Truth is stranger than fiction and in the story of Luka Magnotta, there is a struggle to find where truth ends and fiction begins.
The Butcher of Montreal was one of the horrifying headlines to erupt around the world in 2012 when a twisted gay porn actor Luka Rocco Magnotta was arrested and charged with the murder and dismemberment of a lover he met on Craigslist. But that alone wasn’t what makes this true crime horror story so memorable, it’s the macabre cult of personality of the perpetrator and the dark and disturbing timeline that guides us through this episode of the Homicide Inc. podcast.
When Larissa Warrington showed up at False Creek Elementary School in Vancouver, Canada on the 5th of June 2011 to pick up her 3 children, the last thing she expected to hear was that a severed right hand had been found in the school. A right hand and a note that read “Roses are red, violets are blue, the police will need dental records to identify you. Bitch.”
The police, on getting the call about a foot having been found in a school, were not too surprised. You see, the week before they had been recovering body parts from all over Montreal: a torso from a garbage dump, a foot from the head-quarters of the conservative Party of Canada, a hand from the head-quarters of the Liberal party of Canada. They had no idea that the missing person report Dong Dong Xu had made was tied to the crime. In fact, long before the police would identify the owner of the body parts, Xu heard chatter about a video online depicting a homicide and beheading. When he got the link, he didn’t need to press play, the thumbnail of the video was an image that would haunt him for the rest of his life; the decapitated head of his friend, Jun Lin.
Jun Lin was a 33-year old international undergraduate student from Wuhan, China. He had moved to Montreal in 2010 to study engineering and computer studies at Concordia University. He held a part-time job as a corner store cashier and, in his free time, he took government-offered French classes. His favorite thing to do was to have dinner with his friends and play the Chinese card game: san guo sha or three kingdoms kill. He had recently moved out of his old apartment he shared with Feng Lin, a 35-year old software company manager.
But, Jun had a secret. It was something that he had hidden from his friends and family back home in China. It was the reason he moved to Canada to start a new life. It was a country far more liberal and accepting of him.
Jun was gay.
It was a closely guarded secret. His family also didn’t know Feng, his ex-roommate, was actually his partner of nearly 2 years. They only knew him as their son’t friend and roommate. And though Jun already had a divorce under his belt, they wanted him to find another girl and take a swing at marriage again.
Yet, even separated by many thousands of miles, the pressure of lying when he called home wore on Jun. He would ultimately break up with Feng and move out of their shared apartment. He took that newly minted single status and jumped on Grindr and Craigslist to find partners he could hookup with casually and not have to lie to his parents. It was through one such tryst his feet would cross with those of one Luka Magnotta. Little did he know that a few hours later, those very feet would be hacked off by his newly found lover.
Yet, the murder of Jun Lin by Magnotta, had been predicted over a year before by a group of some particularly dedicated cat-lovers.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Who was Luka Magnotta and how in the world did Jun Lin, meet his end at his hands.
Luka Magnotta was not always Luka Magnotta. He was actually born Eric Newman on July 24th 1982, the first of three children to teenage parents who would split up soon after. He grew up in a suburban neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Toronto and was home-schooled by his mother until 6th grade. His mom was a hypochondriac and obsessed with cleanliness. She would sometimes even lock the kids out of the house to clean. Once, she even locked their pet bunnies out in winter until they froze to death.
When Eric was 13, his father’s mental health started deteriorating. Schizophrenia. The marriage fell apart and from then on, Eric was mainly brought up by his domineering grandmother, Phyllis Yourkin, in a home rife with beatings and abuse. When he wasn’t at home, Eric tried desperately to fit in with his classmates at Charlottetown Junior School in Scarborough. There, they remember him for the tall tales he told. Once, in an attempt to make his name sound meaningful, he claimed he was named after Julia Roberts’ actor brother Eric. As neither Julia nor Eric’s careers had yet taken off by the time he was born, the bare-faced lie was easily debunked. There were instances of lashing out when called out for blatant lies, violent fits of rage… at one point, he hurled a chair at a teacher!
