Judge to watch ‘torture video’ connected to ‘cannibal cop’ case

Don’t expect the judge to break out the popcorn when he watches this video.

Manhattan federal Judge Paul Gardephe on Thursday said he’ll have to personally watch a sadistic torture video before deciding whether authorities can use it as evidence at the Feb. 24 trial of a former Stuyvesant HS librarian charged in a sick plot to rape and murder women and children in connection to the NYPD’s infamous “cannibal cop” case.

“I read the government’s description, and I will need to look at the video before I can rule on it,” Gardephe said deadpanned, referring a black-market video titled “Pain 35″ that the feds found in Christopher Asch’s home.

It depicts two men torturing two nearly naked women with nipple clamps, a leg spreader, riding crop, handcuffs, rope and scenes in which the men insert needles into one of the woman’s private parts.

As the Post reported last week, prosecutors say the video served as a “how-to” guide for Asch, 62, of Greenwich Village, living out his twisted fantasies and that the FBI believes the women in the video and are actually being tortured.

Prosecutors say they may show selected “screen shots” from Pain 35 but aren’t planning to play the video in court. Instead, they want an FBI agent to describe it in detail to jurors to help show Asch intended to carry out his grizzly plan and wasn’t just “fantasizing” as he alleges.

Brian Waller, Asch’s lawyer, said he sat through an airing Pain 35 and he believes isn’t a “how-to” video, but rather a simple S&M fetish video.

He said any mention of it at trial would prejudice jurors, adding he believes the women in it are “actresses, and not being tortured.”

The video is apparently so damning that alleged co-conspirator Michael Van Hise has asked Gardephe to be tried separately because he doesn’t want his case tainted by “Pain 35.”

Authorities came upon the Asch and Van Hise while investigating the notorious NYPD “cannibal cop” Gilberto Valle, a former police officer who was convicted last year of a plot to kidnap, cook and eat women.

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