Luka Magnotta: Man, Boy or Beast?

by Starks Shrink

Luka Magnotta, dubbed by the media as the “cannibal killer”, is a Canadian who stands accused of the brutal murder and dismemberment of Montreal Concordia University student, Jun Lin. He is also accused of mailing the body parts of his victim to members of the Canadian parliament in Ottawa and two schools in Vancouver — charges to which he has pleaded not guilty. In addition, he is charged with distributing obscene material for a video posted on an Edmonton website called “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick”, which depicts parts of his gruesome deed in graphic detail. His trial is expected to begin in September of 2014.

Luka Magnotta was born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman in Scarborough, Ontario. He is the oldest of three children. Little is known about his childhood save for reports that it was dysfunctional. We do know, however that he lived with his grandparents after his parents’ divorce and went to high school from 1998 to 2000. Classmates and teachers recall him as vain and prone to telling preposterous stories, mostly to nurture his own grandiosity. While all this is hearsay, it is supported by Luka’s own words, which are amply posted on the Internet. I believe that at some point, his deceit became his reality, and that he put immense pressure on himself to maintain his self-image.

We know unequivocally that in 2000 he was treated as an outpatient and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. As many do, he struggled to accept his diagnosis and only took his medication sporadically. He also had the bad habit of missing his doctor’s appointments and was hospitalized at least twice in 2003. For someone who had confabulated his whole life and believed himself to be superior intellectually and was undoubtedly an attractive physical specimen, this must have been a terrible blow because of the stigma associated with schizophrenia which many still believe to be a personal flaw.

At one point in 2011, he joined a support forum on Psych Central, which allows users to pose questions and answer other participants’ questions. A member posted that he hated his mother and Luka responded, using one of his known online pseudonyms, Vladamir Romanov. Luka described in detail his childhood travails and the abuse he suffered, none of which can be verified, of course. There were several paragraphs in which he describes having been held in a hospital ward against his will because he had been the victim of rape. He goes on to claim that he had been held for several days because his mother refused to give the doctors permission to release him, despite the lavish vacations and expensive gifts he had bestowed upon her even after the abuse. He claims that this event transpired in 2010, when he would have been 28 years old, and would not have needed parental consent to be released, had he indeed been in a hospital trauma ward. I believe he is reliving his rage about having been held in an inpatient psychiatric ward at some earlier point, and even years later, his fury and hatred are clearly evident. His words reveal a juvenile’s tendency toward prevarication, putting him and his mother at extreme ends of the spectrum with Luka portrayed as the ever-generous son while his mother is cruel and callous. At the age of 28, he is still displaying a childlike social perception. These are traits that seem to be consistent throughout his life.

From 2000 onward, Luka’s life tool on a whole new direction. In 2002, he went to work as a male stripper, using pseudonyms such as Rocco, Luka and Jimmy, though at this point his legal name was still Eric Newman. According to news sources, he had a transgender girlfriend during this time, who claims to have broken off the relationship because Luka was, in her words, “a pathological liar”. It’s interesting to note that Luka is purported to have had several transgender girlfriends but also openly identifies himself as gay. The rumor surrounding Luka’s career is likely just that –rumor generated by Luka himself. His claims of having been a porn star and model may have some basis in reality but probably more a toehold than a foothold.

For some, being a gay porn star may not be the height of aspiration, but Luka needed to be seen as a pinnacle of success in his chosen field and must have found it frustrating when the only roles he could land were mere bit parts in low-budget pornographic films. Maintaining the illusion of being a rising star and paying for cosmetic enhancements doesn’t come cheaply, and in 2005, Luka was charged with a myriad of fraud offenses. It seems that Luka had befriended a woman, who while legally of age 21, had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old. He persuaded her to obtain credit cards and racked up $10,000 worth of fraudulent debt. He pleaded guilty and was convicted of fraud and impersonation. The judge, however, gave Luka leniency based upon a letter from his psychiatrist, which indicated that Luka was schizophrenic but would have a decent prognosis if he was compliant with his medication and treatment schedule. He was given nine months of community service and a year’s probation. This incident displays Luka’s striking lack of concern for the welfare of others as long as they serve his needs, which at the time were financial. The Crown had also intended to charge him with sexually assaulting and videotaping the same woman but for unknown reasons withdrew the charges.