Eric’s grandmother noticed he was hearing voices, speaking loudly and feeling afraid. She was the first person to take him to a psychiatrist in 1999; his first of many. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. An illness he shared with dear old dad. Soon after, he dropped out of high school. When asked what they remember about him, former teachers and classmates alike said he was a narcissist, preoccupied with his looks, often changing his hair color.
Eric went on disability and was admitted to a psychiatric group home. At 21, he started stripping at a Toronto nightclub, taking parts in low budget gay porn shoots and prostitution.
He had his first brush with the law in 2004 when he became acquainted with a mentally impaired woman and sexually assaulted her, videotaping the assault. He also preyed on her limited IQ convincing her to apply for credit cards, and racking up more than $10,000 dollars in purchases.
For unexplained reasons, the charges of sexual assault were dropped before the case went to trial. Now who drops a charge that you have actual video evidence of!? Eric Newman walked away with a mere 9 months of community-service and 12 months’ probation.
After this stint, Newman came out a new man. And what’s a new man without a new name? It was 2006, when Eric Newman legally ceased to exist and Luka Rocco Magnotta was born. Talk about porn star names! A new man, a new name, ready to take the world by storm! Or perhaps hide a naughty past that didn’t fit his self image. But, by March 2007, he would file for bankruptcy, citing lack of employment and insufficient income to pay off debts amounting to $17, 000.
Magnotta had a revelation: being a celebrity would better fund his lifestyle. He auditioned for the tv show Cover guy; in his casting video, he says “some people say I am devastatingly good-looking”. In 2008, at the audition for the show Plastic makes perfect, he tells the judges, “I’ve had my nose done. I’ve had two hair transplants and I’m planning to have muscle implants in my pecs and arms”. He was rejected by both.
Even with his reality show train wrecks, Magnotta’s popularity was blasting off! The internet was ridden with hundreds of forums about the up and coming porn star. Once, someone created a post on www.stormfront.org, a popular white supremacist site. The post said Magnotta was an open white supremacist, being forced to flee Canada and return to Russia because of his views on white supremacy. In a week, another post supporting Magnotta’s courage in the face of death threats showed up on YouTube. A fan page titled ‘Luka Magnotta is my new idol” cropped up on YouTube. On Flickr a page read “Luka Magnotta arrested in New Mexico for trying to gain access to Area 51. A River Phoenix fan website announced: “I saw something on YouTube where someone said Luka and Rivers are cousins? Is that so?” Rumors even circulated online that he was dating Karla Homolka, the notorious schoolgirl killer. Magnotta, distraught, filed complaints with the police about the rumors and showed up at the headquarters of the Toronto Sun newspaper. “Homolka Rumor Ruins Model’s Life” reads the headline to a video link from the September 2007 interview.
Magnotta’s pages were chockfull of his jet-setting celebrity lifestyle; expensive cars, travelling to exotic locales. Everything you would expect of a global superstar. Magnotta was living the life of a successful model and gay porn star. The only down side to his celebrity was the constant defense he needed to mount against the Canadian gossip community linking Magnotta to the wildest of stories. Fortunately, he had a growing army of dedicated followers ready to rise to his defense.
But, by the fall of 2010, Magnotta’s own postings took a darker turn when he shared a link to a video called 3 guys 1 hammer. In the video a man is shown being viciously beaten to death with a hammer. A first hint into the disturbed mind of Luka Rocco Magnotta.
One wintry December day in 2010, former US soldier Ryan Boyle, was on YouTube, clicking through videos looking for a good laugh. What he came across was anything but. It was a video called 1 boy 2 kittens and the comments were full of users expressing horrified disgust and demanding that something had to be done. Ryan wavered between clicking on it.
His curiosity won, He played it.
In the video, a man in a hoodie with blurred features places two kittens in a sealed bag and then, using a vacuum, sucks out the air, suffocating them to death. An equally disturbing follow-up video shows the same man rubbing the kittens’ limp bodies against his genitals.
Boyle, an avid lover of animals, was livid! But, he also knew the authorities wouldn’t pursue the case as the victims were ‘just animals’. Soon, a global Facebook group of animal lovers called “Find the Vacuum Kitten Killer for great justice” was formed. 4000 people quickly signed up, trying their best to gather evidence from the video to find the killer. But the group was too large to get anything done. The whodunnit was marred by endless false leads of “this might be him.” Everyone and their neighbor was a suspect.
