Michelle Troconis is a dual American-Venezuelan citizen and former ESPN South America television host who was convicted in March 2024 of conspiracy to commit murder and related charges in connection with the 2019 disappearance and presumed killing of Jennifer Farber Dulos, a New Canaan, Connecticut, mother of five. She was the live-in girlfriend of Jennifer’s estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, at the time of the killing. Troconis, now serving fourteen and a half years at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Connecticut, is pursuing a direct appeal and has separately appealed the denial of a habeas petition claiming her first lawyer botched her defense.
Life Before the Case
Troconis was born on September 26, 1974, in Memphis, Tennessee, while her Venezuelan parents were studying there. The family moved back to Venezuela when she was six, and she grew up with three sisters. She studied psychopedagogy in Caracas and later trained in equine-assisted therapies.
She spent more than a decade in Argentina, working from roughly 2003 to 2012 as marketing and public relations director for the Cerro Castor ski resort.1Awful Announcing. Michelle Troconis South America Winter Sports Host Found Guilty Murder During those years she hosted and produced Snow Time for ESPN South America, filmed at resorts in Argentina and Chile, interviewing athletes, resort directors, and celebrities.2Stamford Advocate. Michelle Troconis, a CEO and Mother Charged in Jennifer Dulos Case She also ran a television production company in Argentina and co-founded horse-riding therapy programs.3CT Public. Jennifer Dulos Michelle Troconis Sentencing
Troconis returned to the United States in 2012, first to Miami, then to Connecticut in September 2017.4El País. Michelle Troconis, the Most Hated Woman in the United States She has a daughter, Nicole, a competitive skier who made a Junior Olympic team.
How She Met Fotis Dulos
Troconis and Fotis Dulos met in April 2016 at the Greater Miami Ski Club, introduced by another member. Dulos, a luxury home builder in Connecticut, was a new member and was there with a girlfriend at the time.5MichelleTroconis.com. FAQs Jennifer Dulos’s divorce filings state that the affair began in 2016.6Oxygen. Fotis Dulos Reportedly Flaunted Romance With Michelle Troconis By 2017 Troconis had moved into Fotis Dulos’s Farmington home. He and Jennifer were then locked in a bitter divorce and custody fight over their five children.
What Prosecutors Said She Did
Jennifer Farber Dulos vanished on the morning of May 24, 2019, after dropping her children at the New Canaan Country School. Her black Chevrolet Suburban was found abandoned near Waveny Park, about three miles from her home, and police found bloodstains and spatter in her garage that led investigators to conclude she had been seriously assaulted there.7ABC News. Connecticut Mystery Timeline Disappearance Mom Jennifer Dulos Her body has never been found. A probate judge declared her legally dead in October 2023.8NBC Connecticut. Search for Jennifer Farber Dulos Continues Five Years After Her Disappearance
Prosecutors did not accuse Troconis of committing the killing. They accused her of helping Fotis Dulos plan it, cover it up, and evade arrest. Their case rested on several strands.
Hartford municipal surveillance footage showed Fotis Dulos stopping along Albany Avenue around 7:30 p.m. on May 24, dumping garbage bags into public trash cans. Investigators recovered the contents, including a Vineyard Vines shirt and bra sliced down the middle, a poncho, gloves, zip ties, a screwdriver, and a box cutter with a broken blade. DNA testing linked blood on several items to Jennifer Dulos.9Stamford Advocate. Michelle Troconis Trial Jennifer Dulos Blood Trash Troconis was in the passenger seat of the Ford Raptor Fotis Dulos was driving. Investigators said the video captured a female figure leaning out of the vehicle toward a storm drain, from which they later recovered altered license plates traced to a vehicle formerly registered to Fotis Dulos.10NBC Connecticut. Experts and Investigators Review Albany Avenue Video in Troconis Trial
A red Toyota Tacoma also figured in the case. A fabric sample from its passenger seat tested positive for Jennifer Dulos’s blood, and surveillance placed the truck near Waveny Park, close to where her SUV was later found abandoned.11CBS News. Michelle Troconis Jennifer Fotis Dulos Connecticut Murder Conspiracy Trial Evidence
Prosecutors argued Troconis helped construct an alibi by answering a prearranged phone call on Fotis Dulos’s cellphone at the couple’s home, making it look as though he was there. They pointed to smoke rising from the couple’s chimney the day Jennifer disappeared and argued Troconis helped clean the Tacoma and bag evidence.
The Police Interviews That Sank Her Case
Three interviews Troconis gave to investigators in June and August 2019 became central at trial. On June 2, she told police she and Fotis Dulos had showered together at 7 a.m. on the day Jennifer vanished and that she had seen him at home at 8:15 a.m. Four days later she recanted, saying she had not actually seen him that morning until lunch. She also admitted leaning out of the vehicle on Albany Avenue but said she was wiping gum off her hand. Investigators confronted her with a written timeline seized from Fotis Dulos’s home that they called a “rehearsed story” meant to line up with her first account.12Stamford Advocate. Takeaways Day 10 Troconis Trial Interviews
Fotis Dulos never stood trial. On January 7, 2020, Connecticut State Police arrested him on charges of murder, felony murder, and kidnapping; prosecutors alleged he had killed Jennifer at her home between roughly 8:05 and 10:25 a.m. on May 24, bound her with zip ties, and placed her in her own vehicle.7ABC News. Connecticut Mystery Timeline Disappearance Mom Jennifer Dulos On January 30, 2020, he died at his Farmington home from carbon monoxide inhalation. He was 51. He left a note asserting his own innocence and that of Troconis and Kent Mawhinney, writing that he refused to spend “even an hour more in jail for something I had NOTHING to do with.”13ABC News. Fotis Dulos Alleged Suicide Note Leaves Questions The murder charges against him were dismissed. The case against Troconis went forward.
