The Troubling Case Of The ‘Cannibal Cop'

The Troubling Case of the ‘Cannibal Cop'
FILE - In this Oct. 25, 2012, file courtroom drawing, Federal Defender Julie Gatto requests bail for her client, New York City Police Officer Gilberto Valle, right, at Manhattan Federal Court in New York. The FBI claims its analysis found that 40 of Valle?s emails and chats were evidence he wanted to abduct, torture and eat women. But an agent also testified on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013 at Valle?s federal trial that there were thousands of others the FBI concluded were mere fantasy, even though they contain the same ghoulish elements. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams, File)
FILE - In this Oct. 25, 2012, file courtroom drawing, Federal Defender Julie Gatto requests bail for her client, New York City Police Officer Gilberto Valle, right, at Manhattan Federal Court in New York. The FBI claims its analysis found that 40 of Valle?s emails and chats were evidence he wanted to abduct, torture and eat women. But an agent also testified on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013 at Valle?s federal trial that there were thousands of others the FBI concluded were mere fantasy, even though they contain the same ghoulish elements. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams, File)

Gilberto Valle was 25 years old and still living with his father in Queens when, in 2009, he met Kathleen Mangan on OKCupid. He was a cheerful, moon-faced cop at a precinct in West Harlem; she was new in town, a young Teach for America recruit at an elementary school in East Harlem. Their romance got serious quickly. They moved to their first apartment, a one-bedroom on 88th Street and Third Avenue. They got a pet, a bulldog they trained together and took turnswalking. Mangan remembers those early years fondly. “It was fun,” she said in court last year, the only time she’s commented publicly about her husband or marriage. “We laughed together. It was nice. He opened doors, pulled out chairs.”

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