Day three in the trial of alleged "Cannibal Cop" Gilberto Valle continued yesterday with more testimony from FBI Agent Corey Walsh, who went into great detail about online conversations between Valle and a man named Aly Khan, who discussed their desire "to slaughter a girl and make her meat.” But most of the day was taken up by defense lawyer Robert M. Baum laying into Walsh, and his attempts to prove the government had unfairly presented evidence without clarifying the difference between reality/intent and fantasy.
Walsh admitted that investigators had decided only three out of Valle's two dozen cannibal chat buddies were involved in the plotting of "real" crimes with him. The other 21 communications had been identified as "fantasy role play" by officials. Baum spent several hours picking apart the real and fantasy conversations, in an attempt to prove that there was little difference between them (i.e., Valle would haggle over prices and methods of torture with similar language). Walsh said investigators differentiated between the two sides by looking at the use of actual victims' names in messages, along with any discussions of past crimes.
Valle wrote in one message last April that it was “fun to chat and push the envelope.” Asked how many people he had "done" (ie, killed and eaten), he responded, “in my imagination a lot. Haha.” In another conversation in Feb 2012, he wrote: “I just like to get a little dirty with the ideas. I just have a world in my mind and in that world, I am kidnapping women and selling them to people interested in buying them.”
Despite Walsh's testimony about Valle's very graphic conversations with Khan (they discussed taking turns raping her in addition to killing and eating her while on a trip to India), it seems Andrea Peyser has been won over by the defense. She wrote an editorial today about the government's case against Valle going down the toilet: "In the last three days, the government has proved that Valle is morally demented and mentally twisted...But so far, there is no evidence that he planned to do anything with that information more damaging than drool over the women he craved." Considering how much she relishes the chance to take the moral outrage high ground on everything, it doesn't bode well for the government.
Police have also arrested two other men in relation to the case, including “Moody Blues,” the online handle of a British man who was one of the three people who exchanged graphic messages with Valle about kidnapping and eating women that cops have marked as "real" crimes. In one message, Valle wrote him: “I’m having lunch with Kimberly on Sunday... I just enjoy the thought of making her suffer... I just can’t wait to get Kimberly cooking."
