OK, so let's set the scene. It's May 29th, 2012.
It's a Tuesday. And, you know, you have to imagine
the environment at the Conservative Party of
Canada headquarters in Ottawa. Right. It's probably
the most boring place you can imagine. Totally.
It's all gray suits, the hum of photocopiers,
phones ringing with, I don't know, donor requests.
It's sterile. It's bureaucratic. That's pure
technocracy. And then a package arrives, just
a standard cardboard box for the mailroom or,
you know, the receptionist. Nothing special about
it on the outside. But when it's opened. Well,
the first thing that hits everyone is the smell.
And that's never a good sign. Not at all. Because
inside, under the packing material, it's not
some policy paper or a box of campaign buttons.
It's a human left foot decomposing. I mean, just
stop and think about the sheer cognitive dissonance
of that moment. You're in this hyper -controlled,
abstract world of politics, and you are suddenly
face -to -face with the most visceral, biological,
rotting reality imaginable. The police are called,
obviously. The place goes into lockdown. The
hazmat team shows up because, you know, this
is post -9 -11. The immediate fear is, what,
anthrax? Some kind of chemical attack. Yeah,
they're not thinking murder victim. They're thinking
terrorism. But while all this chaos is unfolding
at the Conservative headquarters, the story splits.
Because at that very same time, across town at
a Canada Post sorting facility, a postal worker
flags a suspicious package. And this one is addressed
to the Liberal Party of Canada. Inside. A human
left hand. And that's the moment the police realize
this isn't some gruesome, isolated prank or a
medical mix -up. This is coordinated. This is
intentional. You could almost call it a campaign.
It's a broadcast. I think that's the word we
have to use from the jump. Most violent crime.
You know, it's messy. It's hidden. The killer
tries to cover their tracks, clean the scene,
hide the body. This was the absolute opposite
of that. The perpetrator, who we quickly learned
was Luca Magnata, was using the national mail
system, an arm of the state itself, to make sure
his crime was unavoidable. He was forcing the
system to deliver his horror show to its own
doorstep. So today we're going to take a deep
dive into the murder of Jen Lin. And look. i
know almost everyone calls this the luca magnata
case if you watch the documentaries if you look
it up online his name is always in the title
which is exactly what he wanted exactly And as
we went through all the source material for this,
the court transcripts, the police reports, the
psychiatric assessments, it just becomes so clear
that focusing on Magnata is actually playing
into his hands. He orchestrated this entire thing,
this whole horrific performance, just so we would
all be sitting here seeing his name. It puts
us in a really tricky position, doesn't it? Because
to understand what happened, we have to analyze
him, the architect of it all. But we have to
be so careful not to mythologize him or turn
him into some kind of supervillain. Yeah, because
the why and the how here are, I mean, they're
genuinely fascinating in a really dark way. This
is, you could argue, one of the first truly modern
social media murders. It unfolds physically in
Montreal, Paris and Berlin, but its real stage
was the Internet. A stage he built for himself
over years. But before we get into the international
manhunt and frankly. the bizarre cinematic elements
of his trial we have to ground this story because
while government workers in ottawa were reeling
from these packages a group of friends in montreal
were getting more and more worried their friend
was missing we need to talk about jinlin we absolutely
do because he is so often reduced to just that
one label the victim a footnote in his own story
But he was a real person with a complex life.
He was 33 years old from Wuhan, China. He'd come
to Montreal in 2010 and he wasn't just, you know,
drifting. He was a student at Concordia University,
an undergraduate in engineering and computer
science. This was a smart, driven guy. And by
all accounts, a really kind person. His friends
called him Justin. The witness statements paint
this picture of a man who was, well, the sources
use the word romantic. He was optimistic, looking
for love, but also pretty lonely. You can see
why. He's juggling full time studies, a part
time job at a convenience store and just trying
to figure out life in a new country, a new language.
That's incredibly isolating. And on top of all
that, there was this other huge pressure in his
life. Jun Lin was gay in Montreal. He was out
and trying to live that life. He had a boyfriend
for a while, but his family back in Wuhan had
absolutely no idea. That's a heavy burden to
carry. He was living this kind of fractured existence.
The sources mentioned he'd actually been married
to a woman back in China and they divorced. Right.
And at 33, the cultural pressure from his parents
to, you know, settle down, find another wife,
have children, continue the family line. That
was immense. It was a constant weight on him.
