INTERVIEW: True Crime Author Rich Cohen

BIO:

Rich Cohen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tough Jews, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, Sweet and Low, When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead (with Jerry Weintraub), The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones, The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse, and Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent. His new book, Murder in the Dollhouse: The Jennifer Dulos Story, was published in May. He is a co-creator of the HBO series Vinyl, an Editor at Large at Air Mail and a columnist at the Wall Street Journal. He has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine, among other publications. Cohen has won the Great Lakes Book Award, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for outstanding coverage of music. His stories have been included in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. He lives in Connecticut.

INTERVIEW:

LYNN: Beyond your bio, tell us a little bit about how and why you chose to write a book about the murder of Jennifer Dulos.

RICH: As soon as this story reached the news, I felt an intense identification with Jennifer Dulos. The more I learned, the stronger that feeling became. I identified with her as a Gen Xer, as a lover of pop culture, as a Jewish person, and mostly as a writer-- as someone tasked by some mysterious inner sense with creating something for which there is no obvious need. I felt I understood her sensibility and felt a burning desire to understand what had happened to her and why.

LYNN: The amount of research you did for this book was extraordinary. From the personal interviews to the court documents to the endless articles written about the case, how in the world did you keep all of the information straight?

I have always tried to construct nonfiction narratives out of various reportorial strands, ideally from as many different sources, and as many different kinds of sources, as possible. This book was the same, with the added advantage of Jennifer’s own writing, meaning her own voice, which allowed me to get a sense of some of her thoughts. Keeping track of it all is no different than keeping track of all the information one needs to navigate the world.

LYNN: What’s the biggest life lesson you learned as a result of writing this book?

RICH: Little things have huge importance in our lives. Decisions that might have seemed minor to Jennifer – her decision to visit Aspen and the Aspen airport on this particular day – might determine everything. All of our lives are like that. I have learned to pay more careful attention to my own decisions as a result of working on this story. Also, just because someone (Fotis) went to the same college, and has some of the same friends, and is from the same social set, does not mean you know them.

LYNN: What was your favorite part about investigating this crime?

RICH: Interviewing the people who had worked with Jennifer in the theatre group in New York. Jennifer had great taste in people – with some obvious misses – and talking to them brought not only Jennifer to life as she was then, but that entire era of downtown creative New York City.

LYNN: What part of investigating or writing this story did you hate most?

RICH: The details of the crime scene, the blood and the evidence. I simply could not fathom the violence and evil of the crime itself.

LYNN: Was there anything that almost made you give up on the project?

RICH: I did not want to bring any harm or increase injury to Jennifer’s children. The fear of being part of that injury made me pause working on this project for almost two years. It was only when the crime was written about and dramatized in quick books, articles, documentaries, podcasts, and TV movies that I saw a place for my work. I felt Jennifer was being lost in all these stories, flattened into a victim. My goal was to restore Jennifer to her own story, to show her as a person.

LYNN: You’ve written books about everything from the Chicago Bears to a Jewish war story. How did writing this true crime story compare?

RICH: It was more restrained. I think of my writing as freewheeling and also pretty funny. With this story, I knew that for it to be good, I had to restrain those tendencies and put myself at the service of the material.

LYNN: One paragraph you wrote seemed to sum up Jennifer: “She disdained clutter for the same reason she paid careful attention to her weight: she could not stand waste, excess, or any kind of disorder. Everything had to be perfect.” But of course, her life wasn’t perfect. How do you think she dealt with that reality from day to day?

I think she tried to present a perfect picture – perfect marriage, perfect family, etc. – to the world, which may have ultimately placed her in danger. By the time she was willing to accept the reality of the situation, she was low on options and running out of time. She was determined to make it work, right up to the moment she knew it wouldn’t.

LYNN: Jennifer seemed to grow up in a money bubble, with a father who would spend whatever it cost to take care of her. How do you think that affected her inability to (a) recognize Fotis Dulos for what he truly was, and (b) get away from him before it was too late?

RICH: She never had to deal with the bad people. Her father did that for her. When he was gone, and she was face to face with this psycho, she did not know how to do it. Here’s what it shows: you can’t really protect people in the long run.

LYNN: You also said that it was unfortunate that Jennifer Farber met Fotis Dulos when she was vulnerable, when she “…feared her window on motherhood was closing.” Throughout the book, you described Jennifer as a woman obsessed with marriage and having children—to the point that she lived for a time with a crib in her apartment when she was single. Do you think her biological clock was the primary motivator in marrying Fotis?

RICH: I do. I think she had these two dreams – to be an artist and to be a mother. She could not figure out how to reconcile them. By the time she gave up the first dream for the second, she was running out of time. This caused her to act fast – too fast. Married fast, had kids fast, etc. By the time she realized just what sort of person she had married, she was entangled and in trouble.

LYNN: You commented in the book that “A psychopath is a chameleon. He sees what you want, then becomes that thing.” Clearly you were speaking about Fotis Dulos. Do you think he was self‑aware enough to “act the part” on purpose, or was it merely instinctual behavior on his part?

RICH: Yes. I think he was selling himself to get what he wanted. He wanted Jennifer – for her social position, beauty, and money. He figured out what she wanted, then became that thing. I think he conned her and did it very intentionally.

LYNN: I was fascinated (and disgusted) with your description of the Greek male traditional values that Fotis learned from his own father. For instance, a man stepping out on his wife is not cheating, it’s just “being a man.” And that marriage is just a means to an end, in other words, producing children. I find it hard to believe that kind of narrow thinking didn’t become apparent early in their relationship. Thoughts?

RICH: That was part of the con. He showed her what she wanted to see. Later, when she wanted more from him, his instinct took him back to lessons he had learned as a kid. He did not see her complaint as valid. He gave her what she wanted: children, a family, a home. This entitled him, in his mind, to do what he wanted.

LYNN: I loved what you said about Fotis’ initial interview with the police: “Fotis spoke first, another mistake. If you are meeting with police, you should volunteer nothing; even your tone of voice can give you away. Let the police start by telling you what they know.” This is really good information for a mystery writer. Do you have any more tips that would help writers make their murder investigations more credible?

RICH: Empathy is the most important quality for any kind of writer. You have to put yourself in the place of the person you are writing about. Only by becoming that person in some sense can you understand their actions, and only by understanding their actions can you explain them to a reader.

LYNN: You added important statistics near the end of the book, i.e. “According to the FBI database, 482 wives were slain by their husbands in the United States in 2019.” Can Jennifer’s story teach us anything about domestic abuse in this country?

RICH: Yes. That this is a disturbingly common problem that is somewhat hidden because people do not like to share their misery with the world.

LYNN: You also stated that by the time Jennifer realized how bad the marriage was, she “…wanted to be free but was not willing to be poor.” So often we hear that women don’t leave abusive relationships because they wouldn’t have a way to support their children, but this seems several steps beyond that type of thinking. What does this say, if anything, about Jennifer or young women of privilege?

RICH: She loved the world of her parents. She idealized it and did not see it as surely it was… that her parents were just people, like her. I think her fear of losing that world closed her off from the kind of experience she would need, both as a writer and as a wife trying to survive a disastrous marriage.

LYNN: What are the chances you’ll write another true crime book like this one?

RICH: I think I will. Working on this book made me realize that I have a way of knowing what goes on inside all these beautiful homes. And now, I really do want to know. Connecticut, where I live, can seem mundane and placid – but it really isn’t.

LYNN: Thanks again, Rich. This was a great albeit tragic story, and I appreciate your time to give us a window into your grand project.