Attorney for Melodie Gliniewicz Seeks to Have All Charges Dismissed

The attorney for Melodie Gliniewicz will again plead his case on Tuesday to have all charges against his client dismissed.

Attorney Donald Morrison claims Gliniewicz, 52, of Antioch, did not have any control over the bank accounts used by the Fox Lake Explorer program and that her late husband, Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz, was solely responsible for stealing from the program, according to the Daily Herald.

According to the motion, Melodie Gliniewicz never had access to the Fox Lake Explorer program account, never wrote a check from the account and never possessed a debit card linked to the account between September 2008 and April 2015, which is the time period when Lt. Gliniewicz was in charge of the account.

The motion goes on to state that Melodie Gliniewicz became a fiduciary over the charitable trust funds of the Fox Lake Explorer Program in March 2015. The defense claims the original grand jury indictment claims Melodie Gliniewicz was in charge of the funds since 2008, according to the motion.

On Tuesday, a court date will be set to hear the defense’s motion, according to the Daily Herald. This will be the second time the defense has filed a motion to dismiss the charges against Gliniewicz. The first time the motion was denied by Lake County Judge Victoria Rossetti but that decision has since been vacated after Rossetti recused herself from the case.

Melodie Gliniewicz was indicted by a grand jury earlier this year following an investigation into an embezzlement scheme that ended up robbing the Fox Lake Explorers program of thousands of dollars. Police said Lt. Gliniewicz staged his own murder after embezzling funds from the Explorer program for years. He was found shot dead in Fox Lake on Sept. 1.

Authorities have claimed Melodie Gliniewicz played a “fiduciary role as an adult advisor with the Fox Lake Police Explorer Post,” which was run by her late husband.

Detectives determined some of the personal expenses paid from the police explorer account included a trip to Hawaii, payments to businesses such as Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Fox Lake Theatre, and over 400 restaurant charges, Covelli said.