The city of Montreal will never forget the discovery that shook its streets in May 2012. The building manager could no longer ignore the stench emanating from a suitcase abandoned in an alley. Finally, when he decided to open it, he found the mutilated torso of a man, with no trace of his limbs.
The horror was not limited to that alley. As the spring progressed, more of the man’s body parts turned up in the most unexpected places in Canada. He left foot It was found in a package sent to the offices of the Prime Minister of that country. The left handdestined for the Liberal Party, was intercepted before reaching its destination.
But the most macabre was yet to come. The right hand and the right foot of Jun Lin were sent to two elementary schools in Vancouver, British Columbia. The classrooms, full of children, became scenes of terror when they opened the packages with the human remains.
Jun Lin, a 33-year-old young man, had arrived in Montreal from China with great expectations and dreams to fulfill. As an international student, his life in Canada revolved around his studies and finding new friends. His destiny crossed with the man who would end his life in the most brutal way imaginable.
On the night of May 24, 2012, Jun Lin responded to an advertisement on craigslist posted by Luka Magnotta, who was looking for someone interested in sex and bondage. At 9 p.m., Lin sent her last text message to a friend. What happened next was immortalized in a video that Magnotta would upload the next day to a website called bestgore.com. The video, titled “1 Lunatic, One Ice Pick,” showed Lin naked and tied to a bed frame, while New Order’s music played in the background.
The 11-minute video was a scene of unimaginable horror. Magnotta attacked Lin with an ice pick and a kitchen knife, dismembering her body as she recorded every moment. In a series of macabre acts, Magnotta sexually violated Lin’s limp body, allowed a dog to chew on her remains and, according to police, even ate parts of her corpse. Police found evidence of cannibalism in an extended version of the video they reviewed.
Before this heinous crime, Luka Magnotta had already shown signs of a disturbed mind. A group of online sleuths had investigated him for more than a year, after discovering videos in which Magnotta tortured and killed animals. In December 2010, he had posted a video titled “1 boy, a kitten”, where he suffocated two animals with a vacuum cleaner and a plastic bag.
These online sleuths had collected an impressive amount of information about Magnotta. They analyzed metadata from her photos, found clues to her whereabouts, and shared everything with the police. However, her warnings were largely ignored. “You’re just cats,” authorities told them, dismissing concerns that Magnotta might escalate his violence.
Magnotta’s efforts to get noticed online were also revealing of his need for attention. He created Wikipedia pages about himself, fake fan pages and spread rumors that he was in a relationship with serial killer Karla Homolka. To online sleuths, Magnotta’s motivation was clear: He sought fame at any cost. “There is an unwritten rule on the Internet. It’s called rule zero: don’t mess with cats,” commented one of the detectives. Another added: “What better way to get famous than to fuck with cats?”
It didn’t take long to identify the culprit. Luka Magnotta, a name that would soon be synonymous with horror, had recorded his crime. In an 11-minute video titled “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick,” which he uploaded to a website called bestgore.com, he clearly showed him dismembering Jun Lin’s body with an ice pick and a kitchen knife.
But the real question on everyone’s mind was not who had done it, but because?
Magnotta, born Eric Newman in 1982 in Ontario, had chosen his new name as a kind of reinvention to purge bad memories from his life. According to one of his few friends, Nina Arsenault, Magnotta had mentioned traumatic experiences in his childhood that deeply disturbed him, to the point of many times punching himself in the face.
Magnotta’s story begins when his parents abandon him at the age of 10. The adults left the boy in the care of a brutal and domineering grandmother, until his adolescence in a small town in Ontario, where being young and bisexual was a constant struggle. Added to this was a genetic inheritance of paranoid schizophrenia from his father, who led him to hear voices from the age of 18.
Over the years, Luka Magnotta attempted to erase his past as Eric Newman through plastic surgery and a life as an escort and minor porn star. But his transformation failed to calm his inner torment.
The investigation into Jun Lin’s murder revealed a disturbed mind and a chain of events that culminated in one of the most gruesome crimes of the decade. Police searching Magnotta’s apartment found blood on the mattress, in the bathtub and in the refrigerator. Security footage showed Jun Lin and Magnotta entering the building together shortly before the murder.
Luka Magnotta had fled, but he couldn’t escape for long. Police tracked him to an internet cafe in Berlin on June 4, 2012, where they found him Googling his own name, reveling in the macabre fame he had gained.
What had led Luka Magnotta to commit such an atrocity? Although the young man stated that a voice in his head forced him, psychiatrists debated whether it was true madness or a desperate search for attention. He was arrested on June 4, 2012, 12 years ago today, and finally, in December 2014, a jury rejected his insanity defense and sentenced him to life in prison.
Once the authenticity of Jun Lin’s death video was confirmed, police began an intensive search to capture Luka Magnotta. It all began with the discovery of the torso in Magnotta’s Montreal apartment, where the evidence made it clear that a horrendous crime had occurred. The building’s security cameras showed Lin and Magnotta entering together shortly before the murder, and the trail of blood in the apartment left no doubt: the killer was on the run.
Meanwhile, Magnotta had left Canada, but he had not been discreet. Using his own name, he traveled to Paris, which allowed the authorities to follow his trail with relative ease. Once in France, Magnotta traveled to Berlin by bus. However, the police already had him surrounded.
On June 4, 2012, German police found him in an internet cafe, absorbed in his own fame, while searching for himself on Google. The image of his arrest shows a defeated but unrepentant man, whose delight in the notoriety of his crime only increased the horror of his actions.
—Are you Luka Rocco Magnotta? —asked one of the officers.
“Yes, it’s me,” Magnotta responded, without resistance.
Magnotta’s extradition to Canada was swift. On his return flight, officers watched him closely. Magnotta never denied his crime. On the contrary, he seemed to delight in the macabre details he shared with psychiatrists and officers. In one of his statements, he claimed that he and Jun Lin were lovers and had shared a night together when a sudden paranoia overcame him. According to Magnotta, a black car outside the apartment convinced him that Lin was a secret agent. “Tie it. Cut it off,” he heard a voice in his head say. “Do it. “He is from the government.”
But was this the truth? Psychiatrists were divided. While some believed that Magnotta suffered from a paranoid schizophrenia, others maintained that his crime was too organized to be the result of disordered thinking. Magnotta had planned his escape, dispersed his victim’s remains, and documented everything, suggesting cold, calculating premeditation.
The trial of Magnotta It was a media spectacle that kept the world in suspense. In December 2014, after a judicial process full of macabre revelations and heartbreaking testimonies, the jury found him guilty of all charges: first degree murder, desecration of a corpse, distribution of obscene material, criminal harassment and use of couriers to send indecent material.
The testimonies also played a crucial role. The Jun Lin’s family described the devastating impact of his loss. Her father, in a particularly emotional moment, spoke about his son’s dreams and aspirations, his academic achievements, and the promise of a future brutally cut short. “I will never see his smiling face again, or hear about his new accomplishments or his laughter,” he said. “Lin Jun will never be around to celebrate her birthday or ours.”
The jury’s verdict was overwhelming. Magnotta was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. The sentence was a partial relief to Jun Lin’s friends and family, but it could not erase the pain of her loss. Jun Lin’s family expressed that no sentence would be enough to repair the void left by his murder.
