Luka Magnotta diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, says 2005 court document

By The Canadian Press - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 11:21 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – Luka Magnotta, accused of killing and dismembering a Chinese student, was treated for paranoid schizophrenia, though his pyschiatrist said he didn’t always take his medication.

A letter from a psychiatrist who saw Magnotta, 30, is attached to the court file on a 2005 conviction for fraud and references the diagnosis of the “major psychiatric disorder.”

The letter was released today after several media outlets fought for it to be made public.

The doctor at the Rouge Valley Health System in Toronto says Magnotta suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since at least 2000 and had been hospitalized several times.

The psychiatrist writes that Magnotta, then known by his birth name Eric Newman, was on anti-psychotic medications but didn’t always take them, which the doctor said could lead to paranoia, auditory hallucinations and fear of the unknown.

Continue…

Lurid details of Magnotta case a secret to all Canadians – except these people

By The Canadian Press - Friday, March 22, 2013 at 6:50 PM - 0 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP

MONTREAL – They make up the tiny segment of the population that has heard the disturbing evidence at the high-profile case of alleged killer Luka Rocco Magnotta.

Unlike lawyers, court officials and journalists, however,these curious court-watchers didn’t get paid to observe the testimony at Magnotta’s ongoing preliminary hearing in Montreal.

They chose to be there.

Continue…

Updated: Luka Magnotta, accused in infamous body-parts case, returns to court

By The Canadian Press - Monday, March 11, 2013 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

MONTREAL – A preliminary hearing for Luka Rocco Magnotta has adjourned for a day while the judge weighs whether the public and the media should be barred from attending the procedure.

The high-profile case was back in court, in a high-security room, as lawyers argued over an exceptional request to hold the hearing behind closed doors.

Magnotta is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Chinese-born student Jun Lin last May. He has pleaded not guilty.

Lawyers for the accused, the prosecution, media organizations and Lin’s family all spoke in court today. The evidence discussed is subject to a publication ban.

Quebec court Judge Lori-Renee Weitzman is expected to issue a ruling on the matter on Tuesday morning.

Clad from head to toe in white, Magnotta sat quietly, with his arms folded in his lap. His feet and hands were shackled and he was in a glass box that was sealed off from the rest of the courtroom.

Magnotta’s lawyers were trying to have the public and media booted from the hearing, which is to determine if there is enough evidence for a trial.

While the evidence presented during the preliminary inquiry is already subject to a publication ban, his legal team argued that the only people who should be allowed to remain for the hearing were the prosecutors, the judge and a court clerk.

Authorities named Magnotta as a suspect after the severed remains of Lin, a Montreal engineering student, were mailed to the Ottawa offices of the federal Conservatives and the federal Liberals along with two Vancouver schools.

More remains were found at a Montreal park.

Luka Magnotta, accused in infamous body-parts case, set for preliminary inquiry

By Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press - Sunday, March 10, 2013 at 8:42 PM - 0 Comments

MONTREAL – Luka Rocco Magnotta, the man charged in connection with the infamous body-parts case that dominated headlines for the better part of 2012, is set to begin his preliminary inquiry on Monday.

But if Magnotta’s lawyers have their way, the only people in the Montreal courtroom to hear the sordid details will be the prosecutors, the judge and a court clerk.

Magnotta is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying and dismemberment of Chinese-born student Jun Lin last May.

The 30-year-old low-budget porn actor and stripper, who crafted an online personality for himself over several years, became known worldwide after an international manhunt.

Continue…

Luka Rocco Magnotta preliminary hearing set to go March 11

By The Canadian Press - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 at 7:03 PM - 0 Comments

MONTREAL – A shackled Luka Rocco Magnotta remained impassive as he made his first court appearance since last June on a first-degree murder charge in the gruesome slaying of a Montreal university student.

Magnotta kept his eyes on the ground when not looking at the Crown or the judge as lawyers set the stage Wednesday for a preliminary hearing that will begin March 11.

The hearing, which will determine whether the 30-year-old Ontario native is sent to trial, is scheduled to last at least two weeks and possibly resume in June.

Magnotta is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying and dismemberment of Chinese engineering student Jun Lin last May.

Continue…

Luka Rocco Magnotta case back in court ahead of March preliminary hearing

By The Canadian Press - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 at 8:03 AM - 0 Comments

MONTREAL – The court case of Luka Rocco Magnotta, who is charged in the slaying and dismemberment of a Chinese engineering student, resumes today.

Crown and defence lawyers will be in a Montreal courtroom this afternoon to iron out the details of Magnotta’s preliminary hearing, which is scheduled to begin March 11.

Magnotta faces several charges, including first-degree murder in the slaying of Concordia University student Jun Lin last May.

The other charges are: committing an indignity to a body; publishing obscene material; criminally harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament; and mailing obscene and indecent material.

The 30-year-old Ontario native has pleaded not guilty and has chosen trial by judge and jury.

Continue…

Flying Magnotta on a private jet? It might have saved us over $200,000

By Alan Parker - Monday, September 17, 2012 at 4:57 PM - 0 Comments

Left: an Airbus CC-150 Polaris (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) ; Right: a Gulfstream 350 (Photo: PrivateFly)

The next time Canadian authorities have to extradite a high-profile fugitive from a distant country, I suggest they do a little comparison shopping first.

I’m referring, of course, to the $375,000 (and counting) tab for getting accused cannibal killer/dismemberment murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta back to Canada from Germany in June.

Part of the bill was for hotel accommodation and “catering” in Montreal and Berlin for the eight Canadian public employees (two military flight crew members and six Montreal police officers) who flew to Germany and returned with a ninth Canadian, the aforementioned Magnotta. Those expenses are not wildly unreasonable, although the $2,000 bill for “catering” in Berlin works out to $250 per Canadian public employee—a little steep for dinner and breakfast when you consider they were in Berlin for 12 hours. Maybe box lunches for the return flight were thrown in by the caterers as well. Who knows.

The hospitality expenses are mere chicken feed, however, compared to the $370,570 transportation bill taxpayers are apparently being dinged with for the expedition.

Continue…

Cost of extraditing Magnotta on military plane: $375,000

By Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press - Sunday, September 16, 2012 at 2:59 PM - 0 Comments

MONTREAL – The cost to Canadian taxpayers for Luka Rocco Magnotta’s extradition from Germany, aboard a government plane fit for the prime minister, is expected to be about $375,000.

The estimated price tag for the accused killer’s unusual journey home includes flight expenses, catering service and a hotel stay for authorities who fetched the fugitive from across the Atlantic, according to federal documents obtained by The Canadian Press.

