Michael Van Hise
By Theodore Shoebat
A man in New Jersey has been charged for plotting to have his wife, her sister and her four children kidnapped, tortured and murdered. As we read in one report from NJ.com:
A New Jersey car mechanic was sentenced to seven years in prison on Tuesday in a plot to kidnap, torture and kill women and girls, bringing an end to a criminal case that shed light on cannibalism and other fetishes circulating in dark corners of the internet.
The sentence means Michael Van Hise will spend about six additional months in prison on top of the 51/2 years he already has served.
U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe’s sentence was less than half of what federal sentencing guidelines recommended.
The Manhattan jurist noted that Van Hise, 28, had cooperated with the FBI and had suffered a difficult childhood that included learning disabilities, parents who abandoned him and impediments that left him playing with little trucks and cars in his room at age 23 as if he were a child.
He also said Van Hise, of Hamilton Township in Mercer County, was less culpable than his co-defendants: a school librarian and a former Massachusetts police chief who were sentenced to 15 and 10 years in prison respectively for their roles.
But Gardephe said Van Hise earned his prison time by turning to the internet to recruit others to kidnap, rape, torture and murder his wife as well as his sister-in-law and her four children. No one was ultimately harmed.