Body of Evidence: The Disappearance of Jennifer Dulos

The text of the exclusive interview with the lead prosecutor in the extraordinary murder-without-a-body case that shocked America.

Jennifer Dulos, a mother of five, disappeared one morning. She dropped off her children at school and then was gone.

She was in the middle of a heated divorce with her glamorous, and seemingly-wealthy husband. Then on Friday, May 24, 2019 - at approximately 8:30 a.m. she vanished without a trace.

The Connecticut police faced a seemingly impossible task: how to investigate a murder with no body.

Rich Colangelo was the lead prosecutor of the case and in an exclusive interview he speaks about the extraordinary investigation to find the truth about the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos.

#Murdermystery #Coldcase #Truecrimepodcast #Jenniferdulos

Transcript

Declan Hill: [00:00:00] It was a crime that shocked a nation. A mother of five children disappeared without trace from her home. Jennifer Dulos was married to a champion water skier and a glamorous real estate agent, Fotis Dulos. And then one day she vanished, never to be seen again. On this episode, we examine that case with an exclusive interview with Richard Colangelo, one of the lead prosecutors.

Welcome to CrimeWaves..

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Richard Colangelo: Got a phone call from the New Canaan Police Department about 8, 830, that Friday night that she went missing, which was Monday, Friday, May 24th, 2019. And they told me that they had a report of a missing mother. She was supposed to be at some [00:01:00] appointments in New York with her children. And she never showed up, so her nanny reported her missing, and the police went over to the house.

They gained access to the house, and when they went into the garage, they saw what looked like a cleanup of a blood like substance, for lack of a better terminology. Reached out to me. and asked for a search warrant to search the house. I asked them to get a hold of the Western District Major Crime Squad.

I reached out to Sergeant Ken Ventresca, who runs the unit and had him deploy to New Canaan to see what

Declan Hill: we had. What are your emotions on something like that? When you get a call and you hear there's blood in the garage and stuff like that, and it's late at night, what are your thoughts? In that, obviously,

Richard Colangelo: At that time I was a prosecutor for 20 plus years your mind thinks of the worst.

But then you realize, here's a mother of five children you hope for the best. As the investigation was unwinding or [00:02:00] starting they sent me the search warrant. I reviewed that at home. They went in and started processing the crime scene. I got a call about an hour later saying that they found her vehicle, which was a Chevy Suburban on Lapham Road in New Canaan.

She wasn't in it. The vehicle was on in reverse up against a, like a pile of leaves or some debris on Lapham road. They started processing the scene reached out to Ken Ventresca, told him just to keep me posted. Didn't really hear anything from him until probably the next morning when. Yes, they, they found what appeared to be blood like substance, a real cleanup in the garage, three car garage, Center Bay.

There was a Land Rover parked there, and that Land Rover had blood like substance found on the side of it, on the driver's side, and underneath it. They looked at Jennifer's car, didn't start processing yet her Suburban, but they found what appeared to be blood like substance on the, Passenger side of her vehicle and underneath it.

And what looked [00:03:00] like cleanup. So they just started collecting samples. They, they videotaped the crime scene and, we started to try and investigate who is Jennifer Dulos. We're going to get

Declan Hill: right into how you and the team did this extraordinary investigation, but And I, I, I'm sorry to ask you such a flighty question, but as a man with 20 years experience, as a man with daughters and, and a tremendous care for this, what's your sense when you hear that a woman may have been brutally killed or something bad may have happened?

Do you compartmentalize it? How do you, how do you work that one?

Richard Colangelo: Yeah, man, that's a great question. I learned a long time ago in my job as a prosecutor that I had to compartmentalize it. work stays at work and it doesn't kind of blend or mix the family because then, vicarious trauma is real.

I mean, in dealing with that bad that you see, day in, day out as [00:04:00] a prosecutor you'd have to find an outlet.

