– or innocent
Tape shows cop didn’t plot to kill: lawyer
The words are recorded — but their meaning got two wildly different interpretations Monday at a bail hearing for an NYPD officer charged with ordering a hit on her estranged husband and her lover’s teenage daughter.
NYPD Officer Valerie Cincinelli — charged with hiring an FBI agent posing as a hit man in a botched plot to kill estranged spouse Isaiah Carvalho and lover John DiRubba’s 15-year-old daughter, Victoria — burst into tears when she spotted family members in the courtroom.
Hours of audio and video — some of it muffled — were then presented, recordings of Cincinelli and DiRubba’s conversations prior to her May 17 arrest for allegedly scheming to whack Carvalho and the teen.
The cop’s lawyer claims the tapes prove she never asked her boyfriend to kill her ex and DiRubba’s child, and that no money ever changed hands. The prosecution insists the tapes present Cincinelli as an angry, vindictive schemer.
At the hearing’s end, Judge Sandra Feuerstein ordered a psychological evaluation and medical exam for Cincinelli, remanded her back to jail with no bail, and set her next court date for Sept. 17 — a time frame that triggered a fresh flood of tears from Cincinelli.
“We submit that it is palpably clear that she did not give (DiRubba) $7,000 to give to anybody to commit any murders,” Cincinelli’s lawyer, James Kousouros, argued during the hearing. “There was no deed that was going to be carried out.“
“On these tapes you will hear him fishing for her to say something [to] corroborate … you can hear my client’s attitude towards the man you call her boyfriend and co-conspirator. She is mocking him … That is a significant legal problem for the government.”
It was DiRubba who tipped the FBI in February to Cincinelli’s alleged role in the failed murder-forhire plots, eventually working as an informant until her arrest.
In Kousouros explanation of the plot, when police came to Cincinelli’s house claiming her husband was dead, she immediately turned on DiRubba.
“She never thought the man could do anything such as that,” he said. “This was not her idea, it was his. She never intended any harm.”
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Mirabile argued Cincinelli is the dangerous one, and that she continues “to obstruct justice.”
“If there is anyone who knows how to get around the system, it is the defendant,” Mirabile said. “Her family and friends have no control over her. What moral compass did they provide to her when she plotted to kill two people?”
“Valerie Cincinelli does what she wants. She is not the victim, she is the perpetrator.”
Mirabile argued that in Cincinelli’s pending divorce, there was an apparent settlement and that her ex was expected to get 15% of the money.
“She was angry about the money her ex-husband was going to get. She was trying to protect her pension,” Mirabile argued — adding Cincinelli had reason to resent DiRubba’s daughter as well. anybody