According to authorities in northern Illinois, a man from Lake Barrington made a great effort to take somebody’s identity and fake his own death in order to cash in the $5 million life insurance.

Ari Squire, 39, a Lake Barrington resident was known as a kind and giving person ever by his friends, but it turned out not to be this way.

Police said that Squire killed a 20-year-old Justin Newman from Arlington Heights and used its body to stage his own death only to end in committing suicide Sunday at a motel in St. Louis.

Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran said at a news conference: "We have one murderer who was too much of a coward to face the music. He put a bullet through his head,” chicagotribune.com reports.

Curious is that his wife, Denise Squire, 46, a former adjunct professor in health studies at National-Louis University in Wheeling, knew that he was alive and she is under investigation.

Police think that the reason Squire did it is to acquire the life insurance which the couple took out five years ago.

Apparently he had many debts deceiving Medicare.

His attorney, Ronald Clark, said in a memo to the judge in the criminal case that Squire was “financially ruined and personally devastated.”

On February 23 police and firefighters rushed to his home as his garage was on fire. They found a charred body of a man, wearing Squire’s clothes with his wallet, identification and credit cards.

As his memorial dinner was planned by his wife, Squire took Newman’s identity and drove with his car to St. Charles were he stayed for a couple of days before going to Missouri.

He bought contact lenses and hair dye in order to look more like Newman.

On February 26 Newman was reported missing by his mother Donna FioRito who hasn’t heard from her son since February 24 when she received a text message telling her he is going to Missouri and he would return in a week.

Squire lured Newman by offering a constructing job. Newman was happy as he wanted to move out of the cramped apartment he lived in with his mother.

Newman's half brother Frank Testa said: “My mom made his lunch, kissed him goodbye, and that was the last time she saw him. He was a good kid who got taken advantage of.”

Squire was found by police Sunday at a Days Inn in Eureka, Mo.

Officers knocked on his door and they heard some noise inside as a gunshot.  They found Squire’s body with a self-inflicted wound to his head made by a gunshot. In the room there were pieces of Newman's identification.

It took some days to get Squire’s dental records and DNA to find out that the charred body wasn’t his.

The sheriff said that some e-mails that were exchanged between Denise and her husband showed that she knew that Squire was alive.