Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Two men were arrested Monday on charges of conspiracy to kidnap, torture, rape and kill woman and children in an elaborate, twisted plot, the FBI announced.
Charged were Richard Meltz, chief of police for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the Bedford, Massachusetts Veteran Affairs Medical Center, and Robert Christopher Asch, a former high school librarian.
“The bone-chilling conduct alleged in this complaint is a chronicle of sadism and depravity that includes the defendants’ very real steps to carry out their plans to kidnap, torture, rape, and kill the women and children they targeted,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release. “As alleged, Richard Meltz and Robert Christopher Asch assiduously planned their plot in detailed conversations and alternately served as advisers and facilitators of the plan—Meltz provided ‘strategic advice,’ and Asch conducted surveillance and provided supplies including leather ties, a sleeping agent, instruments of torture, and a Taser gun. The only thing that stood between these alleged kidnappers and their horrifying plot was the outstanding investigative teamwork of the FBI and the prosecutors in this office.”
Agents said the men provided an undercover agent with a ski mask, hyper dermic needles, leather ties, chrome forceps and other supplies to help in the plot.
