Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn is being linked to the case of missing Connecticut author Jennifer Dulos, who disappeared in the Connecticut town of New Canaan on May 24 after dropping her children off at school. Her husband Fotis Dulos is claiming through his lawyer Norm Pattis that there’s a connection between the 2012 novel and his wife’s disappearance, saying it inspired a novel Jennifer wrote nearly two decades ago.
Gone Girl tells the story of a woman who fakes her own death and frames her husband.
Fotis and his girlfriend Michelle Tronconis were arrested in early June for tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution in connection to the case. Police accused the pair of dumping trash bags that contained Jennifer’s blood in Hartford.
Flynn, a former EW writer, rejects the theory that her book inspired Dulos, sharing that she’s been following the case and that she’s “deeply sorry for Jennifer and her loved ones.”
“I’ve seen in recent coverage that Jennifer’s husband and his defense attorney have put forward a so-called ‘Gone Girl theory’ to explain Jennifer’s disappearance,” she told local ABC affiliate WTNH in a statement. “It absolutely sickens me that a work of fiction written by me would be used by Fotis Dulos’s lawyer as a defense, and as a hypothetical, sensationalized motive behind Jennifer’s very real and very tragic disappearance.”
A spokesperson for Jennifer denies that she was inspired by Flynn’s novel when she wrote her own. Carrie Luft told WTNH in a statement that the timing of the titles are totally off, with the first draft of Jennifer’s book having been completed in 2002 before she ever met Fotis.
“Trying to tie Jennifer’s absence to a book she wrote more than 17 years ago makes no sense,” Luft said. “Evidence shows that Jennifer was the victim of a violent attack in her New Canaan home.
As of today, she has been missing for a month. This is not fiction or a movie. This is real life, as experienced every single day by Jennifer’s five young children, her family, and her friends. We are heartbroken. Jennifer is not here to protect her children, and these false and irresponsible allegations hurt the children now and into the future.”
Flynn’s novel became a New York Times Best Seller and inspired a big screen adaptation starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.
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