Declan Hill: Welcome to Crime Waves. On this episode, we are examining the case of Jennifer Dulos. She vanished from her house May 24th, 2019, never to be seen again. And our guest is Richard Colangelo, former chief attorney for the state of Connecticut A lead prosecutor on the Jennifer Dulo case and now a colleague as a senior lecturer in the investigations program at the University of New Haven.

Now before we get back to the interview, an appeal, please. Crime Waves works on a budget of zero money. We're not one of the big mainstream media companies who pours hundreds of thousands of dollars into their programs and then adjust the truth depending on which side of the political equation they want to win.

The Crime Waves goal is to bring you interviews with the best investigators in the world [00:05:00] in a straightforward, no nonsense, no political slant. We've already been shadow banned on Twitter, Axe LinkedIn, because in the middle of the COVID epidemic, we ran a three part series on how the virus had most probably linked from the Wuhan Research Laboratory complex.

So please, we're not asking for money or commercial support in any way. But if you can like subscribe, rate, review, or comment, it will help us in a massive way. And now Richard Colangelo on the disappearance of Jennifer Doolo. Let's go back before we get into the investigation that you do. And it's an extraordinary investigation.

It, it's a, it really is a 21st century investigation involving all kinds of technology, but there's another theme that our producer Zania Highlighted. And that is that There were many red flags in this case. There were many times in a very painful divorce case that Jennifer [00:06:00] Dulo reached out saying, something bad is going to happen to me.

Talk us through that as much as you can, please. Didn't know much about

Richard Colangelo: the domestic case. Initially it became part of our investigation and determined that there was, yeah, there were very an acrimonious divorce going on. And in looking at the pleadings, looking at everything that was going on there, you know, the investigators and, and like you said, I mean, they did it, I couldn't have done this without great police work and New Canaan and, and, and highlighting state police also were amazing to work with and they did an amazing job in this investigation.

Through our investigation, we found that in March of that year, 2019. Mr. Dulos started being nice to Jennifer in their divorce proceedings, but up until then, it was a bloodbath. I mean, motions on both sides protective orders filed Mr. Dulos had supervised visitation with the children and only supervised visitation pursuant to a court order Honestly he actually [00:07:00] was down in New Canaan and had a supervised visit on May 22nd.

Declan Hill: So two days before the disappearance.

Richard Colangelo: Two days before her disappearance, that Wednesday, he came down to New Canaan and had supervised visitation with the children, was supposed to see them at a facility in New Canaan that ultimately ended up being closed. So he actually went back to the house where Jennifer was staying.

That was the first time he was at the house. And talking with the witnesses the children and the nanny, they indicated that he only stayed in the backyard, didn't go into the house, didn't go into the garage, didn't go into the kitchen. And that was huge for our investigation.

Declan Hill: I'm going to return to that, that That situation about what a woman or what a domestic partner does who feels threatened because there's been a number of law changes here in Connecticut has been Jennifer's laws introduced, but we'll return to that after we get through the investigation because the investigation is extraordinary because you have a problem.

You've got a suspected murder. You got a suspected homicide, [00:08:00] but you have no body. Talk us

Richard Colangelo: through that, please. From day one you know, our focus was trying to find Jennifer and see, you know, find what happened to her and see where she was to this day, we still haven't found her. Not a day goes by when I don't, I don't think about it.

Not a day goes by when I know the state police, I mean, they are still following up on leads to see where she is. I mean, we did. You know, hours upon hours upon hours of searching for her. You know, we used electronic evidence from Mr. Dulos's cell phone once we seized it to determine his paths and where he might have went before they sold one of the houses that he owned in Farmington.

We went through with We got permission from the bank actually to go through and we went through ground penetrating radar and you know, state police dogs. At one point in this investigation the state police has three different major crime squads, Eastern, Central, and Western. We had every state police crime squad working it.

We had every canine the state police had [00:09:00] plus additional canines from other, other departments looking for Jennifer and trying to find, you know, where she was. And, you know, there were breadcrumbs that we looked at and found that we, we looked at and you know, initially, you know, we had some video of her leaving her house on that, on that May 24th date to drop her children off at school.

