Man Stripped of Foster Care License Dies of Heart Attack : Investigation: Three days after he was publicly accused of sexually abusing girls in his home, he collapses at work.

A Garden Grove truck driver who was stripped of his foster care license this week amid allegations that he sexually abused and exploited teen-age girls in his care, died early Friday morning, apparently of a heart attack.

James F. Fox, 53, collapsed about 3 a.m. at the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, where he worked, said Ed Consiglio, an attorney for Fox’s family. Paramedics summoned to the newspaper found him on a loading dock, unconscious and not breathing.

Fox was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana where he died a short time later, according to a hospital spokesperson.

Three days before his death, the state Department of Social Services revoked Fox’s foster care license after formally accusing him and his wife of sexually abusing five girls and operating an illegal foster care facility in the 13000 block of Greentree Avenue.

The allegations included taking and exhibiting nude and pornographic photos of foster children, trying to encourage girls to appear in pornographic movies or become prostitutes and letting their son have sexual relations with one of their wards.

In addition, Garden Grove police, who investigated the family off and on for two years, had asked the district attorney’s office to file criminal charges against Fox, who was suspected of a number of sex crimes. A decision whether to prosecute was pending at the time of his death.

John Cronin, a prosecutor who heads the district attorney’s branch office at Municipal Court in Westminster, said the inquiry into whether Fox committed any wrongdoing is obviously at an end because of his death.

“He was really our only potential defendant,” said Cronin, “and that is not to say that we would have filed against him. The chance that others in his family would face charges is slim,” added Cronin, whose office was handling the case.

Members of the family declined to comment on Friday. But Consiglio, their attorney, said the Foxes are blaming the news media for the death, particularly attempts by television reporters to contact the family and neighborhood children after the announcement this week that his foster care license had been revoked.

Fox had a history of heart problems, Consiglio said. In 1986 and again in 1989, Fox had open-heart surgery and developed heart trouble again last summer when Garden Grove police served a search warrant at his home, the attorney said. He was hospitalized earlier this year when state authorities informed him they would be revoking his license, Consiglio said.

“Mr. Fox has completely denied the allegations and continued to deny them until the day he died,” Consiglio said. “He was willing to take a polygraph test. He was tried in the press but not in court.”

Had there been any truth to the allegations, Consiglio said, charges would have been filed by now. “I think the district attorney’s office probably figures the evidence is suspect,” he said, adding that Fox only agreed to allow his license be revoked because of his heart problems.

In a formal agreement with the state that revoked Fox’s foster care license, he and his wife admitted no wrongdoing, and James Fox told The Times in an earlier interview that the allegations were false.

A search warrant affidavit filed in court by police also shows that Fox told investigators that he was the victim of a troubled teen-ager who admitted to him that she fabricated the allegations so she could return to a county foster care facility.

Times staff writer Mark Platte contributed to this story.