Over the next couple of years, Luka would work as a paid escort and continue to seek out and play bit roles in gay pornography both in print and on film. During this time, he legally changed his name to Luka Magnotta, a final desperate bid to rid himself of the Eric of his youth who was so vastly inferior to the Luka of his present and future. He also made several stabs at starring in reality TV shows, and one audition tape provides some firsthand insight into who Luka really is. The audition video is for a reality show about cosmetic surgery. In it, Luka admits to having had a number of procedures, including a cosmetic rhinoplasty and hair implants. What this tells us is that he is speaking about his insecurities concerning his appearance as he constantly compares himself with others in his chosen field. He indicates that he had always been good-looking but that at the ripe old age of 25, his looks were fading and he was ‘looking kind of ugly’. He goes on to add that looks are the number one priority for him, with intelligence coming a distant second, although he believes he possesses both of these qualities in abundance. Some of what he relates in the video is intended to persuade the casting agents to select him for their program but his mask slips and we see glimpses of who he really is. In an effort to shock his audience with what he will tolerate in the name of physical perfection, he relates in quite graphic detail what occurs when he gets his hair transplants. Interviews with friends and family also confirm that as a youth, he was obsessed with his physical appearance, so this, at least, is not a performance. He was ultimately rejected for the program as was so often the case. That of course did not stop him from claiming online that he was a reality star.

By this point, Luka was busily creating the image of who he wanted to be through online personalities. He created upwards of 100 separate online accounts and over 20 websites, all dedicated to his favorite topic — Luka Magnotta. Many of these personalities feature photos of Luka or promoted fan pages and blog accounts about Luka. He seemed to be seeking attention in whatever way he could. He went so far as to create online rumors romantically linking himself with Karla Homolka, and then used other sock puppets to dispute the rumor in order to stimulate discussion. When that didn’t result in sufficient attention to satiate his ever-growing appetite, he went to the headquarters of the Toronto Sun to dispute the online rumors, though the paper hadn’t published the alleged link. Though Magnotta railed against online ‘haters’ and wrote pages about the evils of cyberstalking on one of his websites, he planted the rumors himself and in fact, stalked himself more than others did. Magnotta definitely went by the old saw that no publicity is bad publicity.

By 2009, estranged from his family and lonely and broke (he’d filed for bankruptcy two years earlier, citing an unnamed illness and medical bills), he set out to find someone to hustle. He found his perfect victim in a traveling companion who was in was his 70s, and does not wish to be identified. They traveled to Europe with his old “friend” footing the bill and ultimately toured Russia, which made quite an impression upon Luka. After that, he would frequently claim to be Russian, posting photos from the trip in which he sports a jacket emblazoned with that country’s name. He would even post on Russian social media sites. Vladimir Romanov, as well as other Russian-sounding personalities, were born. He even used a fake Russian accent in another attempt to seem more exotic than he really was. His traveling companion must have fed his need for adoration and attention because by 2010, Luka would resort to radical and sadistic ways to increase his online following.

The kitten videos are notorious among animal rights groups and web-sleuthing groups. Most people equate animal cruelty with features of sociopathy, but typically sociopaths exhibit these tendencies in their youth, not at nearly 30. Luka was reveling in actions that generated attention through sheer shock value. He initially posted a video (not of his own making) on his Facebook account entitled “3 guys 1 hammer” in which the actual murder of a man in the Ukraine is shown – a veritable snuff video. He apparently enjoyed the negative attention so much that he moved on to experiment further with his own sadistic videos. In December of 2010, he posted a video entitled “1 boy 2 kittens”, in which a ‘boy’ (Luka in a hoodie) is shown killing two kittens by placing them in a vacuum sealed bag and asphyxiating them by attaching a vacuum hose. He then displays the dead kittens on a shelf inside a refrigerator. The video is emblematic of his sadism and contained elements that would eventually link him to murder of Jun Lin. In posting it, once again Luka clearly displays his affinity for notoriety; he had to know that this video would spark outrage, but perhaps he underestimated the intelligence and vigilance of others who also avail themselves of the internet.