Berlin police arrested Magnotta in early June to end an international manhunt following the killing and dismemberment of Chinese national Jun Lin.

Magnotta is facing several charges in connection with the gruesome slaying, including first-degree murder. The 30-year-old porn actor and stripper has pleaded not guilty to all counts. The chilling details of the crimes he’s accused of caught media attention around the world.

The circumstances of his exceptional return to Canadian soil also raised eyebrows.

Magnotta flew home aboard one of the military’s CC-150 Polaris Airbus transport planes, an aircraft that can be configured to accommodate prominent passengers such as the prime minister, foreign dignitaries, the Governor General and members of the Royal Family.

The flights, from an Alberta military base to Germany and back to Canada, spanned 23.9 hours at an estimated rate of $15,505 per hour — for a total cost of $370,570.

The rate is an estimate that includes maintenance, hangar fees, crew salaries and fuel, which makes up $6,420 of the hourly cost, according to the Department of National Defence.

The hotel cost for eight crew members to stay overnight in Berlin was expected to come to nearly $1,300, while the catering total was approximately $3,500 — $1,500 in Montreal and $2,000 in the German capital.

The figures were included in a package of documents obtained under the Access to Information Act.

A spokeswoman for the Department of National Defence said the final bill for the mission should be confirmed by financial staff in the coming weeks.

“They have a partial actual cost — they’re almost there, but they didn’t want to put the cart before the horse,” Morgan Bailey said.

The tally does not include costs assumed by other Canadian police forces involved in Magnotta’s extradition.

The documents say Public Safety Canada asked the Department of National Defence for help in bringing “a person of interest” from Berlin to Montreal.

The plane’s journey to fetch Magnotta began as it lifted off from a military case in Cold Lake, Alta. It headed for Montreal, where it picked up police officers, before travelling overseas to Berlin.

The ride home saw the Airbus fly from Berlin to Magnotta’s drop-off point at Mirabel airport, north of Montreal. The aircraft later continued on to a military base in Trenton, Ont.

At the time, a police official told media that commercial airlines had declined requests to transport Magnotta across the Atlantic.

Montreal police were thankful the federal government made the plane available for the extradition.

“How can we bring him back to Montreal on a commercial flight with other people sitting on board?” Cmdr. Ian Lafreniere said in Mirabel, shortly after Magnotta emerged from the plane.

“For very extraordinary cases, we do have to take some extraordinary measures.”

Lafreniere also said a direct flight was necessary because, in the case of an international layover, Magnotta could have tried to claim asylum in any country he might have landed in on his way back to Canada.

The Montreal police department has declined, however, to share how much it spent on the mission to Germany.

In a response to an access-to-information request, the force cited concerns that sharing such figures could expose investigation methods and have an impact on court proceedings.

A Montreal police spokeswoman interviewed recently said the service would not comment on details of Magnotta’s extradition flight, which Lafreniere has indicated included six city officers.

Quebec provincial police, which were involved in the mission, also declined to reveal the costs associated with Magnotta’s return to Canada.

In its response to a demand made under the Access to Information Act, the provincial police force referred the request to Montreal police, which it indicated was leading the file.

Police allege Magnotta fled Montreal for Europe in late May, shortly before Lin’s torso was discovered inside a suitcase in an alley behind the suspect’s west-end apartment building.

The body of his supposed victim was found in multiple pieces. The 33-year-old Concordia University student’s hands and feet were mailed separately to the offices of political parties in Ottawa and schools in Vancouver.

Magnotta, who is originally from Scarborough, Ont., was arrested without incident at a Berlin Internet cafe on June 4 after he was spotted reading online news articles about himself by an employee.

Two weeks later, he was aboard Flight CFC 3812 bound for Mirabel.

Magnotta was met by a motorcade of police vehicles with flashing lights at Mirabel airport. A half-dozen men escorted him down the aircraft’s stairs onto the tarmac, and into an unmarked minivan at the centre of the convoy.

Armed officers, at least one of whom carried an assault weapon, monitored a handcuffed Magnotta during the transfer after he emerged from the grey airplane emblazoned with the Canadian government’s logo.

Magnotta is also accused of defiling Lin’s corpse, harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and MPs, and publishing and mailing obscene material.

He opted for a trial by jury during a June court appearance in Montreal and will face a preliminary hearing next March, where part of the evidence against him will be heard.

Could Toews’ bill have stopped Magnotta? No, but something else could have.

By Jesse Brown - Thursday, July 12, 2012 at 4:23 PM - 0 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP; Service de police de la Ville de Montreal/CP

Deep in the bowels of the RCMP’s Ottawa headquarters, thousands of Mounties are scanning the Internet for signs of wrongdoing.  They read every blog post and comment written by Canadians, hunting for clues.  They watch every YouTube video we upload, scrutinizing the shaky footage for incriminating evidence.  Eventually, something pops: a kidnapped child in the blurry background of an Instagram picture! An anonymous post on Tumblr containing information known only to a wanted felon! The Mounties pull the I.P. address of each suspicious uploader and immediately contact the Internet service provider associated with it. All they need now is the given name of the subscriber assigned to that unique I.P., and they can swoop in for a quick arrest. But the Internet service provider can’t be bothered. “Do you have a warrant?” they ask. Thwarted by indifferent corporations and pre-digital legislation, our cyber-Mounties twiddle their thumbs, waiting for judges to sign off on court orders while criminals escape into the ether…

The above scenario, of course, exists only in a fantasy that Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has been selling to Canadians for months.  First he told us that we either stood with his Internet snooping bill or “with the child pornographers.” Then he said his Internet snooping bill would have helped police identify and track Luka Magnotta sooner than they did. But government memos released yesterday to the CBC under access to information confirm what critics of the C-30 have been saying for months: Toews has nothing.

Continue…

Magnotta to face pretrial in 2013

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 5:59 PM - 0 Comments

Luka Rocco Magnotta hardly blinked as he entered a Montreal courtroom this afternoon. His arms and ankles bound in cuffs, his white patterned shirt tucked severely into blue jeans, he shuffled into a glassed-in prisoners box and stared blankly through the window as judge Jean-Pierre Boyer entered the courtroom. If there was an antithesis of Magnotta’s carefully constructed online persona—the globetrotting model, the reality TV star, the self-assured hustler—this was it: a sallow, meek-looking man whose face was pockmarked with acne and his shoelaces removed lest he try to kill himself.

