A city police officer dreamed up plots to kidnap, torture, cook and eat at least 100 women whose photos, names and addresses he pulled from a confidential law enforcement database, authorities said on Thursday.
Gilberto Valle’s fantasies about cannibalizing women — in one, he said he hoped to “cook her over low heat, keep her alive as long as possible” — were retrieved in a trail of e-mails, computer files and instant messages in online fetish chat rooms, and authorities said he was arrested because he was taking steps to carry them out.
None of the women was harmed, although a prosecutor said some of the women knew Valle and he had stalked at least two of them at home or work .
Valle’s estranged wife tipped authorities off to his chilling online activity, leading to his arrest, a law enforcement official said.
Valle, 28, was held without bail on charges including kidnapping conspiracy and unauthorized use of law enforcement records.
US Magistrate Judge Henry Pitman called the charges against him “profoundly disturbing ... the most depraved, most dangerous conduct that can be imagined” and even more troubling because he is a police officer.
Pitman said the charges of the steps Valle took to carry out the plot “suggest more than just talk.”
In 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), said he could make chloroform at home to knock a woman out and discussed how “tasty” one woman looked.
Public defender Julia Gatto had asked for bail, saying the Valle was only guilty of a “deviant fantasy.”
However, Valle was arrested because he was too close to carrying out the “grotesque and disturbing” plots, Assistant US Attorney Hadassa Waxman said.
He had “plans to kidnap, rape, torture, kill and eat the body parts of young women, some of whom the FBI has identified and they acknowledge knowing the defendant for a period of time,” she said.
Valle had created a computer catalogue with records of at least 100 women with their names, addresses and photos, the complaint says.
Some of the information came from his unauthorized use of a restricted law enforcement database, authorities said. He claimed, according to the complaint, that he knew many of them.
“The allegations in the complaint really need no description from us,” said Mary Galligan, acting head of the FBI’s New York office. “They speak for themselves. It would be an understatement merely to say Valle’s own words and actions were shocking.”
Valle was suspended from the police force after his arrest.
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