# "Cannibal Cop" faces life sentence over fantasy role-play **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 12, 2013, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738 "2013-03-12T18:23:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/21 "2013-03-12T20:31:09Z")
> [@trabajabamos](#): > > To take another tact: > > Let’s say that Valle’s plans all involved an anonymous blond woman. In all his postings, rather than saying “Kimberly Sauer” he referred to this unknown woman who might be somewhere near where he lived. Still guilty? Why or why not? I’d say it would be very difficult to obtain a conviction without more incriminating facts - for exampe, if he assembled a “rape kit” or burglary tools. ---
**Author:** ![trabajabamos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/47e85d/32.png) [@trabajabamos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trabajabamos)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/22 "2013-03-12T20:59:07Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > I’d say it would be very difficult to obtain a conviction without more incriminating facts - for exampe, if he assembled a “rape kit” or burglary tools. I keep seeing this sentiment and it makes me wonder: If he’d used a pseudonym for Sauer would they have even been able to get him into court? If, when composing the list of implements that he didn’t actually buy, he’d called chloroform “hairspray” could they have gotten him into court? Seems like it’s uncertain at best. If Valle really was planning to become a serial killer and wasn’t just showing off for his internet pals, Sauer is lucky he didn’t put a lot of thought into covering his tracks. Kind of creepy to think about, honestly. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/23 "2013-03-12T21:15:37Z")
> [@trabajabamos](#): > > I keep seeing this sentiment and it makes me wonder: > If he’d used a pseudonym for Sauer would they have even been able to get him into court? If, when composing the list of implements that he didn’t actually buy, he’d called chloroform “hairspray” could they have gotten him into court? Seems like it’s uncertain at best. > > If Valle really was planning to become a serial killer and wasn’t just showing off for his internet pals, Sauer is lucky he didn’t put a lot of thought into covering his tracks. Kind of creepy to think about, honestly. I dunno why this is surprising. A guy who stupidly allows his impulse to fantasy and bragging to overcome his instinct for self-preservation and admits (and/or brags) to others about his criminal plans is, in the nature of things, much easier for the authorities to convict than someone who doesn’t. I dunno if making up some easily-penetrated code is going to prevent a conviction. Not actually targeting a specific person, OTOH … In fact, lots of criminals are caught that way - through foolishly chattering with or bragging to others, rather than keeping their crimes, or criminal plans, absolutely to themselves (with a special award for a murderer who actually _tattooed his crime scene on his chest_). > **[Killer Nailed by Tattoo Murder 'Confession'](https://www.newser.com/story/116970/killer-nailed-by-tattoo-murder-confession.html)** > > LA gangster tattooed crime scene on his chest ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/24 "2013-03-12T21:23:58Z")
This seems pretty straightfoward to me. At a certain point, taking actions to realize a fantasy stops being making a fantasy seem more real and actually becomes enacting it. The judgment call is about how much one has to do to cross that line. I think it’s reasonable that since he used his power as a police to gain information about real women that’s beyond any reasonable line short of actually attempting the deed. Even if you ignore the admitted sexual fantasy, kidnapping and eating elements, simply collecting that kind of information on real people isn’t normal behavior. Once you tie that back in with some criminal motivation without another non-criminal one, it’s pretty powerful evidence to me. That all said, I would agree with the hypothetical that if he was a lot less specific, it would be a lot more difficult to say it was an actual plan rather than just a fantasy. If he had gotten convicted for that, I think there might be reason to believe that having a dark fetish worked against him, but given the facts here, no. All that said, I don’t think a potential life sentence is appropriate. I’d really be interested in seeing a full psychiatric workup first. ---
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/25 "2013-03-12T21:39:07Z")
I know there are cases of people being stalked who have begged the police to do something, saying they are in fear for their lives, and they’re told, we can do nothing until he/she actually does something. So, this guy is different how? I honestly can’t see it. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/26 "2013-03-12T22:01:07Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > I know there are cases of people being stalked who have begged the police to do something, saying they are in fear for their lives, and they’re told, we can do nothing until he/she actually does something. So, this guy is different how? I honestly can’t see it. Actual objective proof. ---
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/27 "2013-03-12T22:05:02Z")
What proof? Of what? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/28 "2013-03-12T22:10:47Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > What proof? Of what? That the guy really was stalking the person with intent to do them harm. What you described is someone’s complaint, based on their say-so; you did not mention anything in the way of evidence other than that they fear for their lives. Here, they have the guy’s actual detailed plan to capture and eat this woman, including accessing classified personal information databanks to dig up info about her. I see a difference. ---
**Author:** ![trabajabamos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/47e85d/32.png) [@trabajabamos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trabajabamos)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/29 "2013-03-12T22:16:24Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > That the guy really was stalking the person with intent to do them harm. > > What you described is someone’s complaint, based on their say-so; you did not mention anything in the way of evidence other than that they fear for their lives. Here, they have the guy’s actual detailed plan to capture and eat this woman, including accessing classified personal information databanks to dig up info about her. > > I see a difference. I also see a difference. As with most things I guess it comes down to balancing the rights of people who prefer not to be killed/eaten against the rights of people who like to discuss, in gory detail and with potentially malicious intent, the possibility of killing/eating members of the first group. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/30 "2013-03-12T23:29:57Z")
Brings to mind the voice-over opening from the second season of _Castle_… > [@Castle](#): > > There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers. Tom Clancy wrote in _Debt of Honor_ a scenario that involved a pilot flying his 747 into the US Capitol. I imagine that he would have done a certain amount of research into the difficulty of doing this, the effects, and so forth. Research that would not have been all that different from someone actually considering such an act. The key point does appear to be as **Malthus** noted, when the fantasy is “indistinguishable from an actual conspiracy to commit a crime”, and does suggest that if one is going to indulge in _outré_ fantasies one might want to consider this issue and perhaps fictionalize judiciously. