A mom’s love for a sadistic killer is unconditional
Warning: Graphic details follow. My Son, The Killer Did Anna Yourkin — mother of Luka Magnotta — even resist going with that title for her recently published book, written with Brian Whitney?
For a woman who claims that she was sickened by trauma, crazed with anguish when her eldest child was arrested and ultimately convicted of firstdegree murder in the sadistic sexual killing and dismemberment of international student Jun Lin; who, like her son, rails against the treatment the family suffered at the hands of predatory media — she’s certainly played the sensationalism card to push sales.
Subtitle: The Untold Story of Luka Magnotta and “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick.”
Magnotta, né Eric Newman, was the porn actor, model and gay escort who hooked up with Lin on Craigslist, then turned their Montreal date into a crime of unimaginable horrors: raping his bound victim, stabbing Lin 55 times, committing unspeakable abominations upon the poor man’s corpse, cutting the body into pieces, playing with his decapitated head, masturbating himself with a severed limb, sodomizing the torso, and finally disposing of the remains in garbage bags and a suitcase. (Stopping in the lobby to primp and preen in front of a mirror).
No imagining required. Magnotta made a snuff video of the entire thing and uploaded the footage to a website specializing in gore, even marshalling online traffic by beating the promotional drum, under various handles, on other social media sites. That video was entitled “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick.”
Then, after mailing various body parts to political offices in Ottawa and two Vancouver schools, Magnotta jaunted off to Europe, arrested weeks later on an Interpol warrant at an internet café in Berlin, where he’d been eyeballing news coverage of the crime and the international manhunt.
In first-person chapters — alternating with Whitney chapters that include his prison interviews and written correspondence with Magnotta — Yourkin makes it clear that she loves her son unconditionally. A mother’s love can withstand anything. Although their closeness, as Yourkin recounts it, the co-birthday celebrations, the luxury vacations they took together as adults — she was only 16 when Luka was born — is rather creepy.
“Because of chance and choice, I have a son in my life whom I adore. I will stand by him, support, and protect him as long as there is breath in my body.”
Yourkin admits the poor choices she made in men, including the stepfather who physically and emotionally abused Luka. While coping with her violent partners, she tried to do her best by her oddball son, always remaining in close contact. But nowhere does she even attempt to explain how Luka turned into a monster, apart from blaming various medical authorities for failing to properly diagnose and treat her son’s mental illnesses over the years. Yourkin is adamant Luca was never schizophrenic — the defence put forward at the three-month trial in 2014, in hopes of securing a “not criminally responsible” (NCR) verdict. The jury didn’t buy it anyway. Like mother, like son, on that score. “It’s very annoying,” Magnotta tells Whitney. “I never wanted anything to do with the NCR defence.”
Just a legal ploy, Magnotta insists, speaking for the first time since he was handed a life sentence for first-degree murder, indignity to a body and other charges, with no parole eligibility for 25 years.
“I have no mental illness whatsoever. I had to go with it, even though I didn’t want to, but my lawyers pressured me into it. I told the doctors I had no mental illness. Even now in prison I take no medications, but the lawyers said our only chance was to go with the NCR defence. I wish I didn’t do it. I wish I testified and told the story my way.”
Which doubtless would have been a load of lying rubbish.
Magnotta is adamant with Whitney that he never posted the snuff video. That was “Manny.” The same “Manny” — no one has proof that he exists — who had filmed Magnotta killing kittens and put that video online. (Animal rights activists were hunting him on the internet.) The same “Manny” who cut him, spit on him, forced him to have sex with animals and threatened to kill him if he didn’t do his bidding. The same “Manny” who kept calling Magnotta, who wanted a threesome with Lin, kept calling and calling the apartment on that “date night” and ordered Magnotta to turn on the webcam so he, Whitney writes, “could be a part of what was going on.” The same “Manny” who, in Whitney’s account, made Lin tie Magnotta up, then violently sexually assaulted him to the point that Magnotta sobbed.
There are no direct quotations about what happened next because Magnotta has never admitted to the murder. But Whitney describes Magnotta as hearing voices in his head, even as “Manny,” on the phone, suggested Lin had put something in his drink, that maybe Lin is a government agent — look outside for cars with tinted windows.
Whitney writes: “He was scared. He was dizzy. He heard voices saying, ‘Kill him; he is an agent.’ Luka’s mind started racing. He blacked out. He felt something wet. He heard voices. They said, ‘Cut it.’ He felt sick. He threw up. Manny said, ‘I’ll handle everything.’ Luka was shaking all over. Manny told him to start throwing things away in the trash. Lin was on the bed with no arms and no legs.”
There has never been any convincing explanation for the why of what Magnotta did, beyond a consensus of narcissism, his need to be famous, even if that hinged on a ghastly crime that included necrophilia and, apparently, cannibalism. (Magnotta slicing strips of flesh from his victim, seeming to be preparing to eat it.)
Magnotta: “I am frequently … portrayed as this fame-starved unstable person. This inaccurate spin could not be further from the truth. This label is getting old. The truth is I have never requested or participated in any interview with any media outlets in the last seven years. Hardly the act of someone addicted to attention…
“Other people’s opinions of me mean absolutely nothing. I ignore the noise that other people rant. The people who know me know Manny. So when idiots were not witness to the events and who weren’t even there give their opinion, who cares, they are completely irrelevant.”
Prison, Magnotta tells Whitney, is not so bad. “I’m outside the majority of the time; I play a lot of video games. We have movie nights. We all have our own TVs. I have painting class and I exercise a lot. I practice language studies. People need to be proud of their accomplishments. Know your value and share it with everyone.”
Last June, Magnotta married a fellow inmate, Anthony Jolin. Mom attended the wedding.
“It didn’t matter to me where the wedding was taking place, for to me it was a milestone in my son’s life, a day that mothers hope for. We always hope our children will find love and happiness and mine did.”