Hometown Hero
For most of the year, Fox Lake numbers nearly 11,000 people, but its population surges in summer when anglers and boaters flock to the vacation spot.
Gliniewicz was a town fixture. A bit of a maverick, the U.S. Army veteran was tough and tall, with a tailored buzz cut and tattoos. Unlike fellow police officers in uniform, Gliniewicz often sported camouflage fatigues.
He also had a soft side, raising funds for Special Olympics and mentoring teens at Fox Lake Police Explorer Post 300.
“He truly loved his job,” post member Devan Arbay told CNN . “He loved doing things for the Explorers, and his Explorers was a huge part of his life.”
Media consultant and former Daily Herald reporter Lee Filas tells A&E Crime + Investigation that everyone seemed to like Gliniewicz—at least publicly.
“Every time I saw him, he was either acting as G.I. Joe or he was working a parade route or shaking hands with people,” Filas, who covered the Gliniewicz case extensively, says. “Obviously, when the doors were closed and when he was out of uniform, he was a different person. The kids were the victims in this whole thing.”
Officer Down
The morning of September 1, 2015, was sweltering. Gliniewicz bought two packs of cigarettes from a convenience store and drove his squad car to an industrial area.
“I’m going to be out at the old concrete plant, checking on two male whites and a male Black,” he radioed at around 7:45 a.m.
Minutes later, Gliniewicz gave an update; the suspects were headed to a nearby swamp, and he asked for backup.
Converging police heard a shot then plunged hellbent into the swampy woods to rescue their comrade, only to find his body.
“I lost my best friend,” Gliniewicz’s oldest son, D.J., told The Daily Herald. “He was always there for me when I needed it the most.”
‘So Many Twists and Turns’
With three potential cop killers on the loose, Fox Lake schools went on lockdown temporarily. Over 400 local, state and federal officers, including SWAT teams and K-9 units, assisted with the manhunt.
Three men resembling Gliniewicz’s description were located and questioned but exonerated after they provided alibis. A woman falsely claimed two of the suspects had asked for a ride, then fled into a cornfield, sparking a massive search in Volo, Ill.
“There were so many twists and turns around the whole investigation. Personally, my mind changed on a daily basis,” Covelli recalls.
Meanwhile, Lake County Coroner Dr. Thomas Rudd caused waves a week after Gliniewicz’s death by saying he was leaning toward deeming it a homicide, but he could not yet rule out suicide.
For many, the latter seemed unthinkable. Initially, “there was no motive for a suicide,” Filas says.
A Record of Misconduct
Answers to that conundrum started emerging from Gliniewicz’s personnel file.
Along with numerous commendations, investigators found a scandalous record that included allegations of being “highly intoxicated” in public, sexual harassment and skipping out on bar tabs.
Gliniewicz was suspended for telling a dispatcher he could put bullets in her chest. Fellow cops reported finding him drunk and passed out in his truck. A female officer accused him of coercing her into sexual acts.
“The discipline, the investigations, the accusations that were made of him in his personnel file that was so unbelievably thick” would derail promotions and potentially careers at most police agencies, Covelli notes.
However, the larger-than-life Gliniewicz escaped serious repercussions until the arrival of a new village administrator, Anne Marrin. Marrin began reviewing village departments after her hire in 2014. When she found the Explorer Post clubhouse packed with unusual supplies such as flak jackets, she requested an inventory, which sent Gliniewicz into a panic.
Incriminating Texts
FBI experts provided the final puzzle piece in November 2015 after analyzing Gliniewicz’s phone. Agents retrieved a trove of incriminating texts, including references to trying to hire a hitman to take out Marrin.
One day before he died, Gliniewicz texted his former police chief saying of Marrin: “She has now demanded a complete inventory of [Explorer] central and a financial report.” He added the vulgarity, “FML.”
The FBI also found evidence that Gliniewicz had been dipping into Explorer funds for personal use for seven years.
“The forensics that came back on the phone is really what pushed it over the edge to show there was no doubt he took his own life,” Covelli says.
On November 4, 2015, the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force announced that Gliniewicz had staged his murder after embezzling thousands of dollars from the Police Explorer program for mortgage payments, trips, dining and more.
Court documents show Gliniewicz spent more than $13,000 on coffee, restaurants and movies, over $9,800 on hormonal supplements and dating websites, $5,683 for a trip to Hawaii and $15,234 to pay a student loan, among other expenses on the Explorer’s dime.
In 2016, Lake County authorities charged Gliniewicz’s wife, Melodie, with 11 felony counts of money laundering and using charitable funds for personal use. She pleaded guilty to one count of deceptive practices in February 2022 and has contended the couple borrowed money from the Explorer Post but paid it back. A Lake County judge sentenced Melodie to 24 months probation.
Two Shots
Gliniewicz’s spotting three men en route to his death was random. “My belief is that he was attempting to pinpoint what he was staging there to look like a homicide [by] those three. And for them to be the fall people,” Covelli explains.
But the crime scene was “very meticulously planned,” he notes.
The seasoned cop had created multiple crime scenes as training exercises for the Explorers. For this last effort, he scattered pepper spray, then tossed the canister and his baton on the ground to make it appear a struggle had occurred.
Finally, Gliniewicz took his pistol and aimed at his phone, clipped to his bullet-proof vest. The vest absorbed the shock of the bullet, but the impact was “like a sledgehammer,” investigators said.
Undaunted, he maneuvered the gun under his vest and fired the fatal shot.
‘His World Was Collapsing’
Forensic psychologist and author Joni Johnston categorizes Gliniewicz’s dramatic demise as a “crisis suicide.” “I think he was in a desperate situation,” she tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “His world was collapsing. I don’t think he was probably thinking rationally at that point.”
However, “I don’t mean he did not methodically plan out the deception, because he did,” Johnston explains. “But sometimes when people are depressed and in a crisis, their thinking narrows and they focus on one solution. Instead of stepping back and going, ‘This a horrible situation, but my family and I will live through this,’ I think it did become, ‘This is the only way out.’ He couldn’t see his alternatives at the time.”
