Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d From: nobody@nately.ucsd.edu (Anonymous) Subject: Baker Deemed 'Danger to Society' Comments: This message did not originate from the above address. It was automatically remailed by an anonymous mail service. Please report inappropriate use to Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 22:40:04 +0000 Message-ID: <9502132240.AA07118@nately.UCSD.EDU> Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk Lines: 140 BAKER DENIED BOND; HEARING DATE SET STUDENT JUDGED 'TOO DANGEROUS' TO BE RELEASED By Josh White The Michigan DAILY 2/13/95 One federal judge deemed 20-year-old Jake A. Baker "too dangerous for society" and another called him "a ticking bomb waiting to go off" last Friday in denying him bail bond and ordering him to be detained in jail until pre-trial motions, which are scheduled for this Friday. Baker, an LSA sophomore, is accused under Title 18 U.S. Code, section 865(c) of transmitting threats of kidnap, torture, rape and murder across state lines via the Internet, and both Judge Bernard A. Friedman and Magistrate Judge Thomas A. Carlson considered those threats dangerous to a University student mentioned in Baker's posting and to the community at large. "I would not want my daughter on the streets of Ann Arbor or Ohio with a man in the condition I believe he is in right now," Friedman said in an appeal bond hearing Friday afternoon. The charges stem from stories Baker, a Boardman, Ohio native, posted on the Internet newsgroup "alt.sex.stories" and several e-mail messages he sent to a man known as Arthur Gonda in Ontario. Baker's attorney, Douglas Mullkoff, said the detention of his client is unwarranted. "The court is presuming that he is guilty," Mullkoff said. "I respectfully disagree with every word the judge said. Mr Baker was writing fiction in a fiction area of the Internet." During Baker's appeal hearing Friday afternoon, Mullkoff drew a similar picture. "We have a fantasy writers' workshop doing on here," he said. "That is the Internet." Carlson, who presided over the first detention hearing Friday, said there is no freedom of speech issue because Baker made specific threats to a specific woman in e-mail messages to Gonda. Additional evidence admitted at the hearing also pointed to a more "indepth plan" to abduct the woman, Carlson said. "If we only had a story of rape and torture, we would have the issue of the First Amendment here," Carlson said Friday. "But there are at least two additional elements to the case. Mr. Baker named an individual at the U-M as a subject of his story and had discussion with another person about where and how an actual assault could be carried out. This is more than just writing a story." U.S. Attorney Ken Chadwell entered six documents into evidence as part of the case against Baker. Three of the documents were stories that Baker had posted on the Internet, two were batches of e-mail messages to and from Gonda and one, a previously unreleased document, was an incomplete story that Department of Public Safety officers discovered in Baker's East Quad dorm room. FBI Special Agent Greg Stejskal, the only witness to testify at the Friday hearings, said the incomplete story named the same female University student and posed a further threat to her safety. "The story involves Mr. Baker abducting the female student at gunpoint and taking her to a secluded place off of Route 23 in Ann Arbor," Stejskal said. "He tells her to disrobe, to take a toolbox from his car and then uses to tools to torture her." Baker, in his unfinished story, describes the abduction in detail. "I plan it well," Baker wrote. "It will be my first kidnapping; my first real rape of a pretty young girl. My first expirmentation with all the devices of pain I had thought up before. I am obsessed about my target more than any other girl on campus." Baker's mother, Vilma Baker, said she was shocked after watching her son handcuffed and taken out of the courtroom by U.S. marshals. "The judge must have woken up this morning and thought that he was a psychiatrist," Mrs. Baker, a creative writing teacher in Ohio. "While his writing is alarming and I don't particularly like my son's genre; then again I don't like Stephen King or sitcoms. It was just fantasy." But Chadwell said Baker's stories went beyond being creative. "He takes delight in thinking about what horrible things he can do to women," Chadwell said. "He was talking about getting together with Gonda. It is not just fantasy anymore; there were real people involved." "There is a natural progression in these cases," Chadwell said. "He was actually talking about taking action in things he could do to women. He writes in a message to Gonda that 'just thinking about it anymore doesn't do the trick. I need to DO IT.'" Mullkoff said writing such literature is not reason to prosecute. "The idea that anyone who writes what is found to be distasteful is dangerous is false," he said. "He has no criminal record, had no history of violence or aggressive behavior. He is not dangerous." Chadwell points to Baker's e-mail messages as the key factor in the case, while the defense says that the messages sent to Ontario were merely part of the fantasy Baker had created. The letters themselves sent mixed messages. "Sometimes, I'll see a pretty one alone in the quad and think 'Go on Jake, it'd be easy.' But the fear of getting caught always stay my hand," Baker wrote to Gonda on Dec 9. "Sorry, can't come up with an ending to that Asian story yet. I will soon though, hang in there." Psychiatric evaluations that Mullkoff presented to the court do not portray Baker as a dangerous man, but Friedman found evidence in the statements that led him to his decision. "The evaluations may say that he is not a danger, but they do say he will continue to get into trouble with authorities," Friedman said. "They also say that he shows a minimal capacity to delay impulses." Chadwell said he is seeking a grand jury indictment prior to Friday's pre-trial hearing. Mullkoff said he will appeal the detention ruling to the 6th Circuit Court in Cincinnati this week. Federal authorities learned of Baker's activity after DPS notified them late in January. The University became aware of the stories on the Internet after a 16-year-old Moscow girl told her father about discovering the stories in"alt.sex.stories." The girl's father told his friend, a University alum, about the stories and he later sent them to the University for review. The FBI is continuing its investigation. The Ontario Provincial Police are searching for Gonda and investigating his connection to the case.