A judge today refused to set bail for the New Jersey man charged in the notorious “cannibal cop” case after a prosecutor said he discussed raping an infant during an online chat.
Michael Van Hise told an unidentified person he met online that he wanted to “do the newborn,” Manhattan federal prosecutor Randall Jackson said.
“Yeah, it’d be hot to hold a newborn between us…” the other person responded, Jackson said.
Judge William Pauley III said the allegations against Van Hise, 22, represented “really shocking, depraved and violent conduct.”
“The conduct is so far beyond the pale, and presents such a great danger to the community, that there is no set of conditions the court can conceive of that could be set for bail for the defendant,” he said.
It was unclear if the child allegedly discussed during the chat was one of Van Hise’s own. He and his wife, Bolice, have a son, 2, and a daughter who was born in December.
Jackson didn’t say when the alleged Internet conversation took place, but outside court, defense lawyer Alice Fontier said she believed it was after Van Hise began cooperating with the FBI in October, and that everything Van Hise wrote had been “pre-approved” by agents.
Earlier, Fontier told the judge that Van Hise never meant anything he wrote online, and noted that more than 37,000 people are members of the darkfetishnet.com Web site he frequented.
Fontier also said that she signed up at Web site, and within 24 hours got a barrage of emails from people “offering to hang me, torture me, rape, me, eat me.”
Van Hise is charged with offering NYPD cop Gilberto Valle $5,000 to kidnap a woman so he could rape and murder her after they met on the site.
Valle — who’s accused of scheming to kidnap, rape, torture, cook and eat women — is set for trial next month.
Both his lawyers and Fontier have accused the feds of arresting Van Hise to keep him from testifying that he didn’t believe Valle, 28, was serious.
Fontier said it was still “a possibility” that Van Hise would testify in Valle’s defense.
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
bruce.golding@nypost.com