2012 murder in Montreal, Canada
In May 2012, Jun Lin (; December 30, 1978 – May 24 or 25, 2012), a Chinese university student, was fatally stabbed and dismembered in Montreal, 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 him of first-degree murder. Magnotta 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 (), 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. In 2012, 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, 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 routinely lock her children out of the house, and once put her children's pet rabbits out in the cold to freeze to death. 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. Later on, having been diagnosed with schizophrenia, he received a disability allowance; he supplemented that source of income with prostitution. Besides his work as an escort, he began in 2003 to appear in gay pornographic videos. 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, and auditioned for the Slice network television show "Plastic Makes Perfect" in February 2008.
Over several years, Magnotta created many profiles on various social media and discussion 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.
One such rumour emerged in 2007, claiming Magnotta was in a relationship with Karla Homolka, a high-profile Canadian convicted murderer, which Magnotta denied in a subsequent interview with the "Toronto Sun". During the murder investigation in 2012, Montreal police announced that the pair had dated, but soon retracted the statement, and acknowledged that they had no evidence to corroborate the claim. As with the Homolka relationship, Magnotta repeatedly denied other claims that he had planted as hoaxes, and as part of a campaign of cyberstalking against him. Nina Arsenault, who had been Magnotta's lover in the early 2000s, described him in 2012 as a manipulative liar and often self-destructive. 
The "Toronto Sun" reporter who had interviewed Magnotta in 2007 about the Homolka rumours later said that he had found him "troubled", and that he had suspected at the time that Magnotta had made up the rumours to gain attention. However, he had assumed that Magnotta was "if anything (...) more of a danger to himself". A transgender woman who had briefly dated Magnotta at the time, 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".
Early criminal activity.
In 2005, Magnotta, who was going by his birth name at the time, was convicted of one count of impersonation and three counts of fraud (against Sears Canada, The Brick, and 2001 Audio Video): he had taken advantage of a mentally disabled young woman by convincing her to apply for credit cards and then using those cards himself to purchase over $10,000 worth of goods. He was also accused of sexually assaulting the woman, although that charge was later dropped. He pleaded guilty, and received a nine-month conditional sentence with 12 months of probation. The court noted at the time that Magnotta had "significant psychiatric issues" and did not always take his medication.
In 2010, Magnotta posted on YouTube a video titled "1 boy 2 kittens," in which he deliberately suffocated two kittens in a plastic bag with a vacuum cleaner. He later published a second video of himself, this time drowning a cat in a bathtub. A third video showed him feeding a cat to a python. In January 2011, a private Facebook group identified Magnotta as the person in these videos; animal rights activist groups subsequently offered a $5,000 reward for bringing him to justice. He was initially dubbed the "Vacuum Kitten Killer" by the online animal activists. The Internet community which had identified Magnotta reported him to authorities, warning that after committing acts of animal cruelty, he might pose a threat to humans. Their investigation was later chronicled in the 2019 true crime docuseries "". In February 2011, Toronto police began investigating Magnotta in connection with the videos, after receiving a complaint from the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The OSPCA also contacted the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Britain, the American FBI, and police in Montreal, due to the suspect's extensive travels.
Murder and investigation.
Lin was last seen on May24, 2012, and his friends reported getting a text message from his phone at 9:00p.m. His boss became suspicious when he did not show up for his shift the next day. Three of his friends went into his apartment on May27. He was reported missing to police on May29. The last images showing Jun Lin alive were taken by a surveillance camera on the night of May24, 2012: they showed Lin and Magnotta entering the apartment building where Magnotta lived. 
On May25, 2012, an 11-minute video titled "1Lunatic, 1Ice Pick" was uploaded to bestgore.com, depicting a naked male—later identified as Lin—tied to a bed frame being repeatedly stabbed with what appeared to be an ice pick (later determined to be a screwdriver) and with a kitchen knife, then dismembered, followed by acts of necrophilia as the perpetrator used the victim's severed arm to masturbate. The video was edited from various clips and also included still photos. During the video, the 1987 New Order song "True Faith" plays in the background, and a poster for the 1942 film "Casablanca" is visible on the wall. The perpetrator uses a knife and fork to cut off some of the flesh, and gets a dog to chew on the body. Canadian authorities obtained a "more extensive" version of the video, and said that cannibalism may have been performed. 
It was later established that the video did not show the actual killing and that Lin, whose throat had been slit, was already dead when it was shot. The first seconds of the video showed a naked and bound man writhing while another man in a hooded sweatshirt straddled him. However, investigations determined that the person shown in those images was not Lin, but another man who had been to Magnotta's apartment at a different date and had not been murdered. Materials promoting the video appeared online 10 days before the murder took place. Police later said that the video had been sent by Magnotta to bestgore.com, whose owner then posted it online.
Several hours after killing Lin, Magnotta booked a round-trip ticket for a flight from Montreal to Paris, using a passport with his own name.
On May26, 2012, an attorney from Montana attempted to report the video to Toronto Police, his local Sheriff, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but the report was dismissed by officials. Bestgore viewers also attempted to report the video. Police later confirmed it as authentic, and identified the victim, an Asian male, as the same individual whose body parts were sent to Ottawa.
At 11:00a.m. on May29, 2012, a package containing a left foot was delivered to the national headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada. The package was stained with blood, had a foul smell, and 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.
A janitor discovered a decomposing torso inside a suitcase, left in a garbage pile in the alley behind an apartment building in the Snowdon area of Montreal. He first saw the suitcase on May25, but it was not picked up due to the large amount of garbage that day. After searching the scene, police recovered human remains, bloody clothes, and papers identifying the suspect, as well as "sharp and blunt objects" from the back alley. Footage from surveillance cameras inside the building showed a suspect bringing numerous garbage bags outside, and the images matched the suspect who was captured on video at the post office in Côte-des-Neiges.
At 11:33p.m. EDT (03:33 UTC), police searched the apartment Magnotta was renting on Décarie Boulevard. He had moved in four months prior, and his rent was paid up to June1. The apartment had been mostly emptied before he left. Blood was found on different items, including the mattress, the refrigerator, the table, and the bathtub. "If you dont like the reflection. Dont look in the mirror. I dont care ["sic"]" was written in red ink on the inside of a closet.
On May30, 2012, it was confirmed that the body parts belonged to the same individual, later identified as Jun Lin. The suspect in the case was quickly identified as Magnotta, who had by then fled.
A note was found with the package sent to the Conservative Party, saying six body parts had been distributed, and that the perpetrator would kill again. The other three packages also contained notes, but their contents were undisclosed by police, who cited their concerns about possible copycat crimes. On June5, 2012, a package containing a right foot was delivered to St.George's School, and another package containing a right hand to False Creek Elementary School in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was confirmed that both packages were sent from Montreal. Some of the packages were wrapped in pink tissue paper; one of