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( music playing )
( computer chimes )
Man: When you're behind a computer screen late at night,
no one knows who you are,
where you are.
I became part of this cyber community
where people are exploring deviant thoughts
and exploring their fetishes.
I'm not the only one out there with these thoughts.
They were accepted.
The anonymity makes you
try and outdo the other person--
who could be the sicker one,
who could be the more depraved one.
The baby was sleeping, the mom was sleeping,
there was just nothing to do.
And you shut the computer off and that's it...
I go back to being the regular me.
But someone might say the anonymous nature
could also bring out who you really are.
In my worst nightmare,
I could never have guessed that this would've happened.
Reporter: Breaking news, an almost unbelievable story.
A New York City police officer has been arrested
in a failed plot to kidnap dozens of women,
cook them, and then eat them.
Reporter #2: Gilberto Valle has become known as the "Cannibal Cop."
The 28-year-old's wife uncovered the alleged plot.
Reporter #3: Charged in a conspiracy to commit kidnapping,
and allegedly used NYPD computers
to get information on a list of victims.
Reporter #4: Defense lawyers did not deny his online activity
but called it a sexual fantasy
that he would never act on.
Woman: These are thoughts, very ugly thoughts,
but we don't prosecute people for their thoughts.
Reporter: It comes down to this.
Is this guy just fantasizing,
or is there enough evidence to suggest
he was really planning to do this?
Man: There's nothing we like better than,
at least in fiction, a killer.
You know, the worst, meanest, baddest,
roughest, toughest, serial killer in the world--
let's get inside their heart and mind
and figure out exactly what they're about.
And there are story archetypes
that we all sort of adhere to.
Gil, as the Cannibal Cop, was typed as well,
whether it was the monster of the week
or as this week's Hannibal Lecter,
or as a master criminal,
or as a vicious beast who needed to be controlled.
Not only was this someone
who seemed to have been planning
to abduct and eat his wife and other women,
but the idea of him wandering around with a badge
was something so devious that it was unbelievable.
Shocked.
But then when it actually made it to trial,
there were two sides to this story.
And when the defense stood up and said
this is a thought police case,
then suddenly it got even more theatrical
and more interesting.
It was the best that true crime has to offer,
because it was about a crazy side of human behavior
that we don't get to see,
and that's what was happening in real life here.
( music playing )
Woman: Papa! Come here, look!
Woman: Audio's good?
Man: Just give me a check one, check two.
Check one, check two.
- Woman: Ready to go? - Mm-hmm.
There were lot of myths about what was going on here.
You get a picture painted in your head,
you get a story.
And you just start,
once you have that initial concept,
once you have that preconceived notion,
you start to seek out pieces of information
that go with that, that jibe with it,
and you disregard things that go against that.
You know, I want everyone
to have all the facts in front of them
before they make up their minds for themselves.
I grew up in Queens, New York.
My parents separated at an early age.
Oh, wow!
Mom was more soft love.
You know, she was there for emotional support.
Dad would be the one to kick you in the butt.
He was very, you know, strict,
and we didn't want to disappoint my dad.
Reporter: Valle's arrest comes after the FBI obtained
detailed accounts of the barbaric plans.
The government says Valle made his sick plans
in online chat rooms.
His father, in disbelief.
- Of course, I'm shocked. - Is it possible?
I don't think so.
Gil Valle, Sr.: As a parent, now that all this has happened,
a lot of different things come into the mind.
Is he crazy?
You know, all this stuff coming together.
What is he? Is he crazy?
Woman: How did you feel when you heard
the first allegations about cannibalism and kidnapping?
I couldn't believe it. I said, "That's not my son."
I'm, like, "There's gotta be a mistake. That's not my son."
Gileto, mama kiss.
Gileto kiss. Gileto kiss.
The first time I actually heard these Internet chats...
that's when I noticed,
I'm like, "Okay, my son did have a problem."
For the good boy that I know
to be discussing women in such a way,
it was just horrible.
But if anything, he needed help.
See a psychiatrist. See a therapist.
I mean, I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong,
but you know, some people choose
to let out their frustrations by going to the gym,
punching a punching bag.
That might work for them.
For some it might be
getting on a site like this
and fantasizing, you know,
thoughts of...
horrible thoughts like that.
Well, he created a monster.
He's a good writer.
I mean, how could anybody believe
that one person is gonna kidnap a hundred women
and cook and eat a hundred women.
Which one was in the trunk of his car?
Which one was in the spit over the fire?
Which one was in the oven?
Man: The fact that he's sitting there
in his apartment
while his wife and baby are asleep in the next room,
and he's talking about,
you know, slitting her throat,
and the fact that he's going around in his police uniform
all contribute to a sense of dread around it.
But was he involved in the planning of a real crime?
And at what point is it appropriate to step in?
There was no real-world attempt.
But when they went through his computer,
they found 24 sets of conversations.
In 21 of them people said, "Hey, is this for real?"
And Gil Valle said, "No, this is a fantasy.
No matter what I say, it's all make believe."
But in three, he never said that.
In fact, there were some moments in those chats
where one of the participants would say,
"Hey are you for real?"
And Gil Valle would say, yes, he was.
That could seem like evidence
that this was a real conspiracy.
We do not have thought crime in this country.
We do not prosecute people for what they think.
It is permissible to have all of the thoughts
from a criminal law enforcement point of view
that Gilberto Valle had.
What's impermissible is planning with another person
to execute on those thoughts.
Two charges had been brought against him,
conspiracy to kidnap,
as well as an unauthorized use of a law enforcement database
in order to gain some information about one of the victims.
Man: Conspiracy is the prosecutor's favorite instrument.
