Board of Selectmen

After Dulos Case, New Canaan Police Investigators Seek More Video Surveillance Throughout Town

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Police investigators in New Canaan hope that the town’s plan to install cameras at Waveny’s entrances as a result of the Dulos case leads to more video surveillance throughout town. For the fourth straight year, the New Canaan Police Department Investigative Section is asking that municipal officials especially consider installations at the town border and entrance and exit ramps of the Merritt Parkway, according to an end-of-year report from the head of the section, Lt. Jason Ferraro. “This is directly supported by the Dulos case and the huge role that video evidence played in leading to the arrests of [Fotis] Dulos and [Michelle] Troconis,” Ferraro said in the report, discussed briefly at Jan. 15 regular meeting of the Police Commission and obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request. 

“We realize this is a capital item but having LPR’s [“license plate recognition” cameras] located at strategic locations would greatly improve our ability to get ahead in an investigation and improve the likelihood of an arrest occurring. Hopefully the approval to install cameras at Waveny Park as a result of the Dulos case will be the beginning of more cameras at vital locations within New Canaan.”

The Board of Selectmen last month approved the hiring of a Bridgeport-based technology consulting firm to put together an RFP for updating security systems in New Canaan.

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Fotis Dulos Employee Emerges as Key Figure in Murder Case

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After pedaling his bicycle from Waveny Park to Welles Lane to kill his estranged wife, and then steering an employee’s pickup truck back upstate with her corpse, Fotis Dulos failed to remove from the vehicle the dark-colored, hooded sweatshirt he’d been wearing while cycling, according to interviews and evidence cited in a state police detective’s sworn affidavit made public last week. The Toyota Tacoma’s owner would discover a blue hoodie in a red pail inside the truck on May 28, four days after the murder, according to Detective John Kimball of the state police Western District Major Crime Squad. Kimball’s lengthy affidavits—now spread across seven felony arrest warrant applications connected to the disappearance and murder of Jennifer Dulos—show that the man who came upon the sweatshirt, Pawel Gumienny, has played a critical role in a multi-agency investigation that culminated Jan. 7 in murder charges against Fotis Dulos and conspiracy to commit murder charges for his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, and personal friend and civil attorney Kent Mawhinney. Gumienny, a project manager at Fotis Dulos’s construction company, first was revealed as a key source for investigators in September, when police brought a second round of hindering and tampering charges against Fotis Dulos and Troconis.

Fotis Dulos

Arrest Warrant: Friend of Fotis Dulos Connected to Grave Dug in Woods Two Months Before Murder

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Two months before Fotis Dulos killed his estranged wife at her New Canaan home, a friend of his traveled to a wooded hunting club property upstate where unsuspecting club members just days before the murder would come upon a 3.5-foot-deep, 6-foot-long grave covered over with grill grates and a debris, a blue tarp and two bags of lime inside, according to a state police detective’s affidavit. Kent Mawhinney, a 54-year-old Bloomfield attorney, was not only a friend of Fotis Dulos, but also had worked as the first lawyer to represent him in defense of civil suit brought by Jennifer Dulos’s mother, Gloria Farber, claiming Fotis Dulos owed her family $2.5 million in loans. He also had helped found the five-member Windsor Rod & Gun Club in East Granby more than a decade before, securing its 25-acre property, according to an arrest warrant application (see PDF below) from Detective John Kimball of the state police Western District Major Crime Squad. Though Mawhinney himself was no longer a member of the club, he knew where to find the “hidden key to the logging chain” that secured its entrance, according to Kimball’s affidavit. Six days before the May 24 murder, two club members came upon the “disturbed ground” of the would-be human grave, though they shrugged it off at the time because they weren’t aware of any missing people, and left after kicking around some debris so that no one would fall into the hole, the affidavit said.

Fotis Dulos

State Police Charge Fotis Dulos with Murder, Kidnapping [UPDATED]

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Fotis Dulos killed his estranged, fearful wife on the morning of May 24, 2019, in the New Canaan home where she and their five kids had been living for more than one year, according to a state police detective’s sworn affidavit made public Tuesday. He’d left Farmington at daybreak that Friday morning in a pickup truck and took the Merritt Parkway to New Canaan, pulling off of Lapham Road alongside Waveny and then pedaling to her Wells Lane home on a bicycle from his own childhood that he’d brought to the United States when he moved here from his native Greece, according to an arrest warrant application (see PDF below) from Detective John Kimball of the state police Western District Major Crime Squad. Once at the house, Fotis Dulos laid in waiting for her, officials have said. The last known image of Jennifer Dulos alive is captured 8:05 a.m. by a neighbor’s video surveillance system—she’s driving her SUV home after dropping the kids off at school. A subsequent analysis of the garage, house and SUV by the state’s chief medical examiner, including bloodstains, blood spatter and blood loss, led the state official, Dr. James Gill, to determine that Jennifer Dulos sustained an injury or injuries that would be “non-survivable” without medical intervention.

Fotis Dulos

Police: Manpower Dedicated to Missing Woman Case Led To Minimum Shift Staff, Drop in Motor Vehicle Citations

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The manpower that New Canaan Police dedicated this past summer to the investigation of a missing local mom drained the department’s staff to minimum levels for a time, leading to a decline in motor vehicle violation citations, officials say. Year-to-date motor vehicle violation incidents were down about 20% as of Oct. 31, officials reported at last month’s meeting of the Police Commission. Responding to a question from Commission Chair Sperry DeCew about the decline in incidents—from 3,648 through the first ten months of 2018 to 2,933 this year—Deputy Chief John DiFederico said, “With the investigation this summer, that took a lot of manpower away.”

“We also had a very high number of order-ins,” DiFederico said at the meeting, held Nov. 20 at NCPD headquarters.