We had some video of her dropping her children off at school and then coming back home.

Declan Hill: What, what time is that?

Richard Colangelo: Oh, in the, you know, 8 to 8. 15, I think she returned home about 8. 30.

Declan Hill: Okay.

Richard Colangelo: And then That's the last That's the last time we saw it. Well, that's the last time that we saw Jennifer's vehicle heading to the house.

Then we see her vehicle leaving the house at about 10 o'clock. And Jennifer's phone from her call detail records, because we never recovered her phone, travels from her house to Lapham Road. So, we had that data, so now we searched Lapham [00:10:00] Road, we searched the, the path from Lapham Road multiple times.

Trying to figure out how Mr. Dulos got to Lapham Road was kind of a, a big part of our investigation. Once she went missing, the police reached out to him right away on that May 24th. He didn't contact them or come down to New Canaan until the 25th. When he came down the 25th at night, He was met in the lobby of the New Canaan Police Department with by state police detectives and a New Canaan detective.

And he was there with a lawyer friend of his not a criminal lawyer. I want to say it was a real estate lawyer, but I'm really not sure. Mr. Doulos was asked when he first walked in the door if he had a cell phone. And he said, yes, I do. He had it in his hand. The detective asked him, state police detective said, can I see it?

He handed it to him, asked him if there was a password for it, and was given the password. Mr. Dulos then proceeded to tell us he wasn't going to participate or cooperate with any investigation and they turned around to leave. We told him he wasn't getting his phone back and you know, we got a search warrant and [00:11:00] looked at his phone.

Declan Hill: And what did you find?

Richard Colangelo: Well, we were able to determine that the day that Jennifer went missing that night, Mr. Doulos travels from his house in Farmington to Hartford in the Albany Avenue area. This was a Memorial Day weekend. So the state police went up there on Sunday and kind of surveilled where he was in the area that he looked at.

They found some businesses with some video. And most of Hartford is covered by video cameras. They have a fusion center that aggregates all of that data and information. So we put in a request to them for the data. And then Tuesday, once the you know, people opened back up because Monday was Memorial Day we were able to get more we get the video.

In viewing the video, we see Mr. Julos and his Ford Raptor stopping at different garbage receptacles, dropping off garbage bags dropping off what looks like a a mat that would cover the floor of a suburban and which Jennifer had. And you know, in other videos, we see people going up to garbage cans, pulling out what looks [00:12:00] like a white pillow with dark stains on it.

So, you know, we're starting now to look and see what are in those bags. Can we find them? Because it was. Memorial Day weekend the city of Hartford employees were not working. So we were able to recover a lot of you know, I think three or four different bags and other materials that we sent to the lab and tested.

And the state police forensic lab was amazing to work with in this case. I mean, because of the situation you know, they started processing things as soon as we got there, got the evidence to them.

Declan Hill: Let me just run through the chronology there. Jennifer disappears. Excuse me. The last time we see her car driven into her house is Friday morning roughly eight 30 might, might be in a little earlier, but, but, but roughly then we, we, we don't have the notes in front of us, but around eight 30, then we see the car driven away.

And it, that evening you receive a call from the police saying, [00:13:00] we've got suspicious material. We can't find her. You have tracked down in Hartford, the estranged husband, going around to 30 different trash bins across the city, putting in garbage bags. And you've recovered those garbage bags, as police officers do, and already sent them to forensics by Tuesday morning.

Richard Colangelo: probably had sent there by probably by Tuesday afternoon. It wasn't 30. He made multiple stops. We didn't recover in 30 different places, but we were able to recover in multiple places. Once that occurred we also see him stopping at a, a catch basin and putting something down that looks like a material into the catch basin went, got the city of Hartford to come out and we kind of.

Found what that was. I mean, they opened up the storm drain and tried to see what it was. And we ultimately found that he had thrown in a FedEx [00:14:00] package, a couple of license plates that were from vehicles that he owned. They were altered. He turned a six into an eight, I believe, with tape. So they would look different.