In order to get some clarity, Boyle created a second, smaller Facebook group. This time only inviting users from the original group with skills they could utilize: hackers, investigators, filmmakers and artists. This group was called AB projects.
When they found out someone had posted a photo of a person with pixelated features, lying on a bed holding two kittens in his hands, it sounded remarkably similar to the first video and they started to dig deeper into it. In no time at all, they saw similarities in the videos, the rooms where the video was shot looked remarkably the same. They quickly concluded that both were posted by the same person. Artists in the group tried creating sketches of the suspect by enhancing the blurred features. By the 8th of January 2011, they were certain they had found their man… well, boy. He went by Jamsey Cramsalot Inhisass (ethnicity unknown) Wonder if he’s related to Seymour Butts and Hugh Jass. On his page, he had recently posted a very disturbing video of a cat in a cage being set on fire. A few in the group were skeptical about Jamsey being the suspect. Regardless, Jamsey’s name began to circulate as the prime suspect.
Then, suddenly, less than a day after Jamsey was ousted as the perpetrator behind 1 boy 2 kittens, one of the online sleuths in AB Projects who goes by Nicee Punk received a Facebook message from an anonymous user. It was a single ominous line: “The name of the kitten vacummer you are looking for is Luka Magnotta.”
It was the first time they had ever run across the name. The group began a thorough search into Magnotta. Their searches garnered a trove of the glitzy jet-setting lifestyle Magnotta lived. Photos of Magnotta on the beach, in a sports car, in limos; always pouting and always alone. They also uncovered all the articles, rumors and posts about him spread across numerous websites and social media platforms. Oddly, all except Wikipedia. Even though attempts had been made to create a page on Wiki, they had all been taken down by the self-policing community. What did Wikipedia know that the rest of us didn’t? Something was starting to smell fishy and it wasn’t the casserole I had last night!
The group launched a thorough investigation into the origin of the rumors, comments, posts about Magnotta, the claims of being a white supremacist on Stormfront, the Wikipedia page, dating Homolka, being a former member of the Russian mafia, and claims of being a rising porn star... everything. It all led to one outrageous discovery… The author of all these stories was - wait for it… Magnotta himself!
Plot twist!
Magnotta created multiple profiles using his own name or many pseudonyms. He would then make posts, wild claims and, yes, rumors about himself on every social media and discussion forum he could find. Then, using other profiles he created, he would deny those claims or better still, run to a newspaper to whine about it. All this to portray an image that he was getting tormented by the media; making it appear as though Canadians were well and truly interested in him.
He was single-handedly building buzz and celebrity around himself - A regular old handy Andy. A brilliant scheme.
In the end, Magnotta was found to have racked up at least 70 Facebook accounts and, at least, 20 website profiles!
A clear image of Luka Magnotta emerges; a narcissist consumed by his appearance, who had an obsession and a lust for fame. He wanted the attention of the world and he would do anything…. ANYTHING to get it!
But none of this actually linked Magnotta to the video. Then they found the smoking gun and it had been hiding in plain sight all along: his pictures.
Many of Magnotta’s photos were uploaded with embedded information on the make and serial number of the camera: a hot pink Panasonic DMC F3. His personal pictures had the information and so did the photos of the suspect holding the kittens before they were killed! The group discovered that Magnotta was photoshopping his own face onto images of other male model beefcakes as well as placing himself artificially into foreign locations: London, Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego, Moscow… you name it!
On the 11th of January 2011, an article was published on an extreme animal rights site called Negotiation is Over. It read: “After an intense investigation another anonymous tip has resulted in the ID of the well-known bisexual porn star and model, Luka Magnotta.”
The group formally contacted the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), Ontario and submitted all the evidence they had compiled on him.