It was the second court appearance for the accused murderer and mutilator of university student Jun Lin, and the first in which he appeared in the flesh. Having pled not guilty to five charges, including first-degree murder and the desecration of a corpse, on Tuesday, the man so addicted to his own infamy found out in short order that he would be out of the public eye until 2013—when the pre-trial machinations will begin. Yet to hear his lawyer say it, Magnotta is hardly the picture of cocky confidence these days. “I have some concerns about the institution that Mr. Magnotta is staying at,” said Luc Leclair, who wasn’t present during Magnotta’s Tuesday appearance. “I have attended, I have spoken to the superintendent. They are doing what they have to do, and they are doing correctly, but I want to express my concern for his physical wellbeing and his mental wellbeing.”

Leclair, a short, wiry fellow who bares a resemblance to comedian Ron James, went on to tell the judge that Magnotta needed to be given his medication. The lawyer got up, approached the glass to confirm the dosage with Magnotta, then named the drugs. The following moments were fitting for a man who lived and thrived in a flicker-quick online world: by the time prosecutor Louis Bouthillier  stood to ask for a publication ban on Magnotta’s medication type and dosage, several journalists had already committed the information to the Twittersphere.

Though he expressed concern for his client’s compromised mental state—and Magnotta’s medication certainly suggests a host of mental issues—Leclair didn’t ask for a psychiatric evaluation, as was expected. Rather, the Toronto-based lawyer thanked the prosecution for its help bringing him up to speed on the case. The session over, Magnotta was led out of the prisoners’ box, only to be made to shuffle back into court minutes later, along with the judge and lawyers, when Leclair discovered he hadn’t addressed the issue of Magnotta’s bail. According to a La Presse report, Lin’s parents were present at the hearing, though they were not in the courtroom.

In a brief statement to the press following the hearing, Leclair thanked Magnotta’s psychiatrist and court-appointed lawyer in Berlin—”They took care of him in an exemplary fashion”—and suggested Magnotta was the picture of co-operation in the days following his arrest in Berlin. “Mr. Magnotta waived his extradition rights because he wanted to come back to Montreal. He trusts the Canadian judicial system.”

Five things we learned in the morning papers about the body-parts case

By Gustavo Vieira - Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 8:25 AM - 0 Comments

Martin Patriquin of Maclean’s will be at court today for Luka Rocca Magnotta’s appearance. Watch our website for updates. Follow Patriquin on Twitter at @MartinPatriquin.

The main suspect in the case of the death and dismemberment of Chinese student Jun Lin returned to Canada aboard a military plane Monday evening.

News of Luka Rocca Magnotta’s arrival prompted wide coverage from the country’s news outlets. Tuesday morning’s headlines are all about the operation to bring Magnotta back and what’s next for the man dubbed “Canadian Psycho” by the European press. Here are just some of the details:

1. Security was tight at Montreal’s Mirabel airport, where “a large convoy of marked and unmarked vehicles” awaited. Magnotta disembarked from a Royal Canadian Air Force Airbus CC-150 Polaris just after 7 p.m. Monday from Germany, the Globe and Mail reported.
2. The CBC notes that Magnotta will appear in a Montreal courtroom Tuesday, when he is expected to be formally charged.
3. Now that Magnotta is back in Canada and available to authorities for interrogation, Montreal police turns to the one lingering question in Jun Lin’s death.  The National Post’s Allison Cross calls the quest to find Jun Lin’s head “a gruesome question that befits a gruesome crime.” Lin’s hands and feet were mailed to two political parties’ offices in Ottawa, two schools in Vancouver and his torso was found in a suitcase in Montreal.
4. The Toronto Star’s columnist Rosie DiManno provides plenty of colour on Magnotta’s escape from Montreal last month, as well as on his attention-craving, narcissistic online persona. “The media audience he courted so cravenly — in vain — will be there. For the vain and the craven,” writes DiManno.
5. From Montreal, the Gazette focused on the circus surrounding Magnotta’s return at Mirabel Airport. The Gazette’s Rene Bruemmer reports that bail is highly unlikely for Magnotta, according to Quebec’s prosecutor’s office, and that two investigators will be interrogating him to find out the location of the missing body part.

Are you Luka Rocco Magnotta’s Facebook friend?

By Alan Parker - Monday, June 18, 2012 at 2:32 PM - 0 Comments

50 Facebook profiles of Luka Magnotta. Courtesy For Great Justice.

Magnotta's Facebook profile page

If you’ve ever accepted Facebook friend requests from people you don’t know personally, there’s a possibility you’ve been FB friends with accused cannibal killer Luka Magnotta in one of his many, many guises.

Montreal police say Magnotta maintained about 70 Facebook pages and 20 websites.

But the number of false identities Magnotta created online is far higher — in the hundreds and still counting — according to the group of animal lovers and digital detectives known as For Great Justice who first raised the alarm about Luka Magnotta when they accused him of making several kitten-killing videos in 2010 and 2011.

Some of the inventions linked to Magnotta were fanciful alternate versions of himself with different names, backgrounds and locales — but always featuring photos of Luka Magnotta. Far more were creations known as “sock puppets,” avatars with completely separate — but non-existent — identities that Magnotta is thought to have used to sing his own praises, attack his enemies and send up clouds of misinformation to disguise his online activities.

Some of these sock puppets had only one or two invented Facebook friends (enough to establish a minimal identity if they were playing a minor supporting role) while others had FB friends in the hundreds and thousands.

The latter were usually attached to fantasy lives built online and assembled before sending out mass befriending requests to real people linked to activities and interests — such as yachting or high-end sports cars — that the various personas craved to share.

That is how at least one of my Facebook friends ended up being friends with Luka Magnotta in one of his favourite guises, “Vladimir Romanov.”

I’ll tell you later what a few dozen — just some confirmed ones, not all by far — of Luka Magnotta’s many, many Facebook personas were.

Many of the identified Magnotta Facebook pages have been taken down, but they’re still there behind the digital curtain being examined by police. And many others have yet to be identified.

At least one of the “Vladimir Romanovs” still on Facebook is probably a Luka Magnotta invention. That one has more than 500 friends ranging from members of the European Parliament to wannabe aristocrats, some of whom also appear to be Magnotta fictive monsters.

If one of these avatars WAS your Facebook friend, it’s probably gone from your friends list now, but you might remember the name.

(Not everyone who has the same name as a Luka Magnotta sock puppet Facebook account is fictional. If their accounts are still up on Facebook right now, chances are very good that they are real people–or, at least, not Magnotta creations.)

The sock puppets linked to Magnotta range in complexity and reach.

“Louise Rebecca Sanchez,” for example, described herself as “Just a mom, wife and caring individual all around.” Yet this caring Detroit mother and spouse had absolutely no pictures of her family on her almost-blank Facebook page, had zero communication with anyone in the Facebook universe and listed only one item under Activities & Interests — Luka Magnotta.

