Cannibal Cop Talks Criminal Justice, Heartbreak, & Finding Women Who Accept Him

In the autumn of 2012, NYC's tabloid headlines were suddenly dominated by the story of the "Cannibal Cop," a.k.a. Gilberto Valle, a 28-year-old NYPD officer and married father who was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping after his wife found he'd been in chatrooms on the Dark Fetish Net discussing plans to "kidnap, rape, torture, kill, cook and eat body parts of a number of women" (including her). The officer's defense team argued that he was simply indulging in role-playing and sexual fantasies and never intended to commit a future crime—and though a jury found him guilty, the trial judge overturned his conviction for kidnapping conspiracy, declaring, "The evidentiary record is such that it is more likely than not the case that all of Valle's Internet communications about kidnapping are fantasy role-play." (Valle was still convicted of using police computers to track down women, but that was overturned on appeal.)

Aside from providing local media with a boatload of punny headlines, the "Cannibal Cop" case was a fascinating look at the legal discrepancy between a conspiracy and a thought crime. Now, Valle's penned his own memoir—dubbed Raw Deal: The Untold Story Of NYPD's 'Cannibal Cop.'—in hopes of explaining his side of the story. The book opens with frank revelations about his fetishes and violent sexual fantasies, then delves into his relationship with role-playing and online fetish sites before digging into the trial and his time in prison. We recently caught up with Valle to discuss the memoir, how he feels about the NYPD (he was kicked off the force and now works construction), handling his fetish, and what life is like now that he's infamous.

Was it difficult to reveal so much about your sexual life in writing?
In writing it’s a lot easier—it's a lot more difficult to look somebody in the eye, or talk with somebody on the phone about it—but writing it is always easier. Part of the story is all the graphic and brutal fictional role plays, and I thought if I wanted to write a book I had to put that in there because it’s a big part of the story. When I talk about the criminal case later on, I thought the fact that I share everything, all the embarrassing details, maybe adds to my credibility? I didn’t want to seem like I was flaking out. I understand it’s putting everything out there again, but it’s all part of the story, so it has to be in there.

What was the writing process?
It was planted when I was still in prison. A lot of people, a lot of inmates and some of the guards thought I was going to win—whether it was with the trial judge or the court of appeals—I mean people were kind of getting what was going on with this case and they were optimistic. I wasn’t always optimistic. It was tough to wake up everyday in that place. But people were telling me, "Get out and write a book and get your whole side of the story out." So when I was out of prison, I started writing things down. When I had a thought in my head I would write it down in a notebook.

I had different categories: childhood, my time with Kathleen, prison, beliefs, whatever—and then I started to write. I started to write it as a story and I was including everything. It was getting kinda long and it was frustrating, so the timing worked out perfectly. Last summer I got an email from [defense attorney] Julia Gatto. The guy who ended up being my co-author, Brian Whitney, he had followed the case from the beginning. He said he was a ghostwriter and he was interested in talking with me, and she forwarded me the email. We talked on the phone, we clicked right away. 8 months later, here we are.

You say a lot of people thought you'd be acquitted during the trial—you mention this in the book, too. I think during the trial the turning point was [defense attorney] Robert Baum's cross-examination of FBI agent Anthony Foto. That was when people started to see the silly nature of the case, that there were kidnapping dates that came and went, and there was no follow up. I was supposed to kidnap three women in one day; one in Ohio, one in Manhattan, and I was going bring another one to Pakistan, all in one day.

That's when I think people started to get that I was being railroaded. We started feeling pretty good. It didn’t make it any less embarrassing for me. But after that cross-examination I really felt like we were going to be in the clear, and people in the media started to get it, I mean people in the courtroom were laughing, for crying out loud—so it was starting to look pretty good.

So were you surprised by the initial jury verdict?
Yeah, surprised and completely devastated. I was out back, where the US Marshals were holding me, while the jury was deliberating and they said they had a verdict and I started to think in my head, "Alright, what am I going to say to people, this is going to be the first time I’m actually going to speak in public.” I started rehearsing what I was going to say and I felt really good. And then the verdict came down, and it was just complete, complete devastation.