Then, two more cat videos came to light. In the first, titled python Christmas, a man feeds a 4-month old kitten to a 17-foot Albino Burmese python, while dressed as (you’ll never guess what) Santa Claus. The other, titled Bathtime LOL, a man tapes a cat to a bathroom handle before drowning it in a bathtub. The group started to research the new videos and quickly found out that Facebook pages had been set up discussing the videos in December. In November pictures of the live cats had been posted as well. Magnotta’s M.O. was unravelling; Create buzz using his multitude of accounts and then, post a video.
Trying to determine exactly where Magnotta was at that moment, they searched through his recent pictures. One stood out; A picture of him in front of Buckingham palace. It was a recent post but was it just another Photoshopped image? It turned out to be real. He was in England!
Magnotta who was staying at a pub in Wembley, was very excited to get a tweet from UK Sun Reporter, Alex West asking for an interview. Throughout the 20-minute no holds barred interview, Magnotta vehemently denied being behind the kitten-killing videos. He even went as far as professing his undying love of animals.
Two days after the interview, The Sun received an email from someone claiming to be the actual kitten killer. West said, “it described in lurid, horrifying detail the disgusting things he wanted to do to me – acts of the darkest sexual and violent nature.” Ending with: “…but next time you hear from me it will be in a movie I am producing, that will have some humans in it, not just pussies.” The author of this letter turned out to be Magnotta.
Barely 5 months later in May 2012, an 11-minute video would be uploaded on bestgore.com titled ‘1 lunatic 1 icepick’. It opens with the 1987 New Order song, True Faith playing in the background. A nude man lays spread eagle on a bed. He is tied up and blindfolded. Hanging above the man’s head is a poster of the movie Casablanca, and standing beside him is a figure in dark clothing. Then the video cuts. When it starts again, the figure is straddling the man but soon gets up. The bound man shifts slightly. The video cuts again and returns to the man. He now has a black sheet over his head, blood appears to be on his neck. An eerie silence descends. The dark figure emerges once more his fist clenched around an icepick. He begins to stab at the victim over and over and over with it. The figure then in a most gruesome procession begins to dismember the man; cutting off his head and arm.
The hooded figure ‘plays’ with the decapitated head, simulates sex with the torso and masturbates himself with the severed hand. Using a fork and knife, the figure cuts off some of the flesh to eat and gets a puppy to chew on the body.
Over the next couple of days, a morbid stench, began to permeate the apartments at 5720, Decarie Boulevard. Occupants called the building superintendent who began to search for the source. Outside with the buildings trash he discovered a suitcase riddled with maggots. Nothing ever good comes from a suitcase with maggots. On opening it, to his absolute shock and horror out fell a headless torso. What a way to start the day.
The major crimes unit of the Montreal police were called to the apartment. They searched for evidence starting with the garbage pile where the torso had been found. There they would find limbs, a dead puppy, blood-stained clothes, a hammer, knives, a small circular saw, electronics and an ID belonging to one Luka Magnotta. The discovery of the ID made the police conclude that Magnotta was the victim. After all, how many criminals leave their IDs at the crime scene?
When they found out that a Luka Magnotta occupied Unit 208 of the building, an officer made his way there. It was just a non-descript bachelor unit; a far cry from what one would expect of a jet-setting celebrity. In the room, authorities found a bloody mattress, and a refrigerator splattered with blood. In a closet were the words “if you don’t like the reflection, don’t look in the mirror. I don’t care.” It was written in red ink.
While police were now focused on gathering evidence in the apartment they learned of the 1 lunatic, 1 icepick video posted online. They quickly realized they had disregarded a few key items in the garbage that had featured in the video: a wine bottle and a Casablanca poster.
After retrieving the items, the police learned that the building had surveillance cameras and started sorting through the tapes. They quickly noticed a figure repeatedly going in and out of the building in the early hours of the morning before disappearing into a cab on the night of May 26.
It was Luka Magnotta and he just got promoted from victim to prime-suspect for Murder one.
The following day, the torso was identified as that of Jun Lin. An analysis of the apartment showed that the hair in the kitchen, blood found on the bed, sofa, bathtub, sink, fridge, walls and radiator all were linked to 33-year-old Jun. Four days after Magnotta fled Canada, Montreal police named Magnotta the prime suspect in the homicide case and Interpol added him to its wanted list.