Her musical taste (like Magnotta’s) ran to Madonna, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and Jayne Mansfield and her profile photo was a picture of Madonna. On Sept. 6, 2011, she shared a YouTube video of a 1960 Jayne Mansfield interview with one of Luka Magnotta’s Facebook pages.

“Louise Rebecca Sanchez” was a very simple, not very believable character, but she didn’t have to be more than a sketchy background player: Her main role was to make a supporting comment for a post by a more significant sock puppet, “Rebecca White,” on that same Luka Magnotta Facebook page.

“Rebecca White” was one of Magnotta’s strongest online supporters during the summer of 2011, a time when the For Great Justice animal activists were trying to get various police forces to take action against Magnotta.

“Rebecca White” first appeared, as far as I can tell, on July 4, 2011, when she added a long comment to a May 1 post by another sock puppet, “Anton Himmler,” attacking Magnotta’s accusers as “nothing more than bored teenagers and internet mischief makers” who “decided it would be funny to insert Magnotta into the situation, simply because he looks like the perp.”

In her July 4 comment, “Rebecca White” condemned the actions of the animal rights activists and decried the Toronto police being involved: “Why wouldn’t the Paris police or the Moscow police be involved since he lived in those citys (sic) after 2008?”

Magnotta was living in Toronto at that time, not Paris or Moscow — but you couldn’t tell that from his various Facebook pages which had him living everywhere from Los Angeles and Las Vegas to St. Petersburg and Samara Oblast, Russia.

“Rebecca White” had a very nice Facebook profile photo of a confident middle-aged society matron, but she was also one of those people who withholds all information about themselves on their Facebook pages.

The next day, July 5, “Rebecca White” was back on Magnotta’s Facebook page with a post of her own attacking the animal activists and linking to a YouTube video entitled “Don’t Talk to Police.”

On July 6, another sock puppet, “Adrian Valencia,” reposted a commentary he had first put on Magnotta’s FB page on June 20 branding the accusations against Magnotta as “unmitigated horse$hit.” That post got six likes — five of which were from confirmed Magnotta sock puppets. (The sixth was probably a sock puppet, as well, but I have not confirmed that identity yet.)

The five confirmed sock puppets were “Ben Strong,” “John Bower,” “Michael Williams” — and our old friends “Adrian Valencia” and “Rebecca White,” who also added a comment.

(“Adrian Valencia,” by the way, uses a movie poster of Disney’s The Little Mermaid as his profile photo. Magnotta used movie posters frequently as the photo identifier for his background Facebook characters.)

“Rebecca White” was back on the Luka Magnotta Facebook page again Aug. 1 with a warning that “stalking is dangerous, unhealthy and needs to be taken very seriously … I don’t think this guy had anything to do with that stupid video (of kittens being suffocated to death — more “horrible” than “stupid,” one might think) and you people are the onse (sic) who are sick.”

That posting attracted six comments before Facebook took down the page — five outraged citizens venting after Magnotta was identified as the Montreal dismemberment murder suspect on May 30, but only one from before.

That one comment was the role minor sock puppet “Louise Rebecca Sanchez” of Detroit was born to play — remember her, the “caring mom” who didn’t plaster photos of her kids all over her Facebook page, the loving wife whose only interest and activity was Luka Magnotta? On Sept. 6, “Louise Rebecca Sanchez” added the following ambivalent comment to the Aug. 1 posting of “Rebecca White”: “I agree people shouldn’t stalk him but I hate him.” If Magnotta was himself writing those words, they exhibit a strong degree of self-loathing.

To finish up with “Louise Rebecca Sanchez,” let’s look at her one and only Facebook friend — an unreal creation even more bizarre than “Louise Rebecca Sanchez” but one with 609 Facebook friends, almost all of whom are real people.

“Joey Alexis Lui” was apparently born in Shanghai but the names and identities of his supposed relatives would suggest a much stronger tie to the Philippines or Mexico than to China.

“Joey Alexis Lui” said he lived in Miami but “will work at Canadian sociaty (sic) wrestling starting in Sep 2013.” “Joey Alexis Lui” was a huge wrestling fan, specifically the Lucha Libre style of masked, high-flying wrestling developed in Mexico. Not surprisingly, all of his 609 Facebook friends are also Lucha Libre fans. It’s almost as if he mass-mailed the entire membership of a Facebook Lucha Libre group page. And was accepted. “Joey Alexis Lui” never, ever had a single Internet conversation with a single one of his new “friends.” But he was there–connected.

And those are just a few of the sock puppets (with their own Facebook pages) thought to be created by Luka Magnotta since he joined Facebook on May 16, 2009.

If he created false trails and tried to make himself appear to be rich, successful, cultured and well-travelled, Magnotta also used his Facebook creations to reinforce a compulsive campaign to link himself with schoolgirl killer Karla Homolka.

Part of this delusional campaign (which also involved repeated attempts to alter Homolka’s Wikipedia entry to list Luka Magnotta as her husband) was the creation of a false Facebook page in the name “Logan Valentini” using a photo of Karla Homolka’s sister, Lori.

Among this “Logan Valentini”‘s small circle of Facebook friends was one incarnation of “Vladimir Romanov” with photos of Magnotta.

Another fabricated friend on the “Logan Valentini” page was one “Kriss Bordelais” who was supposedly employed by the Manganao Hotel-Club (a real resort) on the island of Guadeloupe in the French Antilles. When Homolka left Canada in 2007 with her husband, Thierry Bordelais (brother of Homolka’s lawyer) and their young son, their destination was “the French Antilles,” home of the Bordelais family.

For good measure a few other real people were befriended by “Logan Valentini,” including one completely unsuspecting middle-aged man with the last name of Magnotta. He was probably baffled why an attractive blonde woman named “Logan Valentini” wanted to be his Facebook friend, even though she apparently had no interaction with the handful of people who were already her FB friends.

But Mr. Magnotta did his part by accepting the friend request: Anyone who Googled “Magnotta” and “Bordelais” would find the “Logan Valentini” Facebook page — and probably recognize the Lori Homolka profile photo and the Luka Magnotta photos on the “Vladimir Romanov” page. Putting two and two together, the logical conclusion would be that Luka Magnotta was part of the Homolka inner circle, even though they were trying to disguise the relationship. Many people came to that entirely false conclusion.

That Facebook page has been taken down now, but another “Logan Valentini” still exists — “Logan Bathier Valentini” of Staten Island, New York. That young man is almost certainly another Magnotta fiction, one which was never used, as far as I can tell. This young New Yorker has no Facebook friends, conducts zero Facebook activity, and has a photo of a dog as the main picture across the top of his page. He’s not a real person, just a vague shadow of a Facebook ghost.