People said there was a gasp in the courtroom. I didn’t hear it, I was just so crushed. I was in shock, and Julia took my hand under the table, she squeezed my hand while the jury was going through the whole thing. To have that feeling of, you’re finally going to be going home after all this time and then, you know, you start thinking the worst. I was facing life in prison and the guilty verdict comes down and you start thinking, “Oh my God, is this going be the rest of my life?” I wasn’t even thinking appeals and all that—so yeah, that was a very, very tough day, obviously.

You were a cop, you were on one side of the criminal justice system before this happened—
Yeah.

The memoir reads as a fairly strong indictment of the NYPD and also of the criminal justice system as a whole. How did this change your perspective on how the system works?
I was on one side of the law for almost 7 years. I worked with prosecutors, and I think that as a cop—I just want to speak for myself—I had this mindset that the prosecutors were like, “We're the honest ones, we’re doing the right thing—it's defense lawyers that are the ones pulling tricks and being shady." But after going through what I went through and seeing everything play out before my eyes, where the US attorney's office were the ones just blatantly misrepresenting facts, proving a lot of things that were not true, and nothing happens to them. Julia was the one who said to me, during a visit, “You see how there's this perception out there that defense lawyers are the ones that pull all these tricks, but they’re the ones who are twisting facts and cherry-picking things.”

It was just, it was very eye-opening. Where now, today, if I do have a bias—and I have jury duty in a couple weeks, incidentally—but if I do have any bias, it's more towards defendants, where I’m always looking for holes if there's a prosecutor here doing something not really on the level. So yeah, it's completely, completely changed my perception on how things happen in the criminal justice system.

How did your former colleagues on the NYPD treat you after you were arrested?
I didn’t hear a peep from anyone. So, you know, I didn’t know what they were thinking. No one reached out to me. Even worse, no one reached out to my family. My father recently told me—I couldn’t put this in the book because he only told me recently, that he went to the precinct the day I was arrested and the PBA, the union delegate basically kicked him out. Wouldn't help him. My lawyers went twice before the trial to try and get people to help me and everyone turned their backs on my lawyers. Twice. Their lack of action was very disappointing, to say the least. And now that everything worked out and I’m acquitted, and I’m completely exonerated, everybody’s coming out of the woodwork—"Oh man, we supported you from day one." But I didn’t hear any of that, so that wasn’t good enough for me.

There's been a lot of talk about how cops protect cops, even if a cop accidentally shoots and kills somebody. And in this case, it appears they didn’t protect one of their own. Do you have any comment on that?
I was just disappointed at the lack of any response whatsoever. Now I mean, let me try to backtrack a bit. I remember what was being written and said early on, after I was arrested. There were allegations I was actually stalking women and there were supposed to be 100 women’s addresses in my computer—none of that stuff was ever true, but you could imagine why they wouldn’t want to get involved.

This was supposed to be a heinous crime that was about to happen, so yeah, they stayed away—but you know, people who knew me, they’re saying, “We knew Gil wouldn’t be capable of something like this." But although they couldn’t really talk to me, my family was left completely in the dark. And that really pissed me off a lot more—my family, like no one was there with my family, you know?

So it was just them being left in the dark, and how it's played out now when, now they’re coming back and saying they never believed it from day one, and they had my back from day one. No they didn’t, you know? And I’m very honest about that in the book, I think, where even I say that I understand where they came from but it wasn’t enough for me. If I was on the outside and I thought somebody was being completely railroaded I would’ve found a way to support them somehow. And juxtapose that with what you said about cops who got caught drunk driving, or cops who beat suspects—-they get union representation without a problem.

Right.
And to this day even though I’ve been exonerated and I’ve filed paperwork with the city for my salary, I still haven’t got any union representation even though I should have never been fired—they just don’t wanna be involved. I had to do everything by myself, which is also frustrating.

How did you feel about the media coverage?
I wasn’t really privy to a lot of it because I was in prison and I was in solitary confinement for the first 7 months, so I really had no idea what was going on. I’ve read a lot of it now since I’ve been out, and I have no problem with it because, again, what was being said early on in the case was so misleading, and people in the press were reporting what was being said in court. So now I think a lot of press people still want to talk with me and I think a lot of people now see me as a big joke and they make fun, which I’m okay with. I’d rather people make fun of me than be horrified of me.

I’d rather people bust my chops and make me out to be a joke. I’m totally okay with that. But that being said, there’s still a lot of serious issues with this case that kind of got lost, because of the lurid headlines, you know the whole sexual nature of this case, and me being a cop. There is still some serious issues with this case that could relate to most people in society, I think.

