As Nikolaos Kotsopoulos' parole hearing for killing his wife in their Long Island home approaches, his sons hope he gets turned down

Nine-year-old Niko Kotsopoulos had just watched his father fatally shoot his 41-year-old mother in the head in the kitchen of their Manhasset home on May 4, 2002, and — for a few seconds — he thought he would be next.

His father, Nikolaos Kotsopoulos, is now 63 and serving a 25-years-to-life prison sentence for his wife's murder. He had long terrorized his mother with physical abuse and threats in front of his older brother, George, and him, Niko Kotsopoulos told Newsday in a recent interview.

“I thought he was going to do what he's been saying he was going to do for years: Kill her, kill us and then kill himself,” he said.

Nearly 25 years later, weeks before their father’s first parole hearing, set for July 14, Niko, 34, and George Kotsopoulos, 37, said they are afraid their father may be set free to do more harm and are urging officials to oppose his release.

"Over the course of the past 24 years, since the sentencing, he has not once shown any sign of recognition or consideration, or even acknowledgment for the crime he has committed, and he has not shown any sense of reform," George Kotsopoulos said via a Zoom interview.

The last time the brothers spoke to their father was to fabricate his alibi.

A masked intruder

Trial testimony showed their father had coached his sons to tell police that a masked man wearing a blue shirt and blue pants had broken into the house and killed their mother.

He "told us exactly what to tell the police, and he said, ‘The police are going to come here, you need to tell them an intruder wearing this came to the house and did this,’ ” George Kotsopoulos said. "He also told us that we needed to tell them that we were downstairs in the basement, which was not the truth.”

The intruder had shot Carol Lyn Fraser Kotsopoulos in the head, according to the first version they gave police. Their father had struggled with the man, getting him to drop the gun, they said, and the man had fled.

None of it was true, the brothers said, but that’s what they told police. The siblings now live in Brooklyn and Queens.

“It was easier to lie,” Niko Kotsopoulos said. “At least I was alive. At least George was safe. I was happy to lie in that moment.”

But there was no armed man dressed in blue, no break-in, the brothers said. The gun belonged to their father, and they had seen him wave it around many times before.

Two counts of murder

After the shooting, police went on a search with dogs and helicopters for the masked intruder, but when the search failed to yield a suspect, detectives turned their attention to the father.

Though he claimed that the gun did not belong to him, police found a case for it in the house safe, according to trial testimony. They also found bullets in the house that fit the caliber of the weapon, a 9-mm Taurus, and an instruction manual for the same gun, Newsday reported at the time.

As the investigation into their father grew more intense, the brothers said, they saw him less and less.

"We didn't see him for days, then we saw him for 20 minutes, and then he was arrested and then that was the last time," George Kotsopoulos told Newsday.

The father was charged with two counts of murder, the first for intentionally shooting his wife in the face and the second for depraved indifference to human life. He also was charged with third-degree assault for beating his wife, leading up to the shooting.

“That day was a day filled with abuse,” George Kotsopoulos said. “But there were so many previous to it. There were previous days filled with abuse. There were previous days filled with the brandishing of a weapon.”

Newsday has reported that Niko Kotsopoulos was in the basement watching TV, but the brothers now say they were both in the kitchen and witnessed the murder.

Years of therapy

Their mother, the youngest in a family of Scottish immigrants, had embraced her husband’s Greek Orthodox culture and was cooking Easter dinner.

Thinking back to that day, the brothers said they have been over and over the fatal shooting.

“It's something that me and George had to take years of therapy to not, at least for me, not to blame myself,” Niko Kotsopoulos said.

The catalyst that provoked their father into a homicidal rage, he said, was a squirt gun battle that he and his brother had with neighborhood kids.

"Two children playing with water guns and spilling water was enough to set him off on a path to murder somebody,” he said.

At the trial, their mother's niece read from a journal their mother had kept of the years of physical and mental abuse that she had suffered. It documented how she had fled to Canada and Colorado, but she always returned, the brothers said, because she feared her husband would hurt her family or the children.

With their paternal grandparents living in Greece, the brothers were placed in the custody of their aunt June Crilly after their mother's murder. It was only then that George Kotsopoulos felt he could tell the truth.

“We started feeling more comfortable and more safe, and we also realized the life we were living wasn't normal — wasn’t right,” he said.

The trial

The last time George Kotsopoulos saw his father, he was 12 years old, looking at him from the witness stand at his trial.

“In testifying and being able to tell the truth, tell the exact thing we saw and share it, it felt that we could finally find some semblance of justice for our mother,” he said. “I will always be glad that I finally found that courage, through a lot of love and support and therapy, to acknowledge the truth that I had seen and to acknowledge what I had witnessed.”

Frank Schroeder, the assistant district attorney on the case, recalled recently the rage that Nikolaos Kotsopoulos showed during the trial, even in front of the jury.

"It was dramatic," he said. "I was yelling at him, and he's yelling at me, and his mother was in the back of the courtroom screaming out in Greek to calm down."

He said that during summations, the defendant had to be restrained by court officers.

"I was summing up and making a point, and he stands up and starts yelling and coming towards me," Schroeder said. "It was a wild, wild show."

The father was convicted after the jury deliberated for four hours, and he was sentenced in June 2003 to 25 years to life in prison.

In the decades since, Nikolaos Kotsopoulos has sought to reverse his conviction four times, once in federal court and three times through post-trial motions.

He first said his lawyer had been promised a $100,000 bonus for a full acquittal and did not properly represent him, hoping for a big payout.

It wasn’t until 2009, in the federal case, that he admitted shooting his wife, although he said it was an accident. He said he was removing the bullets from the gun when it went off, striking her in the head.

Most recently, in October 2024, he argued that his conviction of first-degree murder, which shows intent to kill, conflicted with his second-degree murder charge, which proves depraved indifference.

He was denied all attempts at early release.

His most recent attorney, Jonathan Edelstein, declined to comment on his parole effort.

George Kotsopoulos said that if he’s released, he fears his father will come after him and his brother.

“I feel that the countless appeals that have all been new fabrication, fabrications of stories, the lack of remorse, the lack of recognition, only solidifies the notion that he still sees me as the reason" for his incarceration, he said.

Apology letter

Two months ago, Nikolaos Kotsopoulos wrote a letter to his sons ahead of his July 14 parole board hearing, but the brothers said it only confirms his lack of remorse.

“He released an apology letter that at no point recognizes or acknowledges the brutality of his crime that he was sentenced for,” George Kotsopoulos said.

Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly submitted a letter recommending against his release.

"Nikolaos Kotsopoulos committed a barbaric crime, beating and pistol-whipping the mother of his children and shooting her in the head while the children were home. He should never be allowed to walk free," she said in a statement, adding that her office will fight to keep him in prison.

His sons will not be at the hearing, but they hope the board rules against his release.

“Everyone here has made it abundantly clear that we never wish for him to see the light of day again,” George Kotsopoulos told Newsday. “He does not recognize what he's done, and he does not recognize the crimes he's committed, and for that, he unfortunately should just be removed from society. But really, the sentiment that really hurts most is that there's just a lot of people here that just miss my mother, including my brother and I.”