In order to be convicted of an attempt,
you have to not only intend to do it,
but you have to go beyond preparation
and cross a line that suggests that you're gonna do it
unless something stops you.
Conspiracy allows you to move that line back.
If two people just talk about doing something terrible
and agree to do it,
and then take one overt act,
they can be prosecuted and put in jail
for the rest of their lives.
Woman: The overt act doesn't have to be a crime itself.
You know, it's not like you say "Let's go rob a bank,"
and the overt act then is you steal a car
to be a getaway car.
It could be something that is entirely lawful otherwise,
it just might have special meaning here.
DeMarco: The defendant talked about
disabling his victims using chloroform.
He then searched "how to make chloroform".
The defendants talked about stalking their victims,
and in fact there was a search
of a proprietary law enforcement-only database
as to where one of the victims lived.
This is not a simple case
of where you're going after somebody
just who thought some evil thoughts.
He took lots of steps in the direction
of possibly doing terrible things.
Engber: He traveled to Maryland
to visit one of the alleged intended victims.
This target of his supposed plot
was his college friend.
If you think this is a dangerous, dangerous man,
then everything that he did in real life
takes on this really ominous color to it.
This trip to Maryland with his wife and baby
could seem like a recon mission
for a murderous kidnapping plot.
If he in fact was planning
to kill somebody specifically,
then all of these would be overt acts
within any meaning of the law.
The question is what was in his mind?
And I'm not sure he knew.
Reporter : Opening statements today
in the trial of the Cannibal Cop.
Reporter #2: In the words of both the prosecution
and defense attorneys,
this is going to be a bizarre trial.
Woman: I don't get to draw nudes very often.
I usually see people sitting in a chair
looking straight ahead at a judge.
But I got to do people on spits,
women being cooked and roasted,
and visuals of Dark Fetish Net.
If you pull in, you could see little naked bodies.
It's pretty amazing.
I've never really seen anything like that in a trial.
Man: There were reporters there
from all over the country.
We'd heard a lot about this case,
but now all of it was being laid out
in front of us for the first time.
There were three alleged co-conspirators.
Michael Van Hise,
somebody in Pakistan known as AliKhan,
and a man in England known as Moody Blues.
He had this plan written out for how to kidnap women.
He was planning on building a pulley apparatus
in his basement to string women up
and torture them and slow roast them.
Says he had a giant oven
that he planned on stuffing these women into.
It all sounded crazy, but potentially true.
Woman: We had a tome of the chats copied for us.
And we were in the position to determine
how much of it was real
and how much of it was fantasy.
I think we all agreed, this man has a problem.
This is sick. This is really quite sick.
But we weren't there to convict on his sick mind.
We were there to convict on a conspiracy to kidnap,
and kill, and maim, and rape.
What made it very real
was that he took pictures
from real people in his life
and shared them on these sites.
And that, for me, takes it past fantasy.
He had what was called a blueprint,
and he had made a list of what he needed.
He had the ability to retrieve all these materials.
That made it very real to us
that any one of these women
could have been a true victim of his.
Gregorian: Alisa Friscia early on
became major figure in the case.
Investigators said Gil had been stalking her.
Kolker: When Gil starts talking money
with Michael Van Hise,
that shift in tone is chilling.
He's suddenly very, you know, grisly and mechanical,
and let's talk turkey,
here's how we're gonna get it done.
And that feels like things are starting to get more real.
These fantasies were really, really scary.
And the level of detail that Gil talked about
and that other people talked about on the Internet
was also really, really scary.
The reality, of course--
coming back to reality--
is that none of the things
that they said ever came to pass.
They often missed dates.
"They said, "Okay, I'll call you on Tuesday,
and we'll do something then."
And then nothing happens on Tuesday.
Nothing happens for three Tuesdays.
And then nothing ever happens at all.
These are fantasies.
Gregorian: There was no giant oven
that could fit somebody inside of it.
There was no pulley apparatus being set up in the basement.
In fact, the basement was a laundry room
for everyone in his Queens apartment building to use,
and wouldn't be a very good torture chamber.
Let's put it this way,
if this was done on Craigslist,
you would know you were being scammed.
He didn't have any of the things you would need
according to his own blueprints and plans on how to do this.
He made up false information.
It wouldn't be effective.
Valle: You read about the case,
you read about these chats, and you're horrified.
You're turned off. You want to step away.
And you're just like, "This guy is a monster."
You know, whatever.
Yeah, this is depraved language
and unconventional thoughts,
but there's no evidence.
Reporter: Shock in the courtroom.
Guilty of conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
Also guilty of wrongfully accessing a federal database.
Liz Valle: I almost froze in time.
And all I kept hearing was,
"Guilty, guilty, guilty."
For me to see him in shackles,
it's heartbreaking.
But, you know, through all this
I haven't cried until now.
And I feel like I want to scream.
I never let it out.
He's not a cannibal.
He never ate anyone.
Isn't that the true definition of a cannibal,
is someone that eats human meat?
Reporter: How are you doing?
Out of all due respect, how are you doing?
Look at me.
I'm strong.
Valle: I went back to the prison,
and that's when I broke down.
I didn't want to do it in front of my family,
but I broke down.
I hear a couple law officer stalking outside.
One of them comes in says, "Valle got convicted."
And another one says, "Get the fuck out.
I thought that guy was going home."
Obviously the case involved thoughts that were unusual
and bizarre and frankly very ugly.
And I--
we think that the jury just couldn't get past that.
Gatto: The conviction was devastating
to everyone on the defense team.
You're representing a human being
whose liberty is on the line,
and when you lose,
you lost it for this human being.
I just think the jury
didn't want to have the "What if?" moment.
Sure, he didn't act in the real world.
Sure, this was all in cyberspace.
But what if?
