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Washington Post

The gripping, enraging story of a mother of five who disappeared in 2019

In May 2019, Jennifer Dulos, a mother of five, disappeared from her New Canaan, Connecticut, home sometime after dropping off her children at school. At the time, she was in the midst of a contentious divorce and custody battle with her husband, Fotis Dulos, a real estate developer. Though her body has never been found, Fotis and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, were charged with her murder, in a case that made national headlines. In the new book 'Murder in the Dollhouse,' Rich Cohen, who reported the story for Air Mail magazine, delves into the case, constructing a true crime tale that's equal parts gripping, sad and enraging. Cohen, the author of more than a dozen books, including 'Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams,' connected closely with his subject. 'The more I learned, the more I felt as if I knew Jennifer, as if her world and mine were contiguous,' he writes in the opening pages. 'We traveled in the same circles, were both writers, and had both made the bewildering journey from city to suburbs ... In reading about her, in visiting the places she had been and talking to the people she had known, I felt like I was seeing the story of my own generation in a convex mirror — distorted but recognizable.' Cohen develops his portrait of Dulos with care, beginning with her childhood, education and early career as a playwright and author. She was the daughter of Hilliard and Gloria Farber, a daddy's girl raised in the lap of luxury in Brooklyn Heights. Drawing on details from a personal essay she published in a 1998 anthology titled 'Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of Twenty Young Writers,' Cohen gives us a glimpse of Jennifer's inner life: She wrote at length about her childhood passion for dollhouses and her elaborate fantasies of her future as a wife and mother, married to a man who would merit her father's designation 'Bank' — someone who had old money, and plenty of it. During her grad school years at NYU, studying playwriting, she was known for the black town car that chauffeured her around town, always waiting at the curb wherever she was, courtesy of her father. Also courtesy of her father was an apartment in the prestigious One Fifth building, where her sparse furnishings included a StairMaster and a baby crib, the latter an aspirational symbol. Hilliard's protection and care of his daughter was so complete that many people close to the situation feel that if her father had not died in 2017, Jennifer would be alive today. Fotis Dulos first came into Jennifer's life when both were undergraduates at Brown, though they weren't close at the time. They ran into each other at the Aspen airport in December 2003, just as Dulos's first marriage was falling apart and shortly after Jennifer had lost her beloved dog, Sophie. Things moved very quickly. They were married by August 2004. With her dollhouse dream seemingly in sight, Jennifer changed her life overnight, leaving the city, her friends and her playwriting career, moving into the Connecticut house Dulos had shared with his first wife and taking a role in his real estate development company — which was funded to the tune of millions by her father. (Dulos was in no way Bank.) She was pregnant with twins when they celebrated their first anniversary, and they were a family of seven by October 2008. Fotis's main activity as a father was to force the children to become competitive water-skiers (as he had been in his youth), with a punishing practice schedule and a prohibition against playing other sports. Waterskiing became the pretext for frequent trips to Florida, where his relationship with Troconis began. Jennifer filed for divorce in June 2017, kicking off proceedings so bitter and protracted that several of Cohen's sources feel the court played a role in the tragedy by exacerbating the disagreements and tensions between the couple. Apparently, this is par for the course in that venue: 'As Las Vegas is the capital of gambling, and New York is the capital of banking, and Los Angeles is the capital of entertainment, Stamford, Connecticut, is the capital of contentious divorce.' The Dulos divorce trial dragged out over 23 months with more than 400 filings, and was still in preliminary discovery when Jennifer disappeared. The details of Dulos's conniving, premeditation, violence and subterfuge are jaw-dropping, and the fact that he avoided ever being held accountable (he died by suicide to get out of going to jail when his bail was revoked) is a brutal twist. Most horribly, Jennifer saw it coming. 'I know that filing for divorce, and filing this motion will enrage him,' she wrote in a request for legal custody of the children. 'I know he will retaliate by trying to harm me in some way.' So, despite the restraining orders, the bodyguards and explicit cries for help, prosecutors say Jennifer Dulos was likely killed in her own home. And the only kind of justice that will ever be served is that achieved by Cohen, who put all the pieces together to tell her story. Marion Winik, host of the NPR podcast 'The Weekly Reader,' is the author of numerous books, including 'First Comes Love' and 'The Big Book of the Dead.' The Jennifer Dulos Story By Rich Cohen Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 352 pp. $29