Murder in the dollhouse: the Jennifer Dulos story, by Rich Cohen

Murder in the dollhouse is a true crime non-fiction book about the disappearance of a wealthy socialite from Connecticut. Jennifer Dulos grew up worshipping her own father and dreaming that she would meet the right man and have a marriage as happy as her parents had. She dallied through her twenties, then in her mid-thirties she married Fotis Dulos, a Greek-American whom she had known slightly when she was a Brown University. He was a handsome and athletic man, but Jennifer married him only one month after his divorce to his first wife was finalized, and less than a year after she met him. Jennifer’s father financed Fotis’s career in real estate, and he had a running debt to Jennifer’s parents which caused marital tension. Fotis was obsessively interested in their five kids’ waterskiing (the sport that Fotis excelled in) and forced them to spend days at the lake skiing. Eventually Fotis began an affair with another woman, and Jennifer filed for divorce. During the contentious divorce proceedings, which lasted two years, the couple fought incessantly, with the kids as pawns in the middle. In 2019, Jennifer disappeared after dropping her kids at school, and Fotis quickly became the main suspect. Significant audiovisual evidence was collected and analyzed, along with physical evidence from Jennifer’s home that left little doubt as to his guilt. His new girlfriend was also clearly complicit. Fotis was charged with murder; he was able to secure bail but when it was on the verge of being revoked, he committed suicide. In the end, his girlfriend was sentenced to 14 years in jail for her role, one of his lawyers also served time for his role in covering up the crime, their kids are in the custody of their grandmother, and Jennifer’s body has never been found. I think this was a well-written account of what transpired and it serves as a cautionary tale on many levels