NYPD officer charged in plot to kill estranged husband and a child, court papers say
NYPD officer Valerie Cincinelli, seen here on April 11, 2017, on duty in Howard Beach, Queens. Credit: Robert Stridiron
A veteran NYPD officer from Long Island was arrested Friday by FBI agents and charged in a plot to kill both her estranged husband and the young daughter of a boyfriend, according to court papers filed by federal prosecutors.
The officer, Valerie Cincinelli, 34, of Oceanside, a police officer for 12 years, was held without bail as a danger to the community on a federal complaint charging her with a murder-for-hire plot at a hearing in federal court in Central Islip.
Among details, according to court papers: Cincinelli was tricked Friday into talking about the murder plot with a cooperator after being shown a picture of her “murdered” estranged husband staged by the FBI, and in February she withdrew $7,000 from a bank to pay “the hitman.”
The cooperator, identified in court papers only as CS, for Confidential Source, was said to be “romantically involved” with Cincinelli, although one of the two targets of the plot was supposed to be his minor daughter, according to papers filed by Eastern District federal prosecutors Catherine Mirabile and Lara Treinis Gatz.
Cincinelli used the daughter’s social media account to track her location for the killing, the prosecutors said.
The confidential source initially told Cincinelli he would find a hitman to carry out the murders and he would convert the $7,000 in cash into a gold-coin payment, the court papers said.
But eventually the confidential source told the FBI about the plot and cooperated in making recordings of Cincinelli discussing the scheme, the court papers said.
In one of the recordings the CS made with Cincinelli, she allegedly said that the hitman should kill her estranged husband near his place of work in Holtsville, stating “it would not look suspicious because the murder would take place in ‘the hood’ or ‘the ghetto,’ ” court papers said.
Prosecutors further said that when the CS told Cincinelli that in the case of the killing of the girl, the hitman “did not want to carry out the murder near a school, [Cincinelli] responded ‘[r]un her the [expletive deleted] over, how about that.’ ”
Prosecutor Mirabile said Cincinelli was in “a volatile relationship” with both her estranged husband and the confidential source.
Cincinelli’s attorney, federal public defender Tracey Gaffey, unsuccessfully argued that her client should be released on bond to her home under electronic monitoring because a sister and several of her brothers, one of whom was an FBI agent, would support it.
Gaffey declined to comment afterward, as did the prosecutors.
A person in the courtroom who identified himself as Cincinelli’s brother declined to comment.
Cincinelli faces up to 10 years in prison if she is convicted of the crime.
Cincinelli joined the NYPD in 2007 and has been on modified assignment without a gun since 2017 because of domestic incidents, said an NYPD spokesman.
Since being placed on modified status, Cincinelli has been working with the Viper unit, which monitors surveillance cameras at city public housing areas. Previously she had worked at the 106th Precinct in Queens, said the spokesman.
Bob Kessler covers federal law, including law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, DEA, IRS and ATF, as well as the federal courts.
