Ex-NYPD officer dubbed "cannibal cop" pens horror novel
NEW YORK -- A former New York City police officer whose bizarre online exchanges about kidnapping and eating women landed him behind bars and earned him tabloid infamy as the "cannibal cop" has penned a horror novel.
Gilberto Valle was convicted in 2013 of kidnapping conspiracy, but the judge threw out the verdict. He was instead sentenced to time served on a lower-level charge of using a restricted law enforcement database to secretly look up personal information about women he knew.
He was also fired from the NYPD. He argued the women were never in danger and it was a sexual fetish.
According to the Daily News, his book, "A Gathering of Evil" was released Jan. 4 and is about sadists who kidnap two young New Yorkers. It's described as very graphic.
In 2012, Valle, an NYPD officer at the time and a married father, was accused of plotting to kidnap, torture and cook at least 100 women, including his wife.
She was the one who tipped off authorities after she put spyware on their computer.
"She saw me staying up late on the computer, and I, like, saw some of the paperwork that she filled out for the FBI. She thought I was having an affair, which I never did," Valle said in a February 2016 interview with CBS New York. "She didn't expect it."
In reality, Valle had been spending his nights in fetish chat rooms, where he described gory fantasies such as "letting her bleed out then butcher her while she hangs."
The FBI found files on Valle's computer that included women's names, addresses and photos.
"I'd send a bunch of pictures to someone I was role-playing with, and they would pick which one they thought was the prettiest, so that person happened to pick my wife. It wasn't like I was shopping her out or that I intended to do any harm to her," he said in the interview with CBS New York.
Valle ultimately served 21 months behind bars. In July 2014, a judge overturned Valle's kidnapping conspiracy conviction, saying it was fantasy role-play.