It's that classic double life story that so many
immigrants and people in the LGBTQ community
face. You have this authentic self you're trying
to build in a new, more accepting place, but
you're still so deeply tethered to the expectations
from back home. In fact, the source material
suggests he had recently ended a relationship
with his boyfriend, and it was specifically because
of this family pressure. He was feeling lost.
He was feeling torn. So he was vulnerable. That's
the key word here. He was looking for a stable,
loving relationship. But in the meantime, he
was just looking for connection. He was on apps
like Grind. He was checking personal ads on Craigslist.
Which is just normal. It's how people meet in
the modern world. It's not some deviant behavior.
It's just dating. But it was that search for
a simple human connection that tragically...
put him in the path of a predator, a predator
who wasn't looking for a partner, but for a prop.
OK, so let's pivot to that predator, to Luca
Rocco Magnata. Even the name, it's a stage name.
It's complete fabrication. He was born Eric Clinton
Kirk Newman in Scarborough, Ontario, in 1982.
And if you weren't to write a backstory for a
future killer, I mean, his childhood would be
a textbook example of developmental trauma. It's
just chaotic. The reports describe his mother
as having this like pathological obsession with
cleanliness to the point where she would lock
her own children out of the house for hours just
to keep it sterile. There's one story about her
putting the family's pet rabbits outside in the
winter to freeze to death because they were dirty.
And then his father was diagnosed with schizophrenia
in the mid -90s, which led to a very messy divorce.
And Magnata himself was actually diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia as a teenager. So there's
a real history of mental illness there, which...
you know, becomes central to the trial later
on. It does, but we have to be careful how we
frame that because his actions show a level of
organization that complicates that diagnosis
significantly. Right. And this is where we have
to tackle one of the big myths that came out
of the media coverage in 2012, the porn star
killer headline. It created this image of him
as some kind of dark, glamorous figure from the
adult film world. When the reality was, well,
it was just sad. Porn star implies some level
of success, a career. Magnata had none of that.
He appeared in like maybe fewer than a dozen
very low budget obscure videos over a five year
span. Industry insiders were interviewed for
some of the reports and they were not kind. They
basically said he was awkward on camera. He had
bad skin. He just wasn't good at it. The consensus
was that not even the porn industry was particularly
interested in him. It was a failure. A reject?
He actually declared bankruptcy in 2007, owing
something like $17 ,000. He couldn't even make
it in the one industry he thought would bring
him fame. And that rejection seems to be the
engine for everything that follows. There's that
story about him auditioning for a reality show
called Pinup Boys. He was apparently convinced
he was going to be the breakout star. And he
was cut almost immediately. And you see this
pattern. When legitimate fame, even fame in a
fringe industry, rejected him, he decided to
pursue infamy instead. If the world wouldn't
give him a platform, he was going to build his
own. This is where the internet fabrication begins.
And the scale of it is just, it's staggering.
It's a full -time job. The police uncovered over
70 Facebook pages he had created. 70 for himself.
All for himself. And more than 20 websites. All
dedicated to promoting the myth of Luca Magnata.
So what was on these pages? Just photos of himself?
Photos, yes, but also just manufactured hype.
He would create... dozens of fake profiles, sock
puppet accounts, and then use them to have conversations
with himself in the comments. Oh, wow. So he'd
post a picture and then have five of his fake
accounts chime in with you look amazing or you're
the next James Dean. That's literally it. He
was trying to create this digital illusion of
popularity and stardom, hoping that if he faked
it enough online, it would somehow manifest in
the real world. It's so pathetic on one level,
but also deeply disturbing. And he wasn't just
pumping his own tires. He was actively manufacturing
scandal to get attention. Which brings us to
the Carla Homolka rumor. This is just next level
manipulation. For listeners who might not know,
Carla Homolka is one of Canada's most notorious
killers. She and her husband, Paul Bernardo,
were the Ken and Barbie killers. She is arguably
one of the most hated women in the country. Her
name is pure tabloid gold. And Magnata knew that.
He knew it was radioactive. So around 2007, he
starts planting rumors on online forums that
he is dating Carla Homolka. He even poorly photoshopped
some pictures of them together. And his goal
wasn't just to start a rumor, right? He had a
multi -step plan. Exactly. He knew the tabloids
wouldn't be able to resist a story like that.
And sure enough... The Toronto Sun newspaper
reached out to him for a comment. And that was
the whole point. He then gives them this big
dramatic interview where he tearfully denies
the rumors that he himself started. It's genius
in a diabolical way. He created the fire just
so he could be the one to call the fire department
and get his name and picture in the paper for
putting it out. It's the ultimate any press is
good press strategy. But this need for attention
started to take a much darker turn well before
Jen Lynn's murder. We have to talk about the
kitten video. We do. This is the crucial precursor.
In 2010, a video titled One Boy, Two Kittens
appears online. It shows a young man whose face
is obscured putting two small kittens into a
vacuum seal bag and then substituting them with
a vacuum cleaner. It's just horrific, gratuitous
cruelty. But the key part of the story is what
happened next. The Internet saw this and, well,
the Internet got angry. Very angry. This is the
whole story that the documentary Don't Frack
with Cats is about. A group of ordinary people,
just animal lovers on Facebook, formed a group
to find the person in that video. They became
amateur Internet sleuths. And they were incredibly
good at it. They weren't police, but they used
digital forensics. They analyzed the model of
the vacuum cleaner to figure out it was sold
in North America. They looked at the design of
the electrical outlets in the background. They
even enhanced a reflection in a shiny object
in the room to get a blurry glimpse of the person
filming. And through this painstaking work, they
identified the killer as Luca Magnata long before
he was on the radar of law enforcement for anything
like this. But here's the twist. He loved it.
He knew they were hunting him. He started interacting
with them. taunting them. He'd create new profiles
and join their Facebook groups to throw them
off the scent or leave cryptic clues. It was
a game to him. Yeah. And it validated his strategy.
The kittens were props, but the violence worked.
It got him an audience, an engaged, obsessive
audience. And once you have an audience that's
hooked on horror, you can't just keep doing the
same trick. You have to escalate. The stakes
have to get higher. Kittens weren't enough anymore.
He needed a human victim to get the level of
fame he craved. Which brings us to that apartment
on Decary Boulevard in Montreal, May of 2012.
He's been posting ads on Craigslist for a few
weeks, looking for people to participate in filming.
And on the night of May 24th, the apartment building
surveillance cameras capture him walking into
the lobby with Jun Lin. That footage is just,
it's so chilling because of how normal it looks.
It's just two guys walking into a building. But
you're watching it knowing that only one of them
is ever going to walk out. Junlin is last seen
alive on that footage. The very next day, May
25th, the video appears online. It's titled One
Lunatic, One Ice Pick, and it's uploaded to a
gore website called bestgore .com. Now, we are
absolutely not going to describe the graphic
contents of that video. There is no need. It's
monstrous. But what we do need to talk about.
from an evidence perspective, is the production
value. Right. This wasn't some shaky, frantic
cell phone video shot in a panic. This was a
production. It's an 11 -minute video, but the
forensic analysis showed it was edited together
from hours of raw footage. It has a soundtrack.
The song is True Faith by the band New Order.
He had props. There's a poster for the movie
Casablanca prominently displayed on the wall
behind the bed. He clearly set the scene. He
thought about lighting, about camera angles.
This was a film set. And there's a detail from
the investigation that is maybe the most disturbing
proof of premeditation I have ever heard. The
opening shot of the video. The opening shot.
The video begins with footage of a different
man already tied to the bed, writhing. For a
long time, the assumption was that this was Jun
Lin in the moments before his murder. But it
wasn't him. It wasn't him. Police were eventually
able to identify and find that man. He was alive.
He had been on a date with Magnata about a week
earlier. So what happened? Magnata drugged him,
tied him up, and filmed him. But for whatever
reason, maybe the man woke up. Maybe Magnata
lost his nerve. He let him go. So that was a
dress rehearsal. It was a complete dry run. He
was testing his methods. He was checking his
camera angles. He was practicing. It proves beyond
any doubt that what happened to Jun Lin wasn't
a spontaneous act of psychosis. It was the fulfillment
of a script that had been written weeks in advance.
The murder happens. The video goes online. The
Internet sleuths who are tracking him for the
kitten videos. They just explode. They're flooding
the Montreal police with calls saying it's him.
We told you he finally did it. But while all
this is happening online, Magnata is in the apartment
cleaning up or well, cleaning up isn't quite
the right word. He's dismembering the body. He
packs the torso into a suitcase and just dumps
it in the alley behind his building. A janitor
for the building actually found that suitcase
on May 25th, the day after the murder. He noticed
it because of the smell on the flies, but because
it was a busy week for garbage collection, it
just sat there. It wasn't officially discovered
and opened for several more days. Unbelievable.