We were always worried
that thought would prevail
over an objective, rational,
non-emotional view of the evidence.
People can be prosecuted
for their thoughts and convicted,
which is even sadder to think about.
Recording: This call is from a federal prison.
Valle on phone: At this point,
I'm pretty depressed every day.
Everyone thinks I'm facing sentencing.
You know, technically, I'm not yet.
I'm still waiting to hear from the judge.
They keep saying a couple weeks more,
and then it gets pushed back,
and it gets pushed back again, and again, and again.
Julia emailed me and she said
she doesn't think it's gonna be good.
The Cannibal Cop case
really raises the big question,
what is the line between thought and action?
Right? Between fantasy and crime.
And it's so gray.
In a case where there's no victim,
there's no harm,
was there enough evidence to show
there had been an overt act?
Engber: The government was saying
that all of his Google searches were overt acts
in furtherance of a conspiracy.
Gil at some point is thinking about eating people
and he starts typing,
"How do you abduct a girl."
He starts doing research into chloroform
and baking pans
and knives for cutting people up.
But the idea that a Google search
would constitute an overt act,
I think, is dangerous.
That's where you get into thought crime.
Kolker: When we think about thought crime,
we think about, you know, George Orwell and "1984",
you think about the thought police.
You think about being put away
simply because of something that's in your head.
Thought crime in the modern age,
in the post George Orwell age,
becomes more of a question of technology
and its power to see what's on our minds
much more often than it used to be able to.
Woman: It's possible for the Internet
to know more about you than your best friend does,
than your family members do,
because what you type in the Google search box
is often a very, very private thing.
Things you wouldn't even tell your friends and family.
Engber: His wife is typing in things like,
"My husband doesn't love me."
It's very sad to see,
but I think it shows that Google searching
is just an extension
of the thoughts we have in our heads.
Sometimes we're sitting at our computer alone
and we just type them in.
Kolker: A lot of the searches that Gil was doing
are as open to interpretation as those chats are.
And one of the cases made by the defense
was that this was storytelling.
That the Dark Fetish Network
was some sort of communitarian storytelling exercise.
The same way that the prosecution is arguing
that the chats are a window into Gil's thoughts,
we can also look at literature
as a window into the author's thoughts.
Someone like Stephen King
can write any number of disturbing things
about human behavior,
and nobody's putting him in jail.
Why is it that we're fascinated
by stories about violence?
If you read, if you view movies,
our stories move us immediately into a safe space
where we can imagine the worst thing possible,
our darkest side.
Man: All these violent stories go back to
what our most basic primal feelings are.
We have propensity for violence.
We have propensity for all sorts of horrible acts.
But if you can act on those urges in stories,
then you don't act on them in real life... in theory.
Tatar: The Cannibal Cop case worries me because
we're entering a new era,
and it's almost uncharted territory.
It's always been fairly easy
for us to draw a line between fantasy and reality.
I mean, there are the stories and images,
and then there's what happens in real life.
Well, we are in the postmodern era,
where these boundaries are becoming
more and more difficult to draw.
Murphy: It's a daunting prospect to think
that everything we do on the Internet
is in fact a window
into our true authentic selves.
It's more that the Internet invites us
to be both who we are and who we are not.
The fear that a space for open trading of fantasy
becomes instead a policed zone in which, you know,
your thoughts may signal your future action
is a real one.
If we don't protect that space,
I think we'll find ourselves in a much different society
than the one that many of us thought we signed up for.
Anybody should be allowed to write a dirty story on the Internet,
or have a dirty fantasy,
even if it's gruesome and tasteless
and not something you would necessarily
want to talk to your mum about over dinner.
That's fine.
It stops being fine
when other real people are involved.
That this guy used police databases to track down women,
and he used his privileges
as an officer of the law to do that,
oh, it just sends a shiver down my spine.
I just can't-- I just can't even.
It's an extraordinary breach of trust
between the police as an entity
and the public at large.
It wasn't just thought crime.
It was real crime.
The idea that everything that happens
on the Internet is fantasy
and it's not really real is dangerous.
It's just another way of not wanting to confront the fact
that these evil thoughts and behaviors exist
within human beings.
It's not a product of technology
or possession by the devil
or any kind of outside force.
It comes from us. The darkness comes from us.
Look what I still have-- his police uniform.
I don't know why I kept it.
Well, we're not going to wear that.
Certainly not.
This doesn't-- Oh, do I have to iron now?
Oh, God.
I'm so nervous.
The judge is making a decision today.
I called my family. I called my closest friends.
I'm like, "Pray for me. Pray for me."
Because if there's going to be bad news,
I've been holding up all this time, Erin.
I've been holding up and I've been strong,
but if I were to get bad news,
"I think that would be the end of me."
I just want to give him a really big hug,
that nobody tells me,
"Ma'am, ma'am, you got to leave."
You know? I just want to hold onto him.
I hope he doesn't have to spend
one more night in that cell.
Julia did say that, you know,
if the news is bad,
we still have other options.
And what I said to her is, like,
"Well, in the meantime,
my son is sitting in jail."
Another year? Another two years? How much longer?
It's going to be a media frenzy,
but I'm not talking to anyone.
Reporter: Can you tell us what you know
is going to happen this morning?
No.
Watch the steps, please.
Gil Valle, Sr.: I want to see him not be a felon.
I want to see him be acquitted.
He didn't commit any crimes.
Valle: I'd like to make a very, very brief statement.
I want to take this opportunity to apologize
to everyone who has been hurt, shocked,
and offended by my infantile actions.
I also want to thank my family.
From day one, their support never wavered.
I've needed that more than you--
anyone will ever know during this impossible situation.
Forgive me, I'm tired.
I want to go home and spend some time with my family.
Thank you very much.
