Authorities: Chicago 'hero' cop staged suicide to cover up crimes

The shooting death of a police lieutenant made national news and brought a stretch of northern Illinois to a tense standstill with roadblocks, thudding helicopters and officers tramping with dogs through woods and over farmland, searching for the killers.

The lieutenant, Charles J. Gliniewicz, was hailed as a hero, and some conservatives seized on this and other shootings as evidence critics of police were fueling a wave of violence against law enforcement.

But Wednesday, more than two months after Gliniewicz was found dead in Fox Lake, a small town northwest of Chicago, law enforcement officials said the truth was different: He took his own life.

Still more surprising was the explanation they offered. They said Gliniewicz, 52, a local fixture admired for his work with young people, had been stealing money from the town for years and feared he was about to be caught.

There is "an overwhelming amount of evidence that Gliniewicz's death was a carefully staged suicide," Cmdr. George Filenko of the Lake County Major Crime Task Force said at a news conference. He said that a review of tens of thousands of emails, text messages and phone calls, along with bank records, showed that for at least seven years, Gliniewicz had been embezzling and laundering money from the Fox Lake Police Explorer program, which he headed, as well as forging documents and signatures. The money had been spent on travel, mortgage payments and adult websites, among other things.

"Gliniewicz committed the ultimate betrayal to the citizens he served," Filenko said.

In a statement, the family said "today has been another day of deep sorrow for the Gliniewicz family." The statement said the family had cooperated with the investigation and would have no further comment.

Crucial evidence, investigators said, lay in 6,500 text messages the lieutenant deleted shortly before he died, but were recovered by the FBI's crime lab. The messages contained incriminating statements and evidence of his crimes, investigators said, and showed his growing fear of being caught.

The amount stolen was "in the five-figure range," Filenko said, and at least two other people were still under investigation.

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Authorities: Chicago 'hero' cop staged suicide to cover up crimes ."