From: Tommy the Tourist (Anon User) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d Subject: Baker Charged with Felony Date: 11 Feb 1995 02:41:46 GMT Organization: none Lines: 131 Message-ID: <3hh85a$8n8@agate.berkeley.edu> Originator: remailer@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU INTERNET WRITER ARRESTED By Judson Branam and Arthur Bridgeforth Jr. The Ann Arbor NEWS 2/10/95 Jake Baker, the University of Michigan sophomore who posted Internet messages graphically depicting the torture, rape and slaying of women, was arrested Thursday by FBI agents and spent the night in the Wayne County jail. He has been charged in federal district court with communicating threats via interstate commerce, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. U.S. Attorney Saul Green announced federal charges against Baker Thursday in Detroit, while a hearing seeking to win Baker's return to classes was taking place without him in Ann Arbor. Following his arraignment, a federal magistrate refused to set bond for the 20-year-old Baker, ordering him held until a bond hearing today. Baker, who appeared in federal court without an attorney, was argumentative with U.S. Magistrate Thomas Carlson. He objected to Carlson's jailing order and told reporters he was within his rights to post the messages. "I have been a free man for four months. I wrote this story four months ago. I haven't harmed anyone," he said. "I think it is a violation of my First Amendment rights and probably several other rights." Baker, from Boardman, Ohio, south of Cleveland, also is known as Abraham Jacob Alkhabaz. He reportedly changed his name before coming to Ann Arbor. The university's Department of Public Safety became aware of the "snuff" fantasies of sexual torture and murder that Baker had put on the Internet on Jan. 19 and contacted Baker the next day. "Baker admitted writing and 'posting' (transmitting) several depictions into the Internet," FBI Special Agent Gregory Stejskal said in an affidavit. "The transmissions...described Baker's desire to commit acts of abduction, bondage, torture, mutilation, sodomy, rape and murder of young women." In addition to the snuff story naming a female U-M student, the complaint includes excerpts from Internet conversations between Baker and a computer user in Ontario, with whom he swapped "snuff" stories. Baker says in e-mail that he would be looking forward to meeting the man, and describes his search for secluded sports in Ann Arbor. Baker then adds, "I don't want any blood in my room, though. I have come across an excellent method to abduct a bitch." The Baker case turned into a two-ring media circus Thursday afternoon, with a cadre of newspaper reporters and television camera crews milling outside the Michigan Union offices where the suspension hearing was taking place, and another group of reporters surrounding Baker at the Federal Building in downtown Detroit as he arrived for his arraignment. Baker's attorney David Cahill said he did not accompany his client to Detroit because FBI agent expected the arraignment to be routine and said they'd return Baker to Ann Arbor afterward. In addition, Cahill doesn't practice in federal court, so Baker is retaining another attorney for today's hearing. Cahill declined to identify Baker's new attorney. "We're doing fine in the university hearing," Cahill said. "Great testimony. We're not doing so well in federal court." During the four-hour hearing on campus, five witnesses testified, Cahill said. They included Steven Gotlib, a psychiatrist retained by Baker; Baker's mother; local attorney and Internet consultant Peter Ward; Deborah Cain of the U-M's Sexual Abuse Prevention and Awareness Center and a friend of the Baker family whom Cahill did not identify. Duderstadt did not attend Thursday's hearing, and Cahill added, "We had a confession that he was not even in town when the letter was signed. It was signed by his consent, so he's not emotionally vested in this case -- we hope." Baker spent Thursday night in a holding cell after U.S. Magistrate Thomas Carlson overrode a recommendation of the U.S. Attorney's Office that Baker be freed on $100,000 personal bond. Carlson instead ordered him held until a bond hearing scheduled for this morning. "The allegations, if true, reflect a profoundly disturbed individual," Carlson said. U-M spokeswoman Lisa Baker (no relation) said the university will cooperate with federal authorities and added: "We will continue to review this individual's status as a student, independent of any action that the authorities will take. Our concern has been, and continues to be, the safety of other students and we will continue to deliberate this." Though university officials are barred by federal law from revealing information from any student records, Lisa Baker has made general statement insisting that students' rights to privacy and safety -- and not posting of pornographic materials -- are at the heart of the Jake Baker case. After receiving a Freedom of Information Act request for the Internet transcripts in question, the U-M released copies of three stories by Jake Baker. In one of the items, Baker wrote he was thinking of using, "Torture is foreplay, rape is romance, snuff (killing) is climax," as his signature file on Internet messages. Mohammed stole 35kg of nitroglycerine. We're waiting for them to fuck up one last time then we'll take out that building. -------- For more information about this anonymous posting service,please send mail to remailer@csua.berkeley.edu with Subject: remailer-info. This message contains automatically generated keyword blocks that have been designed to resemble a threat. These blocks are not a statement of intent by the remailer operator or anyone else. -------- To respond to the sender of this message, send mail to remailer@soda.berkeley.edu, starting your message with the following 5 lines: :: Response-Key: the-clipper-key ====Encrypted-Sender-Begin==== ====Encrypted-Sender-End====