Trial, Verdict, and Sentence
Troconis was charged with conspiracy to commit murder, tampering with physical evidence, conspiracy to commit tampering with physical evidence, and second-degree hindering prosecution.14ABC News. Michelle Troconis Trial Verdict Reached Her trial began January 11, 2024, in Connecticut Superior Court in Stamford. Attorneys Jon Schoenhorn and Audrey Felsen represented her.15Stamford Advocate. Michelle Troconis Jennifer Dulos Expert Testimony The defense argued the state had no direct evidence tying Troconis to Jennifer’s death and that the case amounted to guilt by association. They also sought to introduce expert testimony on memory and multilingualism to explain the inconsistencies in her police interviews.
On March 1, 2024, the jury convicted her on all six counts.16WFSB. Jury Set Continue Troconis Trial Deliberations
At sentencing on May 31, 2024, Judge Kevin Randolph vacated one of the conspiracy to commit tampering convictions on double jeopardy grounds and imposed a total effective sentence of twenty years, suspended after fourteen and a half years, followed by five years of probation. Sentences for the lesser offenses run concurrently.17State of Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice. Troconis Sentencing Press Release18CBS News. Michelle Troconis Jennifer Dulos Death Sentencing
All five of Jennifer Dulos’s children, then thirteen to seventeen, addressed the court publicly for the first time. Theodore Dulos told Troconis he would “never forgive you for what you have done.” Petros Dulos described a “hole” he will never fill because he never got to apologize to his mother. Christiane Dulos said her father had asked her to lie about Troconis’s whereabouts. Troconis’s daughter Nicole, then seventeen, asked the court to consider that she needed her mother.19CT Insider. Michelle Troconis Sentencing Live Updates Troconis told the court she was “deeply saddened by this tragedy” and regretted her relationship with Fotis Dulos.20People. Jennifer Dulos Kids Share Victim Impact Statements to Michelle Troconis
Where the Appeals Stand
In November 2025, Supervisory Assistant Public Defender Pamela Nagy filed a roughly 1,015-page appellate brief raising seven grounds for reversal. They include insufficient evidence, constitutional violations tied to police searches of the home without a renewed warrant, arguments that Troconis’s statements to police were coerced and should have been suppressed, a double jeopardy challenge to one of the conspiracy counts, and a claim that the trial court wrongly excluded a sealed custody evaluation from the Dulos divorce.21News 12 Connecticut. Troconis Appeal Now Public Argues 7 Reasons to Overturn Convictions Nagy has asked for the case to be transferred from the Appellate Court to the Connecticut Supreme Court, arguing it raises novel questions and issues of first impression. As of early 2026, the court had not ruled on the transfer.22CT Insider. Troconis Appeal Supreme Court Jennifer Dulos Death
Separately, Troconis filed a habeas corpus petition claiming her first attorney, Andrew Bowman, gave ineffective assistance. The core allegation was that Bowman told her to sit for the three 2019 police interviews without securing an immunity agreement, and that the contradictions in those interviews became a foundation of the state’s case. A three-day habeas trial took place in January 2026 at Rockville Superior Court in Vernon. Bowman testified that he had urged cooperation because he believed police were close to an arrest and wanted her positioned as a witness against Fotis Dulos. He said he had not sought immunity because in his experience law enforcement does not grant it before a subject talks, and he insisted he told Troconis not to speak if she was not going to be truthful.23Stamford Advocate. Michelle Troconis Habeas Trial Jennifer Dulos Defense expert Michael Fitzpatrick called Bowman’s approach “not reasonably competent” because he allowed repeated interviews after the first went poorly and failed to challenge the state’s attorney’s threat to charge Troconis as an accessory.24Hartford Courant. Judge Denies Michelle Troconis Habeas Petition
In a forty-six-page decision filed May 18, 2026, Judge Carl Schuman denied the petition. He ruled that Bowman’s strategy of positioning Troconis as a cooperator was “reasonable, if not sound” given what he knew at the time and that the strategy’s failure resulted from the “completely unforeseeable” suicide of Fotis Dulos, which left no one for Troconis to cooperate against. Schuman wrote that her “decision to not be truthful or forthcoming during the interviews… falls on her and not Bowman’s advice,” adding that “the right to counsel is not the right to perfect counsel.” He noted Bowman had spent more than 300 hours on the case.24Hartford Courant. Judge Denies Michelle Troconis Habeas Petition On June 4, 2026, Troconis appealed the denial, arguing the ruling rested on facts unsupported by evidence. The Appellate Court has agreed to review it.25Stamford Advocate. Michelle Troconis Habeas Denial Appeal
Ombudsman Finding on a Prison Strip Search
On May 5, 2025, Troconis was subjected to a strip search at York Correctional Institution before a family visit. A correction officer ordered the search on the grounds that Troconis was “out of place” because she had arrived at the visiting area before a head count was announced over the radio. Connecticut’s correctional ombudsman, DeVaughn Ward, investigated and concluded the search violated Department of Correction policy: the count had already been cleared internally before the radio announcement, and the officer’s justification did not meet the threshold for reasonable suspicion. The report, released in April 2026, said the officer had “misunderstood or normalized” practices inconsistent with agency policy and that the search was applied inconsistently among inmates.26State of Connecticut Office of the Correction Ombuds. Report on Unauthorized Strip Search Practices at York Correctional Institution
The officer was counseled by supervisors but had not been formally disciplined as of June 2026, pending review by the agency’s security division. After the report, the Department of Correction revised Administrative Directive 6.7 to limit strip searches to instances of “extreme risk” or when body scanners are unavailable, and body scanning technology was installed at York in January 2026.27CT Insider. Michelle Troconis Dulos Strip Search CT DOC Probe