The video ignited a firestorm amongst several groups, public and private, who fight against animal cruelty, most notably, a group calling themselves Animal Beta Project (ABP). Although the video was removed within hours of being posted, the fuse had been lit. These self-styled online investigators inspected the video frame by frame, analyzing every element contained therein in an effort to identify the ‘vacuum kitten killer’. They spent thousands of hours in research and discussion identifying tiny details, such as where a blanket shown in the video was manufactured and sold. For a time, the attention had Magnotta spooked; he had never anticipated the power of crowdsourcing an investigation. He became more and more paranoid when there was a reward offered for his capture, and even contacted an attorney. But his craving for the limelight ultimately ran roughshod over his instinct for self-preservation, and he infiltrated the sleuthing groups with some of his own fake Facebook personalities, alternately defending himself and hinting at clues that would lead the sleuths closer to his true identity. It is believed that when the group was unable to identify him, Luka, via a fake personality, posted a message from a puppet account, giving the group his name. It seemed that his rants about cyberstalking would soon come home to roost.

After a year of playing cat and mouse, Luka decided it was time for a taunting encore, and posted two more videos in which he found ways to torture and kill kittens in even more gruesome ways. Throughout this time, Magnotta slipped quietly between Toronto, New York and London, perhaps using falsified passports, because by this time, there were police files on him in Ontario, based upon the insistence of the ABP activists. But even this amount of attention wasn’t enough for Luka, not nearly enough. Despite videos posted by ABP that named many of Magnotta’s aliases and revealed his photos as well as proof that he was behind the kitten videos, they gained little online attention. Luka craved much more.

In the weeks before the May 25th murder of Jun Lin, Magnotta took to message boards once again in the guise of many of his online personalities to promote a snuff video that did not yet exist. He characterized himself as a dangerous psychopathic serial killer, but was it confession or another attempt at notoriety? But, on May 25, 2012, a video was posted that was to make the kitten videos look like child’s play. The video, “1 lunatic 1 icepick” was posted to the bestgore website, was indescribably graphic and would eventually lead authorities to the body of Jun Lin, or at least to pieces of his body. The internet kitten-killer hunters, ABP, immediately connected the video to Luka Magnotta. They alerted police that they believed Magnotta to be in Montreal but were dismissed as being a group of armchair internet detectives with no real evidence. Four days after the murder, a janitor in Montreal found the torso of Jun Lin in a suitcase behind Luka’s tiny disheveled apartment. But Magnotta had evaporated the very day of the murder. Shortly thereafter, severed body parts began to arrive at political offices and schools all across Canada and the Interpol search was on. He was apprehended ten days later on June 4th in an internet cafe in Berlin when he famously uttered the words, “You got me”.

This is the timeline and description of Magnotta’s apparent actions, but what does it tell us about Luka, the man, or should that be Luka, the boy? We know that Luka has schizophrenia; it was diagnosed and documented and he was known to eschew his medications which would have tended to keep his illness in check. Schizophrenia, in his case, was characterized by positive symptoms such as auditory hallucinations and paranoia, but schizophrenia is also characterized by negative symptoms such as flat affect and poor cognition. We do know that in the last years of his freedom, he did most of his living online and his life was mostly that of a recluse. When someone with schizophrenia is experiencing a relapse, isolation is a common warning sign. But what about him traveling the world in his imagination and posting his adventures online, with the help of photoshop, for the world to admire? Could his enormous need for attention be traced to his schizophrenia? Some clients affected by schizophrenia experience delusions of grandeur, often seeing themselves as Gods among men. Luka certainly felt that he was superior to most, as evidenced by his taunting games with those who pursued him.

However, studies show that criminals who suffer from schizophrenia are far more likely to have comorbid antisocial personality disorder, which could explain the inordinate percentage of the prison population who have schizophrenia. Studies show that there is a high rate of deficient affective experience which is “a personality style indexed by lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility for one’s own actions”. While this often accompanies substance abuse, there is no indication, other than Luka’s own descriptions of his nonexistent party life, that he consistently indulged himself in drugs or alcohol. His online search for attention resembles that of a small child seeking attention from his parents, at first mugging, performing and trying to obtain positive attention, and then when ignored, the behavior intensifies to acting out with accompanying tantrums until the desired attention is received. It is the attention that is the goal and whether the attention is positive or negative is secondary.

