RedHanded - Episode 100 - Gilberto Valle: Cannibal Cop

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

In 2012 Kathleen Valle started to become suspicious of her New York City police officer husband Gilberto.  He was spending all of his time on the computer, and Kathleen, who had just had their baby was afraid he was being unfaithful.  When she finally broke and checked his online activity - what she found was far more horrifying than anything she had imagined. Gilberto Valle had been on cannibal fetish forums talking to strangers about how he wanted to abduct, rape, torture, kill and eat women - including Kathleen. In the trial, and the media frenzy, that followed - the question became; when does a thought become a crime? Tour tickets: http://gigst.rs/Redhanded - on sale from 10am on Friday the 28th of June 2019.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to episode 100 of Red Handed. Isn't that absolutely nuts? Yes. I feel like 100 episodes, triple figures. How did we get here? And if you think about the ones we've deleted and the bonus ones and the Patreon ones, God knows how many we've actually done.

I don't know how many we've actually done. We're beyond 100, but officially, as it stands, 100 episodes. How exciting. 100 whole episodes. To kick off our 100th episode, first of all, we'd like to say a massive thank you to every single one of you for making this all possible. Without you, it would just be us swearing into the abyss. And because of you and your lovely ears, this show has completely changed our lives. We started Red Handed because we, and some of you already know this story, we got drunk at a party nearly two years ago. And yeah, we actually went and did the thing that we said we were going to do when we were drunk, which is amazing in itself. I think it's Ernest Hemingway who said you should always do what you say you're going to do drunk because it will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

I love it. We're throwing around a lot of literary quotes these days, aren't we? We really are. We've leveled up by getting Hamlet horribly wrong. No one's corrected us yet. The episode hasn't gone out yet, that's why. Honestly, though, in the two years since Red Handed has been up and running, we've had some amazing things happen to us. We've been in the top 10 at the British Podcast Awards

for the Listener's Choice. We were flown out to LA and New York. We've been on Harmontown. We did a collab with Tracy Clayton. We love you, Tracy. And so many more exciting things are coming up this year. With that out of the way, let's get on with our 100th episode, shall we? Oh, I think we better. We're tackling thought crimes today. What we're dealing with really

is how much do you have to think about committing a crime before that thought becomes conspiracy? Thoughts are not illegal, but conspiracy to commit a crime definitely is. Let's look at kidnap, for example. When does the planning of the act become criminal? Is it when you're thinking about what time of day is best to do your person pilfering. Or maybe when you go to Tyrac to buy the black silk tie you're planning to use to blindfold your victim. Could it be when you're sitting in your car about to drive to your target's house with the tie next to you on the front seat? What about if you turn the car around, go home, put the tie in a box in the loft and never think about the whole thing ever again? Are you still a criminal? It's a fine

line and it's a line we're going to be wobbling all over today as we discuss Gilberto Valle, who is more commonly known as the cannibal cop, even though he never ate a single soul, but he absolutely definitely thought about it loads. So even though there's no actual cannibalism happening this week, we would still suggest not eating for at least the first half of this one, because the structure of the show is basically vomit, vomit, legal chat, vomit, end. Sorry, Gemma. I know you don't like the cannibal ones. I'm sorry. And for those of you who don't know, Gemma is our Facebook moderator. And we've got a new one. We've got Rebecca now. We've got two.

Thanks, Gemma. Thanks Rebecca. In 2012, Gilberto was a 25-year-old NYPD officer living in Queens with his new wife. He and his wife, Kathleen Mangan, should have been super happy. They were newlyweds and they had even just had a baby girl, Josephine. But Kathleen had a feeling that something wasn't right because Gilberto didn't seem that interested in wedded bliss. He would stare for hours at his computer screen into the wee hours when his wife and brand new baby were sound asleep upstairs. Gilberto was also very interested in the jogging route that Kathleen took and he was even more interested when she ran it at night. He would ask her if there were many streetlights on her route and if there were ever people around.

I mean, you could be like, this is just a concerned husband who's worried about his wife jogging. But it's weird questioning. I think it's the way he asked it. Like, he wasn't like, oh, maybe don't go running at night because this, this, this. He's like, no, definitely go running at night and then tell me about it when you come home. Exactly. No, that's exactly it.