So by the time the police finally get a warrant
and breach Magnata's apartment on May 29th, he's
long gone. The apartment is almost totally empty,
scrubbed clean. Almost. They found traces of
blood on the mattress, in the fridge, on a table,
but he also left something else, a message. In
the closet. written in red ink on the inside
of the door. It said, if you don't like the reflection,
don't look in the mirror. I don't care. It's
so theatrical. It feels like a line from a bad
movie. It's him talking directly to his audience,
to the internet sleuths, to the police, to us
right now. He's breaking the fourth wall. He's
basically saying, I know you're watching this.
I know you're horrified, but you can't look away.
You're part of the show. You're the reflection.
It's pure, uncut narcissism. So he flees. On
May 26th, just two days after the murder, he's
on a plane to Paris. And this is when he initiates
the next phase of his performance. The mailing
of the limbs. We mentioned the first two packages,
the foot and the hand, sent to the political
parties in Ottawa. That's what puts the case
on the national stage. But he wasn't done. No.
About a week later, on June 5th, two more packages
show up. This time on the other side of the country,
in Vancouver. And the targets are even more disturbing.
They were sent to two schools. St. George's School.
a private boys' school, and False Creek Elementary.
That's a whole other level. Sending body parts
to political parties, as grotesque as it is,
is a kind of political statement. Sending them
to elementary schools, that's just pure psychological
terrorism. He's aiming for maximum public fear.
He's targeting children, the most vulnerable
people in society, to guarantee that the story
leads every newscast. And the notes he included
were just. Oh! They were taunts. One of them
had a twisted little poem. Roses are red, violets
are blue, the police will need dental records
to identify you, bitch. It's so childish and
mocking. He's playing the role of the Joker,
the cartoon supervillain who's always one step
ahead of the police, leaving clues and riddles.
He wants to be a character. And for a brief period,
it worked. The whole world was watching. Interpol
issued a red notice, which is their highest level
international alert. His face was on the front
page of the Interpol website on every news channel.
He got his wish. He was famous. So let's follow
the trail of the manhunt. He lands in Paris.
He checks into a budget hotel in a suburb called
Bagnolet. The French police are actually on to
him pretty quickly. They managed to trace his
cell phone to that hotel. But they just miss
him. By a matter of hours. By the time they raid
the room, he's gone. But he was sloppy. He left
things behind. Pornographic magazines, an air
sickness bag from his flight from Canada. But
the most important thing he left behind was the
name he used on the hotel register. He checked
in using an alias. The name was Kirk Trammell.
Trammell. Now, that name is the absolute skeleton
key to this entire case. It's the piece of evidence
that unravels his entire defense later on. So,
just... Put a pin in that name for a minute.
Okay, so he slips out of Paris. He gets on a
bus and travels across the border into Germany,
heading for Berlin. He's running out of money
at this point. He's on the run. And on June 4th,
Emma wanders into an internet cafe in the Neukölln
district of Berlin. So think about this. You're
the most wanted man on the planet. Your face
is everywhere. What do you do? Do you try to
contact someone for help? Do you look for a way
to get a new identity? No. You do what Luca Magnata
would do. You sit down at a computer and you
Google yourself. It's unbelievable. He just sat
there for hours clicking on news articles about
the international manhunt for Luca Magnata. He
was basking in it. He was drinking in his own
notoriety. And that is what got him caught. The
owner of the Internet Cafe recognized him, not
because he looked suspicious, but because his
face was literally the main image on the front
page of the news website he was reading. So the
owner walks outside. calmly flags down a passing
police car and tells them who's inside. The police
go in. Magnata tries to give them a couple of
fake names at first, but then he seems to realize
the performance is over. He just looks at them
and says, you got me. It wasn't a confession
of guilt. It felt more like a director calling
cut. The show is over. Yeah, it was a curtain
call. So they put him on a Canadian military
transport plane because no commercial airline
wanted the liability of flying him back. And
the case moves to the trial phase. And this is
where the deep dive has to get a little more
technical. Because this was not a whodunit trial.
Not at all. Magnata, through his lawyer, admitted
to all the acts. He admitted to killing Lin Lin,
to dismembering him, to mailing the parts. The
question for the jury wasn't if he did it. The
question was about his state of mind when he
did it. The defense's argument was not criminally
responsible or NCR. And we should probably clarify
what NCR means under Canadian law, because it's
not the same as the insanity plea you see in
American movies. It's a very specific legal and
medical standard. Right. To be found NCR, the
defense has to prove that at the time of the
crime, the person was suffering from a mental
disorder so severe that it made them incapable
of either appreciating the nature and quality
of their act or knowing that it was morally and
legally wrong. So a simple way to think about
it is. If you kill someone because you're having
a psychotic delusion that they are a shapeshifting
demon about to eat your soul, you might be NCR.
