FARMINGTON -- Fotis Dulos' family released a statement Monday emphasizing their belief he was innocent while criticizing the Connecticut justice system and media coverage of the case.
The emotional letter described the effort to charge and convict Dulos as "relentless," saying investigators showed "no mercy" in their pursuit. It went on to claim that biased reporting on the case manipulated public opinion and unfairly turned people against him.
The family defended Fotis as a caring and nurturing person who died "surrounded by pictures of his five children."
Following Fotis' suicide attempt last Tuesday, his sister Rena flew in to the United States from Greece to be at her brother's side. He died two days later from complications related to carbon-monoxide poisoning at a Bronx hospital.
Read the full letter here:
Suicide – the last word anyone who knew Fotis would associate with him. Caring and nurturing father, son, brother, and uncle, achiever, hard worker, fighter, loyal friend, accomplished sportsman, book worm, a great cook, unparalleled host. This was Fotis. He would walk into a room and immediately light it up. He was the man everyone wanted to befriend.
Fotis was a loving man much loved by those who actually knew him.
We, the family of this great man, feel let down by the State that pursued and harassed him and us relentlessly and with no mercy, without ever giving him or us a chance to speak our truth and to share, with a world that was too quick to call him a monster, our story. We feel devastated that a man, only 52 years of age, found himself in a dead-end where he saw taking his own life as the only way to be granted peace. We are enraged with the Media that used him to make sensationalistic (sic) headlines, thus manipulating public opinion; the Media abandoned the presumption of innocence, seeming heedless of the effect its reporting would have on the children in this case. We are shocked at how Law Enforcement obsessively focused with speculation and circumstantial evidence on an innocent man and turned their back on finding the real perpetrator of this tragedy, who is now at large, still a threat to public safety. Words are not enough to describe our thoughts, emotions, and sorrow.
Will the State now investigate the circumstances that led to this horrible end? A family court system lacking accountability? Lawyers and so-called professionals bleeding the estate of a feeble old woman, Gloria Farber, while destroying a loving man’s relationship with his children? We are not alone in wondering how great wealth can be abused to destroy a family.
We call the Judiciary System, in the name of justice, to publicly release Jennifer´s medical records and psychiatric evaluations, offering the public a chance to juxtapose them to those of Fotis. We demand nothing less than the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
We urge the State to recalibrate their investigation and work towards solving this tragic mystery. We urge the Media to understand their destructive role in this turn of events. Even now a court-appointed receiver hawks private pictures of the site of Fotis’s suicide to a press that cannot seem to get enough of this tragedy.
We call the public to pause and reflect after truly spending time reading what paltry evidence was brought against Fotis. What has become of the spirit of fair play, of the presumption of innocence? What crazy lust inspires the haters?
We had contemplated burying Fotis in Farmington but fear desecration of his grave. We will remove his remains to Greece and bid farewell to a nation at war with its ideals.
We live in times of instant gratification and a world thirsty for bread and circuses, where reflection and the pursuit of truth are massacred in the name of fast consumption, scandal, and sensationalism. Fotis was the victim of this sickening zeitgeist.
We ask that you pray for his five children and our family. We ask that you pause and reflect on how it is possible that, in today’s United States of America, a man sought justice and peace by hooking up a pipe on his exhaust and walking into his car to meet his death surrounded by pictures of his five children.
We pray that God grant us strength to forgive everyone responsible for this sickening farce.
Are we bitter? Yes. We lost a much loved and lovely man to a form of mass hysteria. Fotis was no killer. Now he is dead. The case involving Jennifer’s disappearance has not ended. In some respects it now begins anew.
To read more on Fotis Dulos' death and the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos, click here.