What to Know
- An NYPD officer was arrested after she tried to have a hitman hired to kill her ex-husband as well as a child, prosecutors say.
- Valerie Cincinelli appeared in federal court Friday, where she was ordered held without bail
- A source familiar with the investigation tells NBC 4 New York the child was her current boyfriend's 14-year-old daughter
The estranged husband of an NYPD officer accused of trying to hire a hit man to take him out along with a 14-year-old girl says he found out about the alleged plot from federal authorities who told him to fake his own death.
Isaiah Carvalho Jr. said in a Wednesday interview on "Good Morning America" that authorities had him sit in his car and hunch over into the passenger seat, making it look as if he were dead. They also put glass on the floor and all over him, Carvalho said.
Investigators posing as a hit man then texted a picture of the supposed crime scene to Carvalho's wife, Valerie Cincinelli, a 12-year NYPD veteran arrested last week on federal murder-for-hire charges. Carvalho described the whole experience as "absolutely insane."
Cincinelli, 34, was taken into custody Friday by the FBI following the sting operation Carvalho described. NYPD Internal Affairs assisted in her arrest.
A source familiar with the investigation tells NBC 4 New York the child she allegedly wanted dead is her current boyfriend's 14-year-old daughter.
Cincinelli's father spoke out late the night of her arrest, defending his daughter and saying he didn't believe she did what authorities allege.
"I haven't seen anything, and until I do I really shouldn't be saying anything," Lou Cincinelli said at his Long Island home. "But I guarantee you my daughter is innocent of this."
Cincinelli previously worked out of the 106th Precinct in Queens, before being placed on modified duty in 2017 for an unrelated domestic incident, the police official said. Before that though, she was an award-winning officer, including a "cop of the month" award from the Jamaica Rotary in June 2017.
Cincinelli, who joined the NYPD in 2007, was most recently in a unit known as VIPER that monitored security cameras.