People in the Queens neighborhood where NYPD officer Gilberto Valle lives, including his brother, are having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that he faces charges in an alleged plot to to kill and consume the bodies of multiple women. NY1's Ruschell Boone filed the following report.
The arrest of officer Gilberto Valle left his younger brother upset and visibly shaken by the charge that Valle plotted to kidnap, rape, torture, cook and kill women, then eat their body parts.
Valle's brother said he had not spoken with the officer, but he went to his brother's apartment to walk his dog after hearing the news of his arrest. He didn't want to be identified but he said Valle is a good person.
A neighbor and the superintendent of Valle's Forest Hills apartment building said the 28-year-old lived with a woman and a young child, but the superintendent said he had not seen the woman recently.
"Two years, they have been living here," the superintendent said. "I didn't see anything wrong."
Those who know Valle were stunned by the news of his arrest. They all describe him as a good person who kept to himself.
"Very, very, very gentlemanly," said one neighbor. "Like I said, salt of the earth. Very polite. Here with the baby, was very proud of the baby, happy to be a father. But to see something like this is just totally bizarre."
"He looked very nice," said handyman Rafael Marichal. "He doesn't look like that."