Among the fictitious alternate-reality Facebook identities Luka Magnotta created using photos of himself were: many versions of Luka Magnotta, Rocco Magnotta, Vladimir Romanov, Adam Romanov, Vladimir Radulov, Alexi Baranov, Mattia Del Santo, Matthew Del Santo and Christian Audigier.

His photo was also on group Facebook pages with names like “The New James Dean,” “Luka Magnotta and Karla Homolka,” “OJ Simpson and Luka Magnotta” and “Im (sic) In Love With Luka Magnotta.”

Based on my research and two years of detective work by the For Great Justice animal rights group, here are some — just some — of the many fictitious Facebook sock-puppet identities Magnotta is thought to have created:

Robert Patrick, Kim Williams, Brittney Kosta, Martina Karl, Grace Carpenter, Kroy Artorio, Lauren Gee, Lauren Magnotta, Chris Jones, Maxim Chikovskly, Manuel Rodriguez, Henry Wournell, Alicia Dewitt, Rob Menandez, Sanjeep Singh, Jean LuPere, Tina Tavers, Vince Luciforia, Claudia DeMonte, Jane Michaels, Marky Hill, Mariah Jones, Catlin Tanne, Jack McCord, Ellen Fields, Alexander Wilson, Louis Menoudos, Melissa Jones Smith, Maria Battilia, Tristan Burton, Marlene DeSilva, Mariah Jones, Alexei Verekov, Sharron McKenna, Alexis Sparks, Adam Summers, Sean Manners, Sam Brody, Zoltan Hargitay.

And we haven’t touched on his activity on MySpace and other social networks.

But perhaps Luka Magnotta’s scariest social networking presence is on vKontakt.ru — the Russian equivalent of Facebook — which is still online.

The page was created May 12, 2011. On Jan. 18, 2012, a post appeared with a link to luka-magnotta.com along with an album of 27 photos — 25 solo shots of Magnotta, one a Photoshopped image that appears to place Magnotta and Karla Homolka in a hot tub, and a photo of a Toronto Sun front page during the 1995 Paul Bernardo murder trial with a headline based on Homolka testimony: “Paul strangled them…”

If you open the full information on the VK page, it suggests Magnotta’s current city is New York City, his political views are Communist and “humor and love for life” are important in others.

Then, under Personal Information — activities, interests, favorite music and so on —the same phrase appears over and over and over in Russian Cyrillic script:

“серийный убийца”

Over and over. Seven times in all: “серийный убийца.”

“Cерийный убийца” is Russian for “serial killer.”

Suspect in body-parts killing on his way to Canada

By Gabriela Perdomo - Monday, June 18, 2012 at 11:49 AM - 0 Comments

Alleged Montreal killer Luka Rocco Magnota is on his way to Canada, the CBC reports.

Magnotta is aboard a Royal Canadian Air Force plane, officials have confirmed.

Magnotta had fled Canada earlier this month and was arrested in Germany on Jun. 4. He was awaiting extradition.

He is charged with first-degree murder for killing and dismembering Montreal student Jun Lin. Parts of Lin’s body were mailed to addresses in Ottawa and B.C. through Canada Post.

Teacher who showed Magnotta killing video could be charged

By Gabriela Perdomo - Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 10:27 AM - 0 Comments

A Quebec teacher who showed her students a disturbing video believed to be the killing of student Lin Jun by Luka Rocca Magnotta could face criminal charges.

The Montreal Gazette reports that the teacher, whose name has not been made public but worked at the École secondaire Cavelier-De LaSalle in La Salle, Quebec, could be charged for “offences tending to corrupt morals” under the Criminal Code. He is currently suspended for having played the video in his history and citizenship education class on Jun. 4.

Magnotta, 29, is the principal suspect in Jun’s killing and dismembering. Police believe the crime was videotaped. Magnotta was arrested in Berlin earlier this month and is awaiting extradition to Canada.

Luka Magnotta: How not to disappear

By Alan Parker - Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

AP Photo/AP Video

Amid all his other alleged crimes, Luka Rocco Magnotta is apparently a plagiarist.

An article entitled “Luka Magnotta: How to Completely Disappear and Never Be Found” was posted on the website Digital Journal on June 1, 2009, by one “Rocco Magnotta” with an accompanying photo of Luka Magnotta. But Magnotta is not the author of the original article. He found the anonymous text on the Internet and re-posted it on Digital Journal under his own name.

Frank Ahearn. Photo credit E.J. Kelly

That’s the assessment of Frank M. Ahearn, a self-described privacy expert and author of The Digital Hit Man and How to Disappear. Ahearn, who divides his time between New York City and Paris, said the article has been floating around on the Internet in various forms for about five years.

“I actually had it on my website a few years ago (before Magnotta’s claimed authorship) as ‘Tips from Idiots,” Ahearn said in a telephone interview.

Ahearn called it Tips from Idiots because — quite apart from the plagiarism aspect — he says the article is full of bad advice for anyone who truly wants to disappear.

And Ahearn should know: In a two-decade career as a legendary skiptracer, Ahearn says he located more than 50,000 people who didn’t want to be found.

Then, after a chance encounter in 2003 with a corporate whistleblower who feared for his life, Ahearn turned the tables. He began a new career helping people hide — from skiptracers, from stalkers, from abusive ex-spouses, from enemies and from the general nosiness of a world in which so much information about us is now available online.

In the past decade Ahearn estimates he has helped about 85 people vanish, either physically or as an identifiable, reachable digital identity on the Internet.

The article Magnotta claimed to have authored was out of date and neglected to address some of the most critical aspects of engineering a successful disappearance in the 21st Century, Ahearn said. It was probably based on a 1986 book by Doug Richmond with a similar title — How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found.

(Around the same time, Richmond wrote Lonely Planet’s “Mexico: A Travel Survival Guide” and “Central America: How to get there and back in one piece with a minimum of hassle.” So it’s fairly obvious which direction Richmond felt the best getaway lay.)

Magnotta’s flight to Europe from Montreal on May 26 showed more impulse (if not panic) than planning, Ahearn said. “I don’t think he had much of an escape idea in his head,” Ahearn  said. “I think (if) he did the crime … (he) thought, ‘Oh shit, I better get out of Canada.’ I also don’t think he thought the crime would become a worldwide piece of news and Interpol would become involved as well.”

When he was arrested in a Berlin Internet cafe on June 4, Magnotta  had three sets of identification in his possession and was trying to print a new false identity card. Apart from documentation in his own name, Ahearn surmises the fugitive’s other two false identities would not stand up to any kind of serious scrutiny — which is why Magnotta used his own passport for his Air Transat flight from Montreal to Paris.

