In May 2012, Jun Lin (December 30, 1978 – May 24/25, 2012), a university student, was fatally stabbed and dismembered in Montreal, Canada, by Luka Rocco Magnotta, who then mailed Lin's hands and feet to elementary schools and federal political party offices.
After a video depicting the murder was posted online, Magnotta fled Canada, becoming the subject of an Interpol Red Notice and prompting an international manhunt.
Jun Lin, also known as Justin Lin, was born on December 30, 1978, and came from Wuhan.
1982
Luka Rocco Magnotta (born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman) was born on July 24, 1982, in Scarborough, Ontario, the son of Anna Yourkin and Donald Newman.
He was the first of their three children.
According to him, his mother was obsessed with cleanliness, would routinely lock her children out of the house, and once put her children's pet rabbits out in the cold to freeze to death.
1994
His father was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1994, after which he divorced Magnotta's mother, leading Magnotta to move in with his grandmother, Phyllis.
Magnotta attended I. E. Weldon Secondary School in Lindsay.
Later on, having been diagnosed with schizophrenia, he received a disability allowance; he supplemented that source of income with prostitution.
2003
Besides his work as an escort, he began in 2003 to appear in gay pornographic videos.
He also worked as a stripper.
2005
He appeared as a pin-up model in a 2005 issue of Toronto's fab magazine, using the pseudonym Jimmy.
Although some media labeled him a "porn star" after the murder, further reporting showed that his work as a porn actor had been "anything but prolific or high-profile" as he had shot less than a dozen videos over a five-year period.
A staff member of the Internet Adult Film Database commented, upon reviewing Magnotta's output, that "not even the porn industry was much interested in him".
He did not have much success at modeling either.
2006
He legally changed his name from Eric Clinton Kirk Newman to Luka Rocco Magnotta on August 12, 2006.
2007
Magnotta declared bankruptcy in March 2007, owing $17,000 in various debts.
The bankruptcy was fully discharged in December 2007.
In 2007, Magnotta was an unsuccessful competitor in OUTtv's reality series COVERguy.
One such rumour emerged in 2007, claiming Magnotta was in a relationship with Karla Homolka, a high-profile Canadian convicted murderer, which Magnotta denied in a subsequent interview with the Toronto Sun.
2008
He had multiple cosmetic surgeries, and auditioned for the Slice network television show Plastic Makes Perfect in February 2008.
Magnotta created many profiles on various Internet social media and discussion forums over several years to plant a variety of claims about himself.
Among other things, he purported to be a successful model and a prominent porn star.
Police stated that Magnotta set up at least 70 Facebook pages and 20 websites under different names.
Magnotta would use these pages and multiple false online identities to "sing his own praises" (one page called him "The new James Dean"), attack people he disliked, or spread false information about himself as an effort to attract attention.
2010
He had come to Canada in 2010 with the intention of starting a new life there and to study computer engineering.
2011
Lin had been studying in Montreal since July 2011, previously attending Tyark College, a language school, and had worked part-time as a convenience store clerk in Pointe-Saint-Charles.
2012
In June 2012, he was arrested in an internet café in Berlin.
In 2012, he was registered as an international student and an undergraduate in the engineering and computer science faculty at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.
He moved into a Griffintown-area apartment with a roommate on May 1, 2012.
Lin, who was gay, had been at some point married to a woman, though they later divorced.
In Canada, he had lived for a time with another Chinese man.
Lin had never revealed his sexual orientation to his family in China, even though they had met his boyfriend.
Shortly before the murder, Lin's relationship with his partner had ended because Lin was experiencing pressure from his family to "settle down" and marry a woman.
After breaking up with his boyfriend, Lin had been using Grindr and other web applications to meet with men.
Magnotta later said that they had met after Lin had responded to his Craigslist ad proposing sex and bondage.
During the murder investigation in 2012, Montreal police announced that the pair had dated, but soon retracted the statement, and acknowledged that they had no evidence to corroborate the claim.
2014
In December 2014, after eight days of deliberations, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder.
Magnotta was given a mandatory life sentence and 19 years for other charges, to be served concurrently.
Magnotta was previously sought by animal rights groups for uploading videos of himself killing kittens.
