BY PHOEBE MOSES
BERLIN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY – On Monday, German police officials announced the arrest of the fugitive Luka Rocco Magnotta, who had fled from Canada on May 26, after committing the grisly murder of his boyfriend— an incident that he videotaped, and which he followed with the cannibalism and sexual mutilation of the bound and naked man, a graduate student from Concordia University in Montreal.
The gruesome crime precipitated what police call the largest manhunt in Montreal’s history. Six days after Interpol issued a “Red Notice” alert for the fugitive, Magnotta surrendered to Berlin police with a simple utterance of, “You got me.” Magnotta—a former gay porn star, whose real name is Eric Clinton Newman—became the subject of the international manhunt after a video circulated online showing a man—identified by investigators as Magnotta—stabbing another man with an ice pick, and then dismembering him, while the soundtrack from the movie “American Psycho” plays in the background. In the video, Magnotta reveals that he has slashed the other man’s throat, and then proceeds to dismember the body, and perform sexual acts upon it.
Magnotta was dubbed the “Butcher of Montreal,” “the Chameleon,” and “Canadian Psycho,” after it was discovered that he had carved up the victim, 33 year old Lin Jun, a student whom Montreal police say had been “in a relationship” with Magnotta. The 29-year-old former porn star was sought by Canadian authorities for first-degree murder, defiling a corpse, and using Canada’s postal system to deliver “obscene, indecent, immoral, or scurrilous” material.
Canadian police say the murder happened on May 24 or 25. Four days later, on May 29, authorities told shocked reporters that a severed human foot had been sent to the headquarters of the ruling Conservative Party. (For this action, Magnotta is likely to be charged with threatening the life of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.) The grisly details continued when Ottawa postal officials reported intercepting a hand in the mail that was addressed to the opposition Liberal Party, and police discovered a mutilated human torso, which was later identified as belonging to the victim, Lin. French investigators—who the daily Le Figaro described as “terrified” of Magnotta—described him as a “profoundly disturbed man” and “habitual liar,” and used the accused killer’s cellphone signal to trace him to a hotel in a Paris suburb.
Although Magnotta was not on the premises, on Saturday, Paris police found adult magazines, in addition to airsickness bags issued by Air Canada, the commercial carrier that Magnotta used to affect his escape from Montreal to Paris, disguised—as surveillance tapes from Montreal-Trudeau International Airport show—in a dark wig and Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Canadian authorities are also attempting to learn if Magnotta has killed in the past. Montreal police cite an online video depicting a man who resembles Magnotta committing torture against cats. Police say that animal rights activists have been looking for almost two years for a man who killed cats, and then posted the videos of it online.
Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafreniere said of Magnotta, “This is the kind of guy that’s looking for attention. He likes to glorify himself with the Web. The Web will glorify him, and the Web is also going to bring him back to justice, because there are a lot of pictures of him out there, and it will help lead him to us.” As it happened, Berlin police arrested Magnotta at an Internet café after French authorities were tipped off by a client of Magnotta’s, who had recognized the fugitive and alerted officials. As the Montreal police commander, Lafreniere, predicted, it was “the Web” that proved his undoing, as he was reading about himself online, and looking at his image on the computer, which enabled the witness to recognize him. According to a former lover of Magnotta’s, he will do “anything to be famous.”
Nina Arsenault, a transgender woman, said that the accused murderer would boast to her of his killing fantasies. Arsenault told police that Magnotta was a “f****d up kid,” and said he spoke regularly about killing both animals and people, including members of his own family. She told police that he once said to her, “I’m afraid when you look in my eyes, that you’ll see there’s nothing inside of me.”