It's all in the tone of your deliveries we've talked about before. If you're getting creeped out by your husband asking something that if said in a nice way could just portray a nice loving husband, something is most definitely not OK. So Kathleen suspected that the key to her husband's late nights and weird questions must be on his computer. Because it always is. It's always on the computer. But before she decided to crack into his computer, she decided to do some Googling of her own. Poor Kathleen. She sat there and she Googled. My husband doesn't love me anymore. I mean, Google is just a way. Like when you look at somebody's Googles, it's just... It's the window to the soul. The soul. I mean, Google is just a way, like when you look at somebody's Googles, it's just...

It's the window to the soul. The soul. It is. Fuck eyes. Your Google search history is the window to your soul, I think. Kathleen was almost sure, when she was doing all this Googling, was almost 100% sure that her husband was probably having an affair. And that's probably where most people's minds would go. But what Kathleen would eventually find was so much worse. When the internet didn't give her the answers that she needed, Kathleen turned to spyware. And I did think this is so smart of her.

I don't think I would have thought of that. No, I never in a million years would have been like, I'm going to install some spyware on my husband's computer to find out what's going on. She's on it. I just would have looked at his search history, honestly. She's like, now I've got time for that. Straight to the spyware. And this spyware is terrifying. It is so scary.

And especially because this is 2012. Like, this isn't last year. I was amazed that this thing, this sort of thing sort of existed. Not only existed, but was readily available for someone to just buy in Queens. The spyware that Kathleen installed logged all of her husband's keystrokes. It logged every website that Gilberto had accessed and it took screenshots every five minutes. And these are the names of just some of the sites that the father of her 11-month-old child had been visiting. Sexy Amazons. FetLife. Fetish short for fetish, in case you needed that explaining.

Motherless. And there was his favourite one, which was called Dark Fetish Net. The cover art for Dark Fetish Net was a naked woman who was quite clearly dead. There were also photographs of feet that were not attached to any legs. And here is the blurb for the Dark Fetish Network. This is direct quote. It's bad grammar, bad grammar alert. But here we go. Welcome to the social network where you won't feel yourself like an outcast because of your dark fetish. Why? Because this place is created by people like you for people like you. So feel free to look around and meet some crazy, brackets in a good way, people and become part of our growing adult only 18 plus community and then it says in all capitals this place is about fantasies only so play safe and the blurb also makes a distinction between the public content

and the content that is for members only and again we're in the 2000s here free porn is absolutely everywhere if you're going to a website called dark fetish net and feel inclined to make a membership profile to access the member-only content, I'm willing to bet quite a large sum of money that your sexual expression is pretty niche. Kathleen was just about to find out how niche her husband's desires were. On one of the many screen grabs that the spyware had snatched while her husband was up until the crack of Christ, totally unaware he was being watched, Kathleen saw an email login page that she didn't recognise. She went to the same login page and typed in the password that she knew Gilberto used for everything.

And amazingly, it worked. So he's not trying that hard. That is so lazy. So lazy. Use different passwords. Especially if you're on dark fetish net. Right, yeah yeah i would say so if you're using this email to exclusively to hide things from your wife maybe change the password your wife who does know how to use a computer she knows how to use spyware exactly it quickly became clear that gilberto had been using this email account to speak with people

that he had met on dark fetish Net who were into the same things as him and it turned out that Gilberto Valli loved talking about one thing in particular, cannibalism. So Kathleen scrolled through 24 conversations in which her husband described how he planned to kidnap multiple women, take them to his basement where he claimed that he had a pulley system hanging from the ceiling. Gilberto talked about how he would hang women from his ceiling and slit their throats, then stuff them into a giant oven before eating them. The women who didn't make it into the oven would be penetrated on a spit through their uteruses, multiple times before being roasted like a pig.

And it gets worse. As Kathleen dug deeper into these email chains, she found that her husband had been sending photographs of people that they both actually knew in real life to his co-conspirators. So to these strangers that he'd met on Dark Fetish Net. So here's what he was doing. He was talking primarily to three other men. One who lived in New Jersey called Michael Van Heese, one who lived in England, who went by the screen name Moody Blues, and one who lived in Pakistan, who went by the name Ali Khan.

Sometimes together and sometimes in one-on-one conversations with Gilberto, this merry bunch would fantasize about kidnapping women, torturing them, and then eating them. Gilberto told his mates that one woman would be stuffed into a suitcase for rape and murder, and the other two would be raped in front of each other to heighten their fears. There was also a lot of talk about roasting women on open fires, like they're fucking chestnuts and it's Christmas. Like, it's so...

