FOX LAKE, Ill. — Months before an Illinois police officer staged his suicide to make it seem like he died in the line of duty, subjecting his community to an expensive and fruitless manhunt, he apparently sought a hit man to kill a village administrator he feared would expose him as a thief, a detective said Thursday.

Detective Chris Covelli said Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz sent a text message in April asking a woman to set up a meeting with a “high-ranking gang member to put a hit on the village manager.”

Gliniewicz sent another message in May saying he had thought of “planting things,” which made more sense after investigators found small packages of cocaine in Gliniewicz’ s desk after he died, Covelli said.

The drugs were “not linked to any case that we could find,” raising the possibility that the lieutenant sought to frame the manager, Anne Marrin, as a drug criminal before she could expose him as an embezzler, the detective said.

Gliniewicz sent the texts after Marrin, the village’s first professional administrator, began auditing Fox Lake’s finances, including the Police Explorers program that authorities now say the lieutenant had been stealing from for seven years.

Often called “G.I. Joe,” he was a respected figure in the bedroom community of 10,000 people 50 miles north of Chicago. His death on Sept. 1, moments after he radioed that he was chasing three suspicious men, prompted an intense manhunt involving hundreds of officers, and raised fears of cop-killers on the loose.

Two months later, authorities announced that he in fact killed himself to cover his crimes. And now authorities are also investigating his wife, Melodie, and one of his sons, D.J., as well, an official said Thursday.

Melodie Gliniewicz helped her husband run the Fox Lake Police Explorer Post, which put young people interested in law enforcement careers through sophisticated training exercises. In a newspaper interview weeks ago, D.J. Gliniewicz, an Army soldier in his 20s, angrily dismissed suggestions that his father took his own life.

The official, who was briefed on the investigation, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

Authorities refused to officially identify anyone beyond the lieutenant who is suspected in any crimes. They also declined to identify the woman Gliniewicz texted in April, other than to say she is not in law enforcement.

Investigators did interview the high-ranking gang member, who denied ever talking to Gliniewicz. “We found no evidence that they ever talked and we were able to rule him out” as a suspect, Covelli said.