True Crime Podcast 2025 - Police Interrogations, 911 Calls and True Police Stories Podcast

The Case Of The Cannibal Cop - True Crime Documentary

The Case Of The Cannibal Cop - True Crime Documentary Film

crimedocumentary #truecrime

Gilberto Valle, a former NYPD officer accused of planning to abduct and eat women, is the subject of the movie. With a life sentence on the line, Valle claimed that it was a fantasy and that he had no genuine ambitions, which resulted in an astonishing turn of events.

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Duration:: 1h 33m
Broadcast on:: 01 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

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That's grammarly.com/enterprise. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ 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 were exploring dealing thoughts and exploring their fetishes. ♪♪♪ I'm not the only one out there with these thoughts. ♪♪♪ The anonymity makes you try not to do the other person. ♪♪♪ Who could be the sicker one who could be the more to brave one? ♪♪♪ The baby was sleeping, the mom was sleeping, there was just nothing to do. ♪♪♪ And then you shot the computer off and that's it. ♪♪♪ I go back to being the regular me. ♪♪♪ But someone might say you're not. At an enterprise level, nothing is more important than communication. Grammarly for Enterprise enables your team to work smarter and faster. 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These are thoughts, very ugly thoughts, but we don't prosecute people for their thoughts. It comes down to this. Is this guy just fantasizing, or is there enough evidence to suggest he was really planning to do this? ♪♪ 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. ♪♪ Gill, 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. ♪♪ 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 it. And that's what was happening in real life here. (dramatic music) (crowd chattering) - Audience, good? - Taxes was feeling so stuck. Sitting in traffic, squeezing into a parking spot, all to squeeze in getting tax help during your lunch break. 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Velco, banking for everyone. - Just give me a check one, check two. - Check one, check two. - Ready to go? - There were a 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 that, yeah, that preconceived notion, you start to seek out pieces of information that go with that, that jive with it. And you disregard things that go against that. You know, I want everyone to have all effects 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. Mom was more soft love, you know, she was there for emotional support. That would be the one to take you in the butt. He was very, you know, strict and we didn't want to disappoint my dad. - VA's arrest comes after the FBI obtained detailed accounts of the barbaric plans. The government says VA made his sick plans that online chat rooms his father in disbelief. - Of course I'm shot. Is it possible? I don't think so. - 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? - 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 got to be a mistake. That's not my son. - Delete the mama kiss? - Yeah. - Delete the kiss, delete the kiss. - The first time that 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 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, and thoughts of... And horrible thoughts like that. - Well, he created a master. He's a good writer. I mean, how can 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 or whatever fire? Which one was in the oven? - 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. And 21 of them, people said, "Hey, is this for real?" And Gil Valley 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 Valley 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. - Conspiracy is the prosecutor's favor 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 over an act, they can be prosecuted and put in jail for the rest of their lives. - 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 the getaway car. It could be something that is entirely lawful. Otherwise, it just might have special meaning here. - The defendant talked about disabling his victims using chloroform. He then searched how to make chloroform. - The defendant's 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. 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 overacts within any meaning of the law. The question is, what was in his mind? And I'm not sure he knew. - Opening statements today in the trial of the Catable Cup. - In the words of both the prosecution and defense attorneys, this is going to be a bizarre trial. - 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. - 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 coke conspirators, Michael van Heyes, somebody in Pakistan known as Ali Khan, an man in England known as Moody Blues. ♪♪ He had these plans written out for how to kidnap women. He was planning on building a pulley apparatus and 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. - 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 a past fantasy. He had what was called a blueprint and 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. ♪♪ - Alicia Friska, early on, became a major figure in the case. Investigators said Gill had been stalking her. ♪♪ ♪♪ - When Gill starts talking money with Michael Van Heis, that shift in tone is chilling. He's suddenly very grisly and mechanical and let's talk turkey. Here's how we're going to 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 Gill 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, "I'll call you on Tuesday and we'll do something then." And then nothing happens on Tuesday. Nothing happens on three Tuesdays. And then nothing ever happens at all. These are fantasies. - There was no giant oven that could fit somebody inside of it. There was no poly apparatus being set up in the basement. In fact, the basement was a laundry room for everyone in his Queen's 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 that