Luka Magnotta: One Guy, Two Kittens

Kitten videos. Everyone loves a good Kitten video. Imagine going online and clicking on one such kitten video, only to find an act so atrocious it would spawn an entire group to become internet sleuths, helping police to track down a killer. Sounds like the plot of a bad “B” movie, right? What if I told you that it really happened, and is even documented in a popular Netflix documentary? What if I told you the killer was a male model, named Luka Magnotta? 

Luka Magnotta was born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman on July 24, 1982 in Scarborough, Ontario. He was the first of three children to Anna Yourkin and Donald Newman. He, and his siblings were homeschooled for much of their childhood. According to him, his mother was obsessed with cleanliness. She often locked them outside, and even put their pet rabbits out in the cold, where they would freeze to death. 

He was forced to wear diapers until he was 6 or 7.

His father was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1994. Shortly thereafter, Donald divorced Anna, leaving him in the care of his grandmother, Phyllis. Phyllis was known to be brutal and domineering. He was bullied, not only by his grandmother, but his younger brother too for his effeminate tendencies.

He attended I.E. Weldon Secondary School in Lindsay. Living in a small town and identifying as bisexual, his teen years were difficult, to say the least. Former teachers and classmates remembered him for having a preoccupation with looks. 

By the time he was 18, he was starting to experience signs of paranoid schizophrenia, inherited from his father.

In 2003, at the age of 21, he was stripping at Remingtons, a nightclub in Toronto. He began to appear in gay pornographic videos, where he portrayed a straight man turned gay. He took on jobs as a male escort. When asked in an interview if he enjoyed his work as an escort, he replied, “Yeah, I really do enjoy my work, I get to meet new people and all the time and you know. I’m a people person you know. It just worked out great for me yeah.”

In 2005 he appeared as a pin-up model in an issue of Toronto’s fab magazine, using the pseudonym “Jimmy.” There, he described himself as a “22-year-old soccer fan” born in Russia and living in Toronto with hopes of becoming a vice or homicide police officer.

Then the police caught up with him. In 2004 he befriended a 21 year old woman, who had the mental capacity of a child. He convinced her to apply for credit cards, which he then used, racking up a debt of $10,000 in unpaid bills. The Toronto police arrested him and he was charged with sexually assualting the woman and video-taping it, impersonation, and fraud. 

The sexual assault charge was dropped, and he was ultimately convicted of one count of impersonation, and three counts of fraud (against Sears Canada, The Brick, and 2001 Audio Video). Prior to sentencing, his lawyer produced a medical report for the court, indicating that his client had significant mental issues. 

He received a 9 month community service sentence with 12 months probation, and a piece of advice from the judge. The judge told him that he had a medical problem, and that he needed to always take his medication.

In January 2006, he met and started dating a transgender woman named Barbie. She described him as a nice guy, very sweet and very romantic. He even picked her up in a limo for their first date. “He said he wanted to be famous one day,” Barbie told the fifth estate in an interview. She described his apartment as being a shrine dedicated to himself. “He would always beg me to take pictures of him.” Their relationship only lasted a few months.

On August 12, 2006, he officially changed his name. No longer would he be Eric Clinton Kirk Newman. He became Luka Rocco Magnotta, the first in a series of changes he would make. 

Magnotta got cosmetic surgery. Hair transplants, muscle implants for his pecs and arms. When asked how important his looks were to him, he responded, “Oh my God, that’s number one, okay number one is looks, number two would have to be intelligence, and I don’t know what the rest are.” He continued, “All I care about is number one basically.”

He wasn’t doing great financially. In March 2007 he declared bankruptcy, owing $17,000 in various debts. He listed the cause as “illness, lack of employment, and insufficient income to pay off debts.” He claimed he had to pay $200 a month in expenses relating to an unspecified medical condition.

Magnotta was a competitor in OUTtv’s reality series COVERguy in 2007, and even auditioned for numerous other reality TV shows, including the Slice network show, PLastic Makes Perfect in February 2008. Unfortunately, he never made it beyond the audition phase. 

Despite this, he had some fame, enough for rumors to come out regarding his love life. In September 2007 he was rumored to be in a relationship with Karla Homolka, a well-known Canadian serial killer. He went to the Toronto Sun to set the record straight. In an interview he told them, “… career is going downhill these days to be honest with you and…”

“And it’s all because of this whole rumor of you dating Karla Homolka, that’s, this is the thing is the…”

“The rumors destroyed my life basically and I’ve been receiving death threats. My address is posted, that’s why I had to move.” He added, “I’m about to have a nervous breakdown here, my reputation is completely ruined.”

