Did Fotis Dulos shave his head to frame his employee for murder? Accused killer may have had haircut in attempt to look like the man who owned the truck he used to dispose of wife's body, investigators say
Fotis Dulos may have shaved his own head in an attempt to frame his employee for his wife Jennifer's murder, according to investigators who are still searching for the mother-of-five's body 17 months after she disappeared.
Nancy Grace broke down the bizarre theory in a segment on The Dr Oz Show that aired on Thursday afternoon.
Jennifer Dulos, 50, is presumed dead after she vanished on the morning of May 24, 2019, after dropping her five children off at school.
Police believe that her husband Fotis - who was arrested on murder charges last fall and died by suicide in January - attacked her in the garage of their rented home in New Canaan, Connecticut, before he allegedly discarded her body using a red pickup truck he borrowed from his employee Pawel Gumienny.
According to police documents, Fotis had swapped out the backseat of the truck with a seat from his own Porshe and then asked Gumienny to put the original seat back in.
Gumienny, who worked for Fotis' real estate development firm Fore Group, turned the Porshe seat over to investigators, who discovered traces of Jennifer's blood on it.
The framing theory emerged when investigators noticed that Fotis had shaved his head just days before Jennifer disappeared, potentially in an attempt to look like Gumienny, whose hair was closely cropped.
Fotis Dulos may have shaved his own head in an attempt to frame his employee for his wife Jennifer's murder, according to investigators. Dulos is pictured left with his original hairstyle prior to Jennifer's May 2019 disappearance and right in a mugshot with his close crop
Gumienny's red Tacoma truck became a key piece of evidence in the case after it was seen in surveillance video (pictured) near where Jennifer's Chevy Suburban was abandoned the day she vanished
Nancy Grace broke down the bizarre theory that Fotis Dulos may have tried to frame his employee Pawel Gumienny in a segment on The Dr Oz Show that aired on Thursday afternoon
Gumienny's red Tacoma truck became a key piece of evidence in the case after it was seen in surveillance video near where Jennifer's Chevy Suburban was abandoned the day she disappeared.
Grace reviewed the footage during Thursday's Dr Oz episode and questioned why Fotis would have asked to borrow it from Gumienny that day, since he had apparently never done so before.
'As it turns out, later on, he asked the employee: "Will you swap out the back seat of the Tacoma? Just put in my Porsche back seat in the back of the Tacoma,"' Grace said, paraphrasing accounts of that conversation from court documents and investigators' interviews.
'Then he shaves his head. Think Oz, think, I believe Fotis Dulos was trying to frame the employee because sure enough in the back seat, which the employee took to the cops, was covered in Jennifer's DNA.'
'I think Fotis Dulos killed Jennifer, transported her body at the back of his employee's Tacoma, knowing full well DNA would be left there. Then shave his head to look like his employee in all those videos.'
A lead investigator in the Dulos case, Detective John Kimball of the state police's Western District Major Crimes Unit, first presented the possibility that Fotis tried to frame Gumienny in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media last month.
Kimball said that Fotis' sudden hairstyle change caught detectives' attention early in the investigation, leading them to speculate that Fotis was trying to look like Gumienny.
'Whether that was the primary reason or not, it was the end result,' Kimball said.
'He did end up looking like Pawel, to the extent that Pawel commented: 'Hey, you look just like me.' That goes along with the planning and that goes along with creating a diversion.'
'You have several pre-planning steps in the warrant,' Kimball continued. 'One of which is that he didn't use his own vehicle for the commission of the crime. He used the vehicle that was available to him - an employee's vehicle.
'At the time he was using this employee's vehicle, the employee, we believe, had no knowledge of this. He didn't give him permission to use it.
'And Fotis had actually altered his appearance to resemble this employee, so if someone saw this vehicle, they might not associate it with Fotis Dulos. They might associate it with the person whose vehicle it actually was when in fact it was Fotis Dulos.'
Before 8am on May 24, 2019, the Tacoma truck which Fotis borrowed was spotted on surveillance footage driving towards Jennifer's home in New Canaan
The surveillance photo above show's Gumienny's truck - allegedly with Fotis in it - making its way back to where he lives on the morning of Jennifer's disappearance
Investigators uncovered several pieces of evidence leading them to believe that Fotis was trying to frame Gumienny.
According to the arrest warrant, Fotis had instructed Gumienny to go directly to New Canaan to work on a property they were developing there on the morning Jennifer disappeared, instead of stopping at his office in Farmington.
It's believed that Fotis may have given that instruction because he wanted Gumienny to be in New Canaan at the time that the alleged murder occurred.
Fotis had Gumienny's truck washed and detailed before he returned it, and then told Gumienny to throw out the backseats, the warrant stated.
Gumienny eventually removed the seats under pressure from Fotis, but never actually discarded them because he was suspicious of his boss's behavior.
In the days after Jennifer's disappearance, Fotis took Gumienny's phone and allegedly erased some of the contents, including the web search history and phone calls he made on May 25 and 26, Kimball said.
Gumienny's attorney said he expects to be called as a witness in cases against Fotis' alleged accomplices, his former girlfriend Michelle Troconis and lawyer Kent Mawhinney, who are awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy to commit murder.
Fotis denied any involvement in his wife's disappearance up until he killed himself in January by sitting in his SUV inside his garage with the engine running.
Investigators have continued searching various properties connected to Fotis in hopes of finally recovering her body 17 months after she disappeared.
Fotis' former girlfriend Michelle Troconis (left) and his friend and lawyer Kent Mawhinney (right) are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in Jennifer's disappearance
Fotis denied any involvement in his wife's disappearance up until he killed himself in January. Police are seen performing CPR on Fotis after they found him slumped inside his running car in his garage. He died at a hospital two days later on January 30
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