In Gillian Flynn’s bestselling novel Gone Girl, a woman mysteriously vanishes, and is subsequently discovered to have faked her own disappearance in order to frame her husband for her murder (Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck played the couple in the 2014 movie adaptation).
The plot of the novel is now being used as the legal strategy to defend Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, charged with tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and hindering prosecution in relation to the May 24 disappearance of Dulos’ estranged wife, Jennifer Dulos.
“We’re actively investigating the possibility that this is a ‘Gone Girl’ type case, and are considering the possibility that no third party was involved in foul play,” Dulos’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, told ABC’s “20/20”, promoting the theory that the missing woman likewise faked her own murder while pinning the crime on her husband.
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Flynn is not pleased that Gone Girl is being used in Dulos’ defence, and issued a statement to Connecticut’s WTNH, declaring she’s “absolutely sickened” to see her book being used in such a way.
“I have been following the story of Jennifer Dulos’s disappearance. This situation is so incredibly painful, I can’t imagine what her children, her family, and all those close to her are going through. I am deeply sorry for Jennifer and her loved ones,” said the author in her statement.
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“I’ve seen in recent coverage that Jennifer’s husband and his defence attorney have put forward a so-called ‘Gone Girl theory’ to explain Jennifer’s disappearance,” the statement continues. “It absolutely sickens me that a work of fiction written by me would be used by Fotis Dulos’s lawyer as a defence, and as a hypothetical, sensationalized motive behind Jennifer’s very real and very tragic disappearance.”
