The friends and neighbors of police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz reacted with disbelief and dismay to authorities’ announcement Wednesday that the popular Fox Lake, Illinois, officer not only meticulously staged his own suicide to make it look like he died in the line of duty, but had been stealing for years from a police club for youth that he oversaw. And according to reports, Gliniewicz’s immediate family may have helped in the theft.
Investigators said they believed the 30-year police veteran — whose death prompted a weekslong manhunt and whose funeral drew thousands of mourners — killed himself because his criminal activity was about to be exposed.
Recovered text messages and other records now show the 52-year-old Gliniewicz embezzled from the village’s Police Explorer program for seven years, spending the money on mortgage payments, travel expenses, gym memberships, adult websites and loans to friends, Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Commander George Filenko said.
When questions arose about the investigation in September, Gliniewicz’s family dismissed the suggestion of suicide. He “never once” thought of taking his own life and was excited about his retirement plans, his son D.J. Gliniewicz insisted.
According to multiple reports, police have begun investigating whether Gliniewicz’s wife Melodie and son D.J. played any part in his staged homicide. WGN-TV reported late Wednesday that Melodie and D.J. Gliniewicz were the two individuals with whom Joe Glieniewicz communicated in text and Facebook messages.
These messages reveal his increasing anxiety after Fox Lake hired its first professional administrator, Anne Marrin. She began auditing all the village departments, including the Explorer program.
Gliniewicz deleted the messages, but investigators recovered them, and released some of them verbatim on Wednesday.
“If she gets ahold of the old checking account, im pretty well f(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)ed,” the officer wrote in May.
On Aug. 31, the day before Gliniewicz’s death, Marrin said she asked him for an inventory of the Explorers program.
In one of the texts, Gliniewicz discussed trying to get Marrin out of office, perhaps by arresting her for drunken driving, but also mentioning “planting things” and a remote bog in the area.
The officer’s relatives now have asked for time and privacy. A statement issued through their lawyers said Wednesday had “been another day of deep sorrow for the Gliniewicz family.”
“Gliniewicz committed the ultimate betrayal,” Filenko said. “We completely believed from Day One that this was a homicide.”
The revelations stunned people in Fox Lake, a village of 10,000 about 50 miles north of Chicago where the 52-year-old married father of four had long been a role model.
“I haven’t got my thoughts together yet. It’s shocking,” said Fox Lake Mayor Donny Schmit, a friend of Gliniewicz’s who said the officer wanted to meet the day before his death to ensure that the Police Explorer program would continue after what he said was his planned retirement at month’s end.
“You never thought he was this kind of man,” said Kathy Pederson, a single mother who considered Gliniewicz a father figure for her son in the Explorers program. Now, she said, “People are outraged and they are taking down the posters. … They want their money back.”
The reaction to Gliniewicz’s deception extended beyond Fox Lake.
A Washington, D.C.-based organization responsible for collecting the names of officers killed in the line of duty — the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund — quickly removed Gliniewicz’s name and photo from its website and said his name would no longer be etched onto a marble monument dedicated to fallen officers. After his death, pundits had called Gliniewicz a victim of an increasingly dangerous environment for police as some citizens challenge what they see as overzealous enforcement.
An organization that assists survivors of officers killed in the line of duty, the 100 Club of Chicago, asked the Gliniewicz family to return a $15,000 donation. And Motorola Solutions, which announced in September it would put up a $50,000 reward toward information leading to the arrest of Gliniewicz’s killer, said that the money will be donated to the Explorer program to replace stolen funds, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Investigators said Gliniewicz’s death was carefully staged. Minutes before he died, he radioed he was chasing three suspicious men into a swampy area. Backup officers found the Army veteran’s body about 50 yards from his squad car.
The first bullet from his handgun had struck his cellphone and ballistic vest. The second pierced his upper chest, under the vest. The swampy terrain was otherwise undisturbed, Filenko said.
By then, an intense and costly manhunt had begun, with hundreds of officers searching houses, cabins and even boats on area lakes. Helicopters with heat-sensing scanners and K-9 units scoured the area for days. More than 100 investigators stayed on the case for weeks.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
I wonder if this cop was in cahoots with the cop in Wisconsin that got caught stealing all that money from the DARE & other youth programs? The one in WI is in the cover up stage as we speak! AG is participating!
I guess Black lives Matter slogan isn’t the culprit after all!
One wonders if mothers whose sons were involved in the “Police Explorer” program will begin to report paedophile activities reported by their sons ? The paedophile society in the Penn State area operated 30 years or more before concerned mothers brought the debauchery to public attention.
Anyone can put on a uniform and raise his or her hand and swear to things. A uniform does not change human behavior completely. He was only a man and did man things and got in trouble.