US officer plotted to kill, eat wife

The wife of a US police officer on trial for planning to kidnap, rape, kill and cannibalize female victims in Internet communication testified that she was going to be one of her husband’s victims.

“I was going to be tied up by my feet and my throat slit, and they would have fun watching the blood gush out of me,” said Kathleen Mangan-Valle, sobbing repeatedly on the witness stand in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Monday during the trial of her husband and former New York City police officer Gilberto Valle, The New York Times reports Tuesday.

The 28-year-old ex-police officer, who was an active duty New York Policeman until his arrest last fall, has been charged with plotting on the Internet to cannibalize female victims after kidnapping, raping and murdering them.

She further testified that she discovered evidence of her husband’s “desires” to rape, maim, torture and kill women, including some of her friends, after checking her husband’s electronic chat history in their home computers.

During the trial, according to the report, Federal Prosecutor Randall Jackson told jurors that the officer “had been plotting real crimes to kill actual victims.”

This is while the police officer’s attorney, Julia Gatto, insisted that he had just been “living out deviant fantasies” in Internet chat rooms, “with no intention of carrying them out,” the daily added.

“It’s pure fiction. It’s pretend. It’s scary make-believe,” the defense attorney said about the police officer’s Internet communication, specifically planning to hunt specific people to carry out his “fantasy.”

Mangan-Valle, who was a teacher, said that she had been so frightened for herself and their infant daughter that she travelled to the western state of Nevada to live with her parents. She said she contacted the FBI and granted the domestic intelligence bureau access to her laptop and another computer in their home.

Valle’s 27-year-old wife further described some of his chats with others about victimizing some of their female acquaintances, saying in part that two were supposed to be “raped in front of each other to heighten” their fears.

“Another was to be burned alive, she said. There was also talk about putting women on a spit, and cooking them for 30-minute shifts, so they could be tortured longer,” the daily reports.

In cross-examining Mangan-Valle, the report notes, the defense attorney asked her why she had not been willing to speak to defense lawyers before the trial. “You represent the man who wants to kill me,” said the suspect’s wife. “No, I didn’t want to talk to you,” she added, breaking into tears.