A porn actor is wanted in a gruesome case of dismembered body parts that were mailed to different places including the headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada, police said.
Luka Rocco Magnotta, 29, is wanted for homicide, Montreal police said on Wednesday at a news conference.
According to an official close to the investigation, Magnotta worked as a porn actor and there is video of the crime. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly about those details.
Magnotta, believed to originally be from Toronto, was renting an apartment in a -working-class Montreal neighborhood. It was behind that building that police found a man’s torso in a suitcase in a heap of garbage on Tuesday, police said. That same day, a foot was found in a package mailed to Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa, and a hand found at postal warehouse in the Canadian capital. The package with the hand was addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada. Early testing shows the three body parts come from the same man, police said.
Police in masks combed through the blood-soaked Montreal studio apartment on Wednesday. A bloodstained mattress remained there after they left.
“For most of the officers that were there all night long this is the kind of crime scene they’ve never seen in their career,” Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafreniere said.
Lafreniere said they are investigating the possibility that other body parts might have been mailed. He said the suspect and the victim knew each other and the mailed body parts were not linked to organized crime.
The packages with the foot and the hand had been mailed to Ottawa from Montreal. It was not clear why.
Police discovered the severed foot after Jenni Bryne, a top political adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, opened a bloodstained box at Conservative Party headquarters on Tuesday.
Police said the package was addressed to the Conservative Party of Canada and not to a specific person.
Eric Schorer, the manager of the building where the suspect lived, said Magnotta had lived there for about four months, but had not been seen around in a while. He said there were never any complaints about noise in the unit and that Magnotta passed a credit test to rent there.
An online video showing a man that looks like Magnotta shows him committing violent acts against kittens. The video contains at least one photograph made available by Montreal police on Wednesday that identified the man as Magnotta.
For nearly two years, the name has been notorious among animal-rights activists looking for a man who tortured and killed cats and posted the videos online.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese