Trial hears of victim’s injuries
Gruesome details: Pathologist testifies Lin was alive when neck severed
Editor’s note: Contains graphic content.
The shy Chinese student Lin Jun was alive when his neck was slashed. It was the only ante- mortem wound, Latin for “before death,” among a legion of terrible injuries inflicted upon the slight 33- year- old.
The information came Thursday from forensic pathologist Dr. Yann Daze as he testified at the first- degree murder trial of Luka Magnotta, the 32- year- old Toronto man who already has admitted “the physical part” of Lin’s slaying, while denying he had the mental capacity to recognize what he was doing or know that it was wrong.
Magnotta is pleading not guilty, or not criminally responsible, to five offences, including making and posting online a video documenting much of his acknowledged attack upon Lin’s body. That video, as the jurors have heard, was called 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick.
“I cannot say if the victim was alive when he was decapitated,” Dr. Daze told Quebec Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer and a jury.
“What I can say is he was when an edged weapon travelled through all the structures of the neck” and severed them. Though Dr. Daze’s task was rendered more difficult than usual because Lin’s dismembered body was recovered in stages, his severed and decomposing head being found in a Montreal park only about a month after his May 25, 2012, death, the amount of blackened blood found in the neck area was irrefutable evidence that it happened while he was alive.
When a person dies and the heart stops, blood isn’t found at the injury sites. There were three categories of injuries to Lin, Dr. Daze said – the ante- mortem severing of his neck; the likely perimortem, which means at, or around, the time of death, bluntforce blows to his forehead, eye socket and facial bones; and 69 post- mortem wounds that included penetrating or stabbing injuries which were deeper than they were long, edged weapon injuries near Lin’s navel, and several blunt force injuries near or in his anus. Of the injuries to his face, which Dr. Daze believed were probably caused by a hammer because the telltale semicircular lines of a hammer head were still visible, “There were probably too many fractures to be counted.”
Asked by prosecutor Louis Bouthillier if he could estimate the number of blows required to cause that much damage to Lin’s face, Dr. Daze replied simply, “Many. Many.”
He said that at almost all the dismemberment lines — Lin’s body was severed at the ankles, wrists, shoulders and thighs — superficial marks inflicted by an edged weapon like a knife could be seen. It suggested to him, he said, that the killer may have first attempted to cut through the bones, then abandoned that and used a blunt object, possibly a hammer, to smash the bones. The admission made at the start of the trial last week by Magnotta’s lawyer, Luc Leclair, means he isn’t disputing that his client killed Lin, committed indignities to his body, dismembered him, and wrapped his hands and feet in pink tissue paper and mailed them in four parcels across the country, one each to Liberal and Conservative party headquarters in Ottawa, one each to two Vancouver schools.
Rather, Leclair told the jurors, he will call evidence to show Magnotta was so mentally ill he should be found not criminally responsible, or NCR.
Each body- part parcel also contained a hand- printed note on pink paper with bizarre but clearly threatening messages. Two referred to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s wife, Laureen Teskey; one also mentioned Harper; one, purportedly addressed to a school principal, said “Die B– ch! Soon!”, while another contained a version of the “roses are red, violets are blue” poem and ended with, “The police will need dental records to identify you.”
The small bone at the tip of Lin’s spine was also fractured, Dr. Daze said, and on his left hand, the tips of all five fingers “had been cut, as if to make fingerprints disappear.”
There was also a gaping wound to Lin’s buttocks, where skin and fat were missing, as if cut away by a knife or other edged weapon. The jurors weren’t shown any autopsy pictures during Dr. Daze’s testimony, only generic drawings of the human body upon which the myriad injuries were marked. Dr. Daze will complete his evidence Friday.