wouldn't be effective. - You read about the case. You read about these chats and you're horrifying. You're turned off. You want to step away. And you're just like, "This guy's a monster." You know, whatever. - Yeah, this is the pre-language and unconventional thoughts, but there's no evidence. - Shock in the courtroom, guilty of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, also guilty of wrongfully accessing a federal database. - 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? - How are you doing at all, Stuart Speck? How are you doing? - Look at me. I'm strong. - 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 of officers talking outside. One of them comes in and says, "Valley got convicted." And another one says, "Get the fuck out." Maybe the guy thought that guy was going home. Obviously, the case involved thoughts that were unusual and bizarre and frankly very ugly. And we think that the jury just couldn't get past that. - 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 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 sad at the thing about it. - At this point, I'm pretty depressed every day. Everyone thinks I'm facing send this thing. You know, technically, I'm not yet. I'm still waiting to hear from the judge. They get to say in a couple of weeks more, and they get to push back. They get to push back again and again and again. Julia emailed me and she said, "You don't think it's going to 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? The government was saying that all of his Google searches were overt acts in furtherance of the 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. When we think about thought crime, we think about, you know, George Orwell in 1984. You think about the thought police. You think about being put away simply because of something that's in your head. - You see five things. - A thought crime in the modern age and the post-George Orwell age. It 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. 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. 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. 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. All these violent stories go back to what our most basic primal feelings are. We have good density for violence. We have preventative for all sorts of horrible acts. But if you can act on those urges and stories, then you don't act on them in real life. In theory. The Catabell Cup 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, they're 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. 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 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 use 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 a 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 behaviours 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... I'm going to 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, Aaron. 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've got to leave." You know, I just want to hold on to 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, like, well, in the meantime, my son is sitting in jail. Julia did say that, you know, if the news is bad, we still have other options and what I said to her, 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. Do you tell us what you know is going to happen this morning? No. I'll just have to wait for you. I want to see him not be a felon. I want to see him be acquitted. He didn't commit any crimes. I like to make a very, very brief statement. I want to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone who's 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 anyone will ever know. During this impossible situation, forgive me, I'm tired. I want to go home and send some time. Thank you very much. Granting the judgment of acquittal on sufficiency of evidence grounds, which is what the judge granted, it's very, very unusual. And it was front page news. And an acquittal means what? It means you're not guilty. It doesn't mean that you're innocent. One could interpret at least some of the things Gill 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 going to feel if you let him off and he goes out and needs somebody? Those people have been there since seven 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, I'd be like today, I'd love to be outside, obviously. 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, "Mom, I need underwear. Mom, I need this. Mom, I need that." I didn't know where he was. I didn't know where he was. I didn't know where anything was. My boy is home. My boy is home. Everything got packed up in my apartment. I wasn't there. He doesn't know where anything is. There we go. Nobody's alarmed I have a fork in my hand with people around. Everyone's good. All right. He can't. He got a laugh about it. Of course. He's a danger to society. The victims are in danger. I read the ruling late last night. I mean, judges slammed them. Somewhere in the page 80s, there's like five straight paragraphs where he ends all of them with, "This can only make sense as a fantasy role-play. It makes no sense whatsoever in a real conspiracy." He ends like five straight paragraphs like that. Bye, Julia. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Thanks. Take care. Does this come off or we have to wait for the pen to peel? No, we have to wait for the appeal. That can be months. Mm-hmm. 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, how the hell did I come up with something like that? 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 that 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 have gone out and got drunk, that could have stayed up and watched TV, so I don't know if that had to do with a lot of it. MUSIC 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. 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. 