The former police chief at a Massachusetts veterans hospital was sentenced Tuesday to the maximum 10 years in prison in a kidnap-murder case that resulted from the prosecution of a cannibalism case against a New York City police officer.

U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe said 66-year-old Richard Meltz of Linden, New Jersey, was a danger to the community and a substantial sentence was necessary.

Meltz, a diabetic with a history of panic attacks and depression, repeatedly dropped his head through his hands as the judge described how the onetime New Jersey police officer will be treated as a sex offender after his release, with a ban on contacting children under age 17 and accessing Internet sites featuring sadomasochism, bondage or discipline. His wife and daughter cried.

The judge noted that federal sentencing guidelines would have called for Meltz to spend decades in prison if he had not reached a plea bargain to plead guilty to two conspiracy counts that each carried a potential five-year prison sentence. Meltz declined to speak.

Meltz, who was police chief at the Bedford Veterans Affairs Medical Center, admitted in one count that he conspired to kidnap, rape and murder the wife of a man he met over the Internet between 2011 and 2013. In the second count, he admitted conspiring to do the same to a female FBI agent working undercover.

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