To outsiders, Dale Bolinger was a respected nurse – a job requiring care and empathy – at a leading Kent hospital. But in reality, he had a dark side, prowling the seedy underbelly of the online world apparently in pursuit of living out a sick fantasy.
A little over 10 years ago, he had been chatting online to what he thought was a 14-year-old Mexican girl living in Germany. They had met through a website known as the Dark Festish Network.
Lurking in the dark web, it was dedicated to talk of kidnap, rape, torture, murder and cannibalism. Bolinger – who would go on to be dubbed ‘the Canterbury Cannibal’ – boasted to others there that he had killed and eaten both a five-year-old and a 39-year-old colleague while sharing grotesque images.
Using a picture of the supermodel Naomi Campbell as his profile picture and using the alias ‘Chris C’ he listed his interests as “cannibalism, mainly the hunting and preparation of young but sometimes not so young women”.
In reality, the US citizen worked at the QEQM Hospital in Margate and lived in a leafy suburb of Canterbury. Neighbours said he kept himself to himself but could frequently been seen riding his bicycle.
After chatting to the ‘schoolgirl’ for several weeks, hoping to lure her to his home, the father-of-two arranged to meet her at Ashford International station.
The pair had been discussing what they would do – sexual acts before culminating in her head being severed by an axe. The ‘girl’, known as Eva, was apparently keen to participate. He then planned to eat his victim.
The day before he had planned to meet her, he had purchased an axe from a DIY store in Broadstairs.
‘Eva’ never showed up, but the transcript of their conversations was picked up by the FBI. It had been probing a similar case involving a New York cop by the name of Gilberto Valle and flagged up to Kent Police when a user’s email he had been in correspondence with – [email protected] – was traced back to the county.
Valle had been in the same dark recesses of the online world and harboured similar twisted fantasies. Bolinger is believed to have egged him on. Valle had chatted to users about his ‘plans’ to inflict pain onto women he knew – even using the police database to find out where they lived. When his wife found out what he was doing, she reported him and life as he knew it ended.
He was booted out of the police force and faced trial for conspiracy to commit kidnap and, for using the database, violations of the US’ Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Valle was ultimately convicted by a jury but a judge subsequently overruled the conspiracy to kidnap guilty verdict as the prosecution had failed to prove it was more than just “fantasy roleplay”. Given time already served, he was released from prison.
But the same key legal topics which had elevated the story up the news agenda would play out again in the case of Bolinger when he appeared before Canterbury Crown Court.
Having dark and even morbid fantasies is not a criminal act in itself – but where is the line between sharing such sick scenarios and the danger of them becoming a reality?
In the case of Bolinger – as with Valle before – that line was blurred.
There was nothing to suggest Bolinger ever indulged in cannibalism in the past in reality – despite his online ‘boasts’.
Asked by his barrister in court “Have you killed anyone? Have you eaten anyone? Have you raped anyone? Have you sexually assaulted anyone?” each time Bolinger replied: “No.”
He was then asked if he had ever intended to kill or eat anyone, replying: “No, not in reality. Just in fantasy.”
But the purchase of the axe and the discussions with who he believed to be a schoolgirl suggested otherwise.
‘Eva’ was never identified, but Bolinger said in his trial he had probably been talking to a man in his 30s “surrounded by pizza boxes”. Prosecutors, however, had little doubt Bolinger believed he was talking to a 14-year-old – even bragging about it in other correspondence.
While pleading not guilty to charges of attempting to meet a girl under the age of 16 following sexual grooming, he had admitted, before the trial, to others. They included administering a poison or noxious substance after he put a cloth soaked in dry-cleaning fluid over his friend Urlene King’s mouth in July 2010.
The mother-of-four from South London had been visiting Bolinger, a long-time friend, at a previous home of his in Lewisham.
“I was sitting on the couch with my back to the door when he attacked me,’ Ms King later told the Daily Mirror, “I couldn’t breathe and began to feel all giddy – I thought he was trying to rape me.
“I finally broke free and said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He staggered back and said, ‘Oh my God what have I done.’ But he looked different, nothing like the Dale I knew.”
After his arrest, Bolinger had told police during interviews that he had started having fantasies about cannibalism from the age of six.
He told officers: “By the time I got to 14, I turned into the villain of the piece and I wondered what it would be like to eat a girl.
“I do not find children sexually attractive but I do find them interesting as a food source.”
I do not find children sexually attractive but I do find them interesting as a food source
Yet he never revealed his twisted fantasies with his wife of 34 years – or their children.
He also pleaded guilty to making indecent pseudo photographs of children, that had been digitally manipulated, and seven counts of publishing an obscene article.
It was ten years ago today he stood in the dock, head bowed and fists clenched, to hear his punishment. He’d claimed, in his defence, it was all fantasy and he had simply set out to shock users on the website he frequented.
But prosecutors said he clearly hoped ‘Eva’ was on her way. During the court case, prosecutor Martin Yale said: “Eva did not arrive, something about which he challenged her in the final entries of the Eva chatlog the following afternoon.
“It is apparent that his intention when he travelled to Ashford International station was that he would meet 14-year-old Eva and a sexual offence would take place.”
Found guilty by a jury, Judge Adele Williams told him: “You demonstrated when giving evidence that you are an arrogant and manipulative man.
“You have shown no remorse and indeed cannot understand why anyone should find your behaviour in any way abnormal or perverted, let alone criminal.
“You lack any insight into your behaviour and fail to understand that right-minded people will find your behaviour abhorrent, shocking, repulsive and dangerous – dangerous because, by talking about these activities, there is always the risk that your fantasies will tip over into actions.
“There was also the real danger that you would inflame or incite the people with whom you were discussing these activities to move from fantasy to action themselves.”
During the hearing at Canterbury Crown Court, a psychiatrist ruled Bolinger – then 58 – was not suffering from mental illness and would probably continue to have warped fantasies regardless of his punishment.
Judge Williams described the revelation as “worrying and disturbing” and imposed an order banning him from accessing the internet in future without supervision.
He was sentenced to nine years behind bars in 2014 – a little over a year since he had first been arrested.
Nine months on, he was formally struck off the Nursing and Midwifery Council register after chiefs ruled he remained “a clear danger to the public”.
Yet a little over three years later he was released, apparently for good behaviour – and either deported or voluntarily returned to his homeland of the United States. His arrival, unsurprisingly, created unease in the community in which he settled.
Having registered as a sex offender, he tried to start a new life in Blair, a small city surrounded by rolling hills and the River Missouri Valley, in Nebraska. But word soon got out as to his identity.
Local police – somewhat surprised his criminal conviction had not been flagged up to them in advance – took him into custody at Washington County jail amid fears of vigilante attacks.
He was subsequently transferred to a 120-bed “sex offender treatment centre”, called Norfolk Regional Centre, before being released.
He remains on the Nebraska Sex Offenders’ Register – and is required to check in for the 25 years it remains in force.
According to files, he last checked in with local law enforcement officials in July 2024, and remains in the Lincoln area – almost slap bang in the middle of the United States… and some 4,300-plus miles from his former Kent home.
