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| Luka Rocco Magnotta, right, and Karla Homolka |
Montreal police have issued a Canada-wide warrant for Luka Rocco Magnotta — a man with a disturbing online profile who is now accused of murder after the grisly discovery of a torso, whose severed foot and hand were mailed to the Conservative and Liberal party offices in Ottawa.
Police also said that the suspect at large in the gruesome murder and dismemberment ‘could have been a good friend’ of Karla Homolka — though in 2007, Magnotta denied he dated the notorious sex killer.
A video purporting to show Magnotta stabbing a man repeatedly on a bed has been circulating online and was sent to the Montreal Gazette. The Gazette has been unable to confirm that this is the same video that police received. The Gazette has not been able to confirm whether the video was staged.
Police have obtained a disturbing video of the crime and are taking steps to have it removed from a website where it was posted, the Gazette has confirmed.
Investigators are seeking the public’s aid in locating the 29-year-old Magnotta, who may also go by the names Eric Clinton, Kirk Newman or Vladimir Romanov.
“We really need the public’s help on this,” said Montreal police Cmdr. Ian Lafreniere. The assistance of residents in the area where the body was discovered had also helped the investigation advance quickly.
Magnotta is said to be a stripper and a porn star. The suspect was not previously known to police, Lafreniere said.
One of 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. 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,” the relative said.
A headless, limbless torso was discovered in a suitcase with a heap of garbage Tuesday at Place Lucy and Decarie Blvd. in Montreal’s Snowden neighbourhood. At about the same time Tuesday, an employee of Conservative Party of Canada headquarters in Ottawa opened a package that contained a severed foot. A second parcel containing a hand was later located at a Canada Post sorting facility in Ottawa — that package apparently was destined for the Liberal party’s headquarters.
On Wednesday, Ottawa police linked the severed appendages to the torso and transferred the case to Montreal Police.
Montreal Police focused their attention on a second floor apartment in a building on Decarie near where the torso was found Tuesday.
“The suspect and victim knew each other,” Lafreniere told reporters Wednesday. “It isn’t linked to organized crime.”
The tenant of the building is being sought by police, said residents of the building.
The apartment smelled terrible and it appears the homicide may have been carried out on a bed in the small apartment. A reporter saw a mattress stained with blood Wednesday afternoon.
Area residents also said police believe the torso belongs to an Asian man who is apparently missing. The police have been showing them a photo of the Asian man on Wednesday.
Residents described Magnotta as a very quiet man who kept to himself. The building’s superintendent joked about it.
“It’s like you see in the movies. It’s always the good neighbour. It’s the cliche,” he said.
Residents of the building said they believe Magnotta worked in the gay porn industry.
One said the only time Magnotta spoke to him was about five days ago. He asked the man, an actor, how he could get started in “legitimate” movies.
Residents of the building said they also saw Magnotta wearing a bizarre wig days ago and that they commented on his strange appearance.
Employees at a Canada Post office just a few blocks away from where the suspect lives said the police have not questioned them about the possibility of body parts being mailed from their location. Both employees were aware that a torso had been found near their location. But they said no one had asked them about the case until two reporters asked them about the strange story Wednesday afternoon.
Magnotta has also been the subject of an international social media campaign for allegedly killing kittens, videotaping their deaths and posting the videos online. Animal rights activists around the world mobilized to identify him and offered a $5,000 reward to bring him to justice.
The online efforts to find him may have fuelled some of Magnotta’s online writings defending his reputation and complaining about “cyber stalking” and “media propaganda” on his website www.Luka-Magnotta.net.
“I do not feel the necessity to address the specific accusations made in the posts since they are so far from my character that responding to them will give them more credibility than they will ever hold. If the readers of these posts can look behind the storyline that has been created, they will see that there is no reference to a concrete transaction or event that has taken place with any specific person in which I have committed any illegal activity,” he wrote on one of his websites.
“Many hoax websites are created using my image and name, posing as me to seem more believable in respect to the type of audience these website have, I feel I don’t need to list them specifically but people need not be told, not to believe what they read and to take it as fact,” he write in one article entitled “Cyber Stalking,” posted with a photo of him shirtless and reclining.
Police have not released the victim’s name. An autopsy is expected to reveal how the man was killed and whether he was dead before being dismembered, police said.
The autopsy will be performed in the coming days but so far “all indications are that these are from the same body,” a communications agent for Montreal police told the Gazette on Wednesday morning, citing a preliminary report. “We are still waiting for final results.” She spoke on condition her name wouldn’t be published.
