A creepy ex-Stuyvesant High School librarian carrying a bagful of torture devices uttered, “She deserves to die,” when he spotted an undercover female agent who he thought was just a passerby on a Manhattan street, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Christopher Asch, 62, allegedly made the chilling statement in the company of a male undercover when they spotted the woman walking in the Financial District just before his arrest.
Van Hise, prosecutor Brooke Cucinella said, was carrying a black bag containing skewers, a meat mallet, nails, rope, a high-voltage stun gun disguised as a flashlight, an instrument called a mouth spreader, a leg spreader, duct tape, gloves and bleach.
“They shared a desire to rape and hurt women and children, including infants. Their goal was simple, and it was horrific,” prosecutor Brooke Cucinella said about Asch and his alleged co-conspirator Michael Van Hise, 23, during her opening statement in Manhattan federal court.
“The defendants actively sought out the opportunity to carry out their violent fantasies,” she said of their sick plot, which was connected to the NYPD’s infamous “cannibal cop” case.
Asch and another man, Richard Meltz, plotted with the agent to kidnap, torture and kill the woman the agent was pretending to be, Cucinella said, first using the stun gun to incapacitate her.
But defense lawyers insisted the men were just fantasizing about the ultra violence.
“It was all make believe, just a fantasy,” said Brian Waller, the lawyer for Asch, who appeared in court in a suit and tie with neatly trimmed hair.
Van Hise, in contrast, sported a loud purple shirt, tousled hair and a 5 o’clock shadow.
His lawyer, Elizabeth Macedonio, told jurors they should not let the stomach-churning details of the case cloud their ability to render a fair verdict.
“If you have a negative impression, you are required as jurors to put that aside. This is not a popularity contest. You don’t have to like Mr. Van Hise. You may decide that you are appalled by the words that Mr. Van Hise uses,” she said.
Asch and Meltz — an ex-chief of police at US Dept. of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, Mass who copped a plea last month — were busted in 2013 during the feds’ probe of Van Hise, a cohort of NYPD “cannibal cop” Gilberto Valle.
All three hooked up while chatting on DarkFetish –a notorious website that was a favorite of Valle’s and where users fantasize about people being tortured and killed.
Asch, of Greenwich Village, and Meltz in September 2012 offered to help Van Hise, of New Jersey, when he said via email that he wanted his wife, sister-in-law and sister-in-law’s kids raped and murdered, the feds say.
Asch allegedly wrote back to Van Hise: “What’s your feeling about the kids. Do you love them, or do you want them done too?”
Both allegedly discussed killing, dismembering and disposing of their victims, the complaint says.
Asch also allegedly performed undercover surveillance on an FBI agent acting as a would-be “victim,” saying, “She has to die.”
The trial is expected to include testimony and selected screen shots from a sadistic torture video called “Pain 35” that authorities uncovered while searching Asch’s home last spring.
The black-market video depicts two men torturing two nearly-naked women with nipple clamps, a leg spreader, handcuffs, riding crop and rope, and has scenes in which the men insert needles into one of the women’s private parts.
Prosecutors have argued that Asch used the video as a “how-to” guide for carrying out the alleged grizzly plot, and that the FBI believes the women in the movie are actually being tortured.
Manhattan federal Judge Paul Gardephe privately screened the flick and has said he found “extremely disturbing” but would likely allow an undercover FBI agent to testify about its content.
Waller, has said the movie is simply an S&M fetish flick.
Unlike Valle – who was convicted last year of plotting to kidnap, cook and eat women – the feds say the trio’s plot didn’t include allegations of cannibalism.
Asch 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. The criminal charges were later dropped.