- Farmington Police said they found Fotis Dulos unresponsive while conducting a welfare check around noon on Tuesday, when he failed to show up for a court date.
- Sources told multiple local outlets that the 52-year-old had attempted suicide.
- Dulos was accused of killing his estranged wife Jennifer, who disappeared last May, and was out of jail on $6 million bond while he awaited trial.
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Fotis Dulos, the man at the center of one of the nation’s most talked-about crime stories, is in critical condition after an apparent suicide attempt on Tuesday.
At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, police in Farmington, Connecticut, said they were asked to conduct a welfare check at Dulos’ home around noon. Officers looked through a window and saw Dulos unresponsive in a car in his garage, so they immediately forced entry and started life-saving measures.
Dulos was initially taken to UConn Health, before later being transferred to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, to receive treatment in a hyperbaric chamber for carbon monoxide poisoning, his attorney Norm Pattis told CNN. According to NBC New York, Dulos remained in critical condition on Wednesday, and Pattis said he may not recover.
While police didn’t release any details on why Dulos was found unresponsive, sources told the Hartford Courant that Dulos had attempted to kill himself. The Courant and other local outlets had initially reported that Dulos had died, but later amended their reports to say that he was still alive and that medics were trying to revive him.
The 52-year-old was out on $6 million bail while awaiting trial in the death of his estranged wife Jennifer Dulos, who disappeared last May.
Dulos was supposed to be in court on Tuesday for an emergency bond hearing, but didn't show. He faced the possibility of having his bail revoked and being sent back to jail, due to an issue with his insurance company possibly not being able to support his bail, CT Post reported.
Pattis told NBC New York that the news of the possible bail revocation was devastating for Dulos, but "not once did it ever occur to me that he might be a risk of suicide."
"I feel that I let him down, that he trusted me to be his good shepherd through the valley of the shadow of death and perhaps he reached out and I didn't hear what he needed, and I feel a sense of responsibility for his welfare," Pattis added.
Shortly before the reports about the suicide attempt started coming out, aerial footage from WFSB showed someone performing CPR on a body outside of Dulos' house.
Reporters were gathered outside the house waiting to capture Dulos leaving for his bond hearing.
A case with twists and turns like a crime novel
Though Jennifer's body was never found,her husband was arrested earlier this month and charged with murder in connection to her death. His former girlfriend, 44-year-old Michelle Troconis, and civil lawyer, Keny Mawhinney, were also arrested at the same time, and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Jennifer, a mother of five, went missing on May 24, 2019, after dropping her children off at school. She was in the middle of a contentious divorce from her husband.
Fotis and Traconis were persons of interest early on in Jennifer's disappearance, when police discovered that the two had disposed of garbage bags containing items with Jennifer's blood on them shortly after her disappearance, according to Fox 61.
Fotis professed his innocence in his wife's disappearance, telling NBC New York in July that he never wished her harm.
"I had my differences with Jennifer like many people do when they go through a marriage, but that doesn't mean that I wish her ill in any way ... I never wanted Jennifer out of the way, " he said.
His legal team has proposed the theory that Jennifer ran away and framed her husband for her murder in a move reminscent of the popular novel "Gone Girl."
- Read more:
- Fotis Dulos and his lawyer are now being accused of planning to kill each other's wives in a plot straight out of a Hitchcock movie
- The family of missing Connecticut mom Jennifer Dulos called the claim that she may have staged a 'Gone Girl'-style disappearance 'false and irresponsible'
- A mother of 5 has gone missing in the middle of a bitter divorce