Yeah, like, it's funny that you say it's like Christmas. Their plan was, they sort of invented this like magical, famous five-esque serial killer island where they were all going to meet on Labor Day and that's when they were going to kill all of these women. I don't know how Ali Khan was getting there from Pakistan, but he was planning on it apparently. Wow. I mean, they are just so...

I'm really struggling for the right adjective, which isn't like me, but I'm struggling. It's extreme. Gilberto seemed to be taking the whole thing very, very seriously. He sent pictures of women who he knew, along with their heights and weights to the other men, asking them to choose who they would like to eat the most. Kathleen, his own wife, was on that list. He sent a picture of his wife to his fetish forum friends. Understandably, Kathleen lost her shit at that point, I certainly would, and she waited for her husband to come home from work and confronted him with her findings straight away. She's brave. She's brave.

She's brave. I would have fucking run away. I wouldn't have waited. I would have walked straight out that door. Packed my stuff and left. Yeah. She's a brave lady. She's also got a baby girl with him.

Oh, God. Yeah. And they've been married three years, you know, like it's, oh, God, poor Kathleen. Gilberto, when he's confronted with his fetish, I suppose, was taken aback, but he tried to explain to Kathleen that none of it was real. It was all just talk and that he certainly had no real plans to hurt anybody. But Kathleen wasn't buying it and she took her stuff. She took her baby and she left. And then she reported her husband of three years to the police, which must sting extra hard for a policeman to be reported as a cannibal to your colleagues.

Gilberto now claims that he only logged on to Dark Fetish Net the night he was caught out to delete his account. He is sure that if he had only deleted everything one day earlier, none of what is coming next would have happened. And I don't know about you, but that feels a little bit too convenient for me. Yeah, there's no way that he was like, when you see the stuff that he's writing, there's no way he's like getting bored of it. He's fucking ramping up. You're absolutely right. It gets more and more extreme. And we'll see later on, like just how many, how much time he's spending on these websites. He literally, he comes in, he gets in from work. I don't even know if he even speaks to Kathleen.

Kathleen goes to bed with the baby and he is up all night. And he claimed that it wasn't impacting his family or his work life negatively in any way. I don't believe for a second that you getting absolutely no sleep means you're a best dad ever or number one employee. And also you're not like not getting no sleep because you're sat there like working on yourself or improving yourself. Looking after your baby. Exactly.

He is sat talking about how he wants to rape, torture, murder and eat women. I think that's going to have a negative, a detrimental effect on your work life balance, I'm going to say. The way he talks about it is he says that you're anonymous on these forums. He had a screen name which was girl meet hunter by the way and he said that that the anonymity that that gives you makes you want to try and outdo the other person so that's how he explains this like ramping up is that you're just trying to get one over on these other people because nobody knows who you are did you have you seen that cartoon I think it's a New Yorker cartoon where it's just this dog on a computer and it says on the internet nobody knows you're a dog

it's like that yeah and i can get that i do think obviously we all know internet conversations can quickly escalate out of everybody's control peep the facebook group if you're if you're interested but um he does take it to a whole nother level by bringing into it not only his wife but women that he knows and sending photos of them. Like, that is basically the crux of the entire episode. It was later proven that Gilberto had accessed dark fetish net from his iPhone while on duty as an actual police officer. So it doesn't really seem like it's not impacting your work, really, does it? Gilberto still claims that he had gone on to delete his accounts because for him, family comes first and his fascination with the consumption He directly contradicts himself within like two sentences. There is obviously a documentary about this case.

When you watch it, he just strikes me as so stupid. I flip between feeling a bit sorry for him and then thinking the same thing. I don't know where I stand on him, really. He's just like a doughy little weirdo to me. And he hates women. He hates women. Whether he was actually going to do any of these things or not, like, the hatred is real. And the relationship between him and his mother.

Oh, Mike, can we talk about it? Okay, so his mum is called Liz Valley and she is like... Gold star enabler. Yeah, she's not overbearing, she's an enabler. Excuses, excuses, reasons. He can do absolutely no wrong in her eyes. Like it's all just this massive misunderstanding. It's really quite, it's a watch.