Reporter: After 17 months in jail,
do you feel that justice has been done?
Cohen: Granting a judgment of acquittal
on sufficiency of evidence grounds,
which is what the judge granted,
is very, very unusual.
And it was front page news.
And an acquittal means what?
It means you're not guilty. Okay?
Doesn't mean that you're innocent.
One could interpret at least some of the things Gil did
as something that wasn't completely consistent with innocence.
It could be considered an overt act
when he went to the police database looking for targets.
How are you gonna feel if you let him off
and he goes out and eats somebody?
Valle: Those people have been there since 7 this morning.
Even though I'm acquitted, I'm in home confinement.
You know, I haven't really gotten the cabin fever yet,
but, yeah, I mean, a day like today,
I'd love to be outside, obviously.
Liz Valle: Last night, I'm home, and my son is here,
and I thought I was dreaming.
I couldn't believe it.
Until this morning when he's like,
"Ma, I need underwear.
Ma, I need this. Ma, I need that."
- I didn't know where anything was. - My boy is home!
Everything got packed up from my apartment.
- I wasn't there. - He doesn't know where anything is.
There we go.
Nobody's alarmed that I have a fork in my hand
with people around? Everyone's good?
- All right - Be careful.
- You gotta laugh about it. - Of course.
He's a danger to society.
The victims are in danger.
Valle: I read the ruling late last night.
I mean, the judge just slammed them.
Somewhere in the page 80s
there's like five straight paragraphs
where he ends all of them with, uh,
this can only make sense as a fantasy role-play.
It means-- it makes no sense
whatsoever in a real conspiracy.
He ends, like, five straight paragraphs like that.
- All right. - Bye, Julia. Thank you.
Bye, everyone. Thanks, take care.
Liz: Does this come off? Or we have to wait
- I don't know. - for the government's appeal?
No, we have to wait for the appeal.
Oh.
That could be-- that could be months.
Mm-hmm.
Valle: This is something that was private, anonymous,
it was a little bit of a skeleton in my closet,
and now here, everything-- this massive skeleton is out.
It's the epitome of embarrassment to sit in that trial
and have all these emails and chats read.
I mean, it was like, "Did I-- how the hell
did I come up with something like that?"
It was...
It was-- it was bad.
I really don't know how I came across it at first.
But, um...
it was there, I tried it out...
and people thought I was pretty good.
People accepted it, you know?
I mean, yeah, I had a stressful job,
but uh, I don't know how much that played into all that.
You know, I could've gone out and got drunk.
I could've stayed up and watched TV.
So I don't know if that had to do with a lot of it.
Woman: Sexual fetishism
is where our id comes out to play sexually.
An item, a predicament,
a mood triggers an arousal
that is much greater than a simple bodily arousal.
It's really difficult to understand
why someone would be interested
in something like that.
Man: A lot of people have asked the question,
"Where does this come from?"
because they think that something went wrong.
Some abuse, some trauma, bad parenting,
many things have been blamed.
Woman: Gileto fell down.
Because we don't know clearly where things come from,
there's a lot of room for interpretation,
and there's a lot of room for judgment,
and a lot of room for saying things like,
"They chose this.
This is something that they could un-choose."
But we don't choose what we're aroused by.
- ( man growls ) - ( laughing )
- ( growls ) - ( laughing )
Man: We live in a very Victorian,
puritanical culture when it comes to sexuality.
The overt part of our culture
sexually is very open.
We exploit it, we talk about it,
we model it, we advertise with it.
It's in our music. It's in our art.
It's in our television. It's in our movies.
But covertly, I think people are pretty uncomfortable
with their own sexuality.
And when you juxtapose that schism
between overt expression and covert inhibition,
I think that's what creates sexual pathology,
and sexual problems,
and sexually-compulsive behavior.
Woman: Did Gil ever ask you questions
about sex growing up?
Not really.
When he went to college,
I got him a box of Trojans, you know?
I said, "Be careful. Don't use them all at once."
I don't know. Something like that.
But he just laughed and took them.
Blue: It sounds to me
like he was raised in an atmosphere
where people didn't really talk about sex
and anything that fell outside
of what was considered acceptable
was horrifying, shameful,
and something's wrong with me and I'm broken.
Liz: I thought about what led him to get on these sites,
and I wonder if it had anything to do with our divorce.
Woman: Why did you guys decide to get divorced?
I really don't want to get into that.
Valle: I was very young,
so I didn't really understand what was going on.
My memories of them
involve a lot of arguments, unfortunately.
Weren't many happy times.
Liz: His dad was very possessive,
controlling, and verbally abusive.
I didn't want my son to grow up thinking
that that's how you treat a woman.
I mean is he going to talk about it?
Is he going to admit that,
"Yes, that's what made me do it?"
Or "The devil made me do it?"
No. Just kidding.
Valle: People try to explain why this happened,
I try and explain it, and it's tough sometimes.
I guess the most important thing I got out of these chats,
if there's anything I got out of it all was just acceptance.
This is the first time I'm really opening up
about all kinds of freaky stuff.
You know, cannibalism and bondage.
All these years it's all bottled up
and here I had my chance
to finally talk to somebody about it.
It was such a relief to get it off my chest.
When you're typing it,
you don't really think about it.
You're just sort of in the moment.
But as soon as the computer went off, it's over.
You know, I'm the person who I am.
I'm incapable of any violence.
I couldn't hurt a fly.
Kolker: Something that the defense really has to reckon with
is even if he's innocent of planning a kidnapping,
he's still admittedly very interested in kidnapping.
He's on the record talking about it all the time.
He can't get it out of his mind.
How do you prove that he would never do this in the future?
In the ramp-up to the trial,
they were concerned that this might break down
into a he said, she said kind of case,
where the defense would say, "He's harmless."