DNA. Didn't find his DNA on any of those plates, but they were part of something that was registered to a vehicle that he had owned.

Declan Hill: Now, was there anything of Jennifer's DNA or blood on what was in those garbage bags? We

Richard Colangelo: found multiple things. We found a material that was used like paper towels with the blood on them.

We found brooms and mops, that type of thing. We also found a shirt that was bloodied. We found a bra that was bloodied. And we actually also found two. Multiple zip ties with Jennifer's blood on them. And then a couple of those old, like disposable ponchos, the clear ponchos you would buy from a sporting event that were saturated in Jennifer's blood, what ultimately turned out to be Jennifer's blood.

We compared it to a known sample that we got from a from her house from a toothbrush, I believe it was, [00:15:00] and compared the DNA that way. So at this point in time. We had you know, still nobody didn't know where Jennifer was. We knew that, you know, she was home at that eight 30. We know that her vehicle left.

So now we're trying to figure out how did Mr. Dulos get to New Canaan? You know, what did he do? So we scouring video. We ultimately just through great investigative work we were able to find a video from a school bus and with the school bus cameras, there's one facing the children and then there's one facing the door and the children walk onto the bus and you know, the camera that's facing the door is on when the bus is traveling down the street.

So we got the bus, it was on Lapham road and first pass, there's nothing on park on Lapham road. But second pass, we see what looks like a Pickup truck. And we determined that that pickup truck belonged to a foreman that worked with Mr. Doulos. So then we go back to start looking at video from Farmington and we see that pickup truck leaving [00:16:00] Mr.

Doulos residence or one of the houses that he owned in Farmington. About five o'clock in the morning, and then start scouring video from the trip from, from on the hot parkway or route eight find him on route eight passing some rest areas coming down to New Canaan in that morning. Now we have to figure out, and we see that we knew where he parked the vehicle in on Lapham Road.

And that's where Jennifer's car was ultimately found that morning or that after that night, sorry, that she went missing. So now we have to figure out how did Mr. Dills get from Lapham Road to to her house. And the distance here is what, three miles, four miles, five miles? Honestly, I don't remember but not that far.

So just looking at video between the two points, we find an individual riding a bike with a black hoodie and dark pants and a backpack on that morning heading towards, you know, Jennifer's house from the area of Lapham Road. So investigation, we try to find, we find out that Mr. Deulo has had a [00:17:00] bike that was similar to it.

In one of the bags we find on duct tape an emblem from the bike that Mr. Dulos had. And when we did search warrants in Mr. Dulos's residence, we did not find that bike. Our investigation determined that his foreman actually tuned the bike up or made it rideable before Jennifer went missing.

And You know, it was a bike that he had since college. I mean, we had people reaching out to us from, you know, across the country. Hey, I have a picture of Fotis at college with this bike, you know, here it is. So we had that piece of evidence. One of the things we found because now we had the, the, the trip and the location, we knew that Jennifer ended up on Lapham road.

We knew that Mr. Julos was parked on Lapham road now. So we still try to find his. Vehicle heading from Lapham road back up to Farmington and we're able to find it. There's about a 40 minute gap where we don't know what he was doing or where he was.

Declan Hill: And, [00:18:00] and we just review here cause this is, you know, we're right in the minutia of this investigation.

I want to make sure that our listeners are following clearly here. Friday, May 24th, Jennifer Dulo returns to from dropping off her children at school. She's back in her garage around 830 at roughly 10 o'clock. There's cameras from her neighbor's security camera that sees that same car being driven off the property.

So the question is, how does the husband who's later found dropping off garbage bags full of bloodstained clothes, bras. A mat around various garbage dumps in Hartford, about a hundred miles away. How does he come from his house, which is about 70 miles away, to there? Gets himself into the house and then gets the body out of the house into [00:19:00] something.

