In May 2012, Jun Lin (Chinese: 林俊; pinyin: Lín Jùn; December 30, 1978 – May 24 or 25, 2012), a Chinese university student, was fatally stabbed and dismembered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, by Luka Rocco Magnotta, who then mailed Lin's hands and feet to elementary schools and federal political party offices. After a video that showed Magnotta mutilating Lin's corpse was posted online, Magnotta fled Canada, becoming the subject of an Interpol Red Notice and prompting an international manhunt. In June 2012, he was apprehended in Berlin.
In December 2014, after eight days of deliberations, a jury convicted Magnotta of first-degree murder. He was given a mandatory life sentence and 19 years for other charges, to be served concurrently. Magnotta was previously sought by animal rights groups for uploading videos of himself killing kittens.
Victim
Jun Lin (Chinese: 林俊; pinyin: Lín Jùn), also known as Justin Lin, was born on December 30, 1978, and came from Wuhan. He had come to Canada in 2010 with the intention of starting a new life there and to study computer engineering. At the time of his death, he was registered as an international student and an undergraduate in the engineering and computer science faculty at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. Lin had been studying in Montreal since July 2011, previously attending Tyark College, a language school, and had worked part-time as a convenience store clerk in Pointe-Saint-Charles. He moved into an apartment in Griffintown on May 1, 2012.
Lin, who was gay, had been at some point married to a woman, though they later divorced. In Canada, he had lived for a time with another Chinese man. Lin had never revealed his sexual orientation to his family in China, even though they had met his boyfriend. Shortly before the murder, Lin's relationship with his partner had ended because Lin was experiencing pressure from his family to "settle down" and marry a woman.
After breaking up with his boyfriend, Lin had been using Grindr and other web applications to meet with men. Magnotta later said that they had met after Lin had responded to his Craigslist ad proposing sex and bondage.
Perpetrator
Luka Rocco Magnotta (born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman) was born on July 24, 1982, in Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna Yourkin and Donald Newman. He was the first of their three children. According to him, his mother was obsessed with cleanliness, would lock her children out, and once left their pet rabbits in the cold to die. His father was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1994, after which he divorced Magnotta's mother, leading Magnotta to move in with his grandmother, Phyllis.
Magnotta attended I. E. Weldon Secondary School in Lindsay, Ontario. Later on, having been diagnosed with schizophrenia, he received a disability allowance; he supplemented that source of income by engaging in male prostitution. Besides his work as an escort, he began appearing in gay pornography films in 2003. He also worked as a stripper. He appeared as a pin-up model in a 2005 issue of Toronto's fab magazine, using the pseudonym Jimmy.
Although some media labeled him a "porn star" after the murder, further reporting showed that his work as a porn actor had been "anything but prolific or high-profile" as he had shot less than a dozen videos over a five-year period. A staff member of the Internet Adult Film Database commented, upon reviewing Magnotta's output, that "not even the porn industry was much interested in him". He did not have much success at modeling, either.
He legally changed his name from Eric Clinton Kirk Newman to Luka Rocco Magnotta on August 12, 2006. Magnotta declared bankruptcy in March 2007, owing $17,000 in various debts. The bankruptcy was fully discharged in December 2007.
Attempts at notoriety
In 2007, Magnotta was an unsuccessful competitor in OutTV's reality series COVERguy. He had multiple cosmetic surgeries, later auditioning for the Slice network television show Plastic Makes Perfect in February 2008.
Over several years, Magnotta created many profiles on various social media and internet forums to plant a variety of claims about himself. Among other things, he purported to be a successful model and a prominent porn star. Police stated that Magnotta set up at least 70 Facebook pages and 20 websites under different names. Magnotta would use these pages and multiple false online identities to "sing his own praises" (one page called him "The new James Dean"), attack people he disliked, or spread false information about himself in an effort to attract attention. Nina Arsenault, who had been Magnotta's lover in the early 2000s, described him in 2012 as a manipulative liar and often self-destructive. Magnotta planted multiple hoaxes about himself, including negative rumors, so that he could deny them as part of a campaign of cyberstalking against him.
One such rumor emerged in 2007, claiming Magnotta was in a relationship with Karla Homolka, a high-profile Canadian convicted murderer: this prompted AM 640 and the Toronto Sun to interview Magnotta, allowing him to issue denials. The Toronto Sun reporter who had met with Magnotta later said that he had found him "troubled", and that he had suspected at the time that Magnotta had made up the Homolka rumor to gain attention. However, he had assumed that Magnotta was "if anything (...) more of a danger to himself". One of Magnotta's former lovers said in 2012 that he was obsessed with becoming famous, and that he seemed to perceive Homolka and her accomplice Paul Bernardo as "role models". During the murder investigation in 2012, Montreal police announced that Magnotta and Homolka had dated, but soon retracted the statement, acknowledging that they had no evidence to corroborate the claim.
