An NHS nurse has been found guilty of trying to meet a 14-year-old girl he had sexually groomed and promised to kill and eat in a case that began with a tipoff from the FBI.

Dale Bolinger, 58, sat in the dock with his head bowed was found guilty after a four-day trial at Canterbury crown court and did not react as jurors delivered their verdict on a charge of attempting to meet a girl under 16 following sexual grooming.

Bolinger chatted with the teenager, a Mexican girl known as "Eva" said to be living in Germany, on a website called the Dark Fetish Network. The father of three told her: "The idea of us making love and then eating you is a VERY great turn on! I have been called a very generous lover and I would be very generous to you before I prepped you for the table."

The day before he was due to meet his alleged victim, Bolinger – who worked as a registered nurse at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in Margate – bought an axe in Broadstairs, Kent, and told the girl that all she needed to do was get on a train. But jurors heard that Eva, whose identity has never been revealed, failed to show up at Ashford International station as planned.

Bolinger was arrested in February 2013 after police received leads from the FBI, which was investigating offences of conspiracy to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women by Gilberto Valle, a former New York police officer. In the course of their investigation, the FBI discovered the email address meatmarketman@rocketmail.com, which was being accessed from a computer in Kent.

The account was traced to Bolinger and local police searched his home, where they found computer discs containing indecent images of children. Bolinger admitted the images were his but said he had gone to Ashford station only because he feared for the girl's personal safety after their conversations. He claimed that if she had arrived he would have gone to the police.

Prosecutor Martin Yale said one image featured a girl aged between six and nine lying naked on a serving plate with an apple in her mouth. When questioned about the images, Bolinger told police: "I do not find children sexually attractive but I do find them interesting as a food source".

Asked by defence counsel Paul Jarvis whether he had ever attempted to kill anyone, eaten human flesh or sexually assaulted a child, Bolinger replied: "No, not in reality, just in fantasy".

In police interviews, Bolinger said he started having fantasies about cannibalism at about the age of six, and blamed his "very domineering" mother for his "weird" behaviour.

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."

In his closing speech, Jarvis said: "We say that when you look at all the evidence, it's quite clear that Mr Bolinger is far more Walter Mitty than Hannibal Lecter. He is a fantasist and sometimes he goes too far and sometimes he stops, and sometimes – when the person encourages him – the fantasy continues."

DI Rob Chitham, of Kent police, said after Bolinger's conviction: "This was a long and complicated investigation because much of the evidence was in the US. In addition, the people who use fetish chatrooms go to great lengths to hide their identity, and specialist knowledge and equipment is needed to determine who they are and where they live. We worked closely with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in America to identify one of the chatroom users as Mr Bolinger."

Judge Adele Williams adjourned sentencing until 19 September after asking for a psychiatric and a pre-sentence report to be prepared to assess the level of risk Bolinger poses to the public.

Bolinger will be sentenced for attempting to groom a child under 16 for sexual purposes and for previously admitted charges of administering a noxious substance (cleaning fluid) to a woman in 2010, two counts of possessing obscene pictures of children under 16, and seven charges of writing obscene articles.