Twisted cannibal porn star murdered student before eating him and posting his hands and feet
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Luka Rocco Magnotta brutally killed computer engineering student, Jun Lin, before dismembering his body and posting several body parts to political parties and even schools
Luka Magnotta is serving a life sentence(Image: AFP/GettyImages/Montreal Police Department)
It was a crime that horrified and sickened a nation – and is still sending shockwaves around the city it took place in more than 14 years after the gruesome murder.
Jun Lin had travelled from Wuhan in China to Montreal in Canada with dreams of a new life in 2010. He was a computer engineering student and an undergraduate at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.
Jun was a gay man, who had previously been married to a woman but they had divorced and in the years before his death he had lived with another man from his home country.
The student had never told his family about his sexuality and one relationship with a partner is said to have ended because he felt his family were putting pressure on him to “settle down and marry a woman”.
It was at this time he crossed paths with the man who would become his cannibal killer. Following his breakup, Jun was using websites to meet men and twisted killer Luka Rocco Magnotta claimed to have met him after responding to an advert.
Jun Lin had travelled to Canada for a new life(Image: Quirky China News/REX)
Magnotta was born Eric Clinton Kirk but changed his named in 2006. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, something which also affected his father. Following his parents divorce when he was a child, he went to live with his grandmother.
His mother claimed, even as a child, he was obsessed with cleanliness, would lock his two younger siblings out of their home and alleged he left their pet rabbits outside in the cold to die.
Due to his mental health issues, Magnotta received disability payments but would supplement his income by working as an escort. He also appeared in adult films in 2003 and had worked as a stripper.
Magnotta seemed determined to become infamous and had several cosmetic surgeries and even auditioned to be on the reality TV show, Plastic Makes Perfect in 2008.
He created dozens of social media profiles, several containing outlandish claims about his modelling work and the adult films he had made. Magnotta would also plant false rumours about himself so he could dent them publicly.
Magnotta had made several adult films(Image: QMI Agency/REX)
One rumour, which started in 2007, claimed he was in a romantic relationship with convicted murdered Karla Homolka. Magnotta was interviewed by the Toronto Sun, where he denied the relationship. However, it was during this interview that his lies first started to unravel as the reporter described him as “troubled” and believed Magnotta himself was the person behind the rumour.
Five years later, one of his former partners said Magnotta was “obsessed” with becoming famous and saw Homolka and her accomplice Paul Bernardo as his role models.
By 2005, Magnotta’s life as a criminal had begun. He was convicted of one count of impersonation and three counts of fraud. He was given a nine month conditional sentence and 12 months probation. Even then, the court said he was suffering from “significant psychiatric issues” and was prone to not taking his medication.
Things took a sinister turn in 2010 when Magnotta filmed himself suffocating two kittens in a plastic bag before posting a second video of him drowning a cat in the bath.
Police launched an investigation into his activities in 2011 after being contacted by the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Lin’s body parts were mailed to various schools and organisations by the sick killer(Image: QMI Agency/REX)
Then, in May 2012, he met Jun for the first time. CCTV caught the two men going into the apartment building Magnotta lived in.
A day later a truly horrifying video was posted to the interview showing Jun’s dead body being attacked by Magnotta, stabbing him several times before feeding part of him to a dog.
Twisted Magnotta used a wine bottle to sexually assault the corpse while the New Order track, True Faith, played in the background. At the time media reports also suggested a longer video “showed evidence of cannibalism”.
Just a few hours after he had committed the horrifying killing, Magnotta booked a one way trip to Paris but it wasn’t until the following day that 33-year-old Jun’s friends became concerned for him and went to his apartment to find it deserted.
Two days later, on May 29, the Conservative Party of canada opened a package, delivered to their headquarters, which contained Jun’s left foot. Another package, sent to the Liberal Party, was intercepted before it reached its destination. It contained Jun’s left hand.
Magnotta was known as an animal abuser wanted by activist groups (Image: REX/Shutterstock)
The victim’s torso was found in a suitcase behind an apartment building by a janitor and when officers searched the scene they found more human remains as well as clothes covered in blood and paperwork which identified the killer.
CCTV cameras from inside the apartment block showed Magnotta carrying several rubbish bags downstairs over the course of a few days.
When they searched his apartment, police found booked which matched Jun’s along with a chilling note written inside a wardrobe saying “if you don’t like the reflection, don’t look in the mirror, I don’t care”.
A note sent with the first package to the Conservative Party claimed six body parts had been sent out by the killer, who also vowed he would murder again.
St George’s School received the third package, a right foot, on June 5, while another school, False Creek Elementary School in Vancouver, was sent a right hand.
Cannibal killer Luka Rocco Magnotta(Image: REUTERS)
But June 13, police had matched all the body parts to Jun and on July 1 his head was found on the edge of a lake after an anonymous tip.
By this time Interpol had issued a red notice for Magnotta’s arrest. He was finally captured by police in Berlin on June 4, 2012. He was in an internet cafe and was reading stories about himself. Magnotta was returned to Canada on a military plane on June 18, 2022.
His trial took place in 2014 and last 10 weeks, where he was found guilty of first degree murder. The 32-year-old had admitted to killing and dismembering Jun but pleaded not guilty on grounds of mental illness.
Magnotta was also found guilty of committing an indignity to a human body, publishing and mailing obscene material, and criminally harassing Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament.
He showed no emotion as the verdicts were read out and will serve at least 25 years before he is considered for parole.
Jun’s father, Diran Lin, came from China to be there for the trial and in a powerful impact statement read to the court said: “The night Lin Jun died, parts of many other people died in one way or another. His mother, his sister and me, his friends … in one night, we lost a lifetime of hope
“I had come to see your trial system to see justice done, and I leave satisfied that you have not let my son down.”
