By Deborah Feyerick
NEW YORK (CNN) — A police officer accused of a cannibalism plot spent hours online with a man who was kicked off a fetish website because his fantasies were too dark and real, testimony Wednesday revealed.
On the third day of Gilberto Valle’s federal trial, prosecutors introduced e-mails and chats between Valle and a 35-year-old Pakistani man who re-registered on the website under the name “Throat Slitter.”
Valle, 28, is charged with conspiracy to kidnap a woman. The six-year New York Police Department veteran also is charged with accessing a federal database on at least one occasion, allegedly to get information on one of his alleged targets.
Prosecutors argue Valle was “deadly serious” about online plans to allegedly kidnap, cook and eat women. None of Valle’s alleged targets was ever victimized.
Defense attorneys argue their client’s conduct was fantasy role-playing.
FBI agent Corey Walsh read electronic conversations that ran through most of 2012, until Valle’s arrest in October.
In them, Valle allegedly talks to his friend, a self-described butcher who used the online name “Alisherkhan,” about bringing a 25-year-old American woman to Rawalpindi or Lahore, where Alisherkhan promises, “I will make a good meal for you.”
The Pakistani man even says he will buy special knives for the occasion and asks Valle whether he will “participate in the slaughter process with me?”
According to Walsh, Valle says, “I would actually love to cook a girl alive over an open fire.” Then, referring to his wife, who discovered the fetish and alerted authorities, Valle says, “I’ve had other girls I want to kill more…”
In May, Valle notifies his chat buddy he has picked out a girl, someone he has thought about for eight years.
Alisherkhan prods Valle to “send details from drugs to dismembering” but then questions Valle’s seriousness. The officer reassures him, saying he will cook the woman at 160 degrees and that “she will absolutely suffer,” according to testimony.
In later conversations, the two men allegedly talk about plans for sexually assaulting the alleged target.
Prosecutors say the conversations confirm their kidnapping conspiracy.
During opening statements, Valle’s lawyer, Julia L. Gatto, described the conversations as “pure fiction,” telling jurors, “Gil is guilty of having bizarre thoughts and foolishly sharing them on an Internet with others …There’s no crime here, just very disturbing, shocking thoughts.”
Valle, in one e-mail chat to another person, wrote, “No matter what I say, it’s make believe … I just have a world in my mind and in that world I am kidnapping women and selling them to people interested in buying.”
On cross-examination, agent Walsh acknowledged that contrary to his e-mail claims, Valle had no chloroform, ropes or large oven in which to cook his alleged targets.
And while Valle had bragged of stuffing a woman in a suitcase and putting her in the back of his car, FBI agents never swabbed Valle’s vehicle for DNA, nor did they conduct any surveillance during the one-month investigation, according to testimony.
Criminal database records were introduced into evidence with the names of several of Valle’s alleged targets. Defense attorneys pointed out that none of the names were listed with home or other addresses.
CNN’s Kristina Sgueglia contributed to this report.
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