Valerie Cincinelli is accused of asking who she thought was a killer-for-hire to murder the father of one of her children, as well as the teenage daughter of her current boyfriend.
A New York Police Department officer has been arrested after allegedly trying to recruit her boyfriend to help hire a hitman to kill her estranged husband, as well as her boyfriend’s own daughter, officials said.
Valerie Cincinelli is accused of asking who she thought was a killer-for-hire to murder two individuals identified in a criminal complaint against her as “John Doe and Jane Doe,” but who sources identified to multiple news outlets as her husband, Isaiah Carvalho Jr., and her boyfriend’s 14-year-old daughter.
Cincinelli, 34, allegedly put her boyfriend in charge of finding the hitman, and he instead went to the FBI, according to the complaint.
Investigators said Cincinelli’s boyfriend told her he knew someone who would carry out the killings for $7,000, and so on Feb. 18, the 11-year NYPD veteran and mother of two withdrew that amount from a TD Bank in the Long Island hamlet of Wantagh.
She gave the money to her boyfriend, who converted it into gold coins, which he told Cincinelli was the preferred method of paying the man he hired, the complaint said.
Up until Cincinelli’s arrest, she and her boyfriend allegedly spoke multiple times in person and over the phone about the plot to kill her estranged husband and his teen daughter.
When Cincinelli’s boyfriend allegedly told her during a recorded conversation on May 8 that the hitman was going to carry out the killings that coming weekend, he said he was concerned about them occurring in the same time period.
Cincinelli allegedly told her boyfriend to have his daughter, who she kept tabs on through social media, killed “over the weekend and then wait a week or a month to kill” her estranged husband, the complaint said.
By May 13, Cincinelli was questioning why her boyfriend’s daughter was not yet dead, according to investigators. When her boyfriend said the hitman would not kill the teen near a school, Cincinelli allegedly responded: “run her the f*** over, how about that.”
“OK, so she leaves school, you said he knows exactly where she lives, right?” she allegedly also said. “So what’s the problem?”
At one point, she allegedly asked her boyfriend why he “could not carry the murders him/herself,” the complaint said.
Cincinelli is also accused of discussing where the hitman would kill her estranged husband. She allegedly provided her boyfriend with the make, model and color of her husband's car and said he should be killed near his place of work.
“Cincinelli stated that it would not look suspicious because the murder would take place in ‘the hood’ or ‘the ghetto,’” the complaint said.
The couple discussed their alibis should they be questioned by police and the way the hitman would carry out the killings, investigators said. Cincinelli allegedly suggested making her husband’s murder look as if it was over the money he would have on him because of his line of work.
On May 17, Cincinelli was contacted by a detective with the Suffolk County Police Department who claimed to be investigating the death of her husband.
When she heard the news, Cincinelli allegedly cried “fake tears,” a police source told the New York Post.
That same day, FBI agents posing as the hitman sent a text to Cincinelli’s boyfriend with a scene staged to look like a murder took place, the complaint said. It was then that Cincinelli allegedly instructed her boyfriend to delete all texts and photos to each other from their phones, investigators said.
Cincinelli was arrested at her home that same day and charged with use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, officials said.
Cincinelli and her estranged husband, Carvalho, were in the midst of a contentious divorce and custody battle when she allegedly concocted the plot to have him killed, according to reports. Carvalho sued his wife for divorce last year and they have a trial scheduled for June, the Post reported.
“He’s obviously shaken up but he’s doing OK, all things considered,” Carvalho’s divorce attorney, Matthew Weiss, told the Post.
Cincinelli allegedly decided to target her boyfriend’s daughter as well because “she was getting in the way,” a source told the Post.
Cincinelli joined the New York Police Department in 2007.
She was most recently part of a unit known as VIPER that monitors security cameras. During her tenure, she was honored as “cop of the month” from the Jamaica Rotary in June 2017, NBC New York reported.
But that same year, she was suspended and placed on modified duty for an unrelated domestic incident.
According to the Post, a man with whom Cincinelli was in a relationship told the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau she spent time at his home while on-duty.
Cincinelli appeared in federal court on Central Islip Friday, where she was ordered held without bail.
“There is very strong evidence of guilt of the crimes of trying to get these two individuals murdered,” Judge Anne Shields said, citing the “danger” and “serious risk” she posed the two people she is accused of targeting, the New York Times reported.
Cincinelli’s father, who lives in Virginia, told the Post that his daughter is innocent, saying the allegation that she wanted Carvalho killed “b*******.”
“They were married, they have a kid together. … There is no way on the planet my daughter would have someone try to murder him. That’s nonsense!” he said.
He told the Post Cincinelli's boyfriend, who he would not name, was “some wacko who made an allegation against her before that she tried to kill him ... This jackass made allegations about her, and I’m sure he’s behind this.”
InsideEdition.com has reached out to Cincinelli’s attorney for comment.
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