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'Cannibal Cop' Guilty of Plot to Kidnap, Cook Women

By Victoria Bekiempis | March 12, 2013 11:42am | Updated on March 12, 2013 1:06pm
 Gilberto Valle, 28, a former NYPD cop, was found guilty of plotting to cook and eat women.
Gilberto Valle, 28, a former NYPD cop, was found guilty of plotting to cook and eat women.
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OkCupid/Gilberto Valle

SUPREME COURT — An NYPD officer charged in a plot to kidnap, rape, cook and eat scores of women was found guilty by a jury Tuesday, according to published reports.

Gilberto Valle, 28, faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced on charges that include conspiracy to kidnap and illegally using a law enforcement database to look up information about his victims.

Prosecutors said the cop, who was assigned to the 26th Precinct in Manhattan, was "about to act" on his cannibalistic plan before feds swooped in to arrest him in October. 

"If he had not been arrested, he would have carried out his plan," federal prosecutor Hadasa Waxman said at Valle's arraignment in federal court.

Defense lawyers countered that Valle was a "sick" man obsessed with fetish websites that allowed him to role-play as a cannibal.

Defense attorney Julia Gatto compared online plots to Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" — which caused mass hysteria despite disclaimers that it was not real, Courthouse News Service reported Gatto as saying. 

"Panic ensued," Gatto argued. "People really fled their homes. They thought it was an alien invasion," later insisting that Valle's musings were "no more real."

Gatto also once said outside court that some members of the public were supportive of Valle, showing off two Mass cards and saying "there’s support for us from places that might surprise people," according to the Daily News.

Valle, a six-year NYPD veteran, will be dismissed immediately from the NYPD, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Tuesday.

Prosecutors said Valle intended to knock out his would-be victims with homemade chloroform.

"The abduction will have to be flawless," Valle wrote in an email, according to court documents. "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."

According to the complaint, Valle also bragged about his kitchen appliances and planned cooking techniques in a message to a co-conspirator.

"Big enough to fit one of these girls if I folded their legs," Valle said of his oven, according to the federal complaint. "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."