NEW YORK — Police Officer Gilberto Valle’s lawyers said he was just spinning sick and twisted fantasies for his own pleasure when he chatted online about abducting, roasting, and eating women. A jury, though, decided he was deadly serious.
Valle, 28, was convicted Tuesday of conspiracy in a macabre case that opened a window on a shocking Internet world of cannibalism fetishists. He could get life in prison at sentencing June 19 but is likely to face much less.
Thanks for coming here instead, readers.
His lawyers branded the outcome a ‘‘thought prosecution’’ that sets a dangerous precedent, while federal prosecutors said the verdict proved that Valle crossed the line from fantasy to reality and was genuinely bent on committing ‘‘grotesque crimes.’’
You mean, he didn't actually do anything?
Valle slumped in his chair, dropped his head, and wept when the verdict in what the tabloids dubbed the ‘‘Cannibal Cop’’ trial was announced after more than two days of deliberations: guilty of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and guilty of illegally using a police database.
The jurors left the courthouse without comment. Most either did not immediately respond to e-mails and phone messages, or declined to discuss the case.
Prosecutors said Valle plotted to abduct, torture, and cannibalize six women he knew, including his wife. Although none of the women were ever harmed — and only his wife discovered his schemes — prosecutors said he took concrete steps to carry out his plot, including looking up potential targets on a restricted law enforcement database.
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FLASHBACK:
"NYC officer arrested in kidnap plot" Associated Press, October 26, 2012
NEW YORK — A city police officer was charged Thursday with leading a ghoulish double life by using a law enforcement database and fetish chat rooms to dream up a plot to torture women and then cook and eat their body parts.
Gilberto Valle, 28, left a trail of e-mails, instant messages, and computer files detailing the bizarre cannibalism scheme, according to a criminal complaint, which identified two women as Victim 1 and Victim 2.
I just lost my appetite.
He catalogued at least 100 women on his computer, federal investigators said, but there was no information that anyone was harmed.
One document found on his computer was titled ‘‘Abducting and Cooking (Victim 1): A Blueprint,’’ according to the complaint. The file also had the woman’s birth date and other personal information and a list of materials — a car, chloroform, and rope.
‘‘I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus . . . cook her over low heat, keep her alive as long as possible,’’ Valle allegedly wrote in one exchange in July, the complaint says.
In other online conversations, investigators said, Valle talked about the mechanics of fitting the woman’s body into an oven (her legs would have to be bent).
The woman told the FBI she knew Valle and met him for lunch in July, but that’s as far as it went.
The officer’s estranged wife had alerted authorities to his online activity, triggering the investigation that led to his arrest by the FBI on Wednesday, a law enforcement official said. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
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"NYC cannibalism case tests lines of fantasy; Man talked about eating women" by Tom Hays | Associated Press, October 27, 2012
NEW YORK — In Internet chats as breezy as they were bizarre, a police officer accused of plotting to kidnap and eat as many as 100 women was once cautioned not to be wasteful when cooking a victim because ‘‘there is nearly 75 pounds of food there.’’
But no one was ever actually harmed in Gilberto Valle’s alleged plot, let alone eaten. And a defense attorney says the officer was merely engaging in harmless Internet fantasy.
Where exactly the line is drawn between bizarre talk and a true plot has emerged as the key question in a case that has shocked even the most jaded New Yorkers.
Indeed, experts say many people have a compulsion to create horrific scenarios about cannibalism, and that the Internet allows them to indulge in their dark side anonymously and — usually — safely.
Oh, so this is some sort of agenda-pushing psy-op censorship.
‘‘There is a big difference between discussing, and even fantasizing, about this type of activity and actually carrying it out,’’ said Jeffrey Parsons, a psychologist at Hunter College. ‘‘Not all the people who fantasize about it will go on to carry it out.’’
One website called ‘‘Devoured’’ — devoted to a fetish called ‘‘vore”— is almost comical in its approach, saying it’s ‘‘where everyone’s on the menu.’’
The site defines ‘‘vore’’ as a sexual interest that ‘‘occurs from the idea of being eaten whole and alive, eating another alive, or watching this process.’’
Now I want to vomit.
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Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly declined to comment Friday on a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan.
Valle is a six-year NYPD veteran, a college graduate, and father of an infant child.
At a bail hearing on Thursday, defense attorney Julia Gatto argued that he never posed a threat. Charges of kidnapping with the intent to murder are overblown, she said.
Her client ‘‘at worst is someone who has sexual fantasies about people he knows and he talks about it on the Internet, but not act on it,’’ she said.
I'm sure the ladies are really flattered.
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Maybe you should have just jerked off, officer.
