Gilberto Valle, “The Cannibal Cop”

Gil Valle used to lead a normal life, outwardly anyway. He was a young police officer from New York City, who was recently married and had a young daughter. He was conservative and polite, an old school guy by any means. By day he would protect and serve as one of New York City's finest, but at night when he got home from work things became a bit different. That is when he became "Girlmeathunter."

He would get home around midnight, while his wife was sound asleep, and log onto a website called Darkfetishnet.com. This was a website for people with hardcore fetishes such as bondage, cannibalism, vore, torture, castration, pissing, shitting, slavery, leather, executions, mummification, somnophilia and rape fantasies. Pretty much anything one could imagine. There were also people there into cannibalism. Like Valle.

There on the Dark Fetish Network he would write of his fantasies to kidnap, rape murder, and eat a whole bunch of women. His screenname was "Girlmeathunter." He would chat with other users about his fantasies, and they would go back and forth about their plans, all with the goal of getting themselves off. It was a fetish site after all. The thing is though he also would post photos of real women that he knew, including his wife. He would put them in an album called "Cook them or kill them." Other users of the site would rally around and describe to Valle the way they would want to kill the women he knew, including his wife, and whether or not they wanted to eat the women as well.

Other times he would engage in one on one conversations with different users about specific women, such as one named Kimberly. Once Valle wrote "I really want her to suffer, I just can't wait to get Kimberly cooking"

All of this went on for quite a long time. Valle had his life as a police officer and a good family man, and he also had his life on the Internet, where he could allow himself to get into his deviant fantasies.Until one day, his wife, saw what he had been doing. One might imagine this freaked his wife out greatly when she found what he was up to online. She had installed spyware on his computer because she thought he was having an affair. What she found was so much worse. She saw photos of herself, as well as other women that she knew, and she read about plans to kill them.

She left immediately, running home to her family with her baby in tow. Valle tried to explain, it was just fantasy, just what turned him on. But how do you explain something like that? How do you tell your wife you get turned on by the thought of her dying?

Although that is not entirely true. Valle got way more into the thought of actually tying a woman up, and being trussed like a turkey on a platter with an apple in her mouth, then he did the thought of actually carving her up or eating her. But when his wife went to the FBI, fearful that her husband actually wanted to carve her up and eat her, as well as a whole other bunch of women, that distinction seemed lost on them.

Soon Valle was in trouble. 6 FBi agents arrested him at gunpoint in his apartment hallway. He was taken in for questioning, arrested and denied bail. He did not see the light of day again for 21 months.

On Valle's computer google searches were found that said how to prepare human meat, where to get huge cooking trays, and how to cook a woman alive. They also found a document that said "Abducting and Cooking Kimberly: A Blueprint" as well as transcripts of numerous chats that involved detailed plans for abduction.

The case blew up of course. It was one of the biggest stories in New York City, and made news all over the world. A cop was planning on kidnapping, killing, and eating women? After a bizarre media circus of a trial Valle, The Cannibal Cop, was found guilty by a jury of Conspiracy to Kidnap and sent to prison.

The thing is though, he never did anything. No real world actions were ever taken. Through much of the chats Valle would write to people about how he was going to kidnap these women in a white van that he did not own. He talked about a stove in the basement of his secluded mountain house that was big enough to cook a female body in. But he didn't have a mountain house. He didn't have a stove. When he and his supposed co-conspirators set a date for a supposed kidnap, the date would come and go, and nothing would happen.

Obviously, despite the initial hysteria, his plans were not real. The decision was reversed by a judge, and Valle was released, at first on home confinement, while the district attorney's office appealed. Then eventually he was fully exonerated. An HBO documentary was made of the case and Valle has written a book that will be published soon.

The issue of thought crime when it comes to criminality and sexuality is a fascinating one. There have long been people that are into snuff films, where the actress is obviously not really being killed. There are many people that fantasize on a daily basis about killing someone, whether it be their boss, or even their wife. When does the government have the right to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate people because they have fantasies that make the majority of us uncomfortable? How many of us would be in prison because we dreamed of doing things that were scary to other people?