Manhunt for body parts suspect now global as INTERPOL issues warrant (2024)

WARNING: Story contains graphic content

The hunt for Luka Rocco Magnotta has gone worldwide, with INTERPOL issuing an international warrant for the arrest of the Canadian man accused in a Montreal murder that saw a torso left in a suitcase and a hand and foot mailed to the Ottawa offices of the Liberal and Conservative parties.

The global bulletin follows a Canada-wide warrant issued by Montreal police hours after officers first entered the 29-year-old suspect’s apartment — the scene of one of the most gruesome killings in Montreal in recent memory.

Article content

The police had finished their work inside and Apartment 208 was pretty much stripped bare, but the stomach-turning stench and darkened red stain on the mattress left little doubt that something terrible had happened there.

“The smell of death is not funny,” Eric Schorer, the building’s superintendent, said as he opened the door Wednesday afternoon. “If you look at the bed, that’s where it happened.”

[np-related]

Article content

Not only was the unidentified victim dismembered, not only were two body parts apparently mailed to political parties in Ottawa, but it has emerged that the killer filmed his crime and posted it on the Internet. The snuff film titled 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick, depicting the dismemberment of an Asian male body and various indignities to the remains, has provoked online debate about its veracity since it was posted last week. Police have confirmed the video depicts the actual crime.

A janitor had stumbled on the victim’s torso Tuesday when investigating a foul smell coming from a suitcase thrown out in an alley behind an apartment in Montreal’s Snowdon neighbourhood. The same day, federal Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa received a Canada Post parcel containing a human foot, and police discovered a second package containing a hand in an Ottawa postal station. That package was addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Montreal police said in a statement that “concrete elements allow police to believe” that the Ottawa and Montreal incidents are connected, but pathology tests are being conducted for confirmation.

Article content

Article content

Mr. Magnotta, who has also been known as Eric Clinton Newman and Vladimir Romanov, has left abundant traces on the Internet. A Toronto native, he had worked in gay p*rn and as a model, but more recently he attracted attention after being linked to a 2010 online video showing kittens being suffocated with the aid of a vacuum cleaner.

A blog attributed to him and titled “Necrophilia Serial Killer Luka Magnotta” included this March 2012 post:

“It’s not cool to the world being a necrophiliac. It’s bloody lonely. But I dont (sic) really care, I have never cared what people thought of me, most people are judgemental idiots. I’m unable to talk to anybody about it and there’s always the knowledge that 99% of people would be repulsed by me if they found out about my feelings. Some people would even want to harm me.”

In another blog post from 2009, Mr. Magnotta offered step-by-step instruction on starting a new life in another country and never be found again.

“A minimum of four months is really necessary to carry out the heroic actions necessary to leave your old life behind,” he wrote in a post dated June 1, 2009.

Article content

The post also recommends cutting personal ties with “anyone who knows you.”

“Drop out of every group, organization, social circle, bingo table and car pool that you are a part of,” he writes. “The most important thing to remember here is to accomplish this slowly: pull out too abruptly and your friends and associates will become immediately suspicious. Carrying out this step should require several months of missed meetings and unreturned phone calls. Build your absence up gradually until you no longer do anything with the people who knew you.”

In a 2007 interview with the Toronto Sun, Mr. Magnotta denied online rumours that he was in a relationship with notorious schoolgirl killer Karla hom*olka. Montreal police spokesman Ian Lafrenière said Wednesday that police believe he “could have been a good friend” of hom*olka in the past.

He had moved into his Décarie Boulevard apartment about four months ago, Mr. Schorer said. The building, built as an apartment-hotel for Expo ’67, now rents out furnished flats for $490-a-month and attracts residents from newly arrived immigrants and students to drug addicts. After the janitor found the torso Tuesday, police went over the building’s five security cameras and asked Mr. Schorer to identify a man putting something in the building’s garbage. “I said, that’s the guy in 208,” he said.

Article content

Article content

After a Google search turned up evidence of Mr. Magnotta’s film career, he had become known in the building as p*rn Star. He rarely spoke to the other residents, but Mr. Schorer said he was friendly enough and always paid his rent on time.

“He seemed like a really nice guy, really,” he said. “It’s like you see on TV all the time.… It’s almost a cliché or a joke.”

Neighbour Derek MacKinnon, an actor whose best-known role was as a killer in the 1980 slasher film Terror Train, was one of the few people who struck up a conversation with Mr. Magnotta.

“One day we talked, and I said, ‘You and I have something in common. We’re both in film, but I’m not in the same kind of film world you’re in.’ He just laughed,” Mr. MacKinnon said. Later Mr. Magnotta confided that he was worried about his p*rn career haunting him forever and asked for advice about getting into “legitimate” movies.

Then about five days ago, he invited Mr. MacKinnon up to his apartment as they sat on the front step, where residents gather on warm nights to drink beer. “He said, ‘You’ve never been to my apartment, why don’t you come up?’ And I didn’t, thank God.”

Article content

Richard Payette was running his air conditioner full blast Wednesday to fend off the smell coming from Apt. 208 across the hall. He said he never got so much as a hello out of his neighbour, but nothing in recent days suggested crimes were being committed a few metres away.

“Believe me, if there were screams or anything I would have notified somebody, but he was quiet as a mouse, this guy,” he said. Looking out his back window, he had recently noticed the suitcase among the garbage bags in the back alley. “I was telling myself maybe I should pick that suitcase up. You know, one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t, but it looked too new to be in the garbage.”

The online video shows a naked male, tied to a bed frame, being attacked with both an ice pick and a kitchen knife, according to the description on a website called Best Gore. The victim is stabbed, has his throat slashed and is later decapitated and dismembered. The video was posted on Best Gore on May 25, but it is unclear when, or where, it was filmed.

“1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick is without a doubt the sickest thing you will have ever seen in your entire life,” Best Gore writes.

Article content

At the end of the video, a photo is shown of a person dressed in a purple hooded jacket or sweater, leaning over while holding what appears to be an ice pick. His or her face is mostly obscured — the only details that can be made out are the individual’s light skin, dark hair of cheekbone length and a poster for the movie Casablanca on the wall.

Cmdr. Lafrenière said police had not recovered all of the victim’s body and have not been able to identify him. In addition to the torso in the suitcase and hand and foot found in Ottawa, other body parts were found at the apartment building, he said.

“It’s sick in the head,” he said of the crime. “I’ve been talking to investigators who have been doing this for more than 30 years, and they have never seen anything like that.”

One of Mr. Magnotta’s relatives told the Ottawa Citizen the family spent Wednesday night close to the phone in case Canada’s highest-profile fugitive calls while on the lam. “He hurt us when he was younger and we haven’t been in contact with him in a while,” the relative said. ”We heard about all of this on the news and then the police called and asked us to let them know if he calls us.”

National Post, with files from Armina Ligaya, Allison Cross and Vidya Kauri and Postmedia News
• Email: ghamilton@nationalpost.com | Twitter: grayhamilton

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Article content