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. MUSIC 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. Did Gill ever ask you questions about sex growing up? Not really. When he went to college, I got a whole oxytroge and said, "Be careful, don't use a one-to-one spot or something like that." And he just laughed and took him. MUSIC 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. MUSIC I thought about what led him to get on these sides and I wonder if it had anything to do with our divorce. Why did you guys decide to get divorce? I really don't want to get into that. MUSIC I was very young, so I didn't really understand what was going on. My memories of them involve a lot of arguments, unfortunately. There weren't many happy times. 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. MUSIC People try to explain why this happened. I try to explain it. It's tough sometimes. I guess the most important thing I got out of these chats, if there was anything you got out of it, 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 isn't that much change to finally talk to somebody about it. MUSIC It was such a relief to get it off my chest. MUSIC When you're typing it, you don't really think about it. You're just sort of in the moment. MUSIC But as soon as the computer went off, it's over. You know, I'm the person who I am. MUSIC I'm incapable of any violence. I couldn't hurt a fly. MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC 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. MUSIC He's on the record talking about it all the time. You can't get it out of his mind. MUSIC How do you prove that he would never do this in the future? MUSIC And 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 Deets. MUSIC He is a titan in the field. He's interviewed John Henkley Jr. He's interviewed Joel Riffgen, he's interviewed Andrea Yates. And almost for that exception, he works for the prosecution. MUSIC That he would draw the conclusion he drew, which is that this guy is as safe as you and me. That's a huge deal. MUSIC But then, when the trial actually happened, they decided not to bring him on the stand. MUSIC Where Dr. Deets, to have actually testified that deviant sexual fantasy doesn't relate at all to those who sadistically rape and who sadistically murder, he would have been slaughtered on cross-examination. MUSIC Dr. Deets 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 Valley was indulging in these cannibalistic chats and websites because he was coping. MUSIC So, let me get this right. This kind of behavior is coping? MUSIC 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." I'm just, boy, what a therapeutic remedy. A psychiatrist that was routine 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? 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 well 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 and 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 chatroom 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. ♪♪ 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 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. ♪♪ The highly unusual facts of this case reflect the Internet age in which we live. Valley had discussed kidnapping, torturing, raping, characterizing 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 values communications with Van Heiss, Ali Khan, and Moody Blues reflect the real kidnapping conspiracy. Because the government did not offer sufficient evidence to permit a reasonable juror to distinguish between the valley's alleged real chats and his conceited 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. Right now we have that looming over our heads. Until this thing comes off, it's not over. Yeah. ♪♪ Go to the beach. All right. ♪♪ Make my cross-country trip. ♪♪ Yeah, those will be good times when it happens. ♪♪ Ew, ew. Oh, no. ♪♪ Perhaps the most significant aspect of this story is that valley'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. ♪♪ He always said that because he got home late, he couldn't go right to sleep, so he could 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 a installed spyware on the computer, and, you know, she found the chats, everything that this case is about, she found it all. ♪♪ 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 is happening on the computer screen. There were all of these websites that I'd never seen. Dark Fetishnet, Sexy Amazon, Dark Fett, Motherless, Fett Life. I mean, I know S&M is kind of popular, like 50 shades of gray, you know, but this seemed different. A 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 Gilla 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. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Partners make questions themselves and say, "Well, why didn't I see this before?" ♪♪ But we've had an unexpected proximity to decide that he doesn't show to others, wouldn't even show to his wife. 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. ♪♪ 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. I was still the good husband. I was still the good father. I was still doing great at work. ♪♪ 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 a 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 just as simple and banal as that. The time difference. So I would start chatting with him over there. It's eight in the morning. Over here, it's two o'clock and 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. Isn't that amazing? And it's the truth. The day she puts this pie where on is the day I -- I'm, like, I'm moving on from this, because, like I said before, it was starting to affect my family life and that I was staying up later, and I didn't want -- Yo, 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, it might have just happened. Isn't that incredible? I told that, you know, my lawyers and deeds, you know, they're not making that up. That's a god honest truth, but 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. 