HARTFORD, Conn. — State prosecutors want to disqualify Michelle Troconis’ lawyer from defending her because they may call him as a witness to testify about how he obtained a mysterious box of evidence containing a sweatshirt police believe is similar to one connected to the killing of Connecticut mother Jennifer Farber Dulos.
The defense lawyer, Jon Schoenhorn, responded in a filing in court late Tuesday that the attempt by the prosecution to disqualify him is “absolutely baseless” and “only reveals the weakness of its case.”
“That is wholly aside from the fact that the state’s desire to learn what counsel may or may not know about the state’s evidence or the incompetence of the police investigation, does not in any legal sense create a conflict of interest between attorney and client nor constitute grounds for disqualification,” Schoenhorn wrote in the court filing.
The box containing a screwdriver, a wrench and a large black and blue hooded sweatshirt is the latest point of contention in the long-running investigation of the disappearance and presumed murder of Farber Dulos at the hands of her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos. Farber Dulos’ body has never been found.
Police and prosecutors are interested in the sweatshirt because they have security camera footage containing blurry images of someone wearing a similar sweatshirt while riding a bicycle like one Dulos owned near Farber Dulos’ home at about the time she is believed to have been killed on the morning of May 24, 2019. Schoenhorn has indicated he may attempt to use the sweatshirt in his defense of Troconis, according to court filings.
Troconis was Dulos’ girlfriend and was living with him in Farmington at the time of the presumed murder. Prosecutors have charged Troconis with conspiring with Dulos to commit murder and conspiring to hinder the police investigation by disposing of evidence. She has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to be tried later this year.
Dulos was charged, but died by suicide before he could be tried.
According to the motion to disqualify Schoenhorn by the state’s attorney’s office in Stamford, state police investigators first learned of the box and sweatshirt after being called two years after the slaying to the law offices of attorney — and now Superior Court Judge Tara Knight — in New Haven.
Knight handed the detectives a white banker’s box and said she had received it a day earlier.
“Knight, citing attorney client privilege, refused to reveal who gave her the box or how it came into her possession,” the prosecution motion said. “Knight did, however, state the following in sum and substance: She had not looked inside the box; however, she had been assured by her ‘client’ that the contents of the box had a direct connection to the investigation.”
Inside the box, the detectives found, in addition to the sweatshirt and tools, a letter from Schoenhorn to Knight. The letter referred to the criminal charges against Troconis and said only, “I am enclosing a blue sweatshirt that I received from another attorney.”
According to the prosecution memo, Schoenhorn “intimated” that he came into possession of the box a year earlier and disclosed it to police after realizing it could be significant in view of other evidence. He “suggested” the sweatshirt had been in in various places and handled by “several” persons before it arrived in his office.
Detectives also interviewed attorney Andrew Bowman, who represented Troconis before Schoenhorn. Bowman said the box was among the materials he gave Schoenhorn. Bowman said Troconis did not give him the box, but he could not remember who did, according to the prosecution motion.
The prosecution is asking a judge to disqualify Schoenhorn because “he is likely to be a necessary witness” in Troconis’ trial and that creates a conflict of interest between his responsibility as a witness and as an advocate for his client.
The state police first heard about a sweatshirt four days after Farber Dulos’ presumed murder from Pawel Guminenny, an employee of Fotis Dulos’ high-end home construction business. Guminenny told detectives he had left his Toyota pickup truck at Dulos’ home in Farmington the week before the slaying and found the sweatshirt in a red bucket in the truck’s back seat.
Guminenny said he left the bucket, with the sweatshirt, in the laundry room of the home where Dulos was living with Troconis in Farmington.
The state police tested the shirt for evidence and the prosecution said in its disqualification motion that DNA testing was inconclusive. But, it said, Dulos could not be connected to the sweatshirt.
Slightly different test results are contained in state police reports Schoenhorn attached to his motion opposing disqualification. Those reports also say DNA testing does not connect Dulos to the sweatshirt. It says the results are inconclusive as to Troconis, but it is far more likely that genetic material found on the sweatshirt originated from Guminenny.
The police have not charged Guminenny with anything and have indicated in court filings that he has cooperated. He could not say whether the sweatshirt was his or not, according to the prosecution motion.
On the last day Faber Dulos was seen alive, she drove her children to school. Police believe she was killed at her home shortly after returning.
Earlier on the same morning, Guminenny’s pickup truck, was recorded by a security camera leaving the home on Mountain Spring Road in Farmington, where Dulos and Troconis lived. Guminenny told the police he had left his truck there and was using one owned by Dulos.
Video footage from a New Canaan school bus shows that a pickup resembling Guminenny’s was parked on Lampham Road in New Canaan, near Waveny Park, north of the Merritt Parkway after 7:05 a.m. and before 7:40 a.m. Security video from a nearby home shows “a person, wearing dark colored clothing with a hood and a backpack, traveling in the direction of Farber’s home on a bicycle that had a frame structure consistent with Dulos’ bicycle” at 7:31 a.m.
Still more security camera footage shows Farber Dulos returning home from dropping her children at school at about 8:05 a.m. At about 10:25, there is security video of Farber’s SUV leaving her home. It was found near Waveny Park, where the pickup similar to Guminenny’s had been been captured on school bus video footage.
At approximately 11:12 a.m., surveillance footage from a Merritt Parkway rest area shows the pickup traveling toward Farmington with what looked like a bicycle in the truck bed.
Later that night, state police detectives believe, Dulos and Troconis drove into Hartford where security cameras recorded them disposing of black plastic garbage bags, at least two of which were held together with duct tape, according to the prosecution motion.
When state police scientists removed and photographed a piece of tape, they found the logo “Special Tour De France” etched in reverse on the adhesive side.
According to the motion, Special Tour De France is a model of bicycle produced in France. Shown a photograph of that model bicycle, Troconis told detectives that she didn’t recognize the logo, but that Dulos may have owned a similar bicycle.
Dulos, who was born in Turkey, brought a bicycle with him to this country. Detectives have been unable to locate the bicycle, according to the prosecution motion.
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