The family and friends of missing New Canaan mother Jennifer Dulos are firing back against her estranged husband's attorney after he said she may have staged her own disappearance.
Before Dulos was married with children, she was a writer, earning a master's degree from New York University.
Norm Pattis, the controversial attorney for her estranged husband Fotis Dulos, suggested she used those skills to write a manuscript similar to the thriller "Gone Girl," where a woman in a troubled marriage orchestrates her own disappearance and frames her husband for her death. He has since doubled-down on those statements.
A spokesperson for Jennifer Dulos' family, Carrie Luft, fired back Monday, saying Jennifer Dulos' manuscript was done in 2002, before she began dating Fotis Dulos, and has nothing to do with the plot like in "Gone Girl."
"Trying to tie Jennifer's absence to a book she wrote more than 17 years ago makes no sense," says Luft. "Evidence shows that Jennifer was the victim of a violent attack in her New Canaan home."
Pattis released a statement of his own Monday saying, "Efforts to distance Ms. Dulos from a Gone Girl-type scenario are well-meaning, to be sure. But the fact remains that Ms. Dulos remains accountably 'Gone,' and had the imagination, means and motive to disappear."
Jennifer Dulos was last seen dropping her kids off at school on May 24. Police found blood stains and blood spatter in her garage, along with her blood mixed with Fotis Dulos' DNA on the kitchen faucet.
Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend Michelle Troconis are both charged with evidence tampering and hindering prosecution.
Police say the pair were caught on camera throwing out bags of garbage that contained sponges and clothing with Jennifer Dulos' blood.
For the past few weeks, investigators have scoured a Hartford trash facility looking for any trace of the missing woman. As family and friends continue to reel from her disappearance, they say these claims just add to their pain.
Pattis also says he has filed a motion to clarify whether his client and Troconis can see each other while they're both out on bond. Pattis told News 12 that Troconis believes in Fotis Dulos' innocence and still loves him.
He went on to say, "We see no reason why the two of them should not be free to live as they see fit."