Murder of Jun Lin

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 a Griffintown-area apartment with a roommate 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.

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