Editor's note: This story was updated to add Glenn Pianka's political affiliation.

BOZRAH — Distraught over a pending divorce, Bozrah First Selectman Glenn Pianka said in a letter earlier this month he planned to fatally shoot his wife and then himself at a house the two share, according to a March 22 state police arrest warrant.

The arrest warrant also says Pianka only stopped because his daughter came home “at the right time." Pianka, 59, has been charged with second-degree threatening, second-degree harassment and second-degree breach of peace. He was released on $20,000 bond and is due back in Norwich Superior Court on April 20.

Reached Monday by The Bulletin, Pianka, a former state police sergeant for 20 years, called the incident a “highly personal family matter.”

Pianka, of 185 Fitchville Road, was ordered by Norwich Superior Court Judge John Newsom to have no contact with his wife and stay at least 100 yards away from her. According to police, Pianka has three pistols registered in his name.

According to an arrest warrant written by Trooper First Class Collin Konow, a woman identified as “Victim 1” approached him while he was in Lebanon and gave him emails, and typed and hand-written notes she had allegedly received from Pianka.

“While very vague and non-specific, (they) seemed to imply to Victim 1 that Pianka would resort to violence if the divorce proceedings continue in the same direction that they are currently going,” Konow wrote. “Victim 1 conveyed to me that she felt that this communication, while not directly harassing or threatening, had a clear violent undertone that was intended to intimidate her.”

According to the warrant, one of the comments was “maybe a little jail time would do me some good.”

Konow said in the warrant he urged the woman to file a restraining order, but she did not want to. The woman also reportedly asked that police not be contacted because “it may further anger him.”

Konow then recommended the woman move out of a duplex she shares with Pianka to “alleviate some of the tension.”

Then, on March 18, Pianka allegedly mailed another letter to the woman as well as her parents and sister, prompting her father to contact state police in Colchester.

“In the letter, Glenn Pianka described that he has had many sleepless nights since being served with the divorce paperwork. He had become very depressed and went to their Lebanon home and retrieved a loaded pistol and took it to their Bozrah home where he sat in his office waiting for Victim 1 to come home. He went on to say that his plan was to shoot Victim 1 and them himself,” Konow wrote. “He stated that the only thing that stopped him from doing so is their daughter came home at the right time and ‘saved them from a tragedy.’”

Konow wrote Pianka’s wife said she was scared to make any formal complaint or cooperate with police because it would “set Pianka off and he will resort to physical violence if he is arrested and publicly humiliated.”

“It’s an emotionally charged divorce proceeding, that’s all I can say,” Pianka said. He said the newspaper was “out of line” for publishing a story about the March 3 incident.

Pianka, a Democrat and the owner of Olde New England Building & Salvage Co., was elected first selectman in November 2015.

Republican Carl Zorn was also elected. Zorn said Pianka had informed the board about his pending divorce, and officials have a question in to the Secretary of the State’s office about whether he could finish his term while living in another community.

“We’re going to work through that. I don’t know what it means for the town, but we’re going to figure it out,” Zorn said.

Zorn said he believes Pianka has “done a pretty good job so far,” but was not surprised to learn of his arrest.

“I guess it’s not a real shocker. He wouldn’t be the only one that’s happened to,” Zorn said.