New York police officer charged with plan to cook, eat women
Source: news.yahoo.com
A New York City police officer was charged on Thursday 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, Gilberto Valle III, 28, 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, in denying Valle bail at a hearing on Thursday evening, said: "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 who appeared before the judge in a red T-shirt and jeans, was all talk and 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."
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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.
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