Meanwhile, Magnotta was a world away in Paris chatting up a German man he met on a site called gayromeo.com. The man’s name was Frank Rubert and he invited Magnotta, who he knew as William2323, to stay with him in Berlin.
Magnotta had spent the past days partying in the Bastille area of east Paris with old contacts from a previous visit. Ready for a change of scene, he vacated his dingy hotel room in Bagnolet, leaving behind many of his belongings, a pile of porno mags and an air-sickness bag from the flight he had taken from Montreal to Paris. He then hopped on a 14-hour bus to Berlin to meet Rubert. If Ruby only knew.
For three days, the two men painted Berlin red: partying, hanging out with Rubert’s friends, visiting bars and brothels. But all play and no work started to make Rubert a dull boy and he had to leave his new amour to get some work done. Magnotta, anxious to see how his fame was holding up online stopped in at a nearby internet café. Rubert set off for the train station buying a newspaper along the way.
What he found on the front page made his heart skip a beat. There staring at him was a picture of his new friend with big bold letters - ‘BUTCHER OF MONTREAL’.
A few miles away, Magnotta walked into the Helin Café on Karl Marx Street and said “Bonjour internet.” Kadir Anlayisii, an employee at the café took note of the peculiar character wearing sunglasses and makeup. He looked familiar but, he couldn’t place the face. An hour passed and the guy sitting at computer 25 was still there plying away at various sites. He seemed deeply absorbed in viewing YouTube videos and reading articles about the butcher of Montreal. Then it clicked! Holy shit! It was him!!
Anlayisii hustled outside to flag a police car. Maybe he was too excited and incoherent, but the first police car he flagged down didn’t take him seriously and left him in its dust. Fortunately, the second one saw the fear in his eyes and immediately called for a backup. Magnotta, engrossed in the stories of his notoriety, had no idea his goose was entering the final stages of being well and truly cooked. When he looked up from his screen there were seven super-sized German cops. When asked for his ID, Magnotta announced, “You got me. I’m the man you’re looking for.”
Magnotta was arrested and bundled away.
the charge and case build-up
When he was extradited back to Canada, Magnotta faced five charges; the first-degree murder of Jun Lin, committing an indignity to a human body, publishing obscene material, criminally harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament and mailing obscene and indecent material.
Although he admitted to the “physical acts” behind the crimes, he maintains a plea of not guilty. His lawyer’s argument? Magnotta was not criminally responsible due to his history of schizophrenia. 18 months after the murder of Jun Lin, Magnotta indicated he was not the grandmaster of the crimes. He was just the fall guy following orders from one Emmanuel Lopez, Manny for short.
According to Magnotta Manny was a former regular of his. They had met in 2010 while Magnotta was working as an escort in New York. Manny was into threesomes and other violent sexual acts like BDSM and torture fantasies which he liked to record. Manny, was the one who had pushed him to killing the kittens as well as Jun. He was the sociopathic manipulator, not Magnotta.
However, with no address, no phone records and nothing else to go with; finding the elusive Manny would prove to be a challenge.
But first, what’s your favorite movie of all time? One of mine is the 1992 blockbuster starring Sharon Stone. You know the one where she bares all when she crosses her legs. The crime thriller, Basic Instinct. Well it’s Magnotta’s too! I know what you’re thinking… Don’t worry I faint at the site of blood. Basic Instinct became an obsession of Magnotta’s, one of his many online aliases was Kirk Trammell; the same family name as the main character: Catherine Trammell. And in the movie, Catherine’s ex fiancé was Manuel Vasquez… or, you guessed it, Manny for short. Manny was just a figment of Magnotta’s imagination, created as a fall guy for his heinous and brutal crimes. Mystery solved.
But, in trying to present Manny as his fall guy, Magnotta had ignorantly presented prosecutors with evidence. In the same movie, Catherine had killed her lover by tying his hands to the bedpost during sex, before stabbing him to death with an ice pick.The same way that Magnotta killed Jun Lin! Talk about buying the nails for your own coffin.
the court case and breakdown of the crime
The prosecutors had one job: lay down a case that proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the murder of Jun Lin had not been caused by Magnotta’s history of mental illness but, had been pre-meditated. And thanks to the evidence compiled by the AB projects arm-chair sleuths, they would be able to present a timeline of events that preceded Jun Lin’s death.