Police would later report that Magnotta had set up at least 70 Facebook pages and 20 websites under different names. It is believed that it is these pages/discussion forums were the source of numerous rumors. He dismissed these accounts as being hoaxes, and part of a campaign for cyber-stalking him. 

In 2008, he fought with Wikipedia to keep a page up about himself. A battle he lost – twice. 

One Guy, Two Kittens

In 2010, just before Christmas, a video started circulating on discussion boards. The video? “One guy, two kittens.”

The video depicted an unidentified man whose face was concealed placing two kittens into a sealed bag. He then stuck a vacuum hose into the opening and sucked all the air out, completely suffocating and crushing the kittens. 

The video was quickly taken off of YouTube, but not before the animal activists found it. And they were relentless in their search for the man in the video. 

Ryan Boyle, a former US soldier, became the admin of a Facebook group called, “Find the Kitten Vacuumer… For great justice.” About 4,000 people joined the group, including Magnotta, who joined under an alias. 

Then Rescue Ink, an animal protection group, posted a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the Vacuum Kitten Killer (VKK). “It’s a gateway crime, animal abuse,” said Joe Panz, a founding member of the group. “Once somebody starts to open that door, that’s when things start to get really dangerous.”

In early 2011, another group was created, called the Animal Beta Project or the AB Project. This group was a little more exclusive, having only 11 members. “We felt he would continue, that he would harm other animals and eventually move onto something even more violent, like hurting a person,” said John Green, an online alias. 

The group of sleuths did their job, and found photos of a man posing with the very same kittens that were in the video. These photos contained several personal items that were used to identify him, including his face.

But this was not enough for police, which enraged the activists. They worked diligently, tracking him down and compiling pages upon pages of evidence, which they delivered to the police. This evidence contained detailed photographic analysis, metadata pulled from numerous photographs, and detailed locations of where this “kitten killer” could be found.

Over the next year, he posted more videos, which the activists then believed he was taunting them with. In one, the man wore a Santa hat, and was feeding a live kitten to a python. In another, a kitten was duct taped to a broom handle, then drowned in a bathtub. 

But despite all their investigative efforts, nothing was paying off. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, one of the sleuths said, “There’s this unwritten rule of the internet. It’s called rule zero. And it’s you don’t mess with cats.” 

Another added: “What better way to get famous than to f*** with cats?”

According to the group, the police had little interest. “I’m told, ‘It’s just cats’. … They brushed me aside. What else could I have done? In the end, I told them this guy is going to turn around and kill somebody. And they poo-pooed me.”

After The Sun in London, U.K., published a story about the kitten killer, Magnotta went to their office to deny that he had killed a kitten. Reporter Alex West described his behavior as “highly suspicious.” He wrote, “But behind the denials it seemed he was getting some sort of bizarre pleasure out of the attention.” 

Just two days later, threatening emails were received by Sun’s offices. “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.” Though the London police were notified, they could do nothing, claiming it was “outside of their jurisdiction.” Apparently the messages had been “posted from somewhere in North America.”

1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick

Over the course of May 15-16, 2012, multiple references came up for a new video. “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick.” The interesting thing was – the video was nowhere to be found. It had not been uploaded, it essentially didn’t exist. Then all of Magnotta’s online activity went dark.

“1 lunatic, 1 icepick” was uploaded to Bestgore.com on May 25, to the disgust of everyone who saw it. The 1987 song “True Faith” by New Order played in the background while a naked male lay, tied to a bed frame. An unknown male repeatedly stabbed him with an ice pick and a kitchen knife. The body was then dismembered before enduring acts of necrophilia.

Later in the video, which lasted 11 minutes, the killer uses a knife and fork to cut flesh from the now desecrated corpse, and even gets a dog to chew on the body. Internet sleuths noted a poster from the 1942 film, Casablanca, hung on the wall. 

Viewers on Bestgore.com reported the video, and on May 26, Roger Renville, an attorney from Montana, USA, tried to report the video to his local Sheriff, the FBI, and the Toronto Police. The report was dismissed. “I kept insisting, and he told me that my story didn’t make sense,” he said in a Skype video interview. “Why would a killer film himself and then put it on the internet?” Yet police didn’t believe the video was real. Even Interpol was dismissive. That is until May 29. 

