Cannibal killer murdered student then let dog chew on his body parts | World | News

It was a crime that appalled and revolted a nation – and continues to reverberate throughout the city where it happened more than 14 years following the horrific murder.

Jun Lin had travelled from Wuhan in China to Montreal in Canada with aspirations of a fresh start in 2010. He was studying computer engineering and was an undergraduate at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.

Jun was a gay man, who had previously been married to a woman but they had separated, and in the years preceding his death he had lived with another man from his homeland.

The student had never disclosed his sexuality to his family and one romantic relationship with a partner is said to have ended because he felt his relatives were pressuring him to “settle down and marry a woman”.

It was during this period he met the man who would become his cannibal killer. After his relationship ended, Jun was using websites to meet men and depraved killer Luka Rocco Magnotta claimed to have met him following a response to an advertisement, reports the Daily Star.

Magnotta was born Eric Clinton Kirk but changed his name in 2006. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition which also afflicted his father.

After his parents’ divorce when he was a youngster, he went to live with his grandmother.

His mother claimed, even as a youngster, he was fixated with cleanliness, would lock his two younger siblings from their homed and alleged he abandoned their pet rabbits outside in the freezing conditions to die. Due to his mental health difficulties, Magnotta was in receipt of disability payments but would top up his income through work as an escort.

He also featured in adult films in 2003 and had previously worked as a stripper.

Magnotta appeared intent on achieving notoriety and underwent multiple cosmetic procedures, even auditioning for the reality television programme Plastic Makes Perfect in 2008.

He established dozens of social media accounts, many featuring extravagant claims regarding his modelling career and the adult films in which he had appeared. Magnotta would also spread false stories about himself so he could publicly refute them.

One such story, which emerged in 2007, suggested he was romantically involved with convicted killer Karla Homolka. Magnotta was interviewed by the Toronto Sun, where he denied the relationship.

Yet it was during this interview that his fabrications first began to fall apart, as the reporter described him as “troubled” and suspected Magnotta himself was behind the rumour.

Five years later, one of his ex-partners revealed Magnotta was “obsessed” with achieving fame and regarded Homolka and her accomplice Paul Bernardo as his role models.

By 2005, Magnotta’s criminal life had started. He was found guilty of one count of impersonation and three counts of fraud.

He received a nine-month conditional sentence and 12 months probation. Even at that stage, the court noted he was experiencing “significant psychiatric issues” and was liable to stop taking his medication.

Matters got even darker in 2010 when Magnotta recorded himself suffocating two kittens in a plastic bag before uploading a second video showing him drowning a cat in the bath.

Police began investigating his actions in 2011 following contact from the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Then, in May 2012, he met Jun for the first time. CCTV footage captured the two men entering the apartment block where Magnotta lived.

A day later an utterly disturbing video emerged online showing Jun’s dead body being attacked by Magnotta, stabbing him repeatedly before feeding portions of him to a dog.

Depraved Magnotta used a wine bottle to sexually assault the body while the New Order track, True Faith, played in the background. At the time media reports also indicated a longer video “showed evidence of cannibalism”.

Just hours after carrying out the appalling murder, Magnotta reserved a one-way flight to Paris but it wasn’t until the following day that 33-year-old Jun’s friends grew worried about him and visited his flat to discover it abandoned.

Two days afterwards, on May 29, the Conservative Party of Canada received a package, delivered to their headquarters, which contained Jun’s left foot. Another parcel, sent to the Liberal Party, was intercepted before reaching its destination.

It contained Jun’s left hand. The victim’s torso was discovered in a suitcase behind an apartment building by a janitor, and when officers searched the area they uncovered further human remains, along with blood-soaked clothing and paperwork that identified the killer.

CCTV footage from inside the apartment block captured Magnotta carrying several bin bags downstairs over the course of a number of days.

On searching his flat, police discovered books matching Jun’s, along with a chilling note scrawled inside a wardrobe reading “if you don’t like the reflection, don’t look in the mirror, I don’t care”.

A note accompanying the first package sent to the Conservative Party claimed the killer had dispatched six body parts, and also threatened to strike 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.

By June 13, police had matched all the body parts to Jun, and on July 1 his head was discovered at the edge of a lake following an anonymous tip-off.

By this point, Interpol had issued a red notice for Magnotta’s arrest. He was eventually apprehended by police in Berlin on June 4, 2012, while sitting in an internet café browsing news stories about himself.

Magnotta was subsequently returned to Canada aboard a military aircraft on June 18, 2022. His trial commenced in 2014 and lasted 10 weeks, culminating in a guilty verdict for first degree murder.

The 32-year-old admitted killing and dismembering Jun but entered a not guilty plea on the basis of mental illness.

Magnotta was additionally convicted 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 displayed no emotion as the verdicts were delivered and will serve a minimum of 25 years before being eligible for parole.

Jun’s father, Diran Lin, travelled from China to attend 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.”