The other identity documents may have been forged or stolen, Ahearn said, but were probably bought online from one of the many companies that specialize in producing “camouflage” passports and other documents that appear legitimate but are sold as “novelty” items, thus staying — barely — inside the law.

The false passport said to bear the name Kirk Trammel was probably one of those, since it would be almost impossible for Magnotta to choose the name appearing on any real passport that could have been fraudulently issued to him. (And choose he did, since “Trammel” is likely an homage to Sharon Stone’s icepick murderer in the movie Basic Instinct.)

Camouflage passports appear similar to real passports but are issued in the name of countries which no longer exist like Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and British Honduras (now Belize). Because the “countries” are no longer legal entities, the “passports” are not illegal in most parts of the world (the U.S. excluded) — as long as they are not actually used as a form of identification.

But in the years immediately after 9/11, American business travellers in dangerous parts of the world were actually encouraged to carry camouflage passports so they were less obvious targets for al Qaida. And reporters on foreign assignment have been known to carry camouflage passports for use at hotel check-ins — just so their real passports are always with them in case of emergency or rapid departure.

“It’s illegal but plenty of people do it,” Ahearn said.

Some countries with major offshore banking industries will issue “banking” passports in the name of clients who have significant accounts and pay a stiff fee — but it is again highly unlikely that a scuffler like Luka Magnotta would have access to the kind of money necessary to acquire a banking passport.

And money is generally the key to a successful disappearance. The greater access one has to hard cash, the better one’s chances of staying undercover. Magnotta had relatively little money with him during his flight or access to more, apart from selling sexual favours.

The greatest danger Magnotta posed on the run — supposing, of course, that he actually is a psychotic murderer as alleged — was the possibility he would target and kill someone in Europe for financial gain to keep running.

In the end, Magnotta’s inability to break his addiction to using cell phones and the Internet was probably his greatest failure as a fugitive. “Don’t use any computer that can ever be traced to you,” Ahearn said. The footprint is just too big and the trail of evidence left behind is too strong.

Ahearn might have added, “Don’t post dozens of photographs of yourself on the Internet.”

Not if you really and truly want to disappear.

Perhaps we will learn at Magnotta’s trial whether his botched escape attempt was an incompetent failure or just part of a megalomaniacal poseur’s elaborate dance on the international stage before the curtain ultimately falls.

Miami police eager to explore links to 2009 case

By macleans.ca - Saturday, June 9, 2012 at 12:01 PM - 0 Comments

The arrest of Luka Rocco Magnotta after an international manhunt has the attention of investigators from Los Angeles to Gatineau, the Canadian Press reports.

The news agency says Sergeant Confessor Gonzalez of the Miami Police Department is eager to explore links to the Montreal body parts killing and a 2009 case that involved the death and dismemberment of Omar Laparra.

“I looked up the story — rather interesting,” Sgt. Gonzalez told CP’s Andy Blatchford.  “If Mr. Rocco was in Miami at the time of my murder then yeah, I’ll be definitely looking at him.”

The Globe and Mail reports that Concordia University has set up a fund to aid the family of Lin Jun, the Chinese student who was killed and dismembered last month in Montreal.

Magnotta was arrested in Germany in connection with the case. He awaits extradition to Canada.

For more Maclean’s coverage of the case, follow this link. 

A Montreal photographer’s encounter with Luka Rocco Magnotta

By Nicholas Köhler and Martin Patriquin - Thursday, June 7, 2012 at 1:30 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Mason knew the man simply as Rocco. Seeking to beef up his photographic portfolio, the 48-year-old Montrealer had placed an ad on Craigslist in April 2011, seeking models who would work gratis in exchange for free portraits. Soon, Rocco got in touch. Mason agreed to meet the man, who he understood to be a gay model, at Rocco’s apartment in the gentrifying southwest Montreal neighbourhood of Pointe-Saint-Charles. And so it was that around lunchtime on Saturday, May 1 of last year, Mason arrived at Rocco’s apartment, near the Charlevoix metro. Rocco “came out dressed in sweatpants, a tank-top hoodie, and a little bit of facial makeup on his cheeks,” recalls Mason. “The cheek thing was a little much. I said to myself, ‘Ugh, that’s going to be a little creamy on camera—but what the hell.’ I looked at the guy: a very chiselled face, not ugly, by any means. Quite dynamic looking.”

The foundation on his cheeks wasn’t his only idiosyncrasy. “He was speaking in this Russian, sort-of-little-bit-of-an-Eastern-European accent,” Mason says, imitating the Slavic cadence. “He maintained it all the way through. I had no reason to suspect it wasn’t real, but it did cross my mind: is this a real accent? It was just a little bit odd. I said, ‘Where are you from?’ and he says, ‘Half-Italian, half-Russian.’ I had no reason to suspect he was putting on a persona.” Over the ensuing hours Mason took dozens of outdoor shots of Rocco against an urban backdrop of brickwork and graffiti. “I said, ‘Okay, we’re going to do the first shot,’ and he said, ‘I’m ready,’ and I pointed the camera and he went boom: his face went 45 degrees to the side—like a robot, almost—and he froze: no smile, no nothing. Stone-faced. And I said in my head, ‘This guy’s intense. These pictures are going to turn out nice. As freaky as he looks, they’re going to have some punch.’ ”

Continue…

Montreal police to take on Vancouver body parts case

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 11:33 AM - 0 Comments

CBC reports Montreal police will take over the case surrounding the discovery of human remains at a Vancouver school, fueling suspicion that murder-necrophilia suspect Luka Rocco Magnotta was involved.

The remains were discovered in packages sent to two separate Vancouver schools on Tuesday.

On Monday, Magnotta was arrested in Berlin in connection to the grisly murder of Concordia student Jun Lin, whose foot and hand were sent to political offices in Ottawa.

Magnotta’s motive is almost as disturbing as what he did

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 at 3:38 PM - 0 Comments

CP, Service de police de la Ville de Montreal

I am frightened by Luka Magnotta, but not because he is a suspected necrophiliac cannibal killer. He creeps me out because I can’t shake the suspicion that he doesn’t really like killing people and then violating their corpses. I fear that (if guilty), he did it just for the attention.

Yes, Magnotta certainly portrayed himself as a psychotic menace, fueled by sexual deviance and blood lust. When his kitten-killing video made a stir, he warned a British newspaper that “next time the victims won’t be small animals” because “once you taste blood, it’s impossible to stop.” He called himself a “lunatic” on the Internet and wrote a blog that he titled “Necrophilia Serial Killer Luka Magnotta,” well before the alleged killing and necrophilia. He clearly wanted the world to see him as ever so dark and twisted.

