Student Jailed, Faces Trial for His Internet Tale of Torture and Rape

A college student who wrote on the Internet about torturing, raping and murdering a classmate is “a ticking bomb ready to go off” and will be jailed until trial, a federal magistrate said Friday.

Jake A. Baker’s free-speech rights are not an issue, said Magistrate Thomas A. Carlson, noting that Baker made specific threats against a specific woman and discussed the logistics of the crime.

“Just thinking about it anymore doesn’t do the trick. I need to do it,” Baker messaged a man with whom he’d been discussing rape, torture and murder, Carlson said.

The mustached and bespectacled University of Michigan student sat expressionless throughout the hearing as Carlson denied a bail request. Baker, 20, of Boardman, Ohio, doesn’t deny writing the messages and stories over the worldwide computer network, but his lawyer said quotes have been taken out of context.

Baker is charged with interstate transmission of a threat, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Baker sent three narratives last year to a “sex stories” file on the Internet, a global web of computer networks. A man in Ontario, Canada, responded to Baker about the stories, and the two discussed how they could kidnap a woman. The man has not been charged.

Baker apparently never met the woman but had taken a Japanese class with her in the fall. The woman’s name was not released.

The FBI began investigating after a Michigan graduate living in Moscow complained to the school. His daughter had come across the story on the Internet, FBI agent Greg Stejskal said.