By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former police chief of a federal veterans hospital was sentenced in New York on Tuesday to 10 years in prison for his role in conspiring to torture, rape and kill women, a plot that grew out of Internet fetish forums he visited.

Richard Meltz, 66, pleaded guilty in January to being involved in two conspiracies to kidnap and kill women with two other men that he had met through online message boards that indulge violent sexual fetishes.

His was one of several connected cases in New York in which no one was kidnapped or hurt, but hinged on determining when fantasy turns into dangerous reality.

One of the women he had discussed kidnapping in emails and phone calls with the other men was, unbeknownst to him, an undercover agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"Shit!" Meltz hissed loudly before clasping his head in his hands as U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe read out the sentence of 10 years, the maximum possible.

Meltz's wife and one of their two adult daughters hugged each other and wept in the public gallery.

"I conclude that Mr. Meltz presents a danger to the community," Gardephe said. "There could have been no question in his mind that these kidnapping plots were real."

A few minutes earlier, Peter Brill, Meltz's lawyer, had argued for a lenient sentence, saying Meltz was in greater need of mental counseling than a prison sentence he might not survive.

"I don't mean to make this sound silly but this was a hobby of Mr. Meltz's for many, many, many years," Brill said, referring to Meltz's violence-streaked fantasizing. "And then, of course, the Internet gets invented."

Meltz, of Linden in northern New Jersey, had spent some 30 years in policing and law enforcement, the court heard. He was arrested in 2013 after FBI agents began investigating Gilberto Valle, a former New York City police officer who ended up charged with plotting to kill and cook women to indulge his cannibalism fetish.

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Judge Gardephe overturned Valle's conviction on those charges in July, ruling that Valle had only been harmlessly fantasizing, which his lawyers argued was protected by the U.S. Constitution.

In March, a federal jury convicted Michael Van Hise and Christopher Asch, the two other men prosecutors said were plotting with Meltz, for conspiring to kidnap women in order to satisfy similar sexual fetishes.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)