It is a watch, oh my God. And what I find really interesting about the whole thing is like she's in the whole thing the mum and um your brother they're in the whole documentary being interviewed they're fully a part of it and she's constantly like cooking for him and feeding him and he's constantly eating while they're talking about the stuff he's put down the fucking burrito for like a second while you're talking while they're talking to you about how you talked about torturing impaling women through their uteruses and roasting them so you could eat them there's even a bit where he's like in the house and he's eating and he's he

makes this joke where he's like oh is everyone okay like i've got a fork in my hand like blah blah like if you you've got to laugh about it you've got to make jokes and his mum's like oh haha yeah this danger to society oh my god just knock the fucking fork out of his hand wow wow wow so it's safe to say that it is consuming his life there's no way that it was like a separate thing so after Kathleen went and reported him to the police what happened next was devastating for everyone involved as soon as Gilberto was reported to the police. What happened next was devastating for everyone involved. As soon as Gilberto was reported to the police, the press had a field day. One of the most prevalent headlines was, quote,

meet the wife and meet is spelt M-E-A-T. Genius. It's a better joke for a tabloid that you read rather than a podcast that you listen to, but it's there. The intention is there. And like my heart goes out to Kathleen, honestly. We say on the show all the time, you never really know somebody,

but this is... Apparently you never really know somebody until you install spyware on their computer. Oh, God, I don't even want to know, man. She did what anyone would have done in that situation. And, yeah, like we talked about, there is obviously this documentary. You should definitely go watch it. If you haven't, it's, like, everywhere. It's called Thought Crimes, The Case of the Cannibal Cop and they raise a

really interesting point in it. If you're not honest about your sexuality with your partner, then you are in a fundamentally dishonest relationship. Gilberto knew that his cannibalism interest would not go down well with Kathleen, so he hid it and explored it online on his own. Generally speaking, sexuality is accepted in modern society, more or less. We use it to sell products. It's everywhere, but only when it falls within very specific parameters of what is acceptable. Yeah, male nipples fine, female nipples not fine. Exactly. So for someone like Gilberto, he didn't see people like him anywhere. So he internalized his true sexual drive and felt fundamentally different from others. Not making any excuses for him, we're just talking about

what happened. Because when we look at cases like this, and when we're looking at someone who has such an outlying sexuality, my instinct is to look for the reason why. And when we look at people like Armin Meywes, for example, who is the German guy that ate that other guy's dick, he had heaps of childhood trauma, an absent father and an overbearing mother and an imaginary friend he wanted to consume so he didn't feel so alone. But in Gilberto's case, some people argue that nothing that bad ever happened to him. His parents separated when he was quite young, sure, but other than that, his life was pretty normal. His family loved him. He was raised Catholic and obviously Catholics have very strict ideas about what kind of sexuality is okay and what is not. So it's possible, in my opinion, that being surrounded by a very strict set of sex rules may have sparked something in

Gilberto Valley. We can't choose what we're attracted to, but when we're told that it's wrong, that has a negative effect, especially when you know that people would be disgusted by what you are thinking about. And on the 25th of October 2012, Gilberto was arrested by the NYPD based on the 24 conversations that had been found on his computer by his wife. It goes without saying that he was also sacked from the force on the same day. Yeah, reason for dismissal. Can you imagine that? Suspected cannibal. He insisted that he never intended to harm anyone.

Not his wife and not the other women that he'd sent pictures of to the men. He insisted that it was all just role play. But the thing is, he'd sent multiple pictures of real women that he knew in actual life and asked the men that he was chatting to to pick the one that they thought was the prettiest. And guess what? They picked Kathleen, his wife. Now, Gilberto was charged with conspiracy to commit kidnap. Although 21 of the 24 conversations between Gil, Moody Blues, Ali Khan and Michael Van Heese were found to be just fantasy. Three of the conversations caused greater concern.

In these three conversations it appeared that Gilberto and his cannibal buddies were actually making real plans to abduct, kill and eat a woman that Gilberto actually knew. They were talking dates, times, prices, cars, like details. And in these three conversations, when asked if he was for real, Gilberto said that he was. So yeah, the other guys are asking him, are you real? Are you being real about this? And he's telling them, yes, I am. And in other conversations, when asked the same question, he had said to them, it was all just pretend. So it does seem like there was a significant tone shift in the three conversations that the state of New York were building their case on. If you're happy to play along with this, do role play,

and in some instances say that it is just pretend without it breaking the fantasy for you, why not do that here if you're still only joking, if you're still only doing it for pretend? I think what he would probably argue is that it's the ramping up, it's the competition of trying to outdo these people that you don't know and will never meet. Now during the investigation it was proven that Gilberto had accessed Dark Fetish Net over 1,000 times in 2012. Can you think of a website you have accessed 1,000 times in 2019? Google, because it's my homepage. Like, that's it. And LinkedIn.

