Jun Lin’s family releases statement

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UPDATE, JUNE 12 — XTRA STAFF: The family of Lin Jun released a statement through Concordia University on June 11.

The family describes the murder of Jun as “devastating,” and calls for the extradition of Luka Magnotta to Canada.

To read the full release click here.

UPDATE, JUNE 2, 6:32PM — XTRA STAFF: The man wanted in the killling of Lin Jun was reportedly spotted Thursday, May 31, in a Paris bar.

UPDATE, JUNE 2, 5:30AM — XTRA STAFF: Lin Jun first visited Canada in 2010 before coming to Montreal to live in July 2011. He westernized his name to Justin Lin – only coincidentally similar to the name of the reporter on this story, Justin Ling.

According to media reports, none of Lin’s friends know how he met the man wanted in his murder, Luka Magnotta, though there is some speculation the two connected on Craigslist. Friends and co-workers describe Lin as gentle and upbeat. They say he was looking for love.

He landed a part-time job as a convenience store cashier in Pointe-St-Charles and enrolled in French classes and a computer science program at Concordia University, specializing in gaming.

A video was uploaded to YouTube on May 31 that bears the hallmarks of others made by Magnotta. “I think Luka is being framed by the insane agent that he fired — who has been stalking him for years,” the caption reads in part.

Magnotta was interviewed by the Naked News in this video uploaded June 2. It was shot in January 2007.

UPDATE, JUNE 1, 10:30AM — XTRA STAFF: Montreal police report at a press conference this morning that the murder of Lin Jun happened the evening between May 24 and 25. The suspect, Luka Magnotta, then fled on May 26 from Montreal’s Dorval airport on a flight reportedly – from other news sources, unconfirmed by Montreal police – bound for Paris. Police say Magnotta has at least three identities and may have returned subsequently to Canada under a different identity but that he could be anywhere. They say he may be travelling in disguise.

Police say that Lin was last seen on May 24 and that he was reported missing by a friend on May 29. The first body parts were discovered in Montreal on May 29.

Police are pursuing charges of first degree murder and contempt of court against Magnotta in connection with the case. UPDATE, JUNE 2: Police are pursuing five charges against Magnotta: first-degree murder, indignities to a body, publishing and mailing obscene matter, and harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other MPs.

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Magnotta+wanted+four+charges/6722077/story.html#ixzz1wj7gORnK

UPDATE, MAY 31, 7:30AM — XTRA STAFF: Police report that the victim in the Luka Magnotta murder case is 33-year-old Lin Jun. Lin was a student at Montreal’s Concordia University who arrived in July from China. Nina Arsenault tells the Toronto Star she dated Magnotta 10 years ago. Arsenault was one of the judges on Season 3 of CoverGuy. See video below.

UPDATE, MAY 31, 1:32PM — XTRA STAFF: Police say they believe Magnotta may have fled to Europe. Interpol has added him to its wanted persons list.

UPDATE, MAY 30, 10:30PM — XTRA STAFF: CTV News reports that a note accompanied the human foot delivered to Conservative Party headquarters yesterday. It indicated that a total of six body parts had been distributed and that the killer intended to strike again.

BY JUSTIN LING MAY 30, 9:30 PM — The increasingly bizarre story of Luka Rocco Magnotta continued to unwind today. Questions swirled yesterday as a senior-level Conservative Party staffer opened a suspicious package that contained a human foot. A hand was later found in a Canada Post warehouse, bound for the Liberal Party headquarters.

Because of Magnotta’s massive online presence, details are emerging of the man who allegedly dumped the decapitated and dismembered corpse in a Montreal garbage pile.

The events that led to this grisly scene appear to have taken place in a small apartment in Montreal’s west end. Magnotta supposedly captured the whole thing on tape, which hit the internet on May 25. The video has been dubbed “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick.” In the video, someone of Magnotta’s likeness is seen stabbing a man with an icepick before dismembering the body and performing sexual acts on it.

Magnotta is now wanted by Montreal police. Seemingly in anticipation of the manhunt, Magnotta penned an article in 2009 entitled “How to Completely Disappear and Never Be Found.” The article details a complex ruse to avoid detection. If Magnotta is following his own directions, he is currently en route to another province.

