Hero police officer 'staged own death amid embezzlement probe'

In a stunning turnaround, police commanders in Illinois have revealed that the death in September of a senior local police officer which sparked a vast manhunt for his alleged killers and an outpouring of sympathy across the land was in reality a suicide staged to look like a violent murder.

At a press conference in Round Lake Beach, about 50 miles north of Chicago, Commander George Filenko said that the officer, Lt. Charles Gliniewicz, had moreover been embezzling cash from his department for seven years which he had used for personal purposes including accessing adult sex sites.

An exhaustive investigation that included analysing more than 6,500 pages of text messages delivered an “overwhelming amount of evidence” that the death of Lt. Gliniewicz was indeed “a carefully staged suicide,” Commander Filenko told reporters. He said that an audit of the Fox Lake Police Department’s finances had already begun when he took his life.

He added that Lt. Gliniewicz, an Army veteran and father of four, had spent thousands of dollars of stolen money also to pay for a wide variety of other personal needs like, travel, gym memberships and also to facilitate other financial loans. With his crimes and his faked murder, he had committed “the ultimate betrayal of the citizens he served” and his police colleagues, the commander declared.

Before he was found dead on 1 September from a gunshot wound in a field, the officer had radioed that he was in pursuit of three individuals. The ensuing manhunt involved hundreds of officers as well as helicopters with heat-sensors and dog units. Houses, rural cabins even boats on local lakes were searched as part of the operation.

The alleged killing of the lieutenant as well as the execution-style murder soon afterwards of another officer in Texas was seized on by some to push back against the months of negative coverage about the abuse of minorities by police officers and to illustrate the daily risks they run on the job. Some argued that the rhetoric notably of the “Black Lives Matter” movement was inciting violence against officers.

While refusing to elaborate while further investigations are still pending, the officials in Round Lake Beach also indicated that two other individuals are under suspicion related to the crimes of Lt. Gliniewicz.

“This staged suicide was the end result of extensive criminal acts that Gliniewicz had been committing,” Commander Filenko said, adding that the money he had embezzled and the laundered had been from a programme in the department to mentor young people on how they might become officers themselves. He said he had been coming under increasing stress as he saw that the audit was closing in on him.

He said that as part of his attempts to mislead investigators into thinking he had been murdered, the lieutenant, who was weeks from retirement, had left a trail of police equipment at the site where he was found, like a baton and pepper spray, all mean to point to some kind of struggle.