You've definitely been on LinkedIn 1,000 times this year, for sure. I think mine is ACAST, Patreon, Gmail. Good. TunaMelt, did you say? In that order. Gmail and TunaMelt.com, obviously. The classic. I'm so hungry.

I genuinely thought I heard you say TunaMelt. I can't believe I'm hungry while I'm recording this, to be honest. No, me either. You've changed. You've been desensitised. I have. Oh, no. So let's get down to the legals.

The vomit bit is over for now. In the eyes of the law, a thought becomes a conspiracy when the perpetrator commits a real world overt act of intent. Like buying a kill kit, for example. That would be considered an overt act. Our problem here is whether Gilberto and his online friends were committing any of these real life, real time overt acts. So the most obvious thing that jumped out to me immediately about these chats is this sort of torture dungeon basement thing that Gilberto says he has. He says in the basement of his house, he's got this people-sized oven and an intricate pulley system

to suspend women from. None of that was true. The basement of Gilberto's building was a laundry room used by everybody in the building. So that's one point for the fantasy argument. And if that was all he was talking about, he might have been okay. But there's more. Gilberto talked about using chloroform to subdue his victims. And he googled how to make it. But he didn't buy any of the ingredients. Is that enough for an overt act? I think I've probably googled how to make chloroform. I definitely have.

I mean, it kind of feels like an overt act is like an in real life thing to further your conspiracy. I feel like the threshold is high on this that for me, he would have had to go out and buy the ingredients. And the real nail in his coffin is when Gilberto used his work computer to access a federal database to look up some of the women he had sent to his cannibal compadres. One woman who he'd sent a picture of along with his wife and a few other people, Gilberto actually went to college with her and they'd known each other for 10 years. So they went to uni together in Maryland. Gilberto has a degree in psychology, by the way. Before Gilberto was found out, he took his wife and his baby daughter to Maryland to visit this lady that he went to college with. I mean, that's crazy.

And the using of the database to find her, like, oh my God, come on. That to me feels like an in real life overt act to further your conspiracy. But the problem is he doesn't do it at that time. He does it before. He does it the year before. Now, Gilberto says that this was just a trip, that he had no intention of harming anyone, but he told Moody Blues all about it. And when they returned from the Maryland trip back to Queens, Gilberto got straight on dark fetish in it and told Moody Blues all about how mouth-watering

his college pal had looked at brunch and how he could hardly contain himself. Gilberto looked up other women on the police database too but the thing is he was being charged with conspiracy to commit a kidnapping in 2012. The three conversations that the police and later the prosecution in court would argue showed actual real life intent to do harm all happened in 2012. So Gilberto had accessed the police database in 2011. And it's a misdemeanor for sure. But could it be an action of express overt intent if it happened a year before? That's the thing that saves him here, I think, because I would absolutely on your team with it if it was back in the middle of the conspiracy and he's like oh I'm gonna look up where she lives as I'm talking about going to her house and kidnapping and putting her in a big

people oven but he doesn't he does it the year before it feels like it's a completely separate thing he's just at work he's bored and he's looking up a girl he used to fancy at fucking uni but then it kind of feels like I don't know can we ever say it's completely separate he knew this girl before he knew her from college and they're mates as well like he's going to see her he's taking his family like he knows where she lives already no but then i guess i feel like suddenly in 2012 you're thinking about killing and eating her and torturing her but like in 2011 you weren't thinking about that when you you know search for her in the police database oh good i kind of feel like just because that's when he put it into writing in 2012, the intent

to me feels like it's still there even if it happened in 2011. Not a lawyer. We will go on to talk more about the legal side of this. But to me, I kind of feel like that would have been enough for me. But who am I? But I guess the only thing that maybe kind of not redeems him, I'm not going to go so far, but maybe makes him look slightly less scummish, is that in 2012, Moody Blues asked for the address of one of the women that Gilberto had been sending pictures of him to and Gilberto refused to give it to him. So I think Moody Blues is legit.

I think he's asking for dates and times and addresses and Gilberto's saying, I can't give that to you. Or I don't have it, is what he actually says. But he does. He knows where she lives. And if he wants her to himself, I don't know. Yeah, also a good point. U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first

reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha

right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. In 2013, Gilberto Valli's trial began. He was defended by Julia Gatto, who represented the Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. She's known for her aggressive approach and honestly, she does

a pretty good job. And often our gut instinct when we see trials like this is that we want to put people in jail. We want to see them suffer because we think that they are bad people. But that's not how the law works. Ugly thoughts doesn't equal a life behind bars. In the trial, the jury were given the transcripts of all 24 conversations that were uncovered by the spyware on Gilberto's computer. And here's one particularly chilling extract from the chat. Gilberto says, it's going to be so hard to restrain myself when I knock her out. But I'm aspiring to be a professional kidnapper and that's business. But I will really get off knocking her out, tying up her hands and bare feet and gagging her.