Magnotta had previously worked as an erotic dancer and a porn actor, having starred in more than a dozen gay and straight films, including one appearance on the low-budget website StreetBait.com. The website has yet to reply to a request for comment. He also appeared as a fab boy in at least two issues of Xtra‘s Toronto sister publication fab magazine.

According to a Wikipedia article that has since been deleted, Magnotta worked briefly at Remington’s, a Toronto strip club. Staff there, however, say they’ve never seen him before. The article also says Magnotta was a contestant on Canadian reality-TV show Cover Guy, which airs on OUTtv. The station has yet to confirm that Magnotta was ever on the show.

UPDATE MAY 31, 10:17AM — Video from Cover Guy, supplied by Giant Productions:

THIS VIDEO ADDED JUN 2:
END UPDATE

While it’s nearly impossible to confirm that all Magnotta’s social media profiles are legitimate, one Twitter account that appears to be Magnotta’s contains links to white supremacy groups, including Stormfront and the Ku Klux Klan. Magnotta posted a link to one Facebook group that aims to “stop the new fascism of multiculturalism.” Worth noting is that Magnotta’s alleged victim was Asian.

Magnotta’s largest source of infamy before this week came from a series of videos posted in the last two years that purportedly show Magnotta murdering kittens in especially brutal ways. While some have contended that it was not Magnotta in the videos, a large community of animal rights activists came together to try to find him.

The writing that was supposedly penned by Magnotta offers an eerie foreshadowing to this week’s events. On a Blogspot site called Necrophilia Serial Killer Luka Magnotta, the writer recounts finding the mummified corpse of a young boy, who he proceeds to fall in love with. “I don’t have a problem attracting living men. I’m just naturally attracted to the dead,” he explains.

Following that is the text of an academic paper on the morals of necrophilia and the rights of a corpse, written by Sara McKern, an American philosophy major.

On his website, Magnotta lamented that few of the sites that have popped up with his name on them are actually his or authored by him. ONE site contains multiple pictures of Magnotta and several essays on the nature of homosexuality — one in Russian and the other in Arabic. Neither appear to have been written by Magnotta.

Some writing that does appear to have been penned by Magnotta was published on the website Orato. In one, he discusses his conversion to Scientology. In the other, he analyzes the theories around “shadow people.” He wrote consistently for the site throughout 2007.

In Magnotta’s online footprint, there are countless carbon-copy Facebook pages that contain several images of Magnotta and dozens of posts by animal rights activists. He also has three Google Plus accounts and one on BeforeLastCall, a social media site for clubgoers. There are also dozens of video clips, some featuring pictures of Magnotta set to music. One contains various paintings depicting acts of cannibalism set to an ominous score.

Magnotta goes by multiple aliases, including Eric Clinton Newman — his birth name — and Vladimir Romanov. He was born in Russia but later moved to Toronto and spent some time in Miami, Los Angeles and Montreal. UPDATE – Magnotta was born in Scarborough as Eric Clinton Newman, not, as he asserts, in Russia.

In 2007, Magnotta wrote in AssociatedContent that he was undergoing massive cosmetic surgery to make himself resemble James Dean. He later admitted that he was a plastic surgery “addict” and acknowledged emotional issues and drug use. Both articles have been taken offline. In another article, Magnotta writes of his struggles with mental illness, admitting that he is manic depressive.

The deleted Wikipedia article, which may well have been written by Magnotta himself, reads, “All Eric’s ‘friends’ and ‘family’ betrayed him he says and were using him only for his money and this gave Eric a dark disposition on life.

All this stress made Eric spirl [sic] downwards and he became diagnosed with depresion [sic]. Eric never wanted to be like his father, who was addicted his whole life to prescription drugs.”

Magnotta was also involved with serial killer Karla Homolka, say police, even though he denied it in 2007.

UPDATE MAY 31, 9:30AM — The video below, which surfaced today, includes news footage of convicted serial killer Karla Homolka. The clip, which went online last October, also includes images of Magnotta that have appeared on his websites. New images in the video, however, appear to show Homolka and Magnotta together, something he flatly denied. The identities of the other men in the video are unclear so far. The video seems to be consistent with something Magnotta may have edited and posted himself.

READ MORE:
Source recounts dating murder suspect Luka Magnotta
Magnotta trail leads to racist website
Police hunt former fab boy in connection with Montreal murder