A former police chief at the federal veterans hospital in Massachusetts was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in jail for plotting on the Internet to torture, rape and kill women.
U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe said 66-year-old Richard Metlz's plans to abduct and torture women were not just online fantasies. Meltz had established contact online with two men, Michael Van Hise and Christopher Asch, and shared brutal sexual fantasies. Both the men were convicted by federal jury in March.
"I conclude that Meltz presents a danger to the community," Judge Paul said. "There could have been no question in his mind that these kidnapping plots were real."
Meltz pled guilty in January to the charges related to conspiracy and confessed to assisting in the planned abduction of an adult relative of a man from New Jersey and a female undercover FBI agent working on the case, reports CBS New York.
The judge said that Meltz will be treated as a sex offender once he is released. He would also face a ban on contacting children below 17 and accessing Internet sites related to sadomasochism, bondage or discipline, reports the Associated Press.
Peter Bill, an attorney for Metltz, appealed to the judge to grant his client a lenient punishment. He also added that Meltz needed mental counseling to treat his condition and a prison term will not help him any way. "I don't mean to make this sound silly, but this was a hobby of Meltz's for many, many, many years," Brill said, reports Reuters. "And then, of course, the Internet gets invented."
Meltz was a police veteran of nearly 30 years before his arrest in 2013. He was arrested after federal agents began a string of searches for suspected individuals connected with Gilberto Valle, a former police officer charged with killing women then eating their body parts to satisfy his cannibalism fetish.
