The attorney for Fotis Dulos has a simple message for author Gillian Flynn: "Be gone, girl."
Norman Pattis made the comments after the "Gone Girl" scribe said she was "absolutely sickened" by the suggestion that missing Connecticut missing mother Jeniffer Dulos could have staged her own disappearance in a revenge scheme to frame her estranged husband.
While he complimented Flynn's novel, which was later turned into a major motion picture, as "the best book I've ever read on the misleading nature of circumstantial evidence," that's about as far as the niceties went for the writer.
"(Flynn) made a fortune in royalties from the book and movie adaption. Just how her fictional aptitude translates into expertise in an actual criminal case is an even greater mystery, however," Pattis said in a statement to News 4. "Candidly, Gillian’s ignorant fulminations about the Dulos case play to the very impulses she exploited in her book."
Pattis finished his statement with a direct shot right at Flynn: "So here’s a message to Gillian: Be gone, girl. There’s serious work to be done here. This isn’t fiction. It’s reality."
No one has seen the New Canaan mother of five since May 24, when she dropped her children off at school. An attorney for her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, who has pleaded not guilty to evidence tampering and hindering prosecution in her case, posited a theory that Jennifer Dulos faked her disappearance like a character in Flynn's best-seller.
<p">At the time, the attorney, Norm Pattis, cited a "very dark 500-page plus novel" that Jennifer Dulos had written.
Flynn said in a statement to NBC News Saturday that she had seen the recent coverage, including Pattis' reference to her own novel. And she was horrified.
"It absolutely sickens me that a work of fiction written by me would be used by Fotis Dulos's lawyer as a defense, and a hypothetical, sensationalized motive behind Jennifer's very real and very tragic disappearance," she told NBC News.
Jennifer Dulos' family was quick to dismiss Pattis' theory as well, saying shortly after he stated it publicly that the claim was "false and irresponsible" and that Jennifer Dulos' novel had been written well before Flynn's work. The family also said the missing mother's novel was not a mystery tome.
Fotis Dulos Has Message for Those Who Think He's Guilty
"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," according to the statement released in late June.
State, local and federal investigators have been scouring multiple states for any sign of Jennifer Dulos. Her blood and her husband's DNA were found mixed on a kitchen faucet, and Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend were allegedly seen dumping garbage -- some that included Jennifer's clothes and had blood on them -- multiple times on a 4-mile stretch of road in the Hartford area -- but both Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend have denied any involvement in her disappearance.
In his first interview last week, Fotis Dulos exclusively told News 4 that he knows what the public thinks of him, and has a message: Wait until the facts come out.
"I know what I've done, I know what I haven't done," Fotis Dulos said. "I have to stand and fight and hope the truth is going to come out."