This would include the email Magnotta sent to the Sun reporter on December 10th 2011, 5 months before the murder, the one where he said the next time you hear from me it'll be a movie with humans in it not just cats…
2012 would bring with it a flurry of online activity aimed at creating hype for the yet to be produced murder video. On March 3rd, a post was made on a blog titled: Necrophiliac Serial Killer Luka Magnotta. A month later, between April 22nd and 24th, four more videos were posted with the title Cannibal serial killer – Luka Magnotta all in different languages.
Between May 15 and 16, eight days before Magnotta and Jun ever set eyes on each other, there were repeated references online about a new video called: 1 Lunatic 1 icepick. One post depicts a person in a purple hoodie with a fist holding an ice pick. On another site, a user asks ‘where can I watch the 1 lunatic 1 ice pick video?’ All of this follows a similar pattern Magnotta used previously to release his macabre kitten videos and all the aliases used to create this buzz originated from one person alone - Luka Magnotta.
On May 23, Magnotta posts an ad on Craigslist to lure a victim who would star alongside him in the macabre production he had been planning. Magnotta originally claimed that the ad had asked for a participant in BDSM. This is so he could pretend that the encounter started off sexually motivated till the voices in his head took the reins and convinced him to kill Jun. But, in the actual Craigslist ad, Magnotta had stated he was looking for someone who was interested in becoming an actor for a personal movie he was making. The movie, he stated, had no pay and explicitly stated: ‘I am not looking for sex and No cock sucking’. The unsuspecting Jun, had agreed.
Shortly after 10.20pm on May 24th, surveillance footage at the front entrance to Magnotta’s building shows two men entering. Magnotta holds the door open for his guest. Jun, who does not appear to be forced or coerced, steps through the glass doors and disappears off camera. He would never be seen alive again. Around 12am, Jun’s ex-boyfriend Feng would receive a ‘goodnight’ text from Jun. This proves he was still alive up until then. Somewhere between the hours of 12am and 2am that would change. Magnotta offered Jun a glass of wine laced with sedatives. When the sedative took full effect, Magnotta proceeds to tie Jun up on the bed and kill him by slitting his throat. He then stabs his body numerous times with a screw-driver before dismembering and decapitating him. He then committed acts of cannibalism and necrophilia with Jun’s body.
At 2.06am, Magnotta is again seen on tape. He is now wearing the yellow shirt Jun had worn just hours earlier. Throughout the early hours of May 25, Magnotta is caught on camera going in and out of the building, carrying a suitcase and garbage bag. He makes 16 trips to the garbage room in the basement of his apartment building. He’s seen checking himself out in the lobby mirror, adjusting his wig and observing his buttocks. Online records show he booked a round-trip plane ticket to Paris scheduled to leave the following evening. He then goes shopping for a suitcase. He made a number of calls to the 705 region of Ontario and orders himself a pizza.
The following morning, he would cart parcels to two post offices, where four of Lin’s body parts would remain decaying for more than 48 hours, awaiting Monday pickup. Come May 26, all his gruesome chores complete, Magnotta caught a cab to Dorval to catch the flight to Paris that he’d booked the day before.
The trial spanned 12 weeks. With 66 witnesses from three countries (even his Berlin beau flew in to testify). There were hours of surveillance footage shown including 15 incriminating videos shot by Magnotta himself. Perhaps in Magnotta’s twisted mind, the courtroom was a theater where he could show his masterworks to an engaged yet highly disturbed audience.
The Jury of 8 females and 6 males threw out Magnotta’s plea of ‘not-guilty on the grounds of insanity’ and he was convicted of all five charges including first degree murder of Jun Lin. He got a life sentence of 25 years with no chance of parole and an additional 19 years for his other offenses.
Luka Rocco Magnotta is serving his life sentence at Port-Cartier prison, in Quebec. It was there he married another inmate, Anthony Jolin whom he met on the dating site Canadian Inmates Connect.