Then she will be stuffed into a large piece of luggage and wheeled out into my van. And then the person he's talking to says, just make sure she doesn't die before I get her. And then Gilberto says, no need to worry. She will be alive. It's a short drive for you. I think I would rather not get involved in the rape. You paid for her.

She's all yours. And I don't want to be tempted the next time I abduct a girl. I think when he says, it's a short drive to you, I think the guy he's talking to has got to be Michael Van Hees tempted the next time I abduct a girl. I think when he says it's a short drive to you, I think the guy he's talking to has got to be Michael Van Heese, the one who lives in New Jersey. But I mean, horrible as that all was for everybody in the courtroom, Julia Gatto argued that a person cannot be imprisoned for their thoughts, no matter how twisted they might be. But the prosecution, however, argued that Gilberto executed overt actions of intent, citing the trip to Maryland,

accessing the police database, and his chloroform Google searches. This raises another interesting and very contemporary question. Can someone be prosecuted on virtual conduct alone? When it comes to stuff like revenge porn, surely that's all virtual conduct. But then I guess with things like that, you can say that it's still you are committing a crime you're just the tool you happen to be using is the internet it's like if they found the same things that Gilberto was doing here but instead of but he was just like

writing it in letters and mailing them to people would it still it would still be the same argument about thought crime and like pre-crime and this idea that should we just like keep ourselves safe by putting anyone away who might be a danger to society but we're not really sure because is it just a game or are they for real i think that's the real crux of the whole case here other criminal areas in which we come across the idea of a thought crime can be cases around things like terrorism and child pornography. If someone who is attracted to children is looking at a pornographic photo of people who look like they are children, but they're not children, is that legal? Is that illegal?

In the observer's head, they're children, but in reality, maybe they're just young looking 19 year olds. And at what point does someone saying online that they want to decimate the Western world become illegal? We can't police thought. Our Google searches are an extension of our thoughts, and our thoughts are pretty private things. Once we start to police thought, we're in serious trouble, surely. Even in our modern age of quote-unquote alternative facts. And what happens when we look at people who have intrusive thoughts and can't control what they're thinking? Like, for example, people with OCD or PTSD. I don't know, it's very, very complicated because you

can also argue the other side that something like terrorism is such a perfect example. Somebody sat there talking about it. Are they inciting violence when they talk about that kind of thing? And therefore the real crime would be inciting violence and advocating for that. Not necessarily the thought crime, but isn't what Gilberto is doing here advocating for rape and torture and abduction and conspiracy to abduct? Like, it's so complicated. It's really difficult territory. And I think you can't say like, your ideology is different to mine, therefore it's illegal, because that's fascism.

Like, that's where we would get to if we start to police this space in a direct way. I guess it's hard because if people are talking about general thoughts about hatred of the West, yes, it's very difficult for you to police that. If they're talking about wanting to rise up and make bombs and, you know, actually kill people, then it feels like, yeah, you probably want to go get them. It's so complicated. But without the overt act, you've got no grounds. This is true. This is the thing with this case is even with something like overt actions, that can be interpreted in different ways for me him googling the database him googling the database him searching for those women on the database if i was in a jury would have been enough to convince me that that was over in real life

action but for someone else it might not be it's still a virtual thing but i mean it's like him going out in real life to find things that he needs to feed into that fantasy to further it along. That's how I would interpret that. Free speech obviously comes up in this trial a lot as well. And as we covered in our William Melchett Dinkle episode, free speech is only protected by the First Amendment in the United States if it's not intended to lead to criminal activity. So the First Amendment doesn't really help us here either. We don't know if his speech was protected. He was certainly talking about illegal actions, but proving his intent to carry them out is extremely difficult. And the prosecution called one woman to give testimony in the trial who claimed that Gilberto