Lin Jun (Chinese: 林俊; pinyin: Lín Jùn), also known as Justin Lin, was an international student from Wuhan and an undergraduate in the engineering and computer science faculty at Concordia University. He had recently relocated to a Griffintown-area apartment with a roommate. He held a job as a convenience store clerk, and didn’t show up for work on May 25. 

None of his friends had seen, nor heard from him, so they went to his apartment on May 27. Justin Lin was reported missing to police on May 29, the same day a package containing a left foot was delivered to the headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada. The package was stained with blood and had a foul smell. It was marked with a red heart symbol. 

Another package containing a left hand was intercepted in a Canada Post processing facility, addressed to the Liberal Party. 

At least three other packages had been sent/received by various parties. All of the packages contained notes, though the police declined to disclose their contents. The note in the package sent to the Conservative Party stated that a total of six body parts were distributed, and that the perpetrator would kill again.

A suitcase had been left in a garbage pile in the alley behind an apartment building in the Snowdon area of Montreal. A janitor initially saw it on the 25th, but it was not picked up due to the large amount of garbage that day. Police were notified and a search of the area began.

Mike Nadeau told CBC News he first noticed the suitcase in a large garbage pile, but only opened it after people complained about a stench in the air. There were reportedly maggots crawling all over the suitcase. “As soon as we opened it, we just saw the body, with no head, and said, ‘We’re out of here, call the cops.’”

Authorities found human remains, bloody clothes, “sharp and blunt objects,” as well as papers that could identify the suspect. Review of security footage showed their suspect hauling numerous garbage bags outside. The suspect in the video matched a suspect captured on video at the post office in Côte-des-Neiges.

Apartment 208 was searched. This apartment just happened to be the one Luka Magnotta was renting. He had been living there for four months, and his rent was paid up to June 1. But the apartment was mostly empty. That being said, they still found evidence on the items that were there.

Blood was found on the mattress, refrigerator, table, and the bathtub. Looking in the closet, they found the words, “If you don’t like the reflection. Don’t look in the mirror. I don’t care,” written in red ink.

DNA analysis was conducted and, on May 30, 2012, it was confirmed that the blood found in Magnotta’s apartment matched the body parts recovered. 

June 5, a package containing a right foot was delivered to St. George’s School and another, containing a right hand, was delivered to False Creek Elementary School in Vancouver. Both schools unknowingly opened the packages the next morning, to their shock. Both packages were sent from Montreal.

June 13, investigators were able to match all the collected body parts to Lin. On July 1, police received an anonymous tip, and when they reached a small lake in Montreal’s Angrignon Park, they found Lin’s head.

Justin Lin was cremated on July 11, and his ashes buried on July 26 at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery in Montreal.

The Hunt for Luka Magnotta

On May 31, 2012, Interpol issued a Red Notice for Magnotta at the request of Canadian authorities. His name and photo were displayed prominently at the top of the homepage of the Interpol website. A Red Notice is a request for law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. It is not an arrest warrant.

However, an arrest warrant was issued by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), and later upgraded to a Canada-wide warrant by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), accusing him of the following crimes:

1. First degree murder
2. Committing an indignity to a dead body
3. Publishing obscene material
4. Mailing obscene, indecent, immoral or scurrilous material
5. Criminally harassing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several (unnamed) members of Parliament.

Magnotta was not going to go down easily. He fled Canada and flew from Montreal to Paris on May 26, using a false name, Kirk Trammel, and passport. Authorities were able to trace his cell phone to a hotel in Bagnolet, but by the time police arrived, he was gone. All that was left in the hotel were pornographic magazines and an air-sickness bag. 

Having been a model, and a relatively well-liked guy, Magnotta had people he knew in Paris. Police followed one such man who they knew had been in contact with Magnotta. They tracked down yet another man whom he had stayed with for two nights – but that man didn’t even realize who he was until after he had left. 

Magnotta was dubbed the “Butcher of Montreal” by European media and “Canadian Psycho.”

He hopped a Eurolines bus at the Bagnolet coach station, and paid €100 to travel 14 hours to Berlin, Germany. Unfortunately, due to open border policies, he did not have to show a passport to cross the border.

June 4, 2012, Berlin police tracked Magnotta down to an Internet café in the Neukölln district. Café employee, Anlayisli, said he immediately recognized him. He reported that Magnotta had been seated at computer number 25, reading news stories about himself. 

He ran outside to flag down police, but the first car that stopped didn’t even take him seriously. He had to stop another police car, and get them into the internet café. The second police car called for backup. 

Magnotta tried giving the police fake names, hoping to escape once again, but eventually admitted who he was. He was arrested, with police confirming his identity using his fingerprints.

