‘Kindness’ to sicko who killed cats, then student
sing ‘to love you more’!!!” read the user’s original tweet, posted Friday. “The fact that @officialdfoster would let you butcher that song — a classic at that, WOW!”
Grammy-winner Foster, 70, co-wrote and produced the 1995 song, which was recorded by fellow Canadian Celine Dion.
McPhee and Foster (both in inset above) married in June 2019 — her second marriage, his fifth — after meeting in 2006 during her stint on “American Idol,” for which she came in second.
Internet users saw a horrific sight: A man playing with two adorable kittens, then putting them in a plastic bag and vacuuming out the air, suffocating them.
Deanna Thompson saw a horribly troubled person who needed help.
Thompson, one of two armchair detectives at the center of Netflix’s spine-chilling new docuseries “Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer,” says she and her fellow computer whizzes wanted to help Luka Magnotta, the convicted murderer they desperately tried to stop in his tracks.
“We actually had a very kind conversation with him,” Thompson, who went by the online alias Baudi Moovan, told the Daily News on Wednesday, during a conference call with writer-director Mark Lewis.
The miniseries, which dropped on the streaming giant late last month and has since become an internet sensation, follows in the footsteps of Netflix’s other true crime docuseries like “Making a Murderer” and “Evil Genius.”
This time, viewers experience the tantalizing twists of what Lewis calls Magnotta’s “evolution” to “a kind of psychopathic killer,” from posting anonymous online videos of himself killing cats to filming himself murdering an unsuspecting human victim.
According to Thompson, a data analyst at a casino in Las Vegas, who is iffy on being called an online sleuth, she and her fellow online gumshoes spoke with Magnotta “many times” online through his spoof or “sock puppet” accounts.
“Our feeling was that he was feeling lonely and he was feeling, you know, scared,” she explained. “He’s a person, right?
And so we were saying things to him like, ‘Hey, you know, we’re here for you if you need anything. You definitely need some help. We can put you in contact with people.’ ”
Though many assume the sleuths “were harassing him online or doing all these things,” Thompson said “none of that is true.”
“We were very kind to him and trying to get him to get some help,” Thompson said.
Magnotta, now 37, filmed videos of himself killing cats — which Thompson heard about from the online community. In 2012, he graduated to killing 33-year-old Jun Lin, a Chinese engineering student studying in Canada, whose body Magnotta dismembered before sending portions to members of the Canadian Parliament.
Magnotta was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2014, along with other charges, and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 25 years. On lesser charges, Magnotta was also sentenced to 19 years, to be served concurrently.
Aside from the documentary exploring the phenomenon of internet sleuthing and the procurement of fame (or infamy) at any cost, Lewis says his series highlights the “real warning sign” of many serial killers who target and torture animals before humans.
Though Thompson ultimately signed on, she told The News she was hesitant to be in the film because Magnotta stalked her at one point and posted footage of that as well.
“We almost didn’t do this,” said Thompson, who has investigated other criminals. “Was I afraid to do this? The answer is yes, 100%.”
Lewis says it was “imperative” to showcase the emotions felt by those who watched the full videos, which ultimately “forced so many people — hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of people — to try and hunt him down,” and offered key pieces of evidence along the way.
“I was really scared,” Thompson told The News. “But I think the message is important.”