Luka Magnotta: Accused Cannibal Killer of Videoed Dismembered Man

     Tenants in a working-class Montreal, Canada neighborhood complained of a bad smell coming from a pile of garbage behind their apartment building. At ten in the morning on May 29, 2012, when the janitor opened a suitcase at the site of the odor, he discovered a man's bloody torso.

     At 11:15 that morning, in Ottawa, at the Conservative Party headquarters, Jenni Bryne, a top political advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, opened a box that had been mailed to that address. As she opened the package, Bryne was hit by a terrible odor, and recoiled at the sight of dried blood. She immediately called 911 which brought the Ottawa police, a hazmat unit, and officers with the Emergency Special Operations Section. The box contained a human foot, and a note indicating that six other human body parts were in the mail.

     At 9:30 that night, the Ottawa police announced they had found a second severed body part mailed from Montreal. This was a hand found inside a piece of mail intercepted at the Ottawa Postal Terminal.

     On Wednesday morning, May 30, crime scene investigators and hazardous materials officers entered an apartment in the building where the janitor had found the suitcase containing the blood stained torso. The masked searchers were interested in a second-story studio apartment rented by a 29-year-old tenant named Luka Rocco Magnotta.

     Luka Magnotta, a stripper, model, and bisexual actor in low-budget adult films who has used the names Eric Clinton Newman (his born name) and Vladimir Romanov, had lived in the apartment about four months. Originally from Toronto, Magnotta had an Internet presence that included upload videos of animal cruelty. Two years ago a video appeared on the Web featuring Magnotta placing a pair of kittens inside an airtight bag then using a vacuum cleaner to suck out the air. He had a blog under his name called "Necrophilia Serial Killer Luka Magnotta" that featured the following quote: "It's not cool to the world being a necrophiliac. It's bloody lonely. But I don't care." Magnotta was also the author of an Internet article titled, "How to Completely Disappear and Never be Found," in which he lays out a 6-step program for changing one's identify.

     On May 25, in an uploaded 11-minute Internet video on an Alberta-based website called "Best Gore," a man is stabbed, his throat slashed, and his head cut off by an unidentified killer in a dark hoodie who also severs the victim's limbs, then commits sexual and cannibalistic acts on the corpse. A dog in the dimly lit room eats part of the body as well. The snuff video is called, "1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick." The Canadian authorities believe the torso found behind Magnotta's apartment building, as well as the mailed body parts, belong to the man seen murdered online. They also think that Magnotta is the killer/cannibal in the video.

     In Magnotta's Montreal apartment, (Apt. 208) the crime scene investigators believed they were at the site of the videoed murder/dismemberment. Detectives also think the torso found behind the building came from this place. The walls and floor were splattered in dried blood, and in the bedroom they found a blood-soaked mattress.

     A forensic pathologist who examined the torso and the two mailed body parts, believes they belonged to the same person.

     Luka Magnotta is currently the subject on an international manhunt. Many believe the five foot eight, blue-eyed fugitive with the short black hair is hiding out in Europe under a false identity.

UPDATE

     The man believed to have been killed in the snuff film has been identified as a student from China named Jun Lin. The 33-year-old had been attending Concordia University in Montreal. He had been going out with Magnotta, and was last seen on May 24, 2012. Lin was an undergraduate in the engineering and computer science department.

     Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafreniere believes Magnotta is in France. The fugitive is on Interpol's equivalent of the FBI's most wanted list. A Toronto transsexual who had a relationship with Magnotta said the porn actor used drugs and had a bad temper.

     After Luka Magnotta posted the kitten video, he was questioned by a reporter in England. In an email he sent to The Sun newspaper in London, Magnotta warned that his next uploaded snuff video would not involve cats. "Once you kill, and taste blood, it's impossible to stop," he wrote. Since the animal cruelty video, animal rights activists have been trying to get the authorities to intervene.

UPDATE

     On Monday, June 4, 2012, 7 police officers in Berlin, acting on a tip from a person who recognized him, arrested Magnotta in an internet cafe. At first Magnotta gave the cops a false name, then said, "You got me." Magnotta was in the cafe reading about himself on the internet.