How would you feel, though, if you were investigating a case like this and the defendant had the same sort of mounting evidence against them that they had against you? Would you be concerned that the defendant was planning to act on these fantasies?
I never had a problem with the investigation—I had a problem with how they investigated. They tracked my phone for 30 days after my ex-wife contacted them. The tracking on my phone led to nothing, it was just me going to and from work.

I would investigate something like this, but I would also want to look at, okay, this is all written on a fetish website, a fictional fantasy website, but what is he actually doing in real life? And the answer is nothing, there was nothing I did in real life. I don’t know what happened, I might’ve had really dumb agents, I might have had people who just wanted to make a name for themselves. I don’t know what happened with this investigation. I was assigned, unfortunately, very bad agents.

Can you talk a little bit about Agent Foto?
He was a case agent on the case. He had a year and a half on the job. He was the one who did the interview after I was arrested and it seemed like, he came off as this nice guy, you know, he was cordial. I figured if I can explain myself to him, it’s just a misunderstanding, that he’ll get it.

Well, he ended up twisting a lot of my words in a post-arrest interview and it ended up not being a real issue. But he just wasn’t very honest and it was this whole myth, this whole “scary thing.” They claimed that they had GPS evidence that I was on a woman’s block, that never happened—they were basing that off a phone call I made to my ex-wife.

My phone pinged off of a tower in that woman’s area, but that just showed I could’ve been anywhere within 500 yards of that block. But they were claiming early on, and he swore in a statement, under oath, that this was evidence that showed I was on this person’s block and that just wasn’t true. It's just like that's—things can be said by law enforcement, things can be said by prosecutors—they have like, carte blanche to say whatever they want and if it's demonstrated not to be true nothing happens. You know the attitude is, “So what? That’s business as usual. Deal with it.” And I’m not okay with that.

So you were convicted by a jury and then your conviction was overturned by a trial judge. How did this make you feel about trial by jury?
It's a popular saying that three of the scariest words in the English language are, "trial by jury." You don’t know what the hell is going to happen in the jury room. It turned out that they convicted based on what I might have done in the future, not on anything that I did. That was not allowed. You’re on trial as a defendant based on what you did in the past, not what you might do in the future.

So the conviction was faulty, obviously. The judge—that’s why we have judges, you know, to overturn something like that. Now the way it happened, what this judge did almost never happens. Usually a judge will give a new trial, but to straight up throw out the jury’s verdict and dismiss the count, that almost never, never, never happens. I think that’s a testament to what a joke this case was.

And so you were in court mandated therapy. Do you still see a therapist?
Yeah, I see the same guy. I was assigned to him, I was assigned to therapy for, I think, one year. It's been almost 3 years now and I’m seeing the same guy. It’s been very helpful.

It’s been very helpful in my personal growth, and how to move on in my personal life with this whole stigma attached to my name, something I’m probably never going to live down. You know, how to have as normal of a life as I can. And it’s been helpful to talk with somebody who is never going to judge me.

Everybody has their thing that triggers arousal—you can’t help what you’re turned on by. Do you feel that a sexual fetish like yours is something that you need to manage if it’s something you’re not going to act on? Or is it just a part of who you are?
It’s something I’d never act on. It’s something I’ve managed my whole life—since I hit puberty. I mean, you know, like you said, you don’t really choose. To use a psychological term, I guess it’s “conditioned learning." Where you’re exposed to some of the same things, where you find out just by association what you’re aroused by.

It’s something I never planned to tell anybody because I figured some people would think I’m some kind of freak. And that was fine, you know I’d lived my whole life, I made a lot of friends, I was doing well. I was a great cop and it’s something I never forced onto anyone without their consent. It’s something I’ve been totally fine with my whole life. I never felt like I had to talk to somebody about it or I had to—I think the word you said was "manage" it—I’ve just been able to live with it my whole life. And it’s something that’s not going go away. I go to therapy, but it’s not like there’s some magic word the guy’s gonna say and poof it all goes away. That’s not how it works.

Are you dating now?
Nothing exclusive right now. But I have met women since I’ve been out of prison. That hasn’t been extremely difficult. I just don’t know where I’m going to be a year from now, two years from now, so I’m not really looking for a situation where I’m going to settle down. I would like to eventually have a new family and start over and do it the right way this time, and be a completely open and honest relationship. No secrets. I think there’s someone out there, I’m optimistic I’ll meet somebody, but not right now. There’s too much going on right now for me to think about something like that.

