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Joe Gliniewicz: Illinois: Daily Beast on the "hero" cop who stole thousands of dollars from his own department's youth auxillary program and then used his experience in staging crimes scenes for police training programs to fake his own murder - "a carefully staged suicide" - and almost managed to carry it off. (Must Read. HL);
"A
stunning announcement from the Fox Lake, Illinois, police department
claims the town’s hero was secretly leading a life of crime...Investigators never found the men suspected of killing
Lt. “GI Joe” Gliniewicz. Not for lack of effort, not for lack of
evidence, and not for enough tips. The men didn’t exist. The three vaguely described suspects,
“two male white, one male black,” were apparently a product of
Gliniewicz’s imagination, ginned up to make himself go out like a hero. Fox Lake police on Wednesday said Gliniewicz’s death was a “carefully
staged suicide.” Gliniewicz had been stealing and laundering thousands
of dollars from the police department’s youth auxiliary program for
personal purchases, the department said. The purchases included gym
memberships, porn websites, and mortgage payments..........As a leader in the police “explorer” program, Gliniewicz had
extensive experience mocking up crime scenes to train aspiring cops, and
officials say he used those skills to throw police off the trail of his
deception......... Despite the extensive investigation, there remain serious questions
that need to be answered in Fox Lake. Police made clear Wednesday that
it was known fairly early that no one had touched Gliniewicz’s gun other
than GI Joe himself. That, combined with the knowledge that the fatal
bullet came from Gliniewicz’s own gun should have been enough to confirm
a suicide weeks ago. But it apparently wasn’t. Coroner Thomas Rudd’s decision to
inform the press that Gliniewicz’s gun was the murder weapon on Oct. 1
angered police. Filenko dressed down Rudd, telling any media outlet that
would listen how the medical examiner’s release of the only pertinent
information to come out since Gliniewicz died had put the entire
investigation “in jeopardy.” Filenko (George Filenko commander of the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force), didn’t say how Rudd’s actions had done so at today’s press
conference. As far as what will happen to the DNA samples “randomly”
collected from hundreds of Fox Lake residents, or how many there even
are, Filenko said, “I don’t know.” Throughout it all, Filenko and others have insisted that they kept
everything on the table, that nothing was discounted even as the mayor
of Fox Lake called Gliniewicz’s death the “heinous murder of a police
officer.” All for a man who allegedly stole from his own department and the
town that supported it, then deceived his fellow officers by concocting a
fake emergency, and adding to his own family’s grief by tarnishing what
had been a stellar career in law enforcement and a life of commitment
to his loved ones until that day.In his wake, Gliniewicz left confusion, anger, and sadness—perhaps
even more so now that we know more about the full breadth of his
actions."
See related Daily Beast story on why Fox newsers suddenly went quiet when their hero was revealed to be a fraudster. " It was a narrative perfectly suited for Fox News’s conservative commentariat. Too bad it was total bullshit. Three assailants allegedly shot and killed Lt. Joe Gliniewicz,
a wholesome small-town cop and Army vet known locally as “GI Joe”; a
30-year veteran of the force; a married father of four; a local hero. His death had to be part of an ominous trend of societal
menaces murdering law officers in cold blood, supposedly fueled by
President Obama’s “anti-cop” rhetoric and the Black Lives Matter
movement. Several Fox Newsers were quick to make that connection just
as Fox Lake, Illinois, police set out to find the three perpetrators
Gliniewicz mentioned over the radio just before he died."