While much of Magnotta’s information is sealed from the press and public since he has not yet come to trial, we can still draw inferences from what he has presented to us. There are posts attributed to Magnotta in the months before the murder in which he describes himself as having a paraphilia — specifically necrophilia. It is obvious from the body of the text that Luka had been exploring legal and psychological documentation and was prepared to argue that the morality contained therein was arbitrary. He posted similarly about cannibalism. What was his aim? Was he seeking to understand the increasingly disturbing images in his own mind, generated by a psychotic episode? Or was he seeking for ways to create a world in which, through shock, fear and awe,he could finally be seen as a giant?

The videos themselves hold clues. In the kitten videos, he acts very loving toward the two kittens, even nuzzling them before carefully placing them in the bag in which they would be asphyxiated. He then photographs the dead kittens inside an empty refrigerator. The movements are calm and deliberate, without a sense of urgency, and appear to be done to both enrage and entertain the viewer. The icepick video contains clues as well. The actual murder is not recorded; we see a man bound to a bed, with his head covered, who is clearly alive, though his struggles are lethargic at best. The video is then edited to show the man untied and clearly already dead, with his throat slit. The ensuing indignities are carried out in a passionless way, I believe to show the viewers just how heartless he is capable of being. After dismembering the body, he goes on to remove a section of tissue using a fork and knife, presumably to bear out his online description of his own cannibalism, though he doesn’t show that on video. Perhaps he didn’t want to show his face or perhaps, as he had in the past, he was trying project a shocking version of himself that wasn’t grounded in reality. The same is true of his masturbation with the severed arm. It seems as though it was intended more for the viewer than for his own fulfillment. He also included images of body parts in an otherwise empty refrigerator, which ultimately linked the murder video to the kitten video, thereby establishing his identity. Did he create the link purposely? And if so was he seeking to taunt ABP members again? It’s doubtful that he was crying out to be caught. Some surmise that he was imitating the murders in the film version of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho based on the music he chose to use as a soundtrack. It’s not a great leap to presume that the main character in the movie would be someone that Luka would aspire to emulate, in fact his obsession with his looks and perceived ‘cool factor” were of paramount importance to him as were they to the character portrayed by Christian Bale in the movie.

He appears to be lucid while brutalizing Jun Lin’s corpse, and indeed, he took the time to stop and move the camera angles, reposition the body, take close ups of severed parts and edit the video. Given the time frames, he appears to have uploaded the video while sitting amidst the gore he had created. He then calmly packaged up the remains, disposed of the torso and mailed off the remainder of the body parts on his way to the airport while fleeing the crime scene. Typically, such organized thoughts and actions are not seen in a person in the throes of a psychotic break. Studies on mutilation of the victim’s body are sparse as it is a relatively rare phenomenon, and Magnotta’s actions don’t fit clearly into the usual classifications of this type of behavior. However, studies (such as they are) have discovered incidents of mutilation as being higher in offenders with schizophrenia than the rest of the population, but have been unable to connect these incidents to a particular psychopathy. Furthermore, in Magnotta’s case, none of the known reasons for mutilation exist other than a frail, and probably unpersuasive, connection to schizophrenia.

We will never definitively discern Luka’s state of mind was during the actual murder unless this peculiar individual divulges it, and even then, reality and his version of the truth are often separated by a large chasm. It is unlikely that Luka Magnotta will ever walk among us as a free man again. His online torrents about the nature of the crime before it occurred prove premeditation. His seemingly calm and deliberate actions in the murder video belie any defense that he was unable to appreciate his actions or stop them. Finally, mailing the body parts seem more like a misguided attempt at gaining infamy than the actions of a man who was legally insane. And if this is not enough to secure a conviction to Murder One, when he fled the country with assorted falsified documents, he demonstrated that he had the clarity of mind to make choices, which of course, were consistently the wrong ones.

It is a tragedy for Jun Lin and his family that throughout the course of Magnotta’s interaction with Canadian Mental Health services, his comorbid sociopathy was never noted which meant a parallel and appropriate course of mental health treatment was never initiated. Schizophrenia did not make Luka Magnotta a murderer but sociopathy almost certainly did.

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