And the prosecution would say, "He's harmful."
And what they really wanted was the voice of God
to come down from on high and say,
"I've looked at the guy
and he's as nice as you and me."
And that's what they got with Park Dietz.
He is a titan in the field.
He's interviewed John Hinckley, Jr.,
He's interviewed Joel Rifkin.
He's interviewed Andrea Yates.
And almost without exception, he works for the prosecution.
That he would draw the conclusion he drew,
which is that this guy's as safe as you and me.
That's a huge deal.
But then, when the trial actually happened,
they decided not to bring him on the stand.
Man: Were Dr. Dietz to have actually testified
that deviant sexual fantasy doesn't relate at all
to those who sadistically rape
and who sadistically murder,
he would've been slaughtered on cross-examination.
Dr. Dietz himself has written about how people
with sexually violent intentions--
not just fantasies, but offenders to-be,
may seek out law enforcement positions
because of their ability to more easily access prey.
But the defense suggests that Officer Valle
was indulging in these cannibalistic chats and websites
because he was coping?
So let me get this right.
This kind of behavior is coping?
You show me one sex offender treatment program
that tells people go on the Internet
and cope with your deviant sexual arousal
by just engaging with chats about cannibalism, people.
Just-- boy, what a therapeutic remedy.
Woman: A psychiatrist that was retained by the defense
said that looking at these websites
was a way to cope with those urges.
In your experience have you heard of anything like this?
Uh, no.
I have not heard of anything like that.
I don't know that I would say
that looking at those websites
is a way to cope with or manage those urges.
I would personally not prescribe
that to a patient and say,
"Well, if you're having these violent fantasies,
just look at websites online
and that'll help quell those thoughts and urges."
In fact, I would wonder whether it would excite those urges.
If you exercise certain neural-pathways,
what happens is there's a certain reward circuitry
that gets activated in the brain,
and when you reach a certain threshold,
it becomes a habitual or compulsive pattern.
And the pathways to the prefrontal cortex
that are responsible for judgment and reasoning
and making good decisions shut down simultaneously.
So you have a combination of elevated,
pleasurable stimuli in the brain
with poor judgment,
and that's kind of a perfect storm for problems.
What is the capacity of people
who are otherwise strangers,
just connected by chat room or Internet connection,
to influence someone into crime from fantasy?
Some fantasies remain fantasies.
Some fantasies graduate.
The website or the chat or the activity
is no longer interesting to them in the same way.
But acting on it would be.
Greenfield: The connection between fantasy online
and subsequent acting out is impossible to predict.
You can't just assume that fantasy means
that they will enact a behavior,
but you can't also assume that they will not.
And I will be the first to tell you,
in psychology and psychiatry,
we are not good at predicting violent behavior.
Valle: "The highly unusual facts of this case
reflect the Internet age in which we live.
Valle had discussed kidnapping, torturing, raping,
murdering, cannibalizing women with 24 individuals.
At trial, the government conceded
that 21 of these communications
are nothing more than fantasy role-play.
The government nonetheless contends
that Valle's communications with Van Hise, AliKhan,
and Moody Blues reflect a real kidnapping conspiracy.
Because the government did not offer sufficient evidence
to permit a reasonable juror to distinguish between
Valle's alleged real chats and his conceived fantasy chats,
"the jury's verdict on count one cannot stand."
I like when he says-- when he ends with that.
The jury's verdict cannot stand. Must not stand.
I just hope the government doesn't appeal this
and this is officially over, you know?
Right now we have that looming over our heads.
Until this thing comes off, it's not over.
You know?
Go to the beach. Right?
Make my cross-country trip.
Yeah, those'll be good times when it happens.
Man: Gil. Gil.
Okay.
Dada, dada.
Welner: Perhaps the most significant aspect of this story
is that Valle's sexuality was hidden.
If one has to wall off an entire aspect
of what turns them on,
then one has a fundamentally dishonest relationship
with their partner.
And when you have a dishonest relationship with your partner,
you may be able to maintain appearances,
but the story is never going to end well.
Kathleen Valle: He always said that because he got home late
he couldn't go right to sleep,
so he would play video games, watch TV,
go on the Internet for a couple of hours.
Then after I got pregnant, it kept getting worse.
He would stay up until 3, 4, 5 in the morning
or just not come to sleep in our bed.
And then all this really weird stuff started happening.
She had installed spyware on the computer,
and, you know, she found the chats,
everything that this case is about.
She found it all.
Kathleen: It logged every keystroke
that is made on the computer,
and every website that is visited,
and takes pictures every five minutes or so
of whatever's happening on the computer screen.
There were all of these websites that I'd never seen.
Dark Fetish Net, Sexy Amazons,
Dark Fet, Motherless, Fet Life.
I mean, I know S&M is kind of popular,
like "50 Shades of Grey", you know?
But this seemed different.
The girl on the front page was dead.
I noticed on one of the screen pictures that was taken
an email address that I didn't know about.
So I went to Yahoo! Mail
and entered the password that Gil had told me
to use for everything.
All of a sudden I was staring at pictures of my friends.
Pictures of people we knew.
There were thousands.
She confronted me that morning
and left with the baby.
I didn't really know what she was planning on doing
or how long she was planning on staying.
We did stay in touch throughout.
Welner: Partners may question themselves and say,
"Well, why didn't I see this before?"
But we've had an unexpected proximity
to a side that he doesn't show to others,
wouldn't even show to his wife.
Kathleen: I was going to be tied up by my feet,
and my throat slit.
They would have fun watching the blood gush out of me.
Over and over again, just kept saying that
the suffering was for his enjoyment.
That he wanted to make it last as long as possible.
That he had no remorse.