Trial

On June 4, 2012, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was pleased that the suspect was arrested and congratulated the police forces on their good work in apprehending him. 

Interim Liberal Party leader Bob Rae said that Canadians should mourn the victim rather than “in any way, shape or form” celebrate Magnotta’s notoriety.

On June 5, 2012, Magnotta appeared in court. He didn’t fight, didn’t oppose extradition. He even agreed to a simplified process. He was delivered to Canadian authorities in Berlin on June 18, and flown aboard a Royal Canadian Air Force CC-150 Polaris to Mirabel International Airport, north of Montreal. 

A military transport was necessary due to safety concerns with using a commercial flight and potential legal difficulties if the plane was diverted to another country. Once at the Rivière-des-Prairies detention centre, he was placed into solitary confinement.

On June 19, Magnotta appeared in court via video link. He pleaded “not guilty” to all charges vai his lawyer. On June 21, he appeared in person at a high-security Montreal courtroom to request a trial by jury.

The preliminary hearing began on March 11, 2013. Just two days later, one of Magnotta’s lawyers resigned, citing a possible conflict of interest. Expert witnesses were called to testify, including a forensic pathologist, a forensic toxicologist, a forensic odontologist, a bloodstain analyst, data recovery specialists and an Internet investigations officer. 

On April 12, 2013, Luka Magnotta was indicted on charges of first degree murder, offering indignities to a human body, distributing obscene materials, using the postal service to distribute obscene materials and criminal harassment. 

The judge moved to set a tentative trial for the fall of 2014, where Magnotta would be tried by judge and jury.

Magnotta was seen by multiple mental health physicians. He was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, histrionic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. “Something forced me to do it. It just gave me this weird energy,” he told a psychiatrist. “Something just happened in my brain.”

He told them that he and Lin were lovers, sharing a night together when a black car outside filled him with a conviction that Lin was a secret agent. “Tie him up. Cut it,” he heard a voice tell him, he said. “Do it. He’s from the government.”

After he’d killed and dismembered Lin, he recalled the voices telling him, “Give it back to the government.” And so he did – by mailing body parts to various government offices.

He told a psychiatrist who interviewed him about the night he killed Lin, that a person named “Manny” was there urging him to kill. Based on that, it was then determined that this name and his “Tramell” alias were inspired by Sharon Stone’s fictional character Catherine Tramell in the movie Basic Instinct, and that character’s fiancé: Manny Vasquez.

However not everyone was convinced. After all, he had been organized. Some even believed he had committed the crimes for attention, and that the problem was simply, “negative attention is better than no attention at all.”

He pleaded guilty, admitting that he had performed the acts he was being accused of, but claimed diminished responsibility due to his mental disorders. Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer presided over the trial and on opening day, he instructed jurors that Magnotta “admits the acts or the conducts underlying the crime for which he is charged. Your task will be to determine whether he committed the five offences with the required state of mind for each offence.”

Though six tools were recovered outside of Luka Magnotta’s apartment, a pair of scissors, two knives, a screwdriver, an oscillating saw and a hammer, ballistics expert Gilbert Desjardins could not definitively link any of them to the killing.

His defense argued that he was in a psychotic state at the time of the crimes and could not be held responsible for his actions. 

The Crown prosecutor argued that the murder of Lin Jun was organized and premeditated and that Magnotta was “purposeful, mindful, ultra-organized and ultimately responsible for his actions.”

Magnotta chose not to testify.

On December 15, 2014, after 12 weeks of testimony, the jury received their instructions and was sequestered before beginning their deliberations. It took 8 days before they returned a verdict of guilty on all charges. He was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence, and will be eligible for parole after 25 years. He also received a concurrent sentence of 19 years for other charges.

He filed an appeal for the convictions to be annulled, and a new trial ordered. The appeal cited judicial error in jury instruction. The appeal further claimed that the “verdicts are unreasonable and unsupported by the evidence and the instructions.”

He withdrew his appeal on February 18, 2015.

Aftermath

Magnotta was named Canadian Newsmaker of the Year by Canadian media, which caused controversy.

Chinese felt the murder of Lin Jun were racially motivated. They further questioned public safety in Canada, as this murder was the second high-profile killing of a Chinese student in just over a year.

On July 16, 2013, Edmonton police charged BestGore.com owner Mark Marek with “corrupting morals,” for posting the 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick video online.

After reading about Luka Magnotta, and his atrocities, read about Bianca Devins, the victim who was displayed online for all to see.