But I just don’t buy it. I hate to be glib, but doesn’t it all just seem a bit too on-the-nose?

Lin Jun’s killer used an ice pick, just like the killer in Basic Instinct. He hacked off body parts and put them in the mail, because that’s what happened in Seven. He videotaped the murder, but didn’t hide it for personal use, a la Bernardo and Homolka. Instead he immediately uploaded it to the Internet. The murder was set to the soundtrack of American Psycho. Magnotta was arrested in Berlin while Googling himself at an Internet cafe. It’s all so meta.

Continue…

Magnotta photo flap: Labatt learns a harsh lesson in social media

By Jeff Beer - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 at 3:20 PM - 0 Comments

Labatt Breweries quickly learned a brutal lesson in social media marketing and PR after a legal threat against the Montreal Gazette, over the paper’s use of a photo depicting accused killer Luka Magnotta holding a bottle of Blue, transformed into a Twitter backlash mocking the beer company.

The Globe and Mail reported that Labatt had threatened to sue the Gazette unless it took down the photo, believing the association could be disastrous to its brand. Turns out, the threat has done more damage than the photo ever would.

In a letter to the Gazette, Labatt’s associate general counsel Karyn Sullivan wrote, “As I am sure you can understand, this image is highly denigrating to our brand, and we are disturbed that this image remains on your site despite repeated requests and the many images available of this person.”

And then Twitter struck. Well, specifically, National Post columnist Andrew Coyne. Coyne, mocking the brand’s overzealous concern — why would anyone seriously associate the longstanding beer brand with the alleged killer? — started the hashtag #newlabattcampaign, which quickly took off to become a top trending topic in Canada.

Andrew Coyne
I don’t always drink beer after dismembering a corpse, but when I do, I drink Blue. #newlabattcampaign

Cultural associations and media depiction can have a significant affect on brand reputation, whether over a period of time — see Burberry vs. Chavs — or in a single newscast. Many believe the Ford Bronco was…er, killed by OJ Simpson.

The similarities between Ford/OJ and Labatt/Magnotta end at both being big brands and high profile crimes. The difference that Labatt should have recognized is that OJ’s car chase was on national prime time TV, while Magnotta’s Facebook pic appeared in one city newspaper, a single image amid a sea of others in widespread international coverage.

Now, thanks to its over-enthusiastic response, Labatt is the laughingstock du jour.

This article originally appeared at Canadian Business.com

Public policy and the real world

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Michael Geist dismisses Vic Toews’ attempt to link the case of Luka Rocco Magnotta and the government’s “lawful access” legislation.

The Toews comments continue the longstanding trend of unsubstantiated claims by government officials about lawful access. In this case, there is simply no question that law enforcement can obtain the necessary warrant on customer name and address information (if an ISP refused as part of an investigation) and police have presumably obtained warrants for far more detailed information. Moroever, the surveillance capabilities at ISPs mandated by C-30 – which focus on real-time surveillance – appear completely irrelevant given that Magnotta fled to France. In fact, reports indicate that there were early warnings about Magnotta and the video openly available that were dismissed by police.

Bruce Cheadle considers the Eaton Centre shooting in the context of Conservative crime policy.

That the lesson — do the crime, do the time — apparently hasn’t sunk in after more than six years of Conservative rule could be construed as an admission of failure. Nicholson declined an interview request Monday but his office, in an email, listed various gun crime provisions it has enacted and stated “our government has a solid track record when it comes to cracking down on gun crime.”

Christopher Husbands faces one charge of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder in regards to the shooting at the Eaton Centre. The mandatory sentence for first-degree murder of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years was established in 1976. In December 2011, the Harper government repealed the “faint hope” clause for those convicted of first-degree murder.

Magnotta and Homolka: Anatomy of a rumour

By Alan Parker - Friday, June 1, 2012 at 10:52 AM - 0 Comments

When fugitive murder suspect Luka Rocco Magnotta next appears in a Canadian courtroom, he will have much to answer for. But one thing of which he is not guilty, never has been, and almost certainly never will be is this: Having an affair—or even a casual relationship—with schoolgirl killer Karla Homolka.

Yet in the past few days headlines have appeared in newspapers and on major news websites like “Suspect in dismemberment case dated Karla Homolka” and “Porn star wanted in murder/dismemberment case dated Karla Homolka.”

Those headlines are slowly going away now but, after two days on the Internet, they have a life of their own and will undoubtedly spawn new stories and headlines in the future.

Here’s how a five-year-old fabricated story suddenly flared to life in the heat, pressure and exhaustion of a horrific murder investigation.

I first heard of Magnotta in September 2007 when I was Deputy Managing Editor at the Toronto Sun. He was briefly at the centre of a flurry of media attention in Toronto for denying he had been in a relationship with Homolka after her release from prison. He said an anonymous Internet campaign feeding the false rumour was ruining his life.

“I have lost modelling jobs and have been receiving death threats,” Magnotta told talk radio station AM 640.

Among those questioning Magnotta at the time was Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington, who recalled Thursday, “He might have been the creepiest person I ever interviewed.”

Warmington quickly determined during that 2007 interview that Magnotta had no connection to Homolka—but had some serious personal issues of his own to address.

“You spend 10 seconds with him and you easily come to the conclusion it’s all in his own head and all for attention,” Warmington said on Thursday.

Because I had directed the Toronto Sun team that found Karla Homolka in Montreal after her release from prison in 2005, I maintained a professional interest in her post-prison activities. I found the various Internet blog posts and discussions that Magnotta complained were linking him to Homolka. Like Warmington, I quickly concluded there was no basis for believing a connection between Magnotta and Homolka existed. And I also came to the conclusion that Luka Magnotta had probably posted the Internet rumours himself as a publicity-seeking stunt.

There was barely even a chance Magnotta and Homolka were in the same city at the same time, let alone cavorting.

After her release from prison in July 2005, Homolka lived in the Montreal area under the close supervision of her lawyer, Sylvie Bordelais. Homolka’s social milieu was so restricted during that period that she ended up marrying Bordelais’ brother. After she bore a child in early 2007, Homolka left Canada for the French Antilles with her husband and son.

One month before Homolka’s release from prison, Magnotta was convicted on a number of fraud charges in Toronto under his birth name—Eric Clinton Newman. He was sentenced to a nine-month conditional term with nightly curfew, which he served at his mother’s home in Peterborough. He was also put on probation for 12 months.

