SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Police: ‘Canadian psycho’ is hiding in Paris

French police are reported to be certain that Luka Rocco Magnotta, the man dubbed the 'Canadian psycho' due to suspicions of him having dismembered his male lover and mailed his body parts across Canada, is hiding in Paris.

 

Police: 'Canadian psycho' is hiding in Paris
Luka-magnotta.com

Luka Rocco Magnotta is subject to an Interpol arrest warrant, a so-called red notice, after Montreal police identified him on May 30th as a suspect in the murder of Lin Jun, a 33-year-old Chinese man who had been reported as missing by his family a week before.

Magnotta is suspected of having filmed himself as he dismembered his lover Lin Jun whose body parts were then mailed to a series of addresses in Canada.

The 29-year-old Canadian who is known to have lived under a number of aliases, was born Eric Clinton NewmanImportantly for police, he is accustomed to changing his appearance.

In addition to having had plastic surgery on his face — apparently to look more like James Dean — he often wears lipstick and make-up, has dyed his hair and worn wigs, and sometimes dresses up as a woman.

Described as handsome but narcissistic, the 29-year-old, who naturally has black hair and blue eyes, has also changed his name and used several aliases.

He was convicted under his birth name for defrauding several retailers and with stealing $16,900 from a woman in Toronto, culminating in a suspended sentence and probation in 2005.

A series of judge imposed conditions reportedly banned him from owning or using a camera or a computer, and from accessing the internet.

Born in Toronto, family members told reporters they lost contact with him some time ago.

For years Magnotta built a profile through blogs, escort adverts in which he searched online for sex partners, and posted photographs showing himself as a fit, pouty-lipped model and traveler in cities, including Paris.

He used the name “Angel” when working as a prostitute and stripper at Remington’s, a well-known gay bar in Toronto, according to transsexual performer Nina Arsenault, who claims to have had a relationship with him.

The one-time supporter of white supremacists posted a video online of two kittens being suffocated in a plastic bag, according to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, ending an online hunt for the so-called “Vacuum Kitten Killer.”

At the same time, profiles he reputedly posted on online dating services conveyed an altogether different persona — on one website he listed beach volleyball as a hobby and stated that finding a long-term relationship was his priority.

He was granted a license to work as a stripper in Toronto in 2005 and also worked as a male escort.

Pierre Bonhomme, a Canadian filmmaker who recalled a meeting with Magnotta in Toronto in 2007 or 2008, told the Ottawa Citizen it was a “creepy” experience that he quickly decided to escape from.

“I left within about five minutes. It was a really uncomfortable, awkward situation. He was in the shady, druggy, gay-sex prostitution world. He was on a lot of the gay hookup sites,” Bonhomme said.

Magnotta used Russian names, including the alias Vladimir Romanov, on such sites, according to Bonhomme, who also attested to the suspect’s willingness to use fraud and deception.

“He was a hustler,” Bonhomme said. “He was definitely not a gay village kind of guy. He was more of a suburban guy on the Internet, scamming married guys, that kind of thing.”

With Magnotta now a fugitive, probably in France, a 2009 posting he made on the Internet offered advice on how to vanish and never be found.

“A minimum of four months is really necessary to carry out the heroic actions necessary to leave your old life behind,” he reportedly wrote.

He said a person must withdraw from all social circles, possess two sets of false identification papers, convert all assets to cash and then take a bus to a chosen destination, after selling a car somewhere else to mislead police.

Magnotta has apparently not done such a good job of staging his own disappearance: investigators believe he boarded a France-bound plane on May 26th in Montreal and police traced his cell phone signal to the suburb of Bagnolet on Saturday.

But he remains on the run. Psychologist Gilles Chamberland told Radio Canada that Magnotta exudes “narcissistic, anti-social,” behavior, having described himself as being “incredibly beautiful.”

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CRIME

Detectives return to French village to solve missing toddler mystery

Investigators cordoned off a tiny village in the French Alps on Thursday to solve the mystery of a missing toddler whose disappearance last summer gripped the nation.

Detectives return to French village to solve missing toddler mystery

Emile, two-and-a-half, was staying with his grandparents for the first day of the summer holidays when he disappeared on July 8th last year.

Two neighbours last saw him in the late afternoon walking alone on a street in Haut-Vernet, a small settlement of 25 inhabitants at an altitude of around 1,200 metres.

The little boy, barely 90 cm (35 inches) tall, was wearing a yellow T-shirt, white shorts and tiny hiking shoes, according to a call for witnesses at the time.

A massive on-the-ground search involving dozens of police and soldiers, sniffer dogs, a helicopter and drones failed to find him in July.

It was called off after several days following a prosecutor saying it was unlikely such a young child would have survived in the summer heat.

An initial probe into a missing person soon became a criminal investigation into a possible abduction. But the options of an accident or a fall remain open.

French investigators have summoned 17 people, including family members, neighbours and witnesses, to re-enact the events of the day he disappeared.

They are to focus on the last few minutes during which Emile was seen by neighbours, trying to untangle their contradictory accounts.

The family’s “only hope is that the child is still alive, even if this hope fades from day to day,” the grandfather’s lawyer said.

To ensure no outside interference in the investigation, police cordoned off the village from the outside world on Wednesday morning. It will remain so until Friday morning.

Flights over the village are also forbidden.

Early on Wednesday morning, around 15 journalists huddled in the cold rain at the barrier cutting off access to the village, kept at bay by two police cars.

Some 20 investigators are to guide the re-enactment of events, with some flying drones above to film it all.

The boy’s grandfather was questioned in a 1990s case into alleged violence and sexual aggression at a private Catholic school, it has emerged.

But a source close to the case said his possible involvement in the disappearance had always been examined to “the same degree” as other hypotheses.

Emile had just arrived in Haut-Vernet to stay with his mother’s parents in their holiday home for the summer when he went missing.

His parents, devout Catholics living in the southern town of La Bouilladisse, were not present on that day.

His mother is the oldest of 10 children.

Emile was her first child and she also has a younger daughter.

Investigators received some 900 calls from members of the public in the case, all of which have been dismissed as unrelated.

They have also sifted through endless mobile data and call logs in the hope of finding a clue.

In late November, a day before Emile would have turned three, his parents published a call for answers in a Christian weekly.

“Tell us where he is,” they wrote.

SHOW COMMENTS