NBCNEWS.COM - An NYPD officer accused in a gruesome plot to kidnap women, cook them and dine on their "girl meat" has been convicted on all charges.
Officer
Gilberto Valle, a 28-year-old father of one, was found guilty Tuesday
on a charge of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and a charge of illegally
using a federal computer database that prosecutors had said he accessed
to gain personal information about women he was targeting.
The
grisly case included online transcripts of his plans; at one point he
told an alleged co-conspirator that his oven was "big enough to fit one
of these girls if I folded their legs."
"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 was accused of
saying.
Defense attorney Julia Gatto had argued that Valle's chats on fetish websites "are no more real than an alien invasion."
Prosecutors countered that an analysis of Valle's
computer found he was taking concrete steps to abduct his wife and at
least five other women he knew. They said he looked up potential targets
on a restricted law enforcement database, searched the Internet for how
to knock someone out with chloroform, and showed up on the block of one
woman.
Valle "left the world of fantasy and
entered the world of reality," prosecutor Hadassa Waxman said during
closing arguments. She said the officer's arrest last year interrupted a
ghoulish plan to "kidnap, torture, rape and commit other horrific acts
on young women."
The jury heard Valle's potential
victims testify that they were trading innocent-sounding emails and
texts with him, unaware he was supposedly scheming to make meals out of
them. The government also sought to drive home the point that Valle was
more of a threat because he was a police officer.
U.S.
Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement after the verdict was read
that "the Internet is a forum for the free exchange of ideas, but it
does not confer immunity for plotting crimes and taking steps to carry
out those crimes."
