Jake Baker is a sick puppy. Obviously, he finds fantasizing about rape, torture and murder to be richly rewarding, and enjoys discussing these fantasies with other people. His mail to his Canadian friend suggests that he was either quite serious, or at least half serious, about getting together to turn fantasy into action--perhaps if the two men had met, they would have worked each other up to it. Perhaps Baker would have worked himself up to it on his own, and perhaps he still will, despite this wake up call. But being a latent murderer is not a crime in this country, and neither should it be, because of the problems of proof and the fact (as I wrote in my Auschwitz essay last month), that in one sense we are all latent murderers. People are always shocked that the law punishes far more than it prevents, but there is no way to prevent the first murder by the incipiently murderous without rounding us all up and subjecting us to psychological testing, and then you will lock up many non-murderers as well.