:40
Speaker 1: like they were plotting to solve each other's wife problems.
16:42
Speaker 1: One guy digs the grave, the other does the deed.
16:45
Speaker 2: It perfectly illustrates a shared pathology between them. They didn't
16:49
Speaker 2: view their spouses as human beings with rights. They viewed
16:52
Speaker 2: them as logistical obstacles that needed to be managed and
16:54
Speaker 2: eliminated through this collaborative, calculated joint venture.
16:58
Speaker 1: But despite all their planning, the walls finally close in,
17:02
Speaker 1: police secure the arrest warrants. Fotus is officially charged with capital.
17:06
Speaker 2: Murder, but the trial never happens.
17:08
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't. On the morning he is supposed to
17:11
Speaker 1: appear in court for an emergency bail hearing, a hearing
17:14
Speaker 1: where his bond was almost certainly going to be revoked,
17:16
Speaker 1: sending him straight back to a jail cell, he doesn't show.
17:19
Speaker 2: Up, and when a high profile murder suspect fails to appear,
17:23
Speaker 2: the response is immediate. The US Marshals are dispatched to
17:28
Speaker 2: his Farmington property.
17:29
Speaker 1: They walk up that long manicured driveway, look through the
17:33
Speaker 1: windows of the garage, and find photos inside his vehicle
17:35
Speaker 1: with a hose running from the exhaust pipe, he committed
17:39
Speaker 1: suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.
17:41
Speaker 2: It's just a tragic evasion of justice, and.
17:43
Speaker 1: True to his narcissistic nature, he left behind a note
17:46
Speaker 1: declaring his complete innocence and bizarrely insisting that his girlfriend,
17:50
Speaker 1: Michelle and his lawyer Kent, had absolutely nothing to do
17:53
Speaker 1: with it either.
17:54
Speaker 2: It was his final desperate act of control. By taking
17:58
Speaker 2: his own life, he permanently did nigh Jennifer's family the
18:01
Speaker 2: justice of a conviction. He ensured he would never have
18:04
Speaker 2: to sit in a courtroom, face the evidence and answer
18:07
Speaker 2: for the destruction he caused.
18:09
Speaker 1: But the justice system wasn't done. Michelle Traconis's trial finally
18:14
Speaker 1: took place years later, and her defense strategy is something
18:17
Speaker 1: that borders on the absurd.
18:19
Speaker 2: It really was ridiculous.
18:20
Speaker 1: She sat in the courtroom and her lawyers tried to
18:22
Speaker 1: claim that she didn't speak or understand English well enough
18:25
Speaker 1: to know what Fotus was doing or what she was
18:27
Speaker 1: agreeing to when she spoke to the police.
18:29
Speaker 2: A defense that the prosecution immediately dismantled.
18:32
Speaker 1: How did they do it?
18:33
Speaker 2: They simply played the tapes of her multi hour police
18:35
Speaker 2: interrogations where she conversed perfectly, fluidly and complexly in English,
18:41
Speaker 2: without the need for a translator at all.
18:43
Speaker 1: The jury saw right through the charade. They watched the
18:45
Speaker 1: Hartford surveillance footage, they saw the handwritten alibi scripts, and
18:49
Speaker 1: they convicted her of conspiracy to commit murder, hindering prosecution,
18:53
Speaker 1: and evidence tampering. She was sentenced to fourteen and a
18:56
Speaker 1: half years in prison. Significant sentence, absolutely, But beyond the convictions,
19:01
Speaker 1: this case left a massive legal legacy in the state
19:04
Speaker 1: of Connecticut, didn't it, Yes, it did.
19:07
Speaker 2: Out of this horrifying tragedy came Jennifer's Law. This is
19:11
Speaker 2: a piece of legislation that fundamentally expands the legal definition
19:15
Speaker 2: of domestic violence to include something called coercive control.
19:19
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? Explain how that works,
19:21
Speaker 1: because I want everyone listening to truly understand this. When
19:25
Speaker 1: we think of domestic abuse, our minds usually immediately go
19:28
Speaker 1: to physical.