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/31 "2013-03-12T23:42:59Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > The details as reported in the linked article have me leaning toward feeling that this guy committed some crimes and is a sicko, but I question the conspiracy charge and conviction. There isn’t much information to work with though. Maybe some more folks can chime in. Does conspiracy require actions by more than one person? Some folks he communicated with were described as co-conspirators, but I missed where the nature of that conspiracy was described. He apparently arranged to kidnap the woman for another person who posted on the website. They went as far as negotiating a price, though no money changed hands. So that’s probably the conspiracy bit. I guess its possible the whole thing was just acting out a fetish. But even if your in to kidnapping and eating people, I kinda have a hard time seeing being turned on by pretending to be hiring kidnappers. But the whole thing is pretty weird, so who knows. Also, this thread suffers from a disappointing lack of Cannibal puns. ---
**Author:** ![huck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@huck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/huck)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/32 "2013-03-13T01:47:04Z")
Any criminal proceedings involving an act allegedly contemplated but not performed are problematic and pose a risk of prosecutorial abuse. I’m not a criminal lawyer but from what I’ve read and heard conspiracy charges often stick when no other criminal charges would. That being said, on these facts if the defense that the accused was just someone with a different sexual nature and was only fantasizing were to prevent prosecution, it’s hard to see how anyone could ever be convicted of conspiracy to commit a sexual crime and possibly many other crimes against people. However explicit and developed the plan, the accused could simply claim he or she was fatasizing because of a sexual bent. As to the OP’s notion that he was convicted because he wanted to eat a human for sexual gratification, I personally find it much more disturbing that he wanted to _kill_ someone for sexual gratification. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/33 "2013-03-13T02:11:31Z")
This NYT article goes into the jurors’ reasoning in a bit more detail. Apparently they were conflicted and it was certain specific messages that pushed them into a guilty verdict. [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/nyregion/gilberto-valle-is-found-guilty-in-cannibal-case.html?pagewanted=1&\_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/nyregion/gilberto-valle-is-found-guilty-in-cannibal-case.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0) ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/34 "2013-03-13T02:40:47Z")
> [@trabajabamos](#): > > Not to be argumentative, but do you really find it so hard to believe that the guy was convicted for sexualizing two of humanity’s greatest taboos at the same time just as much as he was convicted on the merits of the arguments involved? Murder and cannibalism aren’t taboos that society thinks are icky and gets all squeamish about. They are actual, serious crimes, so yes, I’ll take the brave stance that in convicting him for plotting to commit these acts the jury wasn’t convicting him for sexualizing taboos. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/35 "2013-03-13T03:15:46Z")
The absolute best-case scenario I see is that Valle is a scumbag cop who perceives illegally accessing the police database as a victimless crime. Otherwise he is committing crimes against third parties without their consent to advance his murder-and-eat-people fetish, and that makes him dangerous ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/36 "2013-03-13T04:44:30Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Murder and cannibalism aren’t taboos that society thinks are icky and gets all squeamish about. They are actual, serious crimes, so yes, I’ll take the brave stance that in convicting him for plotting to commit these acts the jury wasn’t convicting him for sexualizing taboos. Cannibalism isn’t a crime all by itself in many jurisdictions. It isn’t illegal in California, but it isn’t popular either. As weird as our partying is, we haven’t had one that featured cannibalism since 1846. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/37 "2013-03-13T05:09:11Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > This NYT article goes into the jurors’ reasoning in a bit more detail. Apparently they were conflicted and it was certain specific messages that pushed them into a guilty verdict. > [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/nyregion/gilberto-valle-is-found-guilty-in-cannibal-case.html?pagewanted=1&\_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/nyregion/gilberto-valle-is-found-guilty-in-cannibal-case.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0) The blurbs from the Jury certainly make it sound like they were trying to determine if the conspiracy is real, not fixating on how weird the guys sex-life was. So the OP seems to have been wrong about the Jury’s motivation. That said, I’m glad it wasn’t up to me. Seems like a really tough call. On the one hand, you don’t want to jail some guy just for what weirdness goes on in his head. On the other hand, at best, he really did seem to mix a lot of reality into his fantasy. Its pretty hard to know how far he was willing to let it go. Kinda interesting to think what his life would be like if he’d been found innocent. Certainly put a sizable dent in ones social and family life once its been widely reported by the media that after you meet with people, you go home and engage in elaborate rollplaying fantasies about murdering and eating them on the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/38 "2013-03-13T06:26:17Z")
People I’ve met? No. Lasagnas I’ve met? All the time. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/39 "2013-03-13T06:54:06Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > People I’ve met? No. > > Lasagnas I’ve met? All the time. I was going to mock the idea of lasagna fetish sites where people rollplay kidnapping and eating pasta. But there’s enough weird stuff on the internet that I’m not 100% sure your joking. I’d google to make sure, but I don’t want to see anything I can’t unsee. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738/40 "2013-03-13T09:33:18Z")
> [@trabajabamos](#): > > To take another tact: > > Let’s say that Valle’s plans all involved an anonymous blond woman. In all his postings, rather than saying “Kimberly Sauer” he referred to this unknown woman who might be somewhere near where he lived. Still guilty? Why or why not? If the rest of the information is enough to verify that it corresponds to an actual person, it’s not fantasy and is guilty. From what I’ve read of the plans details, the information minus the name would have been more than enough to identify the woman. A person can be identified univocally without their name: “the blonde woman who lives in [my bulding, which has twelve flats]” is evidently the separated psychologist with two teenaged boys, as none of the other women in the house is a blonde. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibal-cop-faces-life-sentence-over-fantasy-role-play/652738.md?page=3)