Cause of Chris Pettit’s brother’s death released by Bexar County Medical Examiner’s office

With allegations mounting that his older brother had stolen millions of dollars from his clients and the law practice where he’d been an employee shut down, Charles Joseph Pettit had apparently had enough. At some point in the weeks after disgraced ex-attorney Christopher “Chris” Pettit filed bankruptcy to stave off litigation and closed his firm’s offices, his younger brother wrapped his head and upper torso in plastic sheeting and laid down to die. The death has now been ruled a suicide by the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office. Charles Joseph Pettit, 49, died of asphyxiation, it said in a new report. His body was found July 12 at his San Antonio home, wrapped in plastic. The Medical Examiner’s Office detected Zolpidem, a sleeping aid, in his system but said in an autopsy report that it was uncertain whether the medication contributed to his death.

His body was discovered after Chris Pettit, 55, asked San Antonio police to conduct a welfare check. The brothers had not been in touch since a June 16 text message. Chris Pettit was living in Florida at the time. On June 1, he’d filed for bankruptcy protection for himself and his law firm. He surrendered his law license the next week. Entering Charles Pettit’s house the next month, officers said they were overwhelmed with a strong odor and, according to a police report, found “obvious signs of decomposition” on his body. The autopsy report didn’t suggest how long Charles Pettit had been dead before his body was found. The police report stated Chris Pettit said he believed his brother “had had enough and had possibly taken his own life” as a result of the media attention Chris Pettit was receiving for allegedly stealing millions of dollars from his clients.