Glendale Hts. man charged in dad's suffocation death

Less than two years ago, an imprisoned George M. Panos sought to be freed early so he could take care of his elderly father.

"I need to be by my father's side," he wrote a DuPage County judge in June 2007. "To do my duty for a man I don't really like, but he is my father and he needs me now."

Instead of being his father's keeper, Panos is accused of suffocating the 78-year-old man early Sunday with a pillow as he slept in their Glendale Heights home.

Panos, 44, is being held on a $2 million bond in the DuPage County jail on first-degree murder and solicitation of murder charges. Judge Brian Diamond set the high bond Tuesday morning.

In bond court, Assistant State's Attorney Joseph Ruggiero said Panos called police to his father's home on the 1600 block of Paul Avenue after midnight Sunday to report the elderly man died of natural causes while asleep.

Afterward, Ruggiero said, four people told police Panos had propositioned them to kill his father, also named George, and steal the $200 he had, when they were all together during an earlier gathering in the house.

Ruggerio said Panos later confessed in a videotaped police interview that he alone killed his father. Authorities said an autopsy found the elderly man showed signs of suffocation. His longtime wife, Joanne, died in August 2005 at age 71.

Police were well acquainted with the couple's three sons, court records showed.

The youngest son, Greg, died of a drug overdose at age 36 in August 2006. The oldest, John, 47, is in the DuPage County jail awaiting trial on felony drug charges.

The defendant, George, who is the middle child, has a 25-year criminal history for repeated drunken driving, domestic battery, drug possession, retail theft, public indecency, resisting a peace officer, telephone harassment and traffic-related offenses, court records showed.

"He is a lifelong, unemployed, alcoholic, drug addict who has been in and out of prison his whole life," Ruggiero said.

Panos was last arrested before Sunday in October 2008 on misdemeanor charges after police accused him of inappropriate contact with an underage boy. That case still is pending.

In a 2005 drug arrest, Panos wrote two letters to a DuPage County judge unsuccessfully seeking his early release while serving a three-year prison sentence. In one letter, Panos said he suffers from HIV, depression, severe anxiety and a long addiction to alcohol and drugs.

"My father is severely ill and those taking care of him are once against stealing from him for drug money," Panos wrote. "I am asking anything that can be done to speed my possible release so I can get back to his side and get back to my recovery in society."

George M. Panos is due in court Feb. 23 for arraignment.