Valli had been stalking her. It was also pointed out that Gilberto had promised to deliver a woman to one of his co-conspirators for the fee of $5,000. But the defence pointed out that at many points over the email exchange, the Canamore compadres would promise to further discuss the plot on specific dates, on the next Tuesday at this time, for example, and then they wouldn't do it. So they're not following through on their plan, which the defence uses an argument to suggest that none of it was real. And it was all just role play, it was all just talk. But these missed plans were not enough to give the jury a reasonable doubt and in March 2013, Gilberto Valli was convicted of conspiracy to kidnap

and he was sent to prison. He was also found guilty of unlawfully accessing a federal database and with these two things combined, he could have been looking at a life sentence for his crimes. Well, one crime, one misdemeanor and for his own safety he spent a great deal of his time on the inside in solitary confinement which julia gatto deemed to be a quote an extraordinarily harsh punishment i feel like she's calling that an extraordinary harsh punishment but i feel like it was like you said probably done to stop him being beaten to death. He's a police officer and he's in there for like this fucking weird crime.

Yeah, he wouldn't have lasted a day, I don't think. But the thing is, it wouldn't last long, this sentencing and the time that Gilberto spent in prison, because just over a year later, in July 2014, federal judge Paul Gardape overturned the jury's conviction. Gardape found that there was insufficient evidence to support Valli's guilt. He wrote, quote, we are loath to give the government the power to punish us for our thoughts and not our actions. That includes the power to criminalize on individuals' expression of sexual fantasies, no matter how perverse or disturbing. Fantasizing about committing a crime, even a crime of violence against a real person who you know, is not a crime. The judge added that fantasies that contain violence against women are not harmless, but that quote,

not every harm is meant to be addressed with the federal criminal law. Gilberto's conviction for accessing the database however still stood, but he was given time served for that offence. So Gilberto was released from prison after serving 21 months on a $100,000 bond. He was placed under house arrest and was not allowed any internet access. He was also required to undergo a mental health evaluation and surrender his passport. His lawyer told the press that her client was, quote, guilty of nothing more than having very unconventional thoughts. We are not thought police. The courts are not the deputies of the thought police. Gilberto Valli may be free for now. His house arrest has been lifted and he's reportedly working in construction, but that doesn't mean it's over. Gilberto lost his wife, his job,

his kid and his anonymity during the trial and his freedom may be under threat. His overturned conviction is being appealed and it might go all the way to the Supreme Court. At his sentencing hearing, Gilberto said, I just hope they know they were never in danger. I would never do the things I talked about on the internet. How would they know they're never in danger, Gilberto?

I would feel pretty in danger if I knew that had been happening to me. Exactly. This police officer has been talking to you, talking about you, sorry, using your photos, talking on dark fetish net

with a bunch of strangers about tearing you apart and eating you and he has access to a fucking police database where he can keep tabs on you. How are you not going to feel like you're in danger?

And his lawyer said that the ruling was a victory for a society that treasures freedom of thought and expression. And this, when I found this out, this floored me. This very year, 2019, Gilberto appeared at CrimeCon. I wonder what it's like to be invited to that. That must be nice. And at CrimeCon, he told a crowded room about everything he had lost and how he hadn't seen his daughter since she was about 11 months old. Kathleen has full custody of

Josephine and believes that Gilberto is a danger to her. So it's very possible that he'll never see either of them ever again. And Gilberto admitted to his captive CrimeCon audience that he probably deserved that, but he didn't deserve to be convicted of a conspiracy to kidnap. He said, quote, I understand people don't like what I did, but the question is here, is not liking me reason enough to have me in prison for the rest of my life? And that is the million dollar question this week. Should somebody lose their job over what they say is a fantasy? This is the thing. No, not if it is actually a fantasy. The question becomes the overt intent. And like I said, for me, some of the things that he did, like with the police

database, would have been enough if I were in a jury to be like, that's enough overt intent for me that he was genuinely trying to further this fantasy that he calls it along. And the jury convicted him as the judge that said no. Exactly. But I don't disagree with what the judge said just because some thoughts are harmful and what he's done isn't, you know, what he's done is there is harm in what he's doing. But the federal court doesn't need to be the way you punish every kind of negative or harmful action, potentially. So yeah, I don't know. It's complicated. Did he deserve a custodial sentence? I would have found it very difficult if I was in the jury not to find him guilty. But it's very grey. It's very grey. And if you're wondering what's going on now,

Gilberto claims that he is now currently trying to make lemonade out of the lemons that life has thrown in his face. And he has written a book to capitalise on his own infamy. And it's called A Gathering of Evil. What fucking shit name of all the things he could have called it? Cannibal Cop. It's a novel. It's not like his life story. Oh, whatever.

