An FBI agent says a NYPD officer accused in a cannibalism plot talked about another NYPD officer as a potential target.
The testimony came amid a report that a man considered a co-conspirator of Officer Gilberto Valle — identified in the U.S. case by the online name "Moody Blues" — had been detained on separate charges in Great Britain.
Returning to the witness stand at Valle's federal trial in Manhattan, FBI agent Corey Walsh told jurors that a search of Valle's computer had turned up a file with multiple photos of a woman the agent identified as an NYPD officer who supervised Valle. The government had previously introduced a transcript of an email exchange in February 2012 in which Valle offered a co-conspirator a menu of women he could abduct for rape and torture.
"The second girl listed is a cop — Evelyn, 33 years old," Valle wrote.
"No I want a reg girl," the man responded.
The revelation came as the defense sought to discredit allegations that the 28-year-old Valle conspired with Internet friends to kidnap, kill and eat women, pressing agent Walsh on why some communications were proof of a crime while others were deemed fantasies.
Defense attorney Robert Baum directed Walsh to obvious falsehoods in communications that the government has used as evidence Valle was an actual threat. In one, Moody Blues insisted he and Valle would need a secluded place to cook a woman alive.
"I have a place on the mountains," Valle wrote. "Nobody's around for three quarters of a mile."
Asked if that was true, Walsh testified that authorities "are not aware of a place he had in the mountains."
Valle has been held without bail since October, when he was arrested on charges of conspiring to kidnap women in a cannibalism plot born on the Internet. Throughout the trial that began Monday, Valle's lawyers have attacked government evidence as nothing more than the reflection of a man engaging in extreme sexual fantasies with like-minded people around the world. The government has conceded that Valle never met the purported Internet co-conspirators and no women were harmed.
Jurors have heard testimony from Valle's estranged wife, and from former classmates and other women who testified they knew Valle on a casual basis and never considered dangerous. Their testimony was followed by evidence that all of them were the subject of emails and chats describing how they could be snatched away and eaten.
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Prosecutors allege Valle's cyber co-conspirator Moody Blues told the officer he had killed and eaten at least two women in the past. The New York Post reported Thursday that two men had been arrested in a child porn case in Britain, and that one was Moody Blues.
When asked Thursday whether there had been any arrests related to Valle prosecution in New York, local police in the southern England county of Kent said they had briefly detained two men from the area around Canterbury, the famous cathedral city about 60 miles southeast of London.
Kent Police identified the men only as a 57-year-old and 30-year-old, saying that they had been arrested a week ago on suspicion of conspiracy, child grooming, and possession of child abuse images. The force said in a statement that the men have since been released on bail.
The statement said Kent police had "been in contact with U.S. law enforcement agencies in relation to this investigation" but did not go into any further detail.
An FBI spokesman in New York declined comment.
