Feds busted a former Stuyvesant HS librarian and Massachusetts police chief today in connection to the NYPD’s infamous “cannibal cop,” and charged them in a sick plot to rape and murder women and children, authorities said.
The FBI raided the Greenwich Village apartment of former librarian Christopher Asch and took him into custody around 11 a.m.
Richard Meltz, 65, chief of police at US Dept. of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, Mass., was arrested in Rockaway, NJ.
The the two were scheming to scheming to kidnap, rape, torture and kill women, children and infants, according to a federal criminal complaint.
FBI agents stumbled upon Asch and Meltz through their probe of Michael Van Hise, an accused co-conspirator of the NYPD’s “cannibal cop” Gilberto Valle, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Van Hise, identified in a criminal complaint as “co-conspirator No. 1,” allegedly wanted his wife and sister-in-law murdered and raped, sources and the criminal complaint showed.
In e-mail chats between Van Hise and Asch, Van Hise said hanging his sister-in-law wouldn’t be suspicious “because she tried to hang herself before.”
Van Hise allegedly said, this past August, he’d never want to harm or kill his own kids, because he had sick plans for his daughter: “i dont want the kids done cause when my daughter gets older i’m going to start raping her and have her attached to me so i can” have sex with “her when i want.”
Asch and Meltz allegedly came up with their own plans to target women, separate from Van Hise’s sinister plot.
They met several times earlier this year with two undercover FBI agents and picked out a Hoboken woman to murder and rape, according the federal complaint.
That potential target was a third undercover fed.
Asch and Meltz spoke at length about the equipment they’d need to carry out their sinister plans.
Asch went as far as purchasing a Taser gun at a gun show in Allentown, Pa., on April 6, according to the complaint.
Meltz, showing off his law enforcement know-how, allegedly went over the potential risks of their plans.
The Massachusetts cop was particularly concerned about their two other co-conspirators and if they were former military — because their DNA would be on file, according to feds.
“DNA is like, extremely effective,” Meltz said in a tape-recorded April 3 chat with Asch. “Except for OJ, he got away with it. But everybody else gets nailed.”
But the two agreed that the reward was worth the risk, according to taped calls.
“Because the end result is going to be fantastic,” Meltz allegedly said.
Asch and one of the undercover agents met today and the former librarian showed he was serious about their plans against the Hoboken woman.
“Asch brought to the April 15 meeting two bags of tools intended to be used in the kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of [the Hoboken woman], including but not limited to a Taser gun, rope, a meat hammer, duct tape, gloves , gloves, cleaning supplies, zip ties, a dental retractor, two speculums, 12-inch skewers, pliers, wireless modem, and a leg spreader,” according an affidavit written by FBI Special Agent Anthony Foto.
This isn’t Asch’s first brush with law enforcement.
Asch, who is openly gay, was arrested and suspended in 2009 for six months without pay from his Stuyvesant perch for allegedly touching students’ backs and whispering in one’s ear.
But a Manhattan Supreme Court judge said he was the victim of discrimination. Those charges were dropped.
Additional reporting by David K. Li