PENDLETON, Ind. (AP) — An illegal immigrant serving five life terms for the strangling deaths of his wife, three young daughters and a neighborhood girl apparently took his own life Thursday by hanging himself, authorities said.

Simon Rios, 36, was found in his cell at the Pendleton Correctional Facility about 25 miles northeast of Indianapolis at 12:29 a.m. Thursday, prison spokesman David Barr said. Rios was pronounced dead about 40 minutes later after guards and medical personnel couldn't revive him.

There were no signs of foul play, Barr said. An autopsy was scheduled.

His attorney, Michelle Kraus of Fort Wayne, said he left a note requesting his remains be returned to his native Mexico.

"I'm very sad. I know he did a very evil thing, and he always knew he did a very evil thing. He always expressed remorse to me," Kraus said.

Rios fatally beat and strangled his wife, Ana Casas-Rios, 28, and strangled their three daughters, Liliana, 10, Katherinne, 4, and 20-month-old Thannya, on Dec. 13, 2005, in their Fort Wayne home.

Five days earlier, he had lured 10-year-old Alejandra Gutierrez, a former classmate of Liliana, into his van as she waited at a school bus stop. Authorities say he raped and strangled her, then dumped her body in a gravel pit 50 miles away near Muncie. Her body was not found until 11 days after she vanished.

"I don't want anybody to ever lose sight that he is not a victim here," Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards, who tried Rios, said Thursday. "He killed his wife and four little girls. They are the victims here."

Rios' death came a year and eight days after he was sentenced to four life sentences for the murders of his family and two counts of moving a body from a death scene. He earlier had received a life sentence for the murder, rape and molesting of Gutierrez.

The disappearance of Gutierrez, the slayings of Rios' wife and daughters days later, and investigators' subsequent discovery of Gutierrez' frozen body on a tip from Rios gripped the state nearly three years ago. A standing-room-only crowd the day after Christmas packed St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Fort Wayne for the girl's funeral presided over by Bishop John D'Arcy.

Two school employees who failed to alert Gutierrez's family when she didn't arrive for classes resigned less than a month after her body was found. Six school districts and eight government agencies later formed a partnership to respond quickly to child abductions.

Richards said a victim advocate in her office notified Ana Casas-Rios' family in Mexico of Rios' death Thursday. She said they've chosen to remain private despite the attention the case attracted. However, Casas-Rios' mother and other family members attended his sentencing hearing a year ago at which they said they had forgiven him and did not want to see him die.

Members of Gutierrez's family also opposed the death penalty because their Roman Catholic faith teaches against it.

Rev. Paul R. Bueter, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Warsaw, counseled Rios in jail. He said he received a recent letter from Rios in which the inmate said he enjoyed playing billiards with other prisoners and reading religious pamphlets the priest had sent him.

"I hope in God and the Virgin of Guadalupe that you are fine," Bueter translated from the Aug. 7 letter written in Spanish. "I'm in good health, thanks be to God. ... I read the Bible that you gave me. I'm also saying my prayers."

Bueter speculated Rios had grown depressed again, as he had been at the time he killed his family. The priest said Rios wanted his wife and daughters to join him in heaven.

"He was definitely upset over what he did to that girl," Bueter said. "He wanted them with him when he took his own life, but he couldn't do it to himself. ... He was hoping they (police) would shoot him."

Police found Rios, then 33, on the front porch of his home after receiving a 5 a.m. suicide call. He told them he argued with his wife after she arrived home from work about 1:30 a.m., hit her with a steel pipe, then strangled her with an extension cord. He then strangled the 4-year-old with his hands and the other two girls with an extension cord. He placed the children on a bed together.

"He certainly has expressed contrition over what he had done," Bueter said.

Prosecutor Richards saw it differently.

"He killed his wife, his three girls. He killed a completely innocent neighbor girl," Richards said. "For me it's difficult, given the heinous nature of these crimes, for remorse to have much weight."