You don't know that what you're doing is wrong
in a rational sense. But if you kill someone
because you want to be famous or because you
want their money, you know it's wrong. You're
just choosing to do it anyway. That's just first
degree murder. Exactly. And that was the battleground
of this trial. Was he a man in the grips of a
profound psychosis or a calculating narcissist
executing a plan? The defense brought in their
own forensic psychiatrists, a Dr. Watts and a
Dr. Allard, and they both testified that they
had diagnosed Magnata with schizophrenia. They
pointed to his family history, his father's diagnosis,
his own diagnosis as a teen. They talked about
his claims of hearing voices, of being controlled
by a figure he called Manny, who was forcing
him to do these things. They argued he was in
a full -blown psychotic break. But the Crown
prosecution... They weren't buying a word of
it. Not for a second. Their expert psychiatrists,
Dr. Chamberlain and Dr. Paris, came to a very
different conclusion. They agreed he had mental
health issues, but they diagnosed him with a
cluster of personality disorders. Specifically,
narcissistic personality disorder. histrionic
personality disorder, and antisocial personality
disorder. And this is the absolute crucial distinction
in the whole case. A personality disorder is
not a psychotic illness. It's not a break from
reality. If you have narcissistic personality
disorder, you're not hallucinating. You know
right from wrong. You just have an inflated sense
of your own importance, a desperate need for
admiration, and a complete lack of empathy for
others. So the Crown's argument was that he wasn't
crazy. He was just evil. and that he was organized,
he was lucid, and that the entire murder was
him acting out a pre -written script. And this
is where we take out that pin we put in the name
Kirk Trammell. Because the prosecution's masterstroke
was connecting the entire crime to one of Magnata's
favorite movies, the 1992 thriller Basic Instinct.
When I first read this part of the trial transcript,
my jaw was on the floor. It sounds like something
from a movie, not a real legal argument. It sounds
unbelievable until the prosecutor, Louis Boutilier,
starts laying out the evidence piece by piece.
And it's devastating. OK, so let's walk through
it. Point one, the alias. In the movie, Sharon
Stone plays a seductive, manipulative novelist
who is a murder suspect. Her name is Catherine
Trammell. OK, so Magnati uses her last name for
his alias when he's on the run in Paris. That
could be a coincidence. It could be. But then
point two. The voice in his head. Magnata told
his psychiatrist that this person named Manny
was the one who controlled him, who told him
to kill Jun Lin. And in the movie. In Basic Instinct,
Catherine Trammell's fiancé, who she murdered
before the movie begins, was named Manny Vasquez.
Okay, wow. That's getting pretty specific. It
gets more specific. Point three, the murder weapon.
The ice pick. The movie is famous for its ice
pick murder scene. The title of Magnata's video
was One Lunatic. One ice pick. But here's the
picker. Magnata didn't actually use an ice pick.
The weapon he used to stab John Lynn was a screwdriver
that he had bought at a local hardware store.
So that breaks the pattern. Right. Because what
the police found in his apartment was a can of
silver spray paint. And forensic analysis confirmed
that he had painted the handle of the screwdriver
silver to make it look like an ice pick on camera.
That is the single most damning piece of evidence.
You do not stop in the middle of a psychotic
break to do arts and crafts. You don't paint
your props to match a movie if you're not in
your right mind. Precisely. The prosecutor argued
that this one act proved planning, deliberation,
and a conscious effort to stage the murder to
mimic the film. It's incompatible with the defense's
theory of a disorganized, chaotic mind. And there
was one more parallel, wasn't there? With the
opening scene of the movie. Yes. The very first
scene in Basic Instinct shows a blonde woman,
seen from behind, straddling a man who is tied
to a bed. She then murders him with an ice pick
during sex. Magnata's video visually mimics that
exact scene and dynamic. He wasn't just taking
inspiration from the movie. He was trying to
recreate it. He wanted to be Catherine Tramiel,
the brilliant... Beautiful killer who outsmarts
everyone and gets away with it. This evidence
just completely shredded the NCR defense. It
showed the jury that the voices and delusions
he was describing to the doctors weren't symptoms
of schizophrenia. They were plot points he was
plagiarizing from a Hollywood script. The jury
deliberated for eight days, which is a long time.
