NYPD Officer Charged With Plan To Cook And Eat Women

An officer of the New York City Police
Department, NYPD , was on Thursday charged
with conspiring to kidnap , torture, cook and eat
women whose names he listed in his computer.
In a criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan
federal court, 28-year-old Gilberto Valle III, of
Forest Hills, Queens, was charged with conspiring
to cross state lines to kidnap the women and
with illegally accessing a federal database.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in
prison.
Investigators uncovered a file on Valle ’s
computer containing the names and pictures of
at least 100 women, and the addresses and
physical descriptions of some of them, according
to the complaint. It said he had undertaken
surveillance of some of the women at their places
of employment and their homes.
Magistrate Judge Henry Pitman on Thursday
denied Valle bail, saying: “the allegations in the
complaint are profoundly disturbing. I have never
seen allegations similar to this in 16 years on the
bench.”
Valle’s court-appointed attorney, Julia Gatto, had
vigorously argued to the judge that her client, a
6-1/2 year NYPD veteran deserved to be released
on bail.
“The best this complaint alleges is talk, just idle
talk,” Gatto said. “There is no actual crossing the
line from fantasy to reality, your honor.”
In an excerpt of a July online conversation with
an unnamed co-conspirator, Valle is quoted in
the complaint as saying:
“I can just show up at her home unannounced.
It will not alert her, and I can knock her out, wait
until dark and kidnap her right out of her home.”
“I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind
of apparatus … cook her over a low heat, keep
her alive as long as possible,” he said. The
woman in question is identified only as “Victim
1.”
A Manhattan federal prosecutor, Hadassa
Waxman, told the judge on Thursday that Valle
was as “close as he could possibly come,” short
of “kidnapping a woman, drugging her, cooking
her and actually eating her.”
Federal prosecutors, in announcing the charges,
said Valle had created a document called
“Abducting and Cooking: A Blueprint.” Valle also
told an unnamed co-conspirator he would
kidnap another woman for $5,000, they said.
“This case is all the more disturbing when you
consider Valle’s position as a New York City police
officer and his sworn duty to serve and protect,”
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a
statement.
Valle, who an official said had no prior criminal
record, was not charged with carrying out any of
his suspected plans.
A law enforcement official involved in the
investigation characterized Valle’s actions as an
online “fantasy game.”
“He was titillated by it,” said the official, who is
not authorized to discuss the case publicly. “It
looks like he was having these fantasy
conversations with people he’s talking to in
foreign countries.”
Valle’s attorney, Gatto, agreed. “This was a
fantasy, a sexually deviant world where people
talk about unreal things,” she said.
Valle’s estranged wife contacted the FBI after
discovering pornography on his computer,
according to the law enforcement official, who
said the couple is separated. Valle was arrested
Wednesday by the FBI. He is due back in court on
November7.[Reuters]