Gilberto Valle “Cannibal Cop”
Is thinking evil thoughts a crime?
For many, that seems to be the question hanging in the air in the aftermath of the guilty verdict against New York City police officer Gilberto Valle, convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and accessing a government computer database without authorization. During the sensational twelve-day trial in federal court, the jury heard lurid tales of the intentions of the so-called “cannibal cop” and newly married father of a baby girl to kidnap women, then cook, eat and kill them – in that order. Yet no one was ever harmed, leaving Valle’s camp “in shock” and “devastated” by the verdict.
The defense contended that his computer searches of terms like “human recipes” and “how to kidnap,” as well as his photo stash of imagess of extreme sadism against women and photographs of female friends were merely “fantasy role play” with other perverts (our term) he’d met online.
So is this verdict a frontal assault on the First Amendment, or are we legally responsible for what we think? Is now-former Officer Valle a real-life Hannibal Lecter or simply a pathetic fan boy?
From decades of studying violent sexual predators as diverse as Ed Gein, Gary Heidnick and Ted Bundy – who together inspired the composite character of “Buffalo Bill” in The Silence of the Lambs – and analyzing their crimes, our response is: It’s all in the context.
In every case – every one – the act is preceded by the fantasy, and the fantasy becomes an addiction. Just as some people drink to excess to escape their anxieties and others turn to drugs, exercise to exhaustion or gamble to financial ruin, this type of individual is consumed by his violent sexual fantasies as a means of escaping reality, to fill the void of hopelessness and his own perceived worthlessness. To control and dominate another individual of his choosing becomes an all-consuming passion, a temporary release from his anxiety and a validation of his power and standing in the world. And fantasy is the crucial ingredient in the mind of every violent sex offender.
A chat room conversation had Valle proclaiming, “I want her to experience being cooked alive. She’ll be trussed up like a turkey . . . terrified, screaming and crying.”
This is not to suggest that everyone with a violent fantasy life will act out one day. Internet S&M and bondage pornography sites may be sufficient to offer relief. By the same token, an individual predisposed to violence will find such sites high-octane fuel for his fantasies. And at some point the fantasy itself may not be enough.
In the case of Officer Valle, he had the motive – fulfilling his violent fantasy, the means – a cop with the trust that a badge confers, and the opportunity – using official sources to gather intelligence – to actualize the scenarios of his fevered dreams. In the months before his arrest, Valle took several decisive steps, and in so doing, he crossed the line from the realm of the merely perverse to the credible intent to commit violence.
Before he and his wife were to visit a female friend, he emailed one of his Internet pals photographs of the woman along with a text entitled, “Abduction and Cooking of Kimberly” that read, in part, “I’ll be eyeing her from head to toe and licking my lips, longing for the day I cram a chloroform-soaked rag in her face.”
When you combine this with his Internet searches for methods to disable with chloroform, how to cook humans and where to obtain torture devices; his sharing of files with others online and agreeing to pay one of them $5,000 for abducting a woman he wanted to rape and kill, and then casing her neighborhood, you end up with a clear-cut example of someone conspiring to kidnap, torture and murder and well on his way to committing the acts themselves.
The charge of conspiracy covers a multitude of sins, and therefore can be an effective means of protecting a potential victim before the worst happens. We don’t have to wait for someone to rob a bank or have a hit man kill his wife before we arrest him if we have solid evidence that he has talked about and planned the crime with someone else.
It all comes down to the question of whether Gilberto Valle indulged in harmless fantasy with no intent to move beyond the thinking stage, or was this the Acts I and II that we retroactively recognize from every sexual predator?
In our system of criminal justice every jury verdict, by its very nature, is a judgment call. And based on the evidence, in our judgment, there is no question that this jury got it right. We can only hope this case sends out a message that evil thoughts connected with solid indication of intent to act represents not fantasy, but reality.
“…agreeing to pay one of them $5,000 for abducting a woman he wanted to rape and kill”
Guardian has it the other way around: he was the hitman being hired, not hiring a hitman: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/12/nypd-cannibalism-cop-guilty-verdict
To me, this doesn’t seem at all to be a “thought crime”/civil rights issue. I’m fairly positive that hiring a hit man or being a hit man has always been a crime.
You’re absolutely right, Chris. And this brings up the question of why so many people are reacting to this as if we’ve aggressively intruded into this man’s private thoughts and impinged on his right to express himself.
It may have started spreading because it’s the argument the defense used. It probably kept going because “thought crime” is a lot juicier than “hiring a hit man.”
Many of the stories (e.g. NPR, Slate, Salon) never brought up the hit man aspect. I don’t know if that’s on purpose or a citogenesis-style oversight. Many news organizations have cut or trimmed their fact checking staff.