Lt. Joe Gliniewicz Allegedly Arranged Son’s Sham Marriage For Shocking Reason

Fox Lake Police Lt. Joe Gliniewicz became famous for setting up a “carefully staged suicide” to cover his embezzlement from police programs. Now it seems that his corruption went much further and included a sham marriage between his mistress Kathryn Grams and his son.

The purpose was to get a bigger military paycheck from his soldier son D.J. The brief marriage produced thousands of dollars worth of benefits including additional health coverage.

Sources say text messages deleted by Lt. #Gliniewicz were from his wife & son – @RosaFlores reports pic.twitter.com/lwVhaFxYF5

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) November 6, 2015

The sham marriage lasted for about a year according to ABC7, ending on December 29, 2014. One anonymous neighbor reported that Officer Gliniewicz would visit Grams at her home regularly during the marriage

“I saw him several times a week in the middle of the day, and a black unmarked squad car. And he’d stay about an hour.”

The police lieutenant, hailed as a local hero and given the nickname G.I. Joe, was married to Melodie Gliniewicz for 26 years. Now both her and D.J. are under investigation for knowing about the police officer’s alleged fraud.

Fox Lake suicide cop Charles Joseph Gliniewicz threatened to kill 911 dispatcher https://t.co/tDgHTOSRcG pic.twitter.com/74JN1QjhIi

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) November 6, 2015

Still, the sham marriage isn’t the worst of the cop’s alleged crimes.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, on September 1, he committed suicide in a marshy area in rural Lake County, north of Chicago, Illinois. The elaborate staged shooting led to a large manhunt for three men, who the officer loosely identified as suspects in a chase.

Police later detained three men — Thomas Corso, Manuel Vargas and Preston Shrewsbury — who were in the area at the time.

Vargas described the arrest,

“It never crossed my mind this would ever happen in my life. I just went to get something to eat, get some money to pay a cell phone bill and all hell broke loose. It was just a regular morning. That’s all it was.”

The men were later cleared after providing a restaurant receipt proving they were not near Gliniewicz at the time of the death.

On Wednesday, police officials announced that the cop’s case had been changed from homicide to suicide after they discovered Gliniewicz used his own gun. He fired one round into his bullet proof vest and another over it.

Investigators later found cocaine in the lieutenant’s desk, which some have speculated he was going to use to try and frame Village Administrator Anne Marrin. The administrator had started suspecting Gliniewicz’s several years of embezzlement from the department’s Explorer program.

She explained that there were a lot of “red flags” when she questioned the lieutenant.

“When I heard that he was concerned that I was asking tough questions about the police explorer program, it only confirmed to me that asking the tough questions was the absolute right thing to do. In fact, getting at the truth about the administration of the explorer’s program was the only thing that had to be done.”

The Explorer program was designed for youth interested in a future career with law enforcement. The lieutenant allegedly used the stolen money for adult websites, vacations, and other expenses.

When Marrin started to catch on, Joe Gliniewicz tried to put out a hit on her, according to the New York Daily News and Lake County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Christopher Covelli.

G.I. Joe partially revealed the plot in a deleted text message to an unidentified woman to set up a meeting with a well-known gang member. Police have not identified the woman or the gang member.

In the area where the Gliniewicz served, fond memories of the hero-cop are already being taken down or defaced. The alleged sham marriage has also now brought his son and wife into the heat of the investigation.

[Image via Lake County Sheriff / Chicago Sun-Times]