NEW YORK, May 8 (UPI) —
A former NYPD officer, who was arrested in 2012 for conspiring to kidnap, murder, cook and eat women, has gotten a job working as a chef at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan in order to "kill time."
Gilberto Valle, better-known as the cannibal cop, was convicted in federal court over a year ago, but has yet to been sentenced while a judge is deciding whether to grant him a new trial.
The 30-year-old man makes 44 cents an hour for preparing breakfast and lunch each day for other inmates.
According to his mother, Elizabeth Valle, the pizza he makes is so good that even the guards eat it. "He has mastered making pizza," she told the Daily News.
She is hopeful that Valle will be granted a retrial and a second chance to prove his innocence. "I’m at my wit’s end," the mom said. "He’s not the monster they portray him to be. He’s innocent. We want to set the record straight."
Valle was a police officer with the NYPD for six years when his wife found some disturbing photos and chats on their shared computer, which she later turned him in to the authorities.
According to his lawyers, Valle’s issues originated with a scene from 1994 film The Mask. His client’s "pattern of arousal appears to have originated with a scene in the movie, The Mask, in which Cameron Diaz pretends to be abducted and bound," Valle’s defense lawyer Julia Gatto wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe during his first trial.