Student identified as victim of body-parts killer

OTTAWA - Montreal police on Friday identified Jun Lin, a 33-year-old Chinese student at Montreal's Concordia University, as the victim of suspected body-parts killer Luka Rocco Magnotta, now on Interpol's wanted-persons list.

Lin, who was born in Wuhan, capital of the Central China's Hubei Province, arrived in Montreal last July to begin his studies. A missing person's report posted on the Montreal Chinese consulate- general's Chinese-language website said friends and family had lost contact with Lin on May 24 -- around the same time police believe Magnotta killed a man inside his second-floor apartment in west-end Montreal.

A headless, limbless torso was discovered in a suitcase not far from the rundown apartment building on Tuesday, the same day parts of the same body (a hand and a foot) were mailed to two of Canada's major political parties in Ottawa.

Montreal police said Lin knew Magnotta, and there are reports the two men dated.

Magnotta, a 29-year-old, Toronto-born onetime gay model, escort, stripper and porn actor, faces charges of first-degree murder and committing an indignity to human remains.

The Chinese consulate-general in Montreal issued a French- language statement Friday condemning the murderer who committed a "horrible and hateful crime using exceptionally cruel methods with extremely harmful effects," while extending its deepest condolences and sympathy to Lin's family as it is trying to bring his relatives to Montreal.

The Chinese consulate also reiterated what police have said about the case not involving organized crime targeting a particular ethnic group, but still called on Chinese citizens and students in Montreal to be vigilant.

Police believe a 10-minute online "1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick" video featuring the New Order song "True Faith" used in the 2000 horror film, American Psycho, and posted on the Edmonton-based "Best Gore " website on May 25, showing a man using an ice pick to kill what appears to be an Asian man and later dismembering, sexually defiling and seemingly cannibalizing the body constitutes videotaped evidence of the grisly murder.

Montreal police said Magnotta flew out of Montreal on May 26 and is believed to be in France. However, Montreal police warned the slender and boyish-looking suspect, who changed his name from Eric Clinton Newman and also goes by the name of Vladimir Romanov, could have disguised himself as a woman and be wearing a wig -- an accessory his Montreal neighbors had often seen him don.

Meanwhile, Britain's tabloid, The Sun, referred on Friday to encounters its reporters had with the "baby-faced weirdo" last December after the newspaper ran a story about online footage of kittens being suffocated and fed to a python. Magnotta, who has been linked to the videotaped acts of animal cruelty, showed up unannounced at The Sun's London offices to deny he was responsible.

Soon afterward, the newspaper received an email believed to be from Magnotta, which read "next time you hear from me it will be in a movie I am producing, that will have some humans in it, not just pussys [sic]," with a smiley face attached. "Once you kill, and taste blood, its [sic] impossible to stop."

The Sun said it contacted Scotland Yard about the python-eating- kitten video and the email message, but were told by London police that the case was "outside their jurisdiction."

On Thursday, Interpol issued a Red Notice for Magnotta, whom Montreal police have described as 1.78 meters in height, weighing 61 kg, with black hair and blue eyes, which has been circulated in Arabic, English, French and Spanish to its 190 member countries.

In 2005, Magnotta was convicted of fraud in Canada. On Friday, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported that he was also previously accused, under his birth name of Eric Clinton Newman, of stealing 17,000 Canadian dollars (about $16,400) from a woman and sexually assaulting her.