Joseph Gliniewicz, the Fox Lake, Illinois, police lieutenant who killed himself in what authorities called a "carefully staged suicide," tried to have a hit man kill a village administrator he who feared would discover his crimes, an investigator said Thursday.
Gliniewicz sent a text message asking a woman to contact a "high ranking gang member to put a hit on the village manager," Lake County sheriff's Detective Chris Covelli told NBC Chicago, confirming an initial report by the Associated Press. Gliniewicz also suggested that the hit man could "plant something" on the manager, Covelli said.
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Gliniewicz also suggested that the hit man could "plant something" on Village Administrator Anne Marrin, who was auditing Fox Lake's finances, Covelli said. The audit included the Police Explorers, a youth-focused program, which authorities say Gliniewicz had been embezzling from for seven years.
In addition, small packages of cocaine were found in Gliniewicz's desk, but the cocaine wasn't related to the alleged plot to have the village administrator killed, Covelli said.
Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Commander George Filenko said Gliniewicz forged signatures on official documents and stole and laundered thousands of dollars from the Fox Lake Police Explorer Post for personal purchases, mortgages, travel expenses, gym memberships, adult websites and personal loans.
Gliniewicz, 52, killed himself Sept. 1 and staged the scene to look as though he was killed in the line of duty, investigators said. He radioed dispatch that he was pursuing three men, and when backup arrived, officers found him fatally shot.
Authorities said they reviewed 6,500 pages of text messages from Gliniewicz's personal and work phones were reviewed during the investigation. They said Gliniewicz made incriminating statements in messages that were deleted before his suicide.
In a message sent May 13 to someone identified only as "Individual No. 1," Gliniewicz wrote that Marrin "hates me and I've never said more than 3 sentences to her in the year shes been here."
He wrote that Marrin "hates the explorer program and is crawling up my a-- and the program, chief wont sign off to move it to American legion and if she gets ahold of the checking account, im pretty well [expletive]." (Misspellings in original.)
On June 26, he messaged a person identified only as "Individual No. 2": "This situation right here would give her the means to CRUCIFY ME it it were discovered."
Filenko said evidence "strongly indicates criminal activity" by at least two other people, whom he wouldn't identify. Sources close to the investigation told NBC News that Gliniewicz's wife and son are the targets. No further details were immediately available.
Marrin, who sent Gliniewicz an email about inventory the day before he died, alluded to the texts Wednesday without disclosing details. She said then that some of the messages were "a threat to me personally."
"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," she said. "In fact, getting at the truth about the administration of the explorer's program was the only thing that had to be done."
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.