And again, we still haven't found five years later, we still haven't found the body. So that's where we are now. You've, you've, you've done extraordinary work. You and the police investigators have found camera from school buses, cameras from rest areas up and down the Connecticut Parkway system showing this tracking of this thing.

So the question is now, how does he get the body out of the house?

Richard Colangelo: We find, we see Jennifer's car leaving her residence in New Canaan at about 10, 10, 20 in that range. We know that her car, her phone travels from the residence to Lapham Road, and then we don't pick up Mr. Doulos on the parkway.

There's a rest area by exit 36 we would have gotten on. We pick him up. It's about 40 minutes after we lose sight of Jennifer's phone because it does lose signal at some point in time. So the, our investigative theory, I mean, in working with the investigators are the, the best we could figure out is that [00:20:00] he brought her there in the back of Suburban.

And because we found, you know, her blood in the back of the Suburban we, you know, so he had to take some time unloading the Suburban into the pickup truck. When you look at the video of the pickup truck traveling up I 94 sorry, Merritt Parkway, you see garbage bags in the rear of the, black garbage bags in the back of the pickup truck.

You also see what looks like a bicycle in the back of the pickup truck. You know, we, we follow that vehicle up, it's back to Farmington and had the state police do time and distance. If it's traveling 60 miles an hour from this camera to this camera, you know, are we on track with the way his path getting up to the Merritt Parkway?

And, and he was, I mean, he was time and distance, didn't account for any stops. And that's one of the things we were worried about. Where could Jennifer have gone? So then we got him pulling into his house in Farmington, one of the houses that he owned in Farmington that afternoon. And then we have him going back [00:21:00] to his other house in Farmington and coming back and there's video of him traveling back and forth and his girlfriend at the time, Michelle Chacon, is traveling back and forth.

We found out who owned the pickup truck. We spoke to him and we got a search warrant for that pickup truck once we found that it was part of the investigation. And when we went to serve the search warrant on the individual that owned the pickup truck, he said, Hey, you know, Photos was trying to get me to change the seats out.

He told me that he was worried when Jennifer went missing, that he had hugged her that night the day that he brought the kids. So he brought the kids down on the 22nd. So he was worried about her DNA being in the pickup truck. So he wanted me to change the seats out of this old Toyota Tacoma pickup truck.

That was his work truck. So he did, but he said to the police, when we served the search warrant, Hey, I still got the seats. Do you want them? So we took them. And they were, you know, so it was very helpful to the investigation. What do you have in mind on this? Jennifer's blood. Her DNA was, was present on one of the seats that came out of the car, the truck.

Before we actually found the pickup truck, [00:22:00] we had arrested Mr. Dulos and Mr. Conis for dumping the evidence in Hartford. That was the first arrest.

Declan Hill: Again, let me just review this. You've got nobody, but you've got garbage bags being dumped by the estranged husband who's going through a painful divorce with this woman across a city.

You've tracked down through cameras and mobile phone investigations, his. Route to and from the house that morning and away from it. What's his story? How does he explain what he's doing and what's going on?

Richard Colangelo: Never told us anything, never spoke to us, had an attorney that was representing him right away, which is obviously his right.

We made the first arrest and it was becoming a major, you know, national story dateline, 48 hours, everybody wanted to, to talk about the case and then they were, you know, doing their parallel investigations. Mr. Dulos did talk to, I believe it was Dateline, Channel 7, provided an interview for them and said that he was [00:23:00] cooperating with the investigation, that he turned over his phone willingly.

I was really happy about that in case they filed a motion to suppress in, in the case, you know, challenging our searching or seizing of his cell phone because he was helping us with our investigation because he had nothing to do with Jennifer going missing. That was basically all we heard from him.

Once we determined that the pickup truck was involved, and we got it, and investigated it, examined the pickup truck, it was very clear to the investigators that that truck had been severely or deeply cleaned. So now we're investigating again, what's going on, what happened to the pickup truck. Digital evidence from cell phones.