Valle: It was tough to listen to her,
you know, talk about our relationship.
We were together for three years,
I thought they were three wonderful years.
Yeah, I would do this at night,
but it didn't affect my personal life at all.
It didn't affect my job. It didn't affect my family.
Um...
I was still the good husband.
I was still the good father.
I was still doing great at work.
Welner: It's hard to say what to do
with the input of a law enforcement officer
who's an accused sex offender.
Every person charged with crime will deny,
rationalize, and distort facts and details,
in order to make his behavior acceptable.
"I'm doing this on the Internet,
but you know I'm doing it
because my wife is sleeping with our newborn."
"Oh, I get it. "
"He gets it."
As far as sleeping,
I started talking to this guy from England.
So, it was as simple and banal as that--
the time difference.
So I would start chatting with him.
Over there it's 8 in the morning.
Over here it's 2:00.
Normally, I'd be done by then,
but now I'm playing a game with this guy,
and, you know, so I'd stay up a little later.
And that's all it was.
Valle: Isn't that amazing? And it's the truth?
The day she puts the spyware on is the day I--
I'm like, I'm moving on from this.
Because like I said before,
um, it was starting to affect my family life
in that I was staying up later.
And I didn't want--
I always said once it starts--
if it ever affects my family,
"it's got to go."
So it had to go.
And that day-- if I'd done it a day sooner,
none of this would've happened.
Isn't that incredible?
I told that to my lawyers and Dietz, and, you know,
I'm not making that up.
That's the God-honest truth, on my daughter's life.
I went on that day to delete everything.
It's almost like there's a higher power
who said that this had to happen,
and maybe one day we'll know why.
You know, I honestly don't know about this guy.
I mean, this guy--
I mean, I think the fact
that they got him off on that defense
is pretty lucky for him.
It's pretty unusual
to have that kind of level
of violent thought and fantasy
and to get off on the defense--
I would not be shocked if he ends up back in jail.
It disturbs me that Mr. Valle is out.
You know, do I worry for harm?
Not really. Um...
But, you know, he's a disturbed man.
We as the jury were confident
that from what we had, what we were given,
we made the best decision we could.
And when it was overturned by the judge,
I felt betrayed.
It was a very difficult decision.
We were not in agreement from the very beginning.
Some felt more strongly that he was guilty.
Others needed much more proof.
Ultimately, the weight of it
was that this decision
was going to ruin this man's life.
When the trial ended
and the judge read the charges,
before we even talked about anything,
we wanted everyone to understand what the charges were,
and what needed to be satisfied in order to convict.
Illegal use of his police database--
the entire jury agreed
that he was guilty immediately.
And it was just the conspiracy charge
that we really needed to take our time with.
We dissected the chats
that he had with various people.
And this particular line of chats
with Moody Blues
was very different from the others.
We collectively as a jury felt the tone had changed.
We read them over and over and over again.
And even the people reading them had to stop at some point
because it-- we just couldn't take it.
It was very, very hard.
He was taking the steps
to take it to that next level...
to make his fantasy become real.
How long does one wait till one goes through with it?
The trip to Maryland was planned to meet this college friend,
and he was bringing his wife and his daughter along on this trip.
The defense maintained that this was just a trip to visit a friend.
But his chats with Moody Blues
indicated that he couldn't wait to go see her,
that he couldn't wait to think about what he was going to do to her,
and also find out where she worked,
and get some more background information.
It was proven that he did drive by her office,
because he had texted to her about, "Was that your building?"
Apparently the building has some significance on this road.
He did meet her for brunch with his wife and his daughter.
And all seemed normal,
just friends getting together and talking,
and her meeting his wife and his daughter.
A normal person in real life comes back from a road trip,
they've been driving,
they've been with their family and their baby,
and they come home, and they unpack,
and they relax,
and they figure out what they're gonna do for dinner.
Based on the timeline,
this man went straight to his computer
and straight to his friend to chat,
almost like he was reporting in.
And you could tell he was excited about it.
The fact that he came back from this trip
and one of first things he did was write to Moody Blues
was enough to say that he had made this trip,
he had a purpose for this trip,
he satisfied that purpose,
and he shared it with his conspirator.
And that, I think, ultimately led to his downfall.
You know, we sort of expected this.
I mean, we felt good, maybe they wouldn't,
but this just buys them more time.
Liz: That looks delish.
You know, I gave myself a couple hours just to be down,
but, you know, if I'm down they win.
So I don't want to let them win.
I don't want to let them win anything, you know?
Even in jail, I said that all the time.
Like, if I'm down, the government's winning.
Oh, that's a lot.
- Okay. - I always overdo things.
I guess Mom can get used to having me at home.
I can get used to this. Real quick.
( laughs )
I'm gonna be stuck in here for how many more months?
You know, I was looking at possibly going out this weekend.
I mean, I thought it was over, and it's not over.
It doesn't mean they're gonna go through with it, don't forget.
They're smart people. They have to know I'm innocent.
They have to know there's no evidence.
They have to know they screwed up.
Maybe they're thinking, "How would it look if we just dropped it?"
In a sense they had to go through with this just to save face.
You know, what are they gonna do,
B.S. the court of appeals now in paperwork?
They can B.S. a jury. They can't B.S. judges.
Dershowitz: My father always taught me to defend the underdog.
And the underdog's always the person who is on trial
with all the resources of the state,
the police, the prosecution,
being used against that person.
I think juries have often been unwilling
to apply the presumption of innocence.
When I have a jury, the first question I ask is,
"If the evidence shows that the defendant probably did it,
will you convict?"
And many of the jurors say, "Of course, we will."
I say, "Strike that juror."
"Probably" isn't enough.
You have to be willing to free somebody
who will probably do something bad
and who has probably done something bad.
