Prosecutors had no eyewitnesses linking a Connecticut woman to the death of a mother of five who disappeared in 2019, but authorities turned to another crucial piece of evidence to help convict Michelle Troconis in the murder of Jennifer Dulos — hours of video culled from security and surveillance cameras across the state.
Troconis, the girlfriend of Dulos’ estranged husband, was found guilty Friday of conspiracy to commit murder, tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution; she faces up to 50 years in prison when she is sentenced in May.
The case against her and Fotis Dulos, who died in 2020 after he was charged in Jennifer’s death, was partly built around a timeline investigators stitched together using clips from residential security systems, a sprawling network of urban police cameras, and even passing school buses.
For more on the death of Jennifer Dulos, tune in to “A Life Interrupted” on “Dateline” at 9 ET/8 CT tonight.
They captured the movements of a man authorities alleged was Fotis Dulos across 14 hours and a wide swath of Connecticut on May 24, 2019, the day Jennifer Dulos disappeared. Her body has never been found, but a judge issued her declaration of death last year.
The staggering amount of video evidence in the case reflects what Grant Fredericks, a longtime forensic video analyst who has taught for the FBI, described as an increasingly common reality for law enforcement agencies — a reality partly fueled by the boom in residential “smart” cameras and aided by new software from Axon, the Taser and body camera maker.
The Hartford Police Department, which operates some of the cameras used in the Dulos case, has said its newly expanded network has allowed investigators to solve more crimes. To Fredericks, who was not familiar with the Dulos case, the development has heralded a source of information that is one of the most routinely used by law enforcement today.
That source is usually more reliable than its predecessor,…
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