You mention in your memoir that you met a woman who was also interested in BDSM.
Yeah.

Now that you’re more open about your preferences, are you able to find women who accept you for what you want and don't make you feel like you have to hide?
Completely. I wish that stuff was never out there, and I wish I was known for something better. But it’s all out there now, so people who want to talk to me, they know everything. I don’t have to figure out, if I meet a girl, when would be the right time to tell her about all this stuff. Now I’m meeting people who already know everything and they’re okay with it.

They’re very open about their own things. There are some good situations that are happening. But I’ve learned a lot. The girl I mentioned in the book, she’s a lot younger than I am. She’s very smart, she went to law school and all that stuff. But she’s very open about the hard stuff she’s into also. She’s totally okay with it, and she lives her life like a normal person.

Has being able to be open about your fetish in real life made it less enticing to go seek it out on the Internet?
Definitely. There are a couple of things here. I’m working 9 to 5 now so I have to be up kind of early every morning. I’m not up late like I used to be, on the computer. I used to work nights as a cop, so that was one factor. But also, yeah, the fact that I’ve been able to meet women who are okay—they know I’m not a danger, they’re okay with meeting me, they’re okay with doing some things—I can have fun in real life. I don’t have to go do role plays any more. I haven’t done any role plays since I’ve been out, so yeah I think there’s something to that. Me just being able to be me. And people accepting me for who I am, all my flaws included—if you want to call them flaws. I haven’t had to really go back to that stuff.

Your ex-wife has not painted you in a positive light. How do you feel about that?
That was tough, when she testified. I hadn’t seen her since she left. So it had been about 4 months, and there she is in this, I mean it was a circus of a courtroom. People were fighting for seats the first day. It was a really bad situation.It was just very emotional. I thought from my perspective she was just going talk about what she found and how she found it. But then she got into portraying this completely different relationship from the one I remembered. And that didn’t do anything as far as hurting me for the criminal case, but it was frustrating and it made me angry to sit there and listen to some of the things she was saying.

That’s why I included some of the text messages in the book. I was a husband and a father. I provided for my family. To have her paint a life in our home that way was hurtful for me as a man. So, even though that really didn’t have anything to do with the criminal case, I still wanted to put those text messages in the book for—pride I guess? I just wanted people to get the real side of the story, how life was really like in our home. Despite what I was doing on the Internet, I was still a good husband, a good father. I provided for my family and it was frustrating to have a different portrayal out there.

Have you had any contact with her?
None whatsoever.

Have you seen your daughter at all?
No, haven’t seen her. That whole situation is being worked out in Family Court right now out in Nevada. That’s about as much as I can say about it. It’s being done under seal.

I haven’t spoken with her, my daughter. My daughter has no idea that I even exist. That's really heartbreaking. That’s really sad.

Have you had any contact with any of the other women that were mentioned in the case?
I haven’t spoken with any of them. I think from their demeanor when they testified—I think they got that they weren't in any real danger. That being said, I'm sure they don't want anything to do with me, so I'm staying away from them.

I made a public apology a couple of times when I was first let out of prison, and then when I was at my court sentencing I apologized to everyone who was involved in the case. That was meant for them, but I haven’t spoken to anyone individually.

Do you think that the internet is a negative force and that it allows people to indulge in sexual deviances? There’s no nuance on the Internet, so you can’t tell if somebody’s serious or just throwing stuff out there.
That’s a complicated question. I think what people do in their own homes is their own private business, but there are laws in place, there are conspiracy laws in place to prevent violent crimes from happening. So at what point does a person’s thoughts—do they ever cross the line as a criminal action? I think to do that you have to look at what’s going on outside the internet. You’re anonymous on the Internet.

You have that sense on the Internet and, like I said, it’s a complicated issue—and that’s for smarter people to figure out and generally, what people do in their home is their own private business.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Hopefully reunited with my daughter by then. I’ll be in Nevada, hopefully, with a house and just continuing to live as normal of a life as possible. I just hope I’m successful. That’s all I can ask for.

You can order Raw Deal: The Untold Story Of NYPD's 'Cannibal Cop.' on Kindle; and in paperback on Amazon.