NEW YORK – Greek-American author and Vanity Fair contributor Vanessa Grigoriadis has written another impressive article for the venerable magazine, this time about Jennifer Farber, the missing New Canaan, CT mother of five whose estranged husband Fotis Dulos was charged with her murder though her body has not been found.

Dulos died on January 30 of this year from an apparent suicide, leaving behind more questions than answers and a note in which he insisted on his innocence. Farber, however, is still missing.

Meanwhile, the tragic story continues to make headlines. On October 22, a hearing was held in Farmington Regional Probate Court to determine if Farber is legally dead, but Judge Evelyn Daly “took no action” and opted “to consider if she would need more evidence before issuing a ruling,” The Stamford Advocate reported. A lawyer administering Fotis Dulos’ estate asked a judge to declare Farber legally dead so he can access certain funds to pay creditors, the Associated Press reported.

During the hearing, Judge Daly said that “there is no Connecticut case law that would support making a determination that the New Canaan mother of five who has been missing since May 2019 is legally dead,” The Stamford Advocate reported.

On October 24, The Hartford Courant reported that the 10,000-square-foot, six-bedroom house in Farmington, CT, where the Dulos family lived from 2012-17, is on the market for $1.75 million, as part of the sell-off of the Fotis Dulos estate.

Gloria Farber, the mother of Jennifer Farber, is foreclosing on the property, as she is “the primary creditor of the Fotis Dulos estate, which owes her nearly $2 million from a lawsuit over unpaid business loans her family made to [Dulos’ company] Fore Group,” The Stamford Advocate reported. The five Dulos children now live with their maternal grandmother in New York.

The Vanity Fair article, in the November 2020 issue, however, shines a light on Farber and her life, offering a more well-rounded sense of her as a person and not just a victim. The article also offers insight into Dulos and the couple’s relationship that previous media reports could not cover in depth. Including numerous quotes from those who knew Farber and Dulos, the article reveals layers to the tragedy that would otherwise remain hidden. Dulos’ sister Rena, an architect in Athens, is also among those quoted in the article, saying of her brother, “The constant effort to attain high goals has shaped his character, sense of fairness, and can-do approach to life,” Vanity Fair reported.

Grigoriadis spoke with The National Herald about the article which she noted took two months to write. When asked what was the most surprising thing she learned in the process of writing the article, Grigoriadis told TNH, “I was surprised to learn that Jennifer was such a beautiful writer. I hadn’t been to see any of her plays when we were younger, and she was truly talented.”

Farber had written four full-length plays in the late 1990s and was a cofounder of Playwrights Collective, a theatre company “which put on picnic readings in Tompkins Square Park and at a café on Avenue A, salons in living rooms, and, at real theaters, Farber’s surreal comedies mixed with memoir elements,” Grigoriadis wrote in Vanity Fair.

Carrie Luft, one of Farber’s closest friends, told Grigoriadis that “at core, almost all

Jennifer’s work explores the need to be loved and known as one’s true self.”

Grigoriadis and Farber had “crossed paths” in the 1990s when they lived around the corner from each other in Greenwich Village. Grigoriadis wrote in the article, “after I graduated from college in 1995, about five years after she had, we crossed paths, though just barely.”

Grigoriadis quotes Elizabeth Sheinkman, a literary agent and friend, who said, “Jennifer was a vibrant presence on the New York literary scene in the late 1990s. She was observant and often wryly funny about human behavior and social interactions, and she was always generous and supportive towards other writers in her midst.”

The details of how Farber and Dulos met and married, their struggle to have children, how they seemed eventually to have it all, and how it all unraveled, makes the tragedy seem even more profound.

The Vanity Fair article Fates and Furies by Vanessa Grigoriadis is also available online: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/10/true-scope-of-jennifer-farber-fotis-dulos-tragedy.