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. Valley is out. You know, do I worry for harm? Not really, 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. ♪ A legal use of his police database, the entire jury agreed that he was guilty immediately. And it was just a 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 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 going to 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 him. ♪ And you could tell he was excited about it. ♪ The fact that he came back from this trip, and one of the first things he did was right 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. ♪ And looks to be rich. ♪ 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 anything. You know, I don't want to let them win anything, you know? Even in jail, the rest of that all the time. Like, if I'm down, the government's winning. ♪ Oh, that's a lot. Hey. I always overdo things. ♪ ♪ I guess Mom can get used to having me at home. I think I used to this real quick. [chuckles] ♪ I'm going to be stuck in here for how many more months, you know, I was looking at possibly going out this weekend. ♪ It doesn't mean they're going to go through 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 going to do? BS is the core of appeals now in paperwork. They can BS a jury that can't BS a judges. ♪ My father always taught me to defend the underdog. ♪ And the underdog is 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 ten guilty go free than one innocent if you wrongly can find. We just can't allow our system to begin to err on the side of putting people in jail if they may not commit crime. ♪ They said that the line between fantasy and reality cross when he had lunch with the girl in Maryland. ♪ So that makes it seem like shit, when Gil had to 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 with the brunch. They made the whole weekend out to be a surveillance episode. I went down Friday night. I saw five people that weekend. We did things badly as a family down in Maryland. And the whole weekend was about surveillance. I mean, it's just... ♪ And this is the database. Right. ♪ 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 have had more of a case if he 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 a moody-boo says, "What's her address?" ♪ And Gil says, "I can't do that. I can't give you that." ♪ And 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 and 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 going to 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 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 with 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 the right mind, I think, would suggest when 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 have said, "You know, go home, man. I'm no big deal," right? What should they have done? They should have initiated an investigation. It could have been as simple as an undercover agent signing up for an account on darkfedishnet.com and trying to engage him and make real plans. Since skills 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 have been people who have been convicted after they met with agents to plan the kidnapping. One of them, Ash, 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 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. 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 going to 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 a court for my sentencing for the misdemeanor. The big news out of today will be whether or not this house rest is over. Number two is a government going to go through with their appeal. 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. But to me, that is an extraordinary assumption to be making. Good morning. If we had an MRI that could read your mind, would we want to comb through society and find the true deviance 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 rapport 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. ♪♪ You know, there's been a lot set about me when his allegations came out. And, you know, that's not who I really am. That's never equal to me to best know that. I'm ready to show people who I really are. That's it. Could you give us some idea what got you involved in these issues in the first place? I'm not going to comment on that right now. 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 Gill 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, nasty. ♪♪ I think part of you wants me back, but the other part of you wants to kill me. ♪♪ I don't know which Gill is real. I'm afraid I don't know you at all. ♪♪ 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 an 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 is a deadline. ♪♪ So I guess they have until 1159. They'll probably wait until 1150. But... ♪♪ They're gonna appeal, I mean. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I don't want to get my hopes up, but you 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. ♪♪ But this really could be over tonight. Completely. ♪♪ We haven't until midnight, so we'll wait until midnight. And that's it. They never asked for more time. And, you know, the thing better be dismissed. ♪♪ Nothing we see yet. Tech talk, tech talk. Let's go midnight. Go on. ♪♪ ♪♪ What an ending it would be, you know? Today it would all end. You know, the supervision I'm not worried about. It's not like I'm going to 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. And, uh... Nothing will be hanging over my head anymore. ♪♪ I fell asleep and I woke up at after 12. I'm like, it's quiet down there. My heart starts racing. That's concerning. This is concerning me, but 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. ♪♪ Yeah. All right, fine. ♪♪ They file it's around 7.30. Really? Yeah. We were looking at the wrong thing. ♪♪ I was expecting it. ♪♪ ♪♪ It's the same arguments, you know, that I conduct a surveillance... Oh, dear God. Yeah. ♪♪ 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 at all. ♪♪ All right. I'll start 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. ♪♪ Well, 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 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 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 going to 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 going to cost me the rest of my life. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