Illinois police officer staged own death to look like murder

The fatal shooting of a police lieutenant made national news in the United States and brought a stretch of northern Illinois to a tense standstill with roadblocks, thudding helicopters and officers tramping through woods, farms and backyards, searching for the killers.

But in fact, the lieutenant, Charles J Gliniewicz took his own life, law enforcement officials said, more than two months after the officer, who was well known in the area, was found dead near a rural stretch of highway in Fox Lake, a small town northwest of Chicago.

There is “an overwhelming amount of evidence that Gliniewicz’s death was a carefully staged suicide,” commander George Filenko of the Lake County Major Crime Task Force said at a news conference. He said the suicide was meant to cover up Gliniewicz’s years of stealing and laundering money from the Fox Lake Police Explorer program, as well as forging documents and signatures.

“There are no winners here,” Mr Filenko said. Investigators said that at least two other people were still under investigation.

The death of Gliniewicz, a 30-year veteran of the Fox Lake police, has taken confusing turns from the start, and important questions about it remain unanswered. On the morning of September 1st, Gliniewicz (52) radioed that he was pursuing three men near Highway 12, in an area where vandalism had been reported.

Officers who arrived to back him up found him shot dead, with his .40-calibre handgun nearby. A large manhunt for the three suspects ensued, and shifted several miles to the south the next day, when a woman reported seeing men matching the description given by the lieutenant. The next day, investigators charged her with fabricating the report, and she was arrested, a case that is still pending.

A month after the shooting, investigators revealed that Gliniewicz had been shot twice in the chest with his own gun. The first shot struck his bulletproof vest, but the second was fatal. His wife insisted in interviews last month that the fact that he was shot twice proved that he had not taken his own life.

Officials said Wednesday that both shots were fired at very close range. Thomas Rudd, the Lake County coroner, said that for the fatal shot, the gun was inserted under the edge of the bulletproof vest.

New York Times