19:28
Speaker 2: Violence, right, and for decades the legal system only reacted
19:32
Speaker 2: to bruised faces and broken bones. But coercive control recognizes
19:36
Speaker 2: that the most dangerous abuse is often.
19:38
Speaker 1: Invisible, the psychological stuff.
19:39
Speaker 2: Exactly. Imagine having every single text message you send monitored.
19:43
Speaker 2: Imagine having your GPS track constantly, or your partner secretly
19:47
Speaker 2: alienating you from your friends and family until you have
19:49
Speaker 2: no support system.
19:50
Speaker 1: Left, just isolating you entirely.
19:52
Speaker 2: Imagine having your access to bank accounts suddenly cut off.
19:55
Speaker 2: It is a slow, methodical, psychological prison, and Jennifer Farber
20:00
Speaker 2: Dulo's was trapped in a web of terror long before
20:04
Speaker 2: photos ever laid a physical hand on her in that garage,
20:06
Speaker 2: and that is.
20:07
Speaker 1: The most heartbreaking realization of this entire story. Jennifer did
20:12
Speaker 1: everything by the book. She recognized the danger, she had
20:15
Speaker 1: the financial resources to higher armed bodyguards. She fled to
20:19
Speaker 1: a different state to establish safety. She did all the
20:22
Speaker 1: right things, she filed the legal paperwork, and yet the
20:25
Speaker 1: system still struggled to protect her from a man who
20:28
Speaker 1: viewed her as his personal property.
20:30
Speaker 2: And that's what Jennifer's law is trying to correct that
20:32
Speaker 2: systemic line spot. It gives victims legal recourse to get
20:36
Speaker 2: protective orders based on psychological and financial manipulation before the
20:40
Speaker 2: control inevitably escalates into physical violence.
20:43
Speaker 1: As we wrap up this deep dive, this case forces
20:46
Speaker 1: us to look at a fundamental shift in how justice
20:48
Speaker 1: operates in the twenty first century.
20:50
Speaker 2: Because Historically, the golden rule and prosecution was nobody, no crime.
20:55
Speaker 2: Proving a homicide without physical remains was incredibly difficult because
20:59
Speaker 2: defense attorneys were just argue that the victim simply walked
21:01
Speaker 2: away to start a new life.
21:02
Speaker 1: Right, they just disappeared on their own. But Jennifer's case
21:05
Speaker 1: proves that today we leave behind a digital ghost. Think
21:09
Speaker 1: about your own life. It is impossible to vanish without
21:12
Speaker 1: a trace, because the absence of your routine is the trace.
21:16
Speaker 2: That's a profoundly look at it.
21:18
Speaker 1: Your unreturned text messages, your cell phone that suddenly stops moving,
21:22
Speaker 1: the blank spaces on neighborhood ring cameras where your car
21:26
Speaker 1: should have been during your morning commute. You combine that
21:29
Speaker 1: massive digital void with the sheer, blinding hubris of killers
21:33
Speaker 1: who write down their alibis on photocopy paper, and that
21:37
Speaker 1: ghost becomes.
21:37
Speaker 2: The body exactly.
21:39
Speaker 1: You can violently make a person disappear from a suburban garage,
21:43
Speaker 1: but you cannot erase the massive, gaping void they leave
21:46
Speaker 1: behind in the data.
21:47
Speaker 2: The untouched mug of tea, the drop purse, the digital silence.
21:51
Speaker 2: They all speak for the victim. When the victim no
21:53
Speaker 2: longer can.
21:54
Speaker 1: It's a chilling reality, and we have to end with
21:56
Speaker 1: the heaviest, most sobering reminder of all. Despite the can,
22:00
Speaker 1: despite the laws passed in her name, Jennifer Farber Dulas's
22:03
Speaker 1: remains are still out there somewhere in the Connecticut woods,
22:06
Speaker 1: waiting to be found.
22:08
Speaker 2: Her five children are still waiting to bring their mother home.
22:10
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking this intense deep dive with us today.
22:13
Speaker 1: Keep asking questions and we'll see you next time.