A Canterbury nurse alleged to have claimed during internet chats to have eaten people later told police: "It's a bit of a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde."

Dale Bolinger, 58, revealed he kept his interest in cannibalism hidden from his estranged wife Rosemary and their children.

A jury at Canterbury Crown Court heard Bolinger tell police who asked if his wife knew about his fetish: "Rosemary? No, not really, no, no, no, no, no 'cause she would've freaked."

Jurors earlier sent the judge a note asking if Bolinger's alleged claims that he had murdered a five-year-old child and a 39-year-old Caribbean woman had been investigated.

DC Nicola Griffith told the jury that specially-trained dogs had been taken to Bolinger's Canterbury home after his arrest last year.

She said that despite a thorough search of the house and the garden, no evidence of human remains had been found.

And a police investigation into missing people who might have fitted the descriptions in Bolinger's online chatlogs had also drawn a blank.

The jury then heard how Bolinger –

who is accused of attempting to meet a child after grooming – told police how he used an internet name of Darth Vader's "less successful brother".

Jurors were yesterday shown images of websites selling axes that Bolinger is alleged to have sent to a girl he believed was 14. He is said to have chatted about murdering her with an axe and then eating her.

Dressed in a blue striped shirt and tie, Bolinger was today asked by his barrister Paul Jarvis: "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 and he said: "No, not in reality. Just in fantasy!"

He told the jury he had been married for 34 years and had four children – one of whom had died and had last worked at the QEQM Hospital in Thanet.

Bolinger said his interest in cannibalism began as a child but developed after puberty.

He joined the DFN online, giving a name "ChrisC" and a spurious date of birth, saying he did not want people to know his true identity.

He then claimed he did not believe "Eva" – the Mexican teenager living in Germany who is alleged to have groomed – was being truthful either.

"Initially I thought she could be a female... then I thought it was a man who was probably older, maybe 39, surrounded by pizza boxes and who would probably be dead by the age of 45."

He said he did not believe any of those who had signed up for the 18-only fetish network actually gave their true age, gender or names.

But the jury did hear how he had admitted downloading nine pseudo-images of women – including one of a girl aged between six and nine sitting on a serving plate with an apple in her mouth.

And another showed a girl aged between 12 to 15 years in an apron with a child aged between four or five in an oven.

DC Nicola Griffith said Bolinger's description of a Caribbean woman he had killed in 2002 – matched the description of a former work friend who he has admitted trying to smother with a drying cleaning fluid liquid in July 2010.

His barrister Mr Jarvis asked: "Who does that description sound like?"

"I had this fantasy about some of the staff coming in, stealing the girls and taking them into the kitchen to cook for our dinner and I would stop them, which was really great..." - Dale Bolinger in police interview

She replied: "That sounds like a description of Urlene King and she is still alive."

Mr Jarvis asked: "In the search of his house there is not a single piece of evidence that anyone met their deaths in that building or was consumed there is there?"

The detective: "No. That's right."

Mr Jarvis: "From your enquiries, there is no evidence that he has ever killed anybody, eaten anybody raped anybody or sexually assaulted anybody?"

Detective: "That's right."

The Canterbury nurse was arrested after an FBI investigation into his activities on an internet fetish site.

He was questioned by police about his alleged discussions about cannibalism, kidnapping and murdering of a woman.

He told the officer he had used the internet name MeatMarketMan... but had also an account in the name based on an invented Star Wars name - Chad Vader.

The officer asked him who that was and Bolinger replied: "It's Darth Vader's younger and less successful brother. He's a night manager of a supermarket.

"Okay and it's just a mickey take sort of, like all the things, you know, the force is strong with this one. I'm not sure if it was just Chat Vader... I'm sure I wasn't the only person who found it amusing."

The officer later asked: "So Dale, do you have any interest, sexually, fantasy or anything like that related to cannibalism?"

Bolinger, formerly of Davidson Road, replied: "Yeah I did, Okay. It goes back to childhood... I started a file up on myself, going back and looking at when these sort of things started, how they started, what happened and, just trying to, I can't remember who it was...

"The unexamined life is not worth living is one of the... But anyway, so I started seriously examining myself, 'cause there were, I mean... with partners. I've done a bit of bondage and a bit like biting stuff.

"But nothing serious, but it was like 'where has this come from'? I went back to when I was in kindergarten, so about six, and it was all about falling asleep in the afternoon sleeping sessions.

"It was like finding like-minded people and I did a little bit about slavery, slave training and I used a picture of Naomi Campbell as my avatar..." - defendant Dale Bolinger

"And I had this fantasy about some of the staff coming in, stealing the girls and taking them into the kitchen to cook for our dinner and I would stop them, which was really great, sort of thing a six-year-old would do.

"Then as I got older, it changed from me being a sort of hero to me being the villain in the piece. I think I was about 14 or 15 and I was sort of like thinking: 'Oh wonder what it would be like to eat a girl?'," he said.

Bolinger told how he then joined the Dark Fetish Network about five years before he was quizzed last year.

"It was like finding like-minded people and I did a little bit about slavery, slave training and I used a picture of Naomi Campbell as my avatar."

The jury heard how the nurse told police about talking to a girl of the DFN about being beheaded.

"There was a girl called Sally and anyway we were talking about she wanted to be beheaded, which I know she didn't want to be beheaded, I mean this is all fantasy, but we got into a conversation about that."

The police officer asked him: "Did you get sexual gratification from that...?"

Bolinger replied: "Oh I don't know, I think I might have... God this is going to be really weird. No, what I found was that I found it fascinating, the psychology of what was going on, how people were reacting."

He claimed his interest was "less to do with sexual gratification and more to do with anger at a very domineering mother".

In his first police after his arrest, he said: "I mean the people that do do it are seriously deranged and I may be many things, but I don't really think I'm deranged.

"I couldn't take somebody's life, you know, I just couldn't. I mean, I spend my entire working life doing the exact opposite.

"It just seems a bit Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but it's not something I would fulfil. So it's not a
fantasy I would fulfil.. there's no way I would harm them."

Bolinger claimed he suffered from a "domineering" mother, adding: "She was quite forceful and I was brought up in a military household so it was a bit strict anyway.

"Well I suppose I was quite repressed and sort of like what was normal for everybody else wasn't for me, 'cause I mean, my father was in the US Air Force and we moved 18 times in 22 years."

He also admitted he had researched on the internet "how to butcher a human carcass".

And he admitted having a conversation on DFN with a woman called Lyndsay who was "solely interested in becoming a slave".

"There is just this whole sub-culture of people who put themselves into slavery," he said. "Lyndsay said she wanted to disappear as a slave, meaning she'd go somewhere and be somebody's house slave... you know clean up, tidy up but obviously there was a sexual side to it."

Bolinger said he had gone to meet her at Euston rail station, but she did not show up.

He added: "When she didn't turn up I was probably as relieved as anything else, but I wouldn't have decapitated her."

The trial continues.