Gillian Flynn Is "Absolutely Sickened" By A 'Gone Girl' Theory In This Missing Person's Case

Connecticut mother Jennifer Dulos went missing on May 24, 2019, but her husband's legal defense is connecting a much-hyped 2012 novel to the mystery. The disappearance of Jennifer Dulos is connected to Gone Girl, alleges a lawyer for her husband, Fotis. Those accusations have forced author Gillian Flynn to respond.

Published in 2012, and made into a film of the same name in 2014, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl centers on Amy and Nick, a young couple who appear to be happy, clever, and rich, but whose lives are thrown into turmoil when Nick is unfaithful and Amy goes missing. Nick, the prime suspect in Amy's disappearance, finds himself in a hellish situation. What he doesn't know is that his wife is still alive, and has gone on the run, leaving falsified evidence against Nick in her wake. She plans to live under an assumed name before she takes her own life, which will seal Nick's fate in the murder investigation.

According to Fotis Dulos' lawyer, Norm Pattis, there are many similarities between Amy's disappearance in Gone Girl and the missing-persons case of Jennifer Dulos. The Guardian reports that Pattis is "investigating the possibility that this is a 'Gone Girl'-type case and considering the possibility that no third party was involved in foul play." The lawyer also alleges that Jennifer Dulos wrote a manuscript in 2002 that was inspired by Gone Girl. However, Gone Girl was released in 2012, and Dulos's manuscript was finished "before she ever met Fotis," according to the missing woman's spokesperson, Carrie Luft.

"Trying to tie Jennifer’s absence to a book she wrote more than 17 years ago makes no sense," said Luft. "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."

Flynn herself chimed in, releasing a statement to a New Haven, Connecticut ABC affiliate, which read: "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."

Adding a new layer of strangeness to this case is the fact that Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, were arrested in early June, shortly after Jennifer Dulos' May disappearance. The couple were "charged with fabricating or tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution," according to People. Both have pleaded not guilty.