FOX LAKE, Ill. — Months before an Illinois police officer staged his suicide to make it seem like he died in the line of duty, subjecting his community to an expensive and fruitless manhunt, he apparently sought a hit man to kill a village administrator he feared would expose him as a thief, a detective told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Detective Chris Covelli said Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz in April sent a text asking a woman to set up a meeting with a “high-ranking gang member to put a hit on the village manager.” Gliniewicz sent another message in May saying he had thought of “planting things,” which made more sense after investigators found small packages of cocaine in Gliniewicz’ s desk after he died, Covelli said.
The drugs were “not linked to any case that we could find,” raising the possibility that the lieutenant sought to frame the manager, Anne Marrin, as a drug criminal before she could expose him as an embezzler, the detective said.
Gliniewicz sent the texts after Marrin began auditing Fox Lake’s finances, including the Police Explorers program that authorities now say the lieutenant had been stealing from for seven years. The Associated Press