"Probably" just isn't enough.
Better 10 guilty go free
than one innocent be wrongly confined.
We just can't allow our system
to begin to err on the side
of putting people in jail
if they might not commit crimes.
Valle: They said that the line between fantasy
and reality crossed
when he had lunch with the girl in Maryland.
So that makes it seem like, shit,
when Gil had the lunch with this girl,
you know, maybe he was thinking about something.
As far as coinciding with the chat,
I knew, like, yeah, I had the chat,
but, you know,
I was with my wife and daughter,
nothing ever happened at the brunch.
They made the whole weekend out to be a surveillance episode.
I went down Friday night.
I'd seen-- I saw five people that weekend.
We did things, Kathleen, as a family down in Maryland,
and the whole weekend was about surveillance.
I mean, it's just...
Right.
Kolker: When the prosecution makes a big deal of him
using this computer to look up information about these women,
yes, it's a violation, and, yes, it's a crime.
But looking at the timeline between
when he actually did those searches
and when he was having chats about those women
with other people on the Dark Fetish Network?
It's not exactly clear that he's planning anything.
They might've had more of a case
if he'd looked up that information
and then five minutes later
there's a record of him emailing
somebody from the Dark Fetish Network
saying, "Here's the address."
But he didn't even give anybody
on the Dark Fetish Network their addresses.
He didn't even give them their last names.
There's one potentially very telling moment in the chats,
where Moody Blues says, "What's her address?"
And Gil says, "I can't do that.
I can't give you that."
Suddenly the bubble bursts.
This is Gil googling someone he has the hots for.
Only instead of Google he's using the police computer.
Because he's at work, and bored, and says,
"Oh, I have the hots for Kimberly.
I'm going to check out the information
in the police database for her."
And so he does.
And that's sick and creepy and weird,
but is this the action of a guy
who's planning and conspiring a kidnapping?
The prosecution had to convince a jury
beyond a reasonable doubt,
the highest standard in the law,
he actually was agreeing
to commit the crime of kidnapping women,
and here in this case, I don't think they did.
There might be a tendency
to want to punish people for who we think they are
as opposed to what they've actually done.
And so this could be a case where the jury
heard the evidence and thought,
"I don't maybe think he was gonna do it this time,"
but I'm worried he might do it in the future,
I'm worried about what kind of person he is.
I don't like this guy. I think he's creepy.
And so the, you know,
way they resolve that tension is to convict.
Well, we were convicting someone
on what he wanted to do, not what he did.
So we had to believe
that he was going in that direction
to actually commit a crime.
It's easier to make a decision when you have fact,
beyond a shadow of a doubt, reasonable doubt.
And there was not anything
that was fully and completely compelling.
We had to understand this man through these chats.
When the police got this information,
absolutely, they were right to act on it.
No one in their right mind, I think,
would suggest when the--
his wife came and said, "Look what I have--
these disturbing chats, and my husband, by the way,
is a police officer with some power,"
that they should've said,
"Go home, ma'am. No big deal." Right?
What should they have done?
They should've initiated an investigation.
It could have been as simple as an undercover agent
signing up for an account on darkfetishnet.com
and trying to engage him and make real plans.
Kolker: Since Gil's conviction
and since it's been tossed out,
there's been movement on other cases
related to the Dark Fetish Network
where the feds took the extra step
of creating a sting operation.
And there've been people who've been convicted
after they met with agents to plan a kidnapping.
Engber: One of them, Asch,
actually went so far as to create a kit.
He started collecting items that one might use
in a real abduction and torture scenario.
He had needles and handcuffs
and speculums.
He even went and he bought a stun gun.
You can see that they took this so much farther than than Gil did.
It makes you realize that there is this whole--
so many steps before you get to actually
lunging out of a car at someone
and trying to hurt them.
Some very reasonable people
could come to the conclusion
that unless and until he's in a car with the rope
and the chloroform
headed to wherever victim three lives,
it's not enough.
Some reasonable people could also say
even that's not enough.
It's not enough until he gets to the doorstep
and actually starts walking up the steps
and is about to hit the doorbell and say,
"Hi, it's Gilberto. Can I come up?"
And some people would probably even quite reasonably conclude
that we really don't know
what he's going to do in that apartment.
Rowland: There is always reasonable doubt
about whether or not
someone is going to take a particular action.
We don't know, right?
And police officers don't have some magical psychic wand
that allows them to know, either.
We don't want to give the government the ability
to decide what fantasies meet
the thought police's bar for acceptability.
That bar is rightly high.
Look, if the first amendment protects someone fantasizing
about violently raping,
and killing, and eating a woman,
it's gonna protect pretty much anything you're thinking about.
And that's what principles mean.
They make us uncomfortable,
and we apply them regardless.
We're going down to court
for my sentencing for the misdemeanor.
The big news out of today
will be whether or not this house arrest is over.
Number two, is the government
going to go through with their appeal?
( shutters clicking )
Kolker: The interesting thing
about what's happening with Gil now
is that he no longer is just the Cannibal Cop,
he's patient zero in the thought police epidemic
that might sweep the nation.
We're all determined
to try and stop horrible tragedies
before they actually happen.
And we feel like we can do it.
That all we have to do in the future
is monitor the right things
and set up enough cameras
and do enough computer surveillance.
To me that is an extraordinary assumption to be making.
Good morning.
Murphy: If we had an MRI that could read your mind,
would we want to comb through society
and find the true deviants among us
who think these deviant thoughts
and really mean to execute them
or would execute them in a perfect environment?
Certainly in science fiction,
like "Minority Report"
where they talk about pre-crime,
that's a dystopic vision.
And I think that's because when you think about it,
it's often hard for any individual person
to even know themselves
the line between what they're imagining
and what's real.
