Ex-NYPD Officer Pleads Guilty to Obstruction of Justice in Plot to Solicit Hit Man

Why couldn’t he just do it himself? She wondered in her not-so-subtle way. She stopped short of full-on histrionics… for now.

Valerie is a veteran NYPD officer. And she is expecting me to kill her ex-husband and a teenager? MY teenager? This has gotta be her bipolar talking.

“You’re kidding”, he said, to no response.

It was almost too surreal for John to believe. It took a few moments to sink in. He just looked at her frozen with shock and a horrible moral realization: I don’t think she’s kidding.

Did she really just ask me to kill MY daughter?

I. The Lead Up

John, aged 54, still could not believe he was dating someone this disturbed. The coming weeks convinced him of just how serious she was.

Jealousy ravaged her mind and emotions like a vulture circling a dead animal on an arid and lonely Arizona highway. John liked to spoil their three kids – especially his 14-year-old daughter – with expensive gifts.

These gifts and the amount of attention and love he gave the girl caused Valerie’s covetousness toward what they had. It was jealousy at a delusional level – always the elephant in the room for the couple – it possessed greater swaths of Valerie’s emotions, mind, and very self.

Prosecutors argued it was also a financially driven plot. She wanted her ex husband dead because she was afraid their upcoming divorce would give him access to her NYPD pension. She also wanted John to be spending more money on her and her kids, not his daughter from a prior relationship.

Nevertheless, John loved her madly, saying, this Valerie “isn’t the real Valerie.” The picture he paints is of a walking contradiction – sweet and surly, moody yet rational, adorable but mean – an armed Jekyll and Hyde on the force of New York’s Finest.

John would go on to blame Valerie’s bipolar illness for her criminal behavior. It is unclear whether she was diagnosed as such or has a history of mental illness though. His mention of it was the first-time media outlets covering this story had heard of it. As the trial stage is highly-unlikely because of her plea, we would have no way of knowing from that avenue whether she had a psychiatric history.

As he told the New York Daily News: “It hurts me so much, thinking that the real Valerie is sitting in jail, the scared little girl.”

II. The Hit Man and the Federal Informant

Valerie did not want just John’s daughter dead. If she was going to take this step, she wanted as much value for the money she would have to spend to get the job done as she could get. She wanted her soon-to-be ex-husband, Isaiah Carvalho, whacked as well.

Unbeknownst to Valerie, John could not take the cognitive dissonance anymore. He loved her intensely – the couple sported matching “’Til Death” tattoos – but he could not let her do this. What kind of father would he be anyway if he allowed this to happen?

So, John did the right thing: he called the FBI, despite his feelings and devotion for Valerie. They, in turn, kept him on as a CI or confidential informant from February of 2019 to May 17 2019, when they arrested Valerie. She discussed her idea in some depth with John as he was still her boyfriend at the time – so investigators documented much of what she said electronically.

She wanted the hitman solicited for $7000. The assassin was an undercover FBI agent.

III. Obstruction of Justice

On May 17, the FBI and NYPD faked her ex-husband’s death.

They arrived at her house to deliver the awful news and say they’re investigating it. John then showed her a message from the hitman with pictures of the crime scenes of both hits. Very soon after, she methodically destroyed two cell phones holding incriminating messages and other multimedia evidence. This impediment to the grand jury’s probe is what got her the obstruction of justice charge.

She sobbed during her hearing last week, imploring her ex-husband to say something to defend her. She faces 5-20 years in prison. Her sentencing takes place October 29.