It was after completing that sentence that Eric Clinton Newman legally changed his name to Luka Rocco Magnotta. And moved to Ottawa. He would later return to Toronto but he did not move to Montreal until long after Karla Homolka had left that city.

That’s where the issue should probably have ended, but it didn’t. New rumours–and even newspaper stories from as far away as the Bahamas—kept reappearing over the years linking Magnotta and Homolka.

Then, on Thursday, journalist Colin Horgan reported on the Ottawa political website ipolitics.ca that repeated attempts have been made since October 2011 to edit Karla Homolka’s Wikipedia page to insert Luka Magnotta’s name as Homolka’s husband.

“According to Wikipedia’s history of revisions, in October 2011, Magnotta’s name replaced that of Thierry Bordelais, the man who in 2007 was reported to be Homolka’s husband …

The article was apparently left untouched for months, until February 2012, when again Magnotta’s name was inserted…

The article was edited again on March 4th (here), 5th (here), and 30th (here) of this year. Each time, Magnotta’s name was inserted, and each time by a different user.

There is no way to tell whether the changes were made by Magnotta or not.

Magnotta is also mentioned as Homolka’s husband in a piece written for Allvoices.com.

‘Karla Homolka serial murderess and husband Luka Magnotta in the Caribbean,’ reads the title of that piece. The piece was written by ‘inewsman’ in June, 2010. The contributor profile picture bears a remarkable resemblance to Magnotta.”

So the name of a smalltime porn actor, convicted fraudster and self-promoter was still tenuously—if erroneously—connected to one of the most notorious killers in Canadian history at the same time that a new chapter in horrific Canadian murders was opening in Montreal and Ottawa.

When Magnotta was identified as the prime suspect in the ghastly Montreal murder and dismemberment, those Homolka connections floating around on the Internet rose up again to join the ongoing outrage over videos posted online that purportedly showed Magnotta torturing and killing kittens.

So, of course, reporters asked the official spokesman for the Montreal police about the Homolka link, as well as about the kitten killings and all the other macabre aspects emerging in the Canadian crime story of the year.

Answering the dozens of questions was Ian Lafreniere, a veteran of le Service de police de la Ville de Montreal, recently promoted to the rank of commander from sergeant for his good work handling police media relations during the Quebec student demonstrations.

Like other police officers on the case, Lafreniere had been working around the clock.

“For most of the officers that have been there all night long, this is the kind of crime scene they’ve never seen in their life, in their career,” he told reporters who had also been working through the night. “So, yes, I can consider that a horrible crime.”

When reporters asked Lafreniere about the Internet stories linking Magnotta and Homolka, he treated the questions as what they were—minor distractions floating around the periphery of a huge, fast-breaking murder investigation with the accused murderer still on the loose and still a threat to the public, either in Canada or elsewhere.

So when the Homolka connection came up, Lafreniere said police had heard the rumours. “I’ve got no reasons to doubt about it,” CTV News quoted him saying. And the Montreal Gazette had Lafreniere agreeing with the possibility that Magnotta “could have been a good friend” of Homolka.

In the deadline pressure of pulling together a huge story from multiple sources and several reporters, those quotes—and the titillating link between two of Canada’s ghastliest murder stories—resulted in this lead paragraph going out to Postmedia news outlets across Canada on Wednesday:

“MONTREAL — Montreal Police have confirmed the suspect at large in a gruesome murder and dismemberment case once dated notorious sex killer Karla Homolka.”

Other news outlets, including Maclean’s itself, CBC News and CTV News, used the Lafreniere quotes as affirmation that there was some kind of relationship between Magnotta and Homolka. Still others were more circumspect in making the connection, referring to police confirmation of a “link,” not a relationship.

By Thursday morning, Montreal police were trying to clear up the confusion caused by Lafreniere’s ambiguous, off-the-cuff comments on Wednesday.

By Thursday afternoon, Postmedia websites were carrying the following paragraph in their Magnotta coverage:

“Montreal police backtracked Thursday on claims they made this week that Magnotta had dated Karla Homolka, one of Canada’s most notorious sex killers. Police officials clarified that they were aware of the many rumours posted on the Internet, but had no proof to substantiate those stories. In 2007, Magnotta came forward to news media to deny that he had dated her, although many at the time suggested he was the one who started the rumours to gain attention.”

So the Magnotta-Homolka story is back to what it was before — an unconfirmed, unfounded, untrue Internet fabrication. A false rumour probably started and certainly fueled by Luka Rocco Magnotta himself.

But, unfortunately, the headlines and stories saying “police have confirmed” the Magnotta-Homolka connection will remain in Internet space forever, overshadowing the retraction stories and just waiting to be pulled out and cited as sources of misinformation at some point in the future.

The rumour is mightier than the real news sometimes, no matter how bizarre and unbelievable the real news already is.

Suspect sought in gruesome body parts case

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

Montreal police say they’re looking for a low-level porn star in connection with the dismembered body case we reported earlier today.

The suspect is Rocco Luka Magnotta, Luka Rocco Magnotta 29, originally from Toronto. An article on CP24 says:

A man with that same name has a huge presence on the Internet, as a low-level adult film actor and as a contentious figure alleged to have posted videos of cats being tortured and killed.
There is considerable online chatter that the recent killing — along with multiple gruesome acts committed on the male victim’s body — was videotaped and posted on the Internet

Meanwhile, Sun News has posted a video interview with Magnotta from 2007, in which he contends a rumoured connection with Karla Homolka is ruining his career.

UPDATE: the suspect has gone by multiple names. As Global reports, police had initially identified him as ‘Rocco Luka’ in a press release, before correcting his name in a second press release. We have made that correction here.

A suspect is identified

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 3:51 PM - 0 Comments

An individual suspected to be involved with the discovery of body parts in Ottawa and Montreal has been identified. Video of the killing may exist and the second package, the one that contained a human hand, is now said to have been bound for the Liberal party headquarters.

Before Question Period this afternoon, the NDP MP Randall Garrison delivered a statement offering the NDP’s thoughts for the Conservative staff impacted by yesterday’s discovery.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians were horrified to hear of the senseless and cowardly mailing of human remains to Conservative Party headquarters and the interception of a second package at Canada Post’s Ottawa sorting centre. Our sympathies go out to the staff at the Conservative offices who opened the package. Our thoughts are also with Canada Post employees who had to deal with the second package containing human remains. They were all victims of an outrageous and reprehensible act. We encourage anyone with information on this crime to contact police immediately. On behalf of New Democrats, and I think all members of this House across all party lines, we stand in solidarity with postal workers and especially the Conservative Party staff. We condemn these acts and stand united together against these crimes.