It's part of the mystery of humanity.
Valle: You know there's been a lot said about me,
when these allegations came out,
and, you know, that's not who I really am.
That's never--
people who know me the best know that,
and I'm ready to show people who I really am. That's it.
Can you give us some idea what got you involved
in these issues in the first place?
- No. - I'm not gonna comment on that right now.
Kolker: One of the most troubling gray areas of this case
is that most of us don't understand
why someone would act on an impulse like this.
I don't think the jurors, I don't think the media,
I don't think many people at all
could really look into his heart
and really understand Gil as a person.
Is he a harmless teddy bear of a guy?
Or is he a nefarious master criminal?
I really don't know.
Look at this beautiful thing right here. Bare skin.
( woman reading text )
( woman continues )
What makes somebody an ethical human being
isn't what they think,
but what they choose to do with the thoughts.
Somebody can be having
the most dark, depraved thoughts,
but if they don't do anything about them
or find outlet that is entirely harmless,
then that doesn't stop them being a decent human being.
And in the gap between thought and action,
that's where people actually discover
what kind of human being they are.
And I think people have to be allowed
to make that discovery
and then live with the consequences.
There's no news yet with the appeal.
They haven't submitted anything yet.
Today's the deadline.
So I guess they have until 11:59.
They'll probably wait until 11:50.
Bye.
They're gonna appeal. I mean...
I don't want to get my hopes up,
but they didn't mention it in court.
I don't know.
They haven't filed it yet,
but I don't want to get my hopes up.
It's already been such a good day.
This really could be over tonight.
Completely.
They have until midnight,
so we're waiting until midnight.
Then that's it.
They never asked for more time.
And, you know, the thing better be dismissed.
Nothing we see yet.
Tick tock, tick tock. Let's go midnight.
Come on.
What an ending it would be, you know,
if today it would all end.
You know, the supervision I'm not worried about.
It's not like I'm gonna go out
and commit a crime or anything like that.
I have no desire,
not the slightest inkling
to get back on any fetish website.
Those days are gone.
I don't know.
Nothing will be hanging over my head anymore.
I fell asleep and I woke up. It's after 12.
I'm like, "It's quiet down there."
My heart starts racing.
Valle: That's concerning-- this is concerning me.
I don't know what this is.
I'm on something called "Cases Selection Table",
and we're on the second circuit for sure.
Yeah, I see it.
Yep.
All right. Bye.
They filed it around 7:30.
- Really? - Yeah.
We were looking at the wrong thing.
I was expecting that.
This is the same arguments, you know?
That I conducted surveillance.
- Oh, dear God. - Yeah.
So they really want to make assholes out of themselves.
I attempted to establish trust.
It's laughable.
I'm not worried. Don't worry about it.
Today was enough of a good day.
I'm not worried about at all.
All right. I'll stop by tomorrow, all right?
All right. All right, see you.
All right.
Let's hope my cell phone is not 700 yards
from somebody I knew in high school.
Everything sort of overwhelms me sometimes.
With the appeal coming,
and the notoriety that's now surrounding my life...
sometimes I feel like someone's watching me.
But the first couple weeks I was out,
I realized that no one was really recognizing me.
So I started getting more and more comfortable going out.
And then, I thought the next step
was to get to dating again.
It's been a long time, you know?
I think, sometimes I'm craving a little--
you know, I'm craving some companionship.
There's nothing wrong with that.
If I do go, you know, out with a girl,
at what point in the dating process
do I bring this whole thing up?
She either would be, you know, run for the hills,
or she'd be somewhat curious, interested.
I don't know.
There have to be people out there who are interested.
But some people are gonna think
I should be locked up for the rest of my life,
there's no getting around that.
I made a bad mistake. A really bad mistake.
But, you know, it's not gonna cost me the rest of my life.
( music playing )
Reporter: Gilberto Valle,
known as the "Cannibal Cop,"
just made a dating profile on Match.com.
Man: What's he list under some of his--
Man #2: This is even better.
Man: Under some of his likes?
Cooking is one of his likes!
Woman: I love that he said
that he drinks an abnormal amount of coffee,
like that's a real turn-on.
That strategy is admitting a flaw that's harmless.
You don't say "I like to eat dead women."
You say, "Eh, I drink too much coffee."
- Then you think, "Oh, he's honest!" - And he cares too much.
And he cares too much. "I care too much."
"I love pets."
Woman: I mean, this was really a bad guy.
I don't want to be a buzzkill, but, you know, ew.
I have no idea.
♪ And, baby, you'd better believe ♪
♪ I'm back ♪
♪ Back in the New York groove ♪
♪ I'm back ♪
♪ Back in the New York groove ♪
♪ I'm back ♪
♪ Back in the New York groove ♪
♪ Back ♪
♪ In the New York groove ♪
♪ In the back of my Cadillac ♪
♪ A wicked lady sitting by my side ♪
♪ Saying, "Where are we?"♪
♪ Stop at 3rd and 43 ♪
♪ Exit to the night ♪
♪ It's gonna be ecstasy ♪
♪ This place was meant for me ♪
- ♪ Ooh ♪ - ♪ Feels so good tonight ♪
- ♪ Ooh ♪ - ♪ Who cares about tomorrow? ♪
♪ So, baby, you'd better believe ♪
♪ I'm back ♪
♪ Back in the New York groove ♪
♪ New York groove ♪
- ♪ I'm back ♪ - ♪ New York ♪
♪ Back in the New York groove ♪
♪ New York groove ♪
- ♪ I'm back ♪ - ♪ New York ♪
♪ Back in the New York groove ♪
♪ New York groove ♪
♪ Back ♪
♪ In the New York groove ♪
♪ In the New York groove. ♪