On his dating profile, Magnotta had described himself as a single, white male seeking a single male, 28-38 years of age, white and in shape. His partner Jolin, a fellow inmate, is a convicted armed robber serving a similar life sentence after stabbing another inmate to death in the shower. The correctional authorities say, there will be no consummation, no honeymoon, no cohabitation and no riding into the sunset for the couple.
In 2018, Magnotta's mother, the one who locked her kids out of the house, teamed up with popular true crime author, Brian Whitney, to write a book about her son titled, My Son, The Killer: The Untold Story of Luka Magnotta and "1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick". Because, that’s just what moms do. In the book, she gives no reason for her absence at his trial, or her complete absence from his life in prison (till she needs his permission to publish and hop on his notoriety of his wedding in the pokey). The book, rife with grammatical errors and inserts of ‘my son’ and ‘my wonderful son’ is an ode by a mom unwilling to admit her own missteps in Luka’s upbringing nor sympathize with the actual victim Jun Lin.
In his interview with author Whitney, Magnotta would give the scoop on his life behind bars: "We have movie nights. We all have our own TVs. I have painting class and I exercise a lot. I practice language studies." Sounds like a good time. But when asked about the actual crime, Magnotta loses his tongue; claiming instead that he killed no kittens and was definitely not seeking attention by creating 70 Facebook aliases."
The website that hosted the video of Jun Lin's murder, Bestgore.com, faced charges for corrupting public morals. The site's owner Mark Marek was sentenced to a six-month conditional sentence for obscenity in hosting the video. The video is no longer hosted on the site.
The Chinese Students and Scholars Association of Concordia University, where Jun Lin studied, established a fund to be used for any expense incurred by the Lin family in Canada as well an award created in honor of Jun.
As For Lin Jun’s family they have chosen to stay out of the spotlight since their son’s murder. In a letter Lin's father submitted as an impact statement in 2014 he wrote: “The night Lin Jun died, parts of many other people died in one way or another...we do not want to tell our story because it is too sad to repeat. We cannot talk about Lin Jun without talking about his murder. The murder that robbed us not only of Lin Jun but our ability to think about him without feeling pain and shame…”
The amateur sleuths that worked so hard to bring Magnotta to justice were all incensed that more wasn’t done to prevent a foreseeable murder that claimed the life of Jun Lin. The cat killing videos weren’t enough to rouse suspicion and concern with the authorities.
When he was asked why exactly he killed Jun, Magnotta gave two psychiatrists two slightly different explanations for his actions. He told one he killed Lin because the voices in his head convinced him Lin was a government agent sent to kill; he told the other it was a manipulative and abusive acquaintance who convinced Magnotta Lin was a government agent. He said he posted the video depicting his victim’s dismemberment in an effort to silence those voices invading his head. He said he mailed one foot and one hand to federal political parties because the voices were telling him “give it back,” and he thought that perhaps frightening the government would put an end to its involvement in his life.
Truth or a brilliant alibi? I say BS.
At first look, Magnotta is painted as this mastermind killer, who eluded police in a worldwide man-hunt. In reality Magnotta was just an attention-craved psychopath willing to do anything to be in the limelight. He killed Jun because he thought ‘hey, if people give me this much airtime because I killed a bunch of cats, imagine if I killed a human!” He supposedly ‘planned’ the murder for at least 5 months. Yet, he puts body parts of the victim in a suitcase that had his own name on it and left an ID card of his name at the scene. Even while having multiple ID cards bearing his numerous aliases, but the one time he needed them, he decided he would use his real one… just in case the name on the suitcase went unnoticed by the detectives.
And while his mental health history is acknowledged, it is not excuse enough to diminish the cold-bloodedness of his character. The night Jun accepted to star in Magnotta’s video, he was just filling a gap that anybody could have filled. Derek MacKinnon, Magnotta’s neighbor, said just a week before the murder, Magnotta had struck up a conversation with him about acting; even inviting him to his apartment. It was the first time that they had ever talked and Derek had declined. Jun hadn’t. It could have been anyone at all and that’s what makes Luka Rocco Magnotta so terrifying.
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