28-05-2025
Warped killer butchered helpless student and put body parts in post
Hundreds of citizen detectives were determined to learn the identity of depraved Luka Magnotta months before he committed a brutal murder, even warning authorities he was set to kill
Like several well known killers before him, twisted Luka Magnotta started out by abusing animals before he progressed to human slaughter. The murderer's sick online video of pet torture called '1 boy 2 kitten' would eventually prove to be his downfall after a group of animal loving citizen detectives tracked him down.
Now 42, Magnotta is behind bars in Canada for killing Chinese international student Jun Lin, 33, who he had met on a dating site. Back in May 2012, he filmed the sick murder of his victim and posted it online, calling it '1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick'.
Posted on a gore site, the horrific video showed Magnotta in dark clothing towering over blindfolded Lin as he stabbed him a hundred times. The depraved murderer later dismembered his victim's body before mailing it to various political parties in Toronto, sparking a huge police search.
His video contained clues - a poster for the movie Casablanca was above the bed, while New Order's track True Faith was playing in the background. And hundreds of cat-loving detectives were already on Magnotta's trail, coming close to catching him for his sick torture of animals.
A year and a half before he murdered Lin, a Facebook group had been mobilised after Magnotta posted footage of a figure in a dark green hoodie suffocating two tabby kittens using a vacuum and plastic bag. They spent thousands of hours analysing photographs for clues and metadata which they handed to law enforcement, convinced that just like serial killers like Ian Brady, the as yet unidentified Magnotta would go onto kill humans.
The internet sleuths identified a wolf blanket on the sick footage as one that retailed on eBay and could be shipped internationally from the US. From plug sockets to the size of the twin beds in the clip, everything was analysed to try and find the video's location.
The breakthrough came when one of the sleuths received a message: "The name of the kitten vacummer you are looking for is Luka Magnotta." Searching online found the man named seemingly living the life of a jet-setting top model, with wild rumours suggesting he had dated both Michael Jackson and Madonna.
Narcissistic Magnotta had created a false online profile for himself - in reality he was born in Toronto and became a stripper and porn star. Convicted of defrauding a vulnerable 21-year-old woman, he later filed for bankruptcy and in his quest for fame entered reality TV shows and created countless websites and news articles about himself.
When he failed to become a star he progressed to kitten torture, which did capture the public's attention for all the wrong reasons. Now armed with a name, the determined internet sleuths tracked Magnotta to a location in Toronto where police found he had already moved out.
The twisted torturer next made a video called 'Python Christmas ', which showed a live kitten being fed to a snake, before another showing a kitten being drowned in a bathtub. The sick clips were filmed in Islington, North London and Magnotta went onto meet a reporter from The Sun newspaper who had been alerted by the citizen detectives.
Chillingly, the killer later sent an email to the reporter which warned: "Next time you hear from me it will be in a movie I am producing that will have some humans in it, not just pussies... Once you kill and taste blood it's impossible to stop."
Magnotta's warning sadly came true five months later. After body parts were distributed, the killer's studio apartment in Montreal was found complete with a blood soaked mattress and he became one of Interpol's most wanted. And it was a Berlin internet cafe worker, Kadir Anlayisli, who snared him in the end - the eagle-eyed news lover recognised the killer looking up articles about himself.
Magnotta had achieved his dream of being famous and in 2014, he was jailed for 25 years in Montreal for first degree murder. He will become eligible for day parole in June 2034. His story was told on Netflix docu-series, Don't F**k with Cats'.
