Former Atlanta lawyer Fred Tokars, who arranged the murder of his wife in 1992, has died in federal prison, his longtime defense attorney confirmed Wednesday.

Jerry Froelich said Tokars' brother was notified of his death by a prison chaplain last weekend. Froelich said he has not been told of the precise cause of death, although he said Tokars had a form of multiple sclerosis that had left him unable to walk for the past decade.

Froelich said the Tokars family has been unable to get any information about the cause of death and whether it may have been related to COVID-19. They were told only that he developed a fever more than a week ago and was hospitalized last Thursday.

Froelich said Tokars was enrolled in the federal witness protection program when he died, although he remained incarcerated.

Tokars, who began representing white-collar criminals and some of the city's larger drug dealers after three years as an assistant district attorney, was serving life without parole in federal prison. He was convicted in 1994 of participating in a criminal enterprise that transported, distributed and sold cocaine; invested proceeds from illegal drug sales in Atlanta nightclubs that Tokars incorporated; and protected its members from arrest and prosecution through kidnapping, torture and murder. Tokars also was found guilty of conspiring to distribute cocaine, money-laundering and causing the kidnapping, robbery and murder for hire of his wife.

In 1997, a state court jury found Tokars guilty of his wife's murder but declined to recommend the death penalty, opting instead for a parolable life sentence, its only alternative under Georgia law at the time. By then, Tokars was already in federal custody.

Sara Tokars and her two sons, then ages 4 and 6, were kidnapped from the couple's home two days after Thanksgiving in 1992. The kidnapper was a drug addict recruited to kill Sara Tokars by an associate of her husband. Testimony at trial said she was seeking a divorce that could have revealed her husband's money-laundering activities for Atlanta drug dealers. Tokars also had insured his wife's life for $1.75 million before she was killed.

Sara Tokars was gunned down in her SUV in front of her sons.

Froelich said that as a prison inmate, Tokars helped federal authorities solve six murders, including of three federal witnesses, a witness' girlfriend and her 6- and 8-year-old daughters.

Froelich had unsuccessfully sought to secure Tokars' release for three years. He called the refusal to reduce Tokars' sentence "a total injustice."

The defense lawyer said that Tokars' cooperation extended to the prosecution of Dustin Honken, the basis for "Breaking Bad," and Honken's girlfriend, both of whom received the death penalty as a result of Tokars' help.

"I live by jury verdicts. The juries said what they said. I also don't walk away from people," Froelich said.

Froelich said Tokars gleaned much of the information he later provided to law enforcement from inmates who sought his assistance in legal matters after learning he was a lawyer and threatened to kill him if he didn't help them. But he said, when he sought to secure Tokars' release from prison, he was informed the government "did not want to encourage educated people or lawyers who are locked up to think they could go to jail and [then] use their education to get information from other inmates and help themselves get out."

Sara Tokars' six surviving sisters released a joint statement Wednesday saying that Tokars "should have died in the electric chair 28 years ago."

"The pain and suffering that he caused those two little boys and our entire family was and continues to be immeasurable," the sisters' statement said.

Last month, Sara Tokars' youngest son, Mike Tokars, died unexpectedly of a pulmonary embolism. He was 31. Mike Tokars was 4 when his mother was killed in front of him and his older brother Rick, then 6. After shooter Curtis Rower fled, Rick Tokars took his younger brother's hand and ran across a barren field to seek help.

Atlanta attorney Buddy Parker, who successfully prosecuted Tokars on federal racketeering charges in 1994, said Wednesday that Tokars' conduct "was nothing but evil … in issuing a contract for hire to have his wife murdered in the presence of his sons."

Former Cobb County District Attorney Tom Charron, who unsuccessfully sought the death penalty for Tokars, said Wednesday, "I still to this day feel that this certainly was a death penalty case. If you don't seek the death penalty in a case like that, when do you?"

Charron said he believed that when the jury came back unable to convince two jurors to vote for death. "I still feel that way," he said.

"The way people languish on Death Row, Fred, even if had gotten the death penalty, might still be there," he added. "Who knows?"

"I guess it's a fitting ending for Fred," the former prosecutor said. "I hope he made some amends. He caused so much damage."