Jennifer Dulos Dropped Her Kids Off at School and Vanished. A New Book Reveals the Sordid Case That Followed (Exclusive)

One morning, Jennifer Dulos dropped her kids off at the New Canaan Country School and vanished into thin air. Her body has never been found.

At the time of her disappearance, Dulos and her husband Fotis were entangled in one of the most contentious divorce cases in Connecticut state history. The couple met at Brown University, had five children and led what looked from the outside to be a charmed life.

In the wake of Jennifer’s disappearance, Fotis and his girlfriend Michelle Troconis were arrested. He died by suicide the day he was supposed to appear at court; she was tried and convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.

Now, a new book, Murder in the Dollhouse by Rich Cohen, peels back the sparkling facade of the Dulos’s life to unearth the origins and motivations of a crime that became a national obsession.

Below, in an exclusive excerpt from Murder in the Dollhouse shared with PEOPLE, we see the couple’s wedding, and the reactions of their nearest and dearest.

The timeline is important: 

September 2003: Jennifer’s dog, Sophie, dies. 

December 2003: Jennifer meets Fotis at the Aspen airport. 

January 2004: Fotis emails Jennifer. (“Test—Are you there?”) 

March 2004: Fotis files for divorce. 

July 2004: Fotis signs the divorce papers. 

August 2004: Fotis marries Jennifer. 

“It happened very, very fast, and that seemed out of character for Jennifer,” Carrie Luft said in an interview. “Jennifer’s very measured. She’s not a rash, impulsive person. She’s pretty much anti-impulsive.” 

Every study I’ve read about homicidal husbands suggests that speed — the need to get hitched right away, before the other person realizes you’re crazy — is characteristic of psychopathy. 

Why did Jennifer, who’d waited years for Mr. Perfect, suddenly move with such haste? And why did she settle on Fotis, a mismatch in many ways? He was superficial, did not care about art, did not read novels, was neither Jew nor WASP and was definitely not Bank. 

A half dozen friends offer a half dozen reasons. Some say it’s because Fotis was the first suitor with the strength and tenacity to get by Hilliard, who guarded his daughter like the Star of Artaban. If true, it means Hilliard had built obstacles guaranteed to deliver a psychopath, as only a psychopath could breach them. Some say it’s because Jennifer turned desperate in her mid-thirties. A man she’d hardly noticed in 1986 looked like the last train to Memphis in 2004.

“It happened so fast because it happened so late,” said Colette Burson. “Jennifer could see 40 right over the hill, and here comes a good-looking guy she’d known at Brown. She felt like she knew him because he’d been with her at school, and her father had said, ‘It’ll be someone you already know.’ ”  

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“If you look at it from Jen’s perspective, it makes perfect sense,” said Dan Rybicky. “There’s something she wanted her whole life and she was just about out of time. Then here is a man straight from central casting who arrives just before midnight, which makes for a great story. Jen is someone who loved great stories. If it happened to me like that, I would have married Fotis, too.” 

“Jen was quirky and smart but had a bit of that beautiful-girl thing,” said D. J. Paul, who fell for Jennifer when they met on vacation in the Caribbean after college. They’d been at Brown at the same time, but never really knew each other. Jennifer liked D.J., but not in a romantic way. “She was superficial in certain regards, especially with men,” D.J. explained. “She wanted somebody pretty. And Fotis was pretty. And there was something exotic about him. Greek, European. And he really put himself together. It’s easy to see why she fell for him.” 

Jennifer had waited for a storybook proposal all her life, but when the moment came, Fotis made it seem more like business than romance — an arrangement among royals. There was no great ceremony or fanfare. “I’m Greek,” Fotis explained. “We don’t get on one knee.” 

Hilliard Farber was 71 when Jennifer announced her engagement. He was at the peak of his power, but smart enough to know there’s only one direction from the peak. He was already battling some of the health issues that would be his undoing. It was time to plan. He must’ve been disappointed with Fotis. Not a WASP, not a Jew, not even an American. Neither rich nor especially successful. Divorced. Smart but not that smart — it’d probably have been better if he were just plain dumb. Half-intelligent is worse than dumb. If you’re dumb, at least you know you can’t get away with certain things.