Early criminal activity
In 2005, Magnotta, who was going by his birth name at the time, was convicted of one count of impersonation and three counts of fraud (against Sears Canada, The Brick, and 2001 Audio Video): he had taken advantage of a woman with a developmental disability by convincing her to apply for credit cards and then using those cards himself to purchase over $10,000 worth of goods. He was also accused of sexually assaulting the woman, although that charge was later dropped. He pleaded guilty and received a nine-month conditional sentence with 12 months of probation. The court noted at the time that Magnotta had "significant psychiatric issues" and did not always take his medication.
In 2010, Magnotta posted on YouTube a video titled 1 boy 2 kittens, in which he deliberately suffocated two kittens in a plastic bag with a vacuum cleaner. He later published a second video of himself, this time drowning a cat in a bathtub. A third video showed him feeding a cat to a python. In January 2011, a private Facebook group identified Magnotta as the person in these videos; animal rights activist groups subsequently offered a $5,000 reward for bringing him to justice. He was initially dubbed the "Vacuum Kitten Killer" by the online animal activists. The online community that had identified Magnotta reported him to authorities, warning that after committing acts of cruelty to animals, he might pose a threat to humans. Their investigation was later chronicled in the 2019 true crime docuseries Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer. In February 2011, Toronto police began investigating Magnotta in connection with the videos, after receiving a complaint from the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The OSPCA also contacted the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Britain, the American FBI, and police in Montreal, due to the suspect's extensive travels.
Murder and investigation
Lin was last seen alive on May 24, 2012, when surveillance footage captured him and Magnotta entering the apartment building where Magnotta lived. Around midnight, Lin sent a text message to his former boyfriend.
On May 25, an 11-minute video titled "1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick" was uploaded to Best Gore. Compiled from various clips and still photos, the video depicts Lin's corpse tied to a bed frame and being stabbed by Magnotta with a kitchen knife and a screwdriver that had been painted silver to resemble an ice pick. Magnotta then dismembers Lin and uses Lin's severed arm to masturbate, before carving flesh from the corpse with a knife and fork and having a dog chew on it. Magnotta then uses a wine bottle to repeatedly sodomise the victim's corpse. Throughout the video, the New Order song "True Faith" plays in the background, and a poster for the 1942 film Casablanca is visible on the wall. According to Canadian investigators, who obtained a "more extensive" version of the video, it is possible that cannibalism was performed. The first few seconds of the video show Magnotta straddling a different man; this man had visited Magnotta's apartment at a different date and had not been murdered.
Several hours after killing Lin, Magnotta booked a round-trip ticket for a flight from Montreal to Paris, using a passport with his own name.
On May 26, a Montana attorney attempted to report the video to Toronto Police, his local Sheriff, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but the report was dismissed by officials. Best Gore viewers also attempted to report the video. Police later confirmed it as authentic.
On May 27, Lin's friends entered his apartment and found no sign of him, after which he was reported missing to police.
On May 29, a package containing Lin's left foot was delivered to the national headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada. The package was stained with blood and marked with a red heart symbol. A package containing Lin's left hand was intercepted in a Canada Post processing facility, addressed to the Liberal Party.
A janitor discovered Lin's decomposing torso in a suitcase behind an apartment building in the Snowdon neighbourhood of Montreal. He first saw the suitcase on May 25, but it was not picked up due to the large amount of garbage that day. After searching the scene, police recovered human remains, bloody clothes, and papers identifying the suspect, as well as "sharp and blunt objects" from the back alley. Footage from surveillance cameras inside the building showed a suspect bringing numerous garbage bags outside, and the images matched the suspect who was captured on video at the post office in Côte-des-Neiges.
At 11:33 p.m. EDT (03:33 UTC), police searched the apartment Magnotta was renting on Décarie Boulevard. He had moved in four months prior, and his rent was paid up to June 1. The apartment had been mostly emptied before he left. Blood was found on different items, including the mattress, the refrigerator, the table, and the bathtub. "If you don't like the reflection. Don't look in the mirror. I don't care [sic]" was written in red ink on the inside of a closet.
On May 30, 2012, it was confirmed that the body parts belonged to the same individual, later identified as Jun Lin. The suspect in the case was quickly identified as Magnotta, who had by then fled.
A note was found with the package sent to the Conservative Party, saying six body parts had been distributed, and that the perpetrator would kill again. The other three packages also contained notes, but their contents were undisclosed by police, who cited their concerns about possible copycat crimes. On June 5, 2012, a package containing a right foot was delivered to St. George's School, and another package containing a right hand to False Creek Elementary School in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was confirmed that both packages were sent from Montreal. Some of the packages were wrapped in pink tissue paper; one of them was labeled with a note saying "Roses are red, violets are blue, the police will need dental records to identify you bitch."
On June 13, 2012, the four limbs and the torso were matched to Lin using DNA samples from his family. On July 1, Lin's head was recovered at the edge of a small lake in Montreal's Angrignon Park, after police received an anonymous tip.
Manhunt
Investigations in Canada were headed by Peter Lambrinakos. An arrest warrant for Magnotta was issued by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), later upgraded to a Canada-wide warrant by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), accusing him of the following crimes:
- First-degree murder;
- Committing an indignity to a dead body;
- Publishing obscene material;
- Mailing obscene, indecent, immoral or scurrilous material; and
- Criminally harassing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several (unnamed) members of Parliament.