We find that you know, the truck was cleaned at Russell Speeders up in the Avon area. We track or find a video of Mr. Doulos taking out cash from an ATM to pay for the detailing. He leaves we have video of him. Traveling there with Mr. Conis following him to drop him off. He provides or leaves Mr.

Conis [00:24:00] phone number on the, you know, Hey, call this number when the car is done. So we, we get that evidence. After we found that information, we arrested Mr. Dulos and Mr. Conis a second time for the first time we arrested him for hindering prosecution, tampering with evidence. Second time we arrested him for tampering with evidence for detailing the car.

And then we just continued our investigation and try and find out where Jennifer was.

Declan Hill: Now, at one point in that six month period, the defense lawyer comes forward with an idea that this is actually a living gone girl plot. For those of you guys who don't know, there was a famous book and a movie about a woman who deliberately disappears herself to place blame on her husband.

Tell us your thoughts, what you responded on that theory. I

Richard Colangelo: kind of laughed to be honest with you. I know defense attorneys have to do what they have to do and that, that was their arguments or you know, his role in what had to happen. And he hired a really great, good defense attorney Norm Patus was his lawyer.

And I knew [00:25:00] that Mr. Patus is going to give me a run for my money. So I wanted to make sure that the investigation was as complete as we possibly could. So we continued to investigate and we still did not find Jennifer or any whereabouts of Jennifer through our investigation. I had a meeting with the medical examiner.

And in talking with Dr. Gill, presented him with the blood spatter investigation of, so we could determine where that there were two separate sources of blood spatter in the garage. And then we ultimately talked to him. My question was, look, if somebody was injured as severely as we think they were in this garage with this much blood loss, could they have survived without immediate medical attention?

And his answer was no. So with that information, I felt confident, even though we didn't have a body, to that we had enough to arrest Mr. Doulos for her murder. Ultimately, that's what we did. Before we did that, we investigated Mr. Doulos finances and determined that he wasn't as solvent [00:26:00] as he said that he was.

So we arrested Mr. Doulos for the homicide. Arrested Mr. Conis for conspiracy to commit that homicide and also Kent Mweni who was a friend of Mr. Dulos for that conspiracy to commit the homicide. After that arrest, Mr. Dulos bonded out around January, the middle of January 2020, beginning of January 2020.

After Mr. Dulos bonded out, It came to my attention that the collateral that he used to post his bond wasn't what he said. He, realistically, he lied about the equity he had, equity he had in his properties. So we called him in, talked to the judge who approved his bond, said, Hey, look, I'd like to revisit his, his bond.

His conditions of release because he is not he's not compliant with the statute, nor is the bill, bail person, bail bonds person compliant. So we called him into court and that day that he was supposed to show up, he didn't. So I reached out to the state police and had [00:27:00] them call the Farmington police to do a welfare check.

He was found in his garage in a vehicle with a hose going from the tailpipe into the car. He was unconscious when we found him, they could not find a pulse, but he was still warm. So in talking with the Farmington police, they were going to send him to the hospital and they get a call back from the Farmington police and was told that they found a faint pulse.

So they rushed him to the hospital. He ultimately went from the hospital. He went to Lifestar to a hospital in New York, the bariatric chamber. and ultimately succumb to those self inflicted injuries. So that is where the case stood. Mr. Konis and Mr. Mweni's cases were pending still. Mr. Dulos case was dropped because obviously he was no longer with us.

Mr. Konis was tried this past year and Stanford prosecutors that I worked with did a wonderful job presenting that evidence in a, in a kind of concise, clear fashion because it was a very detailed and clear fashion. A [00:28:00] voluminous investigation, and she was convicted. Ultimately, sentenced to 14 plus years in prison for her role.

And now Mr. Marwini's case is now pending. Still haven't found Jennifer her children deserve to know where she is, what happened to her. And that is something that I know they're still working on or trying to find out.

Declan Hill: Let's talk about the larger issue, because I know this has been a national case. I know when Zaniya was doing the research on this, what really struck her and Zaniya, I'm going to ask you to come on in a second here.