But when they came back, the verdict was decisive.
Guilty. On all charges, including first -degree
murder. Which in Canada means it was planned
and deliberate. It carries an automatic life
sentence with no possibility of parole for 25
years. It was really the only verdict that made
sense, given the evidence. The legal system,
in the end, worked. But the cost of getting to
that verdict... We have to talk about the collateral
damage, especially for the family of Jun Lin.
His father, Di Ren Lin, flew from China to attend
the trial in Montreal. He sat in that courtroom
every single day, listening through a translator
to the most horrific details about his son's
death. There were several moments during the
testimony where the evidence being presented
was so graphic, the description so vile, that
he literally collapsed in the courtroom. He had
to be physically carried out by court officers.
I can't even imagine that pain. His victim impact
statement at the end of the trial is one of the
most powerful and heartbreaking documents I've
ever read. He didn't rail against Magnata. He
just spoke about his son. He said, in our hearts,
we are crying out. Our child, our boy, we come
to take you home. It just cut through all the
noise about the killer, the internet, the movie
plots, and it brought it back to the simple,
profound tragedy of a father who had lost his
only son. And the community did try to honor
him. Concordia University, his school, set up
a scholarship and an award in Jin Lin's name
so his legacy would be about academic achievement
and helping other students, not just about how
he died. Which is so important. But then as a
society, we kind of stumbled because we have
to talk about the Newsmaker of the Year controversy.
Yeah. At the end of 2012, the Canadian press,
which is the national news agency, holds a poll
among newspaper editors to decide the Newsmaker
of the Year. And they chose Luca Magnata. Now,
their defense was purely journalistic. They argued
that the title Newsmaker is not an award. It's
not Man of the Year. It's just a neutral recognition
of the person or story that most dominated the
headlines. And technically, they were right.
He was the biggest news story. But it just feels
so wrong. It feels like handing a trophy to the
guy who did all of this specifically to get that
kind of recognition. It was a complete validation
of his entire life strategy. It sent the message
that if your crime is shocking enough, if it's
theatrical enough, we will reward you with the
very thing you crave, a place in the history
books. It led to a huge public backlash and a
lot of soul searching within Canadian journalism.
And he really was a prototype, wasn't he? He's
often seen as one of the first of this new terrifying
breed of killer. The online broadcaster. Absolutely.
We've seen it happen since with killers who live
stream their attacks on Facebook or Twitch or
who upload manifestos and videos before they
act. Magnata was the proof of concept. He showed
that you no longer need the traditional media
to be your gatekeeper. In the old days, a killer
like Zodiac had to write letters to the newspaper
and hope they published them. Magnata just bypassed
all of that. He had his own distribution channel.
He uploaded its product directly to the consumer
on a gore website. He made every single person
who clicked. on that link a part of his broadcast
network. Which brings us back to that chilling
message he left in the closet. If you don't like
the reflection, don't look in the mirror. He
was a monster, but he was a media savvy monster.
He understood the dark side of human curiosity.
He knew that millions of people would seek out
and watch that video. Not because they were evil,
not because they approved of it, but simply because
they couldn't look away. It's the digital version
of slowing down to look at a car crash. It's
exactly that. And when he was finally caught
sitting in that internet cafe in Berlin, staring
at his own face on a news website, he was completing
the circuit. He was the creator of the content,
and he was also the consumer of the reaction
to it. But we, the public, the media, we provided
that reaction. Every click, every share, every
horrified tweet was fuel for his narcissistic
fire. So that leaves us with a really uncomfortable
question, doesn't it? What do we do with that
knowledge? We can't just stop reporting on crime.
We can't stop being curious about the world.
No, but maybe we can be more cautious about where
we put the spotlight. I think that's the only
answer. It's why we made a point of starting
this deep dive with Jin Lin. It's why we focused
on his life, his dreams, his struggles. The killer
always wants to be the protagonist of the story.
I think our job as people who consume these stories
is to refuse him that role. We have to relegate
him to what he actually is. The villain, the
obstacle, the destructive force that ended a
promising life. It's a conscious act of reframing.
We study the perpetrator to understand the how
and why, so maybe we can prevent the next one.
But we remember the victim to understand the
cost. We don't celebrate the performance. Exactly.
Knowledge is our defense. Understanding the mechanics
of his manipulation is the best way to make sure
we're not manipulated ourselves. That's a powerful
place to end. This was a really heavy one, but
an important one. Thanks for taking this deep
dive with us.