Day two in the trial of alleged "Cannibal Cop" Gilberto Valle continued yesterday with testimony from several of the defendant's alleged targets/menu items. One of the women, Kimberly Sauer, was an old college friend of Valle's, so when Valle's wife informed her via Facebook that Valle intended to sell her into "white slavery," she assumed it was a joke, or the work of a hacker. She even took a screenshot of the message and sent it to Valle, asking if he'd been hacked. Valle played dumb, but prosecutors say he had an entire file devoted to planning Sauer's abduction. The Times reports:
Officer Valle had also created a document he called “Abducting and Cooking Kimberly, a Blueprint,” evidence showed. Although the document cited a Kimberly Shea, Agent Walsh said the woman was Ms. Sauer. Officer Valle had listed Ms. Sauer’s ethnicity, age, weight, shoe and bra sizes, and noted that she had no tattoos and did not smoke or use drugs. It gave a target date for the abduction as Sept. 2, 2012.
“I will arrive at some point Sunday night at her home to kidnap her,” he wrote to a reputed co-conspirator in Britain. He also listed “materials needed,” including a car, chloroform, gloves, rope and duct tape to gag her with. The government also introduced an exchange of electronic messages that it said Officer Valle had with the co-conspirator in Britain, who goes by screen names like Moody Blues. “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."
Valle's yearbook photo on the cover of today's Daily News.
Other women testifying included a former high school classmate, another former college classmate and an 18-year-old woman who graduated from Valle's high school alma mater, Archbishop Molloy. Prosecutors say Valle became obsessed with the woman, Kristen Ponticelli, when he would return to the school to watch girls’ softball games. She testified that she had never met or heard of Valle before being approached by investigators. But Valle allegedly had his eyes on her, telling an online chat buddy that she was "the most desirable piece of meat I've ever met" and small enough to fit in his oven.
Valle's online chats with one Moody Blues, identified as Christopher Collins, figured prominently into yesterday's proceedings. Prosecutors shared numerous gruesome exchanges between Valle and Moody Blues, during which Blues said he wanted to dine on Sauer’s liver, “lightly cooked to keep it sweet and tender.” The Post reports that Moody Blues, who bragged that he had already eaten two women, gave Valle cannibal culinary tips:
Moody Blues said face meat is “great for sandwiches,” and noted, “As for feet they are favorite of mine along with the c--t fillet.” He also offered Valle culinary tips, such as brushing human skin with olive oil while cooking it over an open fire.
“Cut off their t--s and slow roast. That way you’ll got lots of girl fat. Great for roasting potatoes and Yorkshire pudding,” he wrote. And while Moody Blues expressed a taste for black women — whose “meat is very, very good” — Valle said he wasn’t interested because “black girls do nothing for me.”
One exchange ended with Valle professing, “I’m dying to taste some girl meat.” And when Valle told Moody Blues that he'd be visiting Sauer in Maryland, he predicted he would be “eyeing her head to toe and licking my lips and longing for the day i cram a chloroform soaked rag in her face.” Moody Blues, ever the voice of reason, advised Valle, "Don’t be TOO obvious! Drooling is definitely out!”
The Daily Beast's Michael Daly was in the courtroom yesterday and noticed Valle’s parents and brother sitting in the second row of spectators, "slumped in the impossibility of finding some appropriate way to be when your nebbishy son comes up a twisted cannibal in thought, if not in action. His family very likely had no idea of his sick fantasies. His wife surely did not until she chanced unto them. Nor did his longtime friends.
"To consider this and then look at the Cannibal Cop was to face a bigger question than exactly where he had been in the blurring of fantasy and reality. It was to wonder how a woman can ever be sure she really knows a guy." After all, Valle met his wife via OK Cupid. Only in retrospect does his profile declaration "I'll Try Anything And Am Not Picky" seem like a red flag.
