HUNTING AN INTERNET KILLER
Lurking deep within the darkest corners of the internet is evidence of some of the most sickening and heinous crimes imaginable. While most people log online to watch videos of cute kittens or to update their Facebook status, a new breed of murderers, rapists and animal abusers are using it to boast of their criminal conquests.
In the harrowing new Netflix documentary Don’t F**k With Cats, the gruesome crimes of an internet killer are exposed by online sleuths, showing the terrifyingly limitless potential of the World Wide Web.
The bizarrely named docu-series focuses on convicted Canadian murderer Luka Magnotta, who killed, dismembered and cannibalised Chinese student Jun Lin, before posting footage of the slaughter online. Like most killers,
Magnotta graduated to murdering humans after first torturing and killing animals.
His story begins in 2010 with a grainy video uploaded online. The footage shows a hooded figure suffocating a pair of kittens with a vacuum seal.
The footage repulsed and horrified so many internet users that a group of Facebook sleuths embarked on an online manhunt in the pursuit of justice. Little did they know, the depraved kitten killer would also go on to post another horrific video – and this time his victim was human.
In 2012, student Jun Lin, 33, disappeared from his home in Montreal, Canada, after planning to meet up with someone via a Craigslist (an online marketplace) ad.
The day after his disappearance on May 25, an 11-minute video titled ‘1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick’ was uploaded to a gore website.
The footage showed a man stabbing a naked male with an ice pick and a kitchen knife, before dismembering the body and engaging in necrophilia.
It didn’t take long for the dedicated internet sleuths to put two and two together.
Luka Magnotta – the man
“LITTLE DID THEY KNOW, THE DEPRAVED KITTEN KILLER WOULD GRADUATE TO KILLING HUMANS”
behind the kitten snuff film – was the same hooded figure in the horrific ice pick footage.
Several armchair detectives are interviewed in the series, after they played a huge part in identifying the killer.
“You can post porn, violence, somebody getting pushed down stairs, religious statues being defamed … and nobody gives a crap,” says Deanna Thompson, one of the cyber sleuths. “But in this seedy underbelly, there’s an unwritten rule. And rule zero is ‘don’t f--k with cats’.”
Using the video of Magnotta suffocating the cats, the team of online detectives zeroed in on ‘digital breadcrumbs’ to pinpoint the uploader’s personal details. But tragically, they couldn’t track him down fast enough to stop Jun Lin’s death.
A few days after Jun Lin’s disappearance, the janitor of an apartment in Toronto found a headless torso in a suitcase.
At the same time, Canada’s Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa received a package containing a human foot, and the Liberal Party received a hand.
Police linked Magnotta to the crime after papers with his name on it were found in the trash and his apartment was splattered with blood.
The body parts were later positively identified as those of missing student Jun Lin.
It triggered one of North America’s biggest manhunts.
By this time, Magnotta had already fled to Paris and was organising the sick body part packages from halfway across the globe. A red notice alerted police worldwide about the hunt for the sick killer, who was
nicknamed the ‘Butcher of Montreal’ by the media.
Using fake names and a false passport, Magnotta was able to evade capture as he flitted around Europe and headed towards Berlin. But on June 4, 2012, Magnotta’s luck with evading the authorities ran out.
While sitting in an internet cafe in Berlin, scrolling through news articles about his own twisted crimes, police surrounded Magnotta. They had him cornered.
“You got me,” Magnotta said, as he was placed in handcuffs.
Magnotta’s extradition back home to Canada was a huge military mission, costing $417,000 to fly him to Montreal on a private jet.
“How can we bring him back to Montreal on a commercial flight with other people sitting on board?” Montreal police commander Ian Lafrenière said at the time. When he landed, hundreds of members of international press were waiting to catch a glimpse of the runaway killer.
In December 2014, two years after he was arrested, Luka Rocco Magnotta was found guilty of first-degree murder. He is currently serving a mandatory life sentence and will be eligible for parole after 25 years. After the release of Netflix’s three-part docu-series on Magnotta, reports emerged about the comfortable life the convicted killer was living behind bars. The Toronto Sun reported Magnotta signed up to a prison dating site in 2015 named Inmates Connect and met fellow convicted murderer
Anthony Jolin. Like Magnotta, Jolin is serving a life sentence for murder. He killed a Halifax teenager who planned to testify against him in court and stabbed another inmate to death in 2003.
The couple married in 2017, but were denied time alone in the prison’s private room.
In all the fascination over Magnotta’s depravity, there is a forgotten victim: Jun Lin. The murdered student was killed simply so Magnotta could have the attention he craved so much.
“It causes me great pain to know that my son’s legacy is to be remembered as a victim,” Jun’s grieving father said.
“He not only suffered in his murder but will be humiliated for each time his name is mentioned and it hurts me deeply and will hurt me forever.”