Jennifer was reaching out for help for months beforehand because she feared for her life. She feared for her safety and there's now being a law passed called Jennifer's Law here in Connecticut, giving more help to women in those situations. Can you talk to us about that? Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the situation that, thanks.

Richard Colangelo: Jennifer's Law was, was named for actually two Jennifers in Connecticut. It is there to provide additional help and support to [00:29:00] victims of domestic violence, give them some support through the family court system. In looking at her case, the judges that were involved in her case did everything that they could within the system to provide her the protections that the civil, civil court afforded the participants in that civil court case.

There was never anything that we could do or Jennifer never made any complaints to a police department in any area of domestic violence that wasn't, it didn't go investigated. So we, the system didn't have anything to go on there. I mean, this is a situation where something inside Mr. Dulos snapped.

Obviously, it was something that he had planned for a period of time. Fortunately, we still haven't found him.

Declan Hill: Zaniya do you have questions?

Zaniya Howell: One of the questions that I was thinking early on when I first started looking into, like, the chronology of it was, when she first filed for that protective order, I think, oh, a month and a half, two months before she first disappeared, [00:30:00] she was filing it because Of some potentially violent behavior or aggressive behavior from her husband.

And I was wondering how he filed in opposition of her, how that influenced the investigation when you first started.

Richard Colangelo: Honestly, we didn't know. I knew very little about the divorce proceeding and the situation that was going on with their divorce, the beginning of the investigation. And as we were probably for the first week, we didn't really figure any of that out, to be honest with you, where she filed any of those.

So, and, and I worked in the criminal court system, right? And I didn't have really any connection to or into dealings with the family court and the civil court system where the divorce case would be. So we really didn't know much about that. When she initially filed [00:31:00] protective order, well, the restraining order would have been done civilly, so that would have been before that civil court.

I don't remember if she ever filed any restraining orders criminally. It didn't in our, it didn't in our jurisdiction in the area that I covered.

Emily Hinterneder: Emily, please take her away. Do you think it's possible to get justice in a homicide case where there is nobody?

Richard Colangelo: Yes. Why do I say yes? This is a case that kind of is that example, that there wasn't many cases that I could find when I did research in Connecticut of charging homicides without bodies.

It was done a couple of times before. I just felt that we had so much circumstantial evidence in this case that she had five children. It was unlike her character, everything that I found out about her from her family and her friends to just forget and leave her children, that it was preposterous that's what she did.

So there had to be something happened to her. Looking at the crime scene, you know, I had no choice but to do what I ultimately did.

Declan Hill: Rich, thank you very much [00:32:00] for taking the time this morning to talk about this case, but thank you as well for your investigation on this one. I know that you're talking in a very matter of fact fashion about a very difficult, very emotional investigation. So thank you for that.

Richard Colangelo: My pleasure.

Declan Hill: Thanks for having me. Pleasure to meet you all.

Richard Colangelo: It's all up here. I didn't have any notes. I worked on intimately with the state police and New Canaan police. Every search warrant came through me, every, you know, part of the investigation came through me. So it's one of those that I'll probably never forget.

Declan Hill: Do you still think about it?

Richard Colangelo: Always wonder where she is. Absolutely. Thank you.

Declan Hill: Hey, it's Declan. Thank you so much for your attention to this episode of Crime Waves about the disappearance and presumed murder of Jennifer Dulo. Our fantastic student producers on this episode was Zaniya Howell and Angie Paulus. Now you'll note that we spoke about the alleged perpetrator, [00:33:00] Fotis Dulos, as little as possible.

And that's the crime waves way. We focus on the investigators and victims of the crime as much as we possibly can. We do not like much of the true crime podcast field, which often treats human tragedy and the despair around it as some kind of pornographic treat. That's not what we do at crime waves. So if you like this episode, and if you like how we handle these issues, then please rate, review, subscribe, follow us on whatever podcast platform you use.

It's a massive help for the entire team here, most of whom are my students. So thank you. And we'll see you on the next episode of crime waves.