Jennifer Dulos Case: Fotis Dulos Pronounced Dead At Jacobi Medical Center
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Fotis Dulos, the Connecticut man charged with the murder of his missing estranged wife, has died two days after police found him unresponsive from a suicide attempt.
Defense attorney Norm Pattis announced Thursday that Dulos was declared dead just after 5:30 p.m., CBS2's Valerie Castro reports.
The 52-year-old stood accused of murdering his estranged wife, Jennifer Farber Dulos, who disappeared in May. The mother of five has never been found.
TIMELINE: The Investigation Into Missing Mother Jennifer Dulos
"We intend to proceed on as if he were alive to vindicate him," Pattis said Thursday.
Dulos was set to appear in court on Tuesday, but was found unresponsive in a vehicle inside the garage of his Farmington, Connecticut home. A photo shows a hose apparently hooked up to the exhaust of the car.
He was airlifted to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx with carbon monoxide poisoning. He remained at the hospital in critical condition until his family arrived from Greece on Thursday.
"The family is adamant that his name be cleared. As we are speaking, we have filed an unusual motion in the Connecticut courts asking to substitute an estate for Fotis Dulos for him as a defendant to force the state to show its hand in a trial filled with evidence we think amounts to no more than innuendo and unsupported suspicion," Pattis said.
It will be up to a judge to decide if the murder case should continue to trial without Jennifer and, now, without Fotis.
Court records say Dulos left a suicide note, found in the seat next to him, "in which he declared his innocence of the infamous and heinous crimes that the State has accused him of and claimed his lawyers have the evidence to prove it."
His attorney wouldn't elaborate on what the evidence might be but says Dulos taking his own life was more a desperate act than a silent confession.
"As to those who contend that Mr. Dulos' death reflects a consciousness of guilt, we say no. We say it was more a conscience overworn with the weight of a world that was too busy to listen and that wanted a story more than it wanted the truth," Pattis said.
Dulos' family requested his organs be donated.
The five Dulos children remain under the care of their maternal grandmother, as they have been since their mother disappeared.
