"Operation Miranda"

The following includes a transcript of Leonard Lake's taped manifesto, which he called "Operation Miranda." This refers to the novel "The Collector" by John Fowles, about a loner young man who kidnaps a fellow student named Miranda who he's obsessed with and in love with. Lake read the book as a teen and reportedly became fascinated with the idea of holding women captive through the book. A copy was also found at Lake and Ng's bunker.

 

"I am a realist. I am 38 years old, a bit chubby, with not much hair, and I’m losing what I have. I am not particularly attractive to women—or I should say particularly attracting to women. And all the traditional magnets—the money, the position/power—I don’t have. And yet I am still very sexually active, and I am still very much attracted to a particular type of woman who almost by definition is totally uninterested in me. Dirty old man, pervert, I’m attracted to young women, sometimes even as young as 12, although to be fair certainly 18–22 is pretty much an ideal range as far as my interests go. I like very slim women, very pretty of course, petite, small breasted, long hair, if I am allowed. And, such a woman, by virtue of her youth, her attractiveness, her desirability to certainly the majority of mankind, simply has better options. There is no particular reason why such a woman should be interested in me. But there is more to it than that. It is difficult to explain my personality in 25 words or less, but I am in fact a loner, I enjoy the peace, the quiet, the solitude, I enjoy being by myself. And while all my relationships with women in the past have been sexually successful, socially they have almost always been a failure. I’ve gone through two divorces, innumerable women, 50–55, I forget exactly the count, I counted recently. I’m afraid the bottom line statement is the simple fact that I’m a sexist slob. I enjoy using women, and of course women aren’t particularly interested in being used. I certainly enjoy sex. I certainly enjoy the dominance of climbing on a woman and using her body. But I’m not particularly interested in the id, the ego, all the things that a man should be interested in to complement a woman’s needs. Now I can fake these emotions, and I can fake them very well. In the past, I’ve been very successful at attracting fairly interesting and attractive women simply because I did fake fairly well an interest in their needs and their requirements. So momentarily I had what I wanted and they thought they had what they wanted. But in the long term I don’t want to bother. What I want is an off-the-shelf sex partner. I want to be able to use a woman whenever and however I want. And when I’m tired or satiated or bored or not interested, I simply want to put her away, lock her up in a little room to get her out of my sight, out of my life, and thus avoid what heretofore has always been the obligation to entertain or amuse or satisfy a particular woman or girlfriend’s whims of emotional whatevers. Such an arrangement, of course, is not only blatantly sexist, but highly illegal. There’s no doubt about it. It violates all of the human rights and blah blah, blah blah blah. To spare posterity my concept of other people’s morality, I’m explaining my morality—what I feel, what I want. And as of this moment I am going to try to get it."

Now this obviously, is crazy. But reading through Lake's manifesto, we can see that he is following a logic of sorts, and is self aware even to the point of describing what an awful human rights violation this is. But this implies that Lake isn't a psychopath, his mind does work correctly, but it implies rather that he's a prime example of a sociopath. This has nothing to do with his sanity and rather shows he has no conscience, he only cares about himself and obviously cannot form empathy for others. It's estimated that about 3% of men are sociopaths, or have antisocial personality disorder.