Magnotta got a ‘strong thrill’ from killing, expert suggests
‘After three kitten videos, you need to move onto something else,’ court told
It may be that for Luka Magnotta, “eventually, cats (were) not enough,” says a forensic psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution.
Dr. Gilles Chamberland was explaining Monday why he thinks that Magnotta may be, among other things, a sexual sadist and why he may have moved from killing kittens online to killing Lin Jun, a 33-year-old Chinese student.
“If this was a strong thrill” for Magnotta, Chamberland said, “eventually, to get the same satisfaction or power, you have to move on.”
Chamberland told Quebec Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer and the jurors that “even if killing cats does not sound sexual, it can become so.”
Magnotta’s world, he pointed out, was a universe drenched in sex and sexuality — he was a former porn actor turned escort and he visited online “gore sites” that cater to those who are aroused by watching unabashed violence.
“Sexual sadism is possible,” he said, and for someone like Magnotta, who needed attention the way others need air, the notoriety he won with the kittenkilling videos would have been like a drug.
Magnotta would have built up “tolerance,” Chamberland said. “After three kitten videos, you need to move onto something else.”
And Magnotta said as much himself, Chamberland pointed out, referring to an email Magnotta sent a British journalist about six months before the homicide in which he bragged his next “movie” wouldn’t feature “pussys,” (sic) but human beings.
The jurors already have heard about the three cat-killing videos, made about six months apart in 2010 and 2011, in two different cities.
At the time, Magnotta denied being the cat-killer and creator — as he had similarly denied starting the rumour he was dating the felon Karla Homolka — but after his arrest in Lin’s death in 2012, he admitted all to defence psychiatrist Dr. Joel Watts.
But Magnotta claimed that a mysterious man who may not even exist, one Manny Lopez, had forced him to make the videos and protested that he loved animals.
The cat videos share common features, Chamberland said, chiefly Magnotta’s concern for what could be called production values.
All begin with someone “playing gently” with kittens, as many online cat videos do. “The difference here is the way these videos end tragically for the cats,” Chamberland said. The shock is the chasm between the beginning, “where someone is playing with these beautiful little cats,” and the horrific finale, when they are suffocated, drowned or fed to a python.
“Mr. Magnotta is taking his time (in all the videos),” Chamberland said. “Apparently, he’s alone. In one, he’s smoking a cigarette. He’s holding the camera with one hand; there’s no tremor in his hand, no fear.”
All the videos were obviously edited, with music tracks added afterwards.
“A disorganized schizophrenic would not act with such care,” Chamberland said flatly, referring to the main diagnosis made by defence experts.
It’s his theory that Magnotta’s actions are hard to explain with a schizophrenia diagnosis, easy as pie if he’s considered to have a personality disorder, which isn’t an illness, but characteristics hardwired in personality.
The 32-year-old Toronto native long ago admitted through his lawyer, Luc Leclair, that he committed the “physical acts” in the May 25, 2012 slaying and dismemberment of Lin, the posting online of a graphic video of the dismemberment and the indignities he performed on Lin’s body, as well as the disposal of his severed remains.
But Magnotta is pleading not guilty, or not criminally responsible, by dint of his alleged schizophrenia: His mental state around and at the time of the homicide is the only real issue for the jurors.
While Magnotta refused to be interviewed by Chamberland, thus depriving him of the psychiatrist’s most useful tool in a mental-health assessment, he has reviewed the extensive records and defence expert reports before the court.
And Chamberland believes Magnotta is acting up a storm, or malingering, deliberately faking or exaggerating symptoms.
It is axiomatic in forensic psychiatry that malingering should be suspected in any legal context where the patient stands to avoid prison, defer responsibility or gain something by doing so.
The second major criterion is a marked discrepancy between the claimed stress or symptoms and objective findings.
That is certainly the case with Magnotta, who variously told the defence psychiatrists that he heard voices or was receiving commands on the night of the homicide or that “Manny” told him Lin was a government agent sent to harm him.
Yet the objective evidence — reams of surveillance — suggest he was cool-headed, and not looking over his shoulder, from the night of the killing through his departure for Paris and then Berlin, where he was finally arrested at an Internet café while reading about himself.
“In my opinion,” Chamberland said, “malingering should be strongly suspected, and I believe it’s very clearly present in this case.”
His testimony continues Tuesday.
A disorganized schizophrenic would not act with such care. DR. GILLES CHAMBERLAND, forensic psychiatrist