Best to work out the arrangements in advance in such a case — be clear, get him to commit, tie him up in string. Hence, Hilliard agreed to bankroll Fotis, putting up the millions he would need to buy land and build houses. According to several friends of the couple, Fotis had, in essence, promised to be a good husband to Jennifer, to be a good father, and, crucially, to raise the children as Jews. Fotis denied this during the divorce proceedings, citing the fact that Jennifer had converted to Christianity before they started dating. 

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While Hilliard and Gloria would surely have preferred a traditional wedding, Fotis and Jennifer decided to get married immediately. Jennifer, who was nearly 36, wanted not one, not two, but three children — and there was no time to waste. Fotis rushed for a different reason. “I don’t care if we have kids,” he told Jennifer. “I just want to be with you” — which makes sense only when you realize that, for Fotis, the home-building business was the baby. 

They wed in a civil ceremony in the Farbers’ Brooklyn Heights apartment on Aug. 28, 2004. Jennifer told a friend she’d been truly amped to change her name. “[She] went out immediately after the ceremony to get a new Social Security card and a new driver’s license. She did not want to be Farber anymore,” the friend told me. “She was so excited to become Jennifer Dulos.” 

Hilliard and Gloria threw a wedding party in February 2005, at the Metropolitan Club on East 60th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. Founded in 1891 by disgruntled New York oligarchs — Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. Pierpont Morgan, Frank Sturgis — who’d been rejected by older clubs, it reeked of Bank. It was built on land purchased from Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough, who signed over the deed at the U.S. consulate in London.

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The four-story building was designed by Stanford White in imitation of the opulent style of the Italian Renaissance. Thus, three flags hang over the Fifth Avenue façade. The town cars and limousines began to arrive at sundown. Central Park glittered with snow. It was 24 degrees at 5 p.m., which would allow guests to wear their fur coats and stoles. Cocktails were served in the foyer, followed by a ceremony in the West Lounge and dinner in the President’s Ballroom. 

Jennifer’s college friends dominated the dance floor. “It was like a class reunion,” said D. J. Paul. “All the pretty people I knew but did not necessarily like at Brown — the Dalton, Saint Ann’s, Horace Mann, and Riverdale kids — were in attendance.” 

As notable as those who were invited were those who were not, including nearly every member of the Playwrights Collective. Perhaps Jennifer was still embarrassed by the unintentional self-exposure of What Party? Perhaps she did not want her downtown friends to see what she was about to become — a suburban housewife. Though he had in fact been invited, collective veteran Dan Rybicky refused to attend.  

“I don’t go to weddings that don’t have my approval,” he explained. “And that one, the speed of it, everything, did not seem right to me.” 

“There was something about the wedding that felt very WASP-y, which I found ironic,” said D. J. Paul. “Because Fotis was not a WASP, and neither was Jen, but this was not really Jen’s party. It was Hilliard’s party. And Hilliard made it seem downright goyish — not your bubbie’s wedding. Or maybe it was just ‘the right kind of Jews’ — German Jews, the old families. It was also one hell of a night, because, like I said, it was Hilliard’s party, and Hilliard was larger than life, and larger-than-life people throw larger-than-life parties.” 

You went in the front door at dusk, and when you came out, what felt like 10 minutes later, it was dawn. Everyone was sober, then everyone was drunk. The dancing went on and on. Jennifer’s friends gossiped about Fotis in the bathrooms: Who is he? What does he want?  

“The guy was pretty, but left zero impression,” said D. J. Paul. “I didn’t dislike him. I didn’t think about him either way. Or, if I did, it was as a pretty boy, Jennifer’s prize, her trophy husband. She wanted somebody she would look great dancing with at her wedding. And she got it — they did look beautiful together on the dance floor.” 

Watching Jennifer, her dress hiked above her knees, her hair down in her face, friends had the sense that she was going away. She’d be moving to Connecticut after the honeymoon, leaving the city and the streets that had been the focus of her dreams. 

Guests were handed a gift on the way out, a sterling silver pill case. D. J. Paul called it “a perfect keepsake for the moment, because it was such a druggy time, and here finally was a container for my benzos.”  

He added, “I thought it a bizarrely wonderful way to mark the wedding, classic Hilliard, but now, looking back, it seems symbolic in the worst possible way.” 

MURDER IN THE DOLLHOUSE: The Jennifer Dulos Story by Rich Cohen. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 20, 2025. Copyright © 2025 by Rich Cohen. All rights reserved.

Murder in the Dollhouse by Rich Cohen comes out May 20 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.