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In one message read to the jury by a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Officer Gilberto Valle of the New York City police wrote that he had picked out a victim and planned to use a stun gun on her. He would then place her in an oven, and cook her at a relatively low heat, "just for my own entertainment and for her suffering," Officer Valle wrote to a man who claimed to be a butcher in Pakistan.

"My mouth is WATERING," the officer had written.

But when a defense lawyer cross-examined the agent about the thousands of Officer Valle's chats and messages that the F.B.I. had reviewed, the tenor of the trial, in its third day in Federal District Court in Manhattan, changed.

The agent, Corey Walsh, testified that investigators had concluded that only three of the two dozen people Officer Valle had exchanged messages with online had been involved in the plotting of real crimes with him. In his communications with about 21 other people, the agent said, Officer Valle had been engaged in fantasy role play.

In a series of withering questions, the lawyer, Robert M. Baum, appeared to try to show that the government had selectively introduced the most damaging of the officer's messages to portray Officer Valle as someone plotting real crimes, while rejecting other chats that did not fit that portrayal.

The clash between real and fantasy was a recurring theme in the courtroom, as Mr. Baum introduced messages for the jury that the bureau had concluded were fantasy role-playing, in which Officer Valle had written that he was not involved in actual crimes.

In one message last April, the officer wrote that it was "fun to chat and push the envelope." When asked how many he had "done," an apparent reference to killing and eating people, he wrote, "in my imagination a lot. Haha."

"I just like to get a little dirty with the ideas," he wrote to another person in February 2012. "I just have a world in my mind and in that world, I am kidnapping women and selling them to people interested in buying them."

The crux of the dispute in Officer Valle's trial has been the government's contention that the officer was plotting actual crimes through his online communications with co-conspirators like the man in Pakistan, and that he also carried out additional acts like conducting surveillance of potential victims. The officer's lawyers have argued that their client was merely engaged in playing out dark fantasies on fetish Web sites that are used by thousands of people. Charges against the officer include conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

Agent Walsh also testified under cross-examination that the F.B.I. did not conduct surveillance of Officer Valle for more than a month after his wife, Kathleen Mangan-Valle, first told the bureau last September about her husband's disturbing e-mails and behavior. He was arrested in late October. Mr. Baum also noted that Officer Valle had written about placing a body in the trunk of his car and asked whether the bureau had searched the trunk or checked for DNA there. The agent answered no.

"You didn't search to determine whether there was ever a body in that trunk?"

"No sir," the agent said.

Agent Walsh had cited the factors he used to differentiate communications that involved real crimes from fantasy role play. The factors included the use of actual victims' names in messages and discussions of past crimes.

Mr. Baum introduced copies of communications that the bureau had concluded were part of fantasy role playing to show that they, too, included the same kinds of discussion of actual victims as well as having other similarities, like methods of torture and even bargaining over the price of the kidnap victims, $4,000 and $5,000.

Earlier in the day, Agent Walsh, under direct examination by a prosecutor, Hadassa Waxman, read aloud additional messages that Officer Valle had exchanged with the man in Pakistan.

"I am not into the humane stuff either," Officer Valle wrote about one woman, Andria Noble, a friend from college, who had testified earlier in the week. "It's personal with Andria. She will absolutely suffer."