It follows two young women from New York who are targeted by a group of wealthy and violent sadists. Oh, does that sound familiar? Like a familiar concept to anybody? Young people being targeted by a group of wealthy people who like hurting other people? Does that sound like something anybody knows about? Sounds like a couple of things I've heard about. And it sounds very on brand for Gilberto, I must say. And further on brand for Gilberto, because you know, he's now like, I won't do it in secret on darkfetishnet.com. I'm so good at this. I went to prison for it. Let's make some money.

I'm just gonna go to like a, I feel like he just went to like a one hour creative writing class and then on like udemy.com and then now he just like writes graphic novels. And he does so many interviews too. Like he like,

if you ring him, he'll talk about it. Oh my gosh, should we ring him? You can. I'll ring him. At some point, potentially on the Patreon,

we may have a phone conversation with gilberto valley let's see tbc not if he listens to this we're hardly being sympathetic are we what's that documentary that crew i can feel like i'm like what the fuck are you talking yeah that's true that's true and he just carries on chatting to him eating burritos is so too much i get i get the feeling that he may not be the best at reading people's emotions. I think so. And it's even harder over the phone. So we could get American.

To be discussed. I'll put it on the whiteboard. Oh, and also, just before we wrap this one up, remember Michael Van Heese, one of the men who was part of Gilberto's alleged kidnapping plot? Well, he's just been sentenced to seven years in prison for plotting to kidnap and torture various women in his family. And where Van Heese went wrong is that he actually met up with a man that he'd been speaking to on Dark Fetish Net

and they drove around talking about how they would rape and kill women and where they would dump their bodies. So that was his overt action of intent. Now, there have been several sting operations that have taken place on Dark Fetish Net since Gilberto has been freed. Because someone said on the documentary which I thought was a really good point, she was like all the

police needed to do to get his overt intent was a sting operation. And this is the thing, they almost jumped the gun and arrested him too quickly. Possibly. I think there's an argument for that. But then he could have just argued entrapment. Yeah, and his wife has already said I know all about you. Yeah. It wouldn't have been a secret. This is true. This is true. And the thing is, even if they'd have spoken to him, he would have just been like, yeah, I thought you were

just another dude to like carry on my fantasy with. I guess they would have had to make him go out and like buy something. I think it's the meeting in person that makes it a different thing. That's true. Now, these sting operations, to come back to those, there was a man called Christopher Ash. He assembled a kill kit, an entire kill kit that included syringes, our favourite speculums, and a stun gun. Another guy, Richard Meltz, had accidentally met with undercover agents to discuss a kidnapping. And I guess we mean accidentally met in that he didn't know who they were. Yeah,'t know. Yeah, he didn't. He didn't willingly walk into an undercover operation. Both men are now actually in prison. So where do we stand? Was Gilberto actually intending on killing anybody? If he wasn't, should his conversations be illegal? Big questions here

to end on. I don't know. I think the thing is with stuff like this, somebody who was escalating that much, who was talking in that way, who was starting to push the boundaries, like using the database, blah, blah, blah. Don't people like that just escalate and do it? But then you're into sort of minority report territory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't do pre-crime. I get that. But there are indicators. And I do feel like that coming back to what that judge said, it is harmful what he was doing because of the hatred of women, the violence against them that he was talking about. I think he needed help. And I think he should have been stopped and he should have been given help. Should he have been put in prison? I don't know. That is a thought. I think I'm have found him guilty. And knowing that he was going to serve a custodial sentence, when you look at it like subjectively from the outside, I feel like

I don't know, but I don't think it's okay what he was doing. I'm not just going to be like, oh yeah, you can chat whatever you want. Like that is a man who is not like, that's not chill, probably. So there you have it. Closing word, not chill, probably. We've come so far. A hundredth episode where absolutely nobody died. So you're welcome. You are welcome. But people are going to die. Unfortunately. We're all going to die. At the live show. Not like people at the live show, but there will be talk of people who have been horribly, horribly murdered. Sound like we're going to gas everyone. Yeah, I know. I don't really know where I'm going with this. I'm not really feeling very well.

But what I would say is that if you don't know the Edmund Kemper story, let's just say he cuts off his mother's head and keeps it around for oral sex. That's all you need to know. So go buy your tickets. Don't read about it. We'll tell you about it in September.

Buy your tickets. And we'll see you next week, where hopefully they'll have all sold out. Exactly. Bye, guys. Bye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media.

To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness,

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