WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.940 OK, so let's set the scene. It's May 29th, 2012. 00:00:03.180 --> 00:00:06.379 It's a Tuesday. And, you know, you have to imagine 00:00:06.379 --> 00:00:08.279 the environment at the Conservative Party of 00:00:08.279 --> 00:00:10.699 Canada headquarters in Ottawa. Right. It's probably 00:00:10.699 --> 00:00:12.339 the most boring place you can imagine. Totally. 00:00:12.480 --> 00:00:14.859 It's all gray suits, the hum of photocopiers, 00:00:15.039 --> 00:00:17.519 phones ringing with, I don't know, donor requests. 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:20.379 It's sterile. It's bureaucratic. That's pure 00:00:20.379 --> 00:00:23.059 technocracy. And then a package arrives, just 00:00:23.059 --> 00:00:25.219 a standard cardboard box for the mailroom or, 00:00:25.260 --> 00:00:26.940 you know, the receptionist. Nothing special about 00:00:26.940 --> 00:00:29.820 it on the outside. But when it's opened. Well, 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:31.960 the first thing that hits everyone is the smell. 00:00:32.100 --> 00:00:34.600 And that's never a good sign. Not at all. Because 00:00:34.600 --> 00:00:37.000 inside, under the packing material, it's not 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:40.140 some policy paper or a box of campaign buttons. 00:00:40.520 --> 00:00:43.960 It's a human left foot decomposing. I mean, just 00:00:43.960 --> 00:00:47.000 stop and think about the sheer cognitive dissonance 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:49.539 of that moment. You're in this hyper -controlled, 00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:52.740 abstract world of politics, and you are suddenly 00:00:52.740 --> 00:00:55.380 face -to -face with the most visceral, biological, 00:00:55.780 --> 00:00:58.679 rotting reality imaginable. The police are called, 00:00:58.759 --> 00:01:01.039 obviously. The place goes into lockdown. The 00:01:01.039 --> 00:01:03.439 hazmat team shows up because, you know, this 00:01:03.439 --> 00:01:06.280 is post -9 -11. The immediate fear is, what, 00:01:06.379 --> 00:01:08.459 anthrax? Some kind of chemical attack. Yeah, 00:01:08.459 --> 00:01:10.099 they're not thinking murder victim. They're thinking 00:01:10.099 --> 00:01:13.359 terrorism. But while all this chaos is unfolding 00:01:13.359 --> 00:01:16.819 at the Conservative headquarters, the story splits. 00:01:17.239 --> 00:01:20.819 Because at that very same time, across town at 00:01:20.819 --> 00:01:23.640 a Canada Post sorting facility, a postal worker 00:01:23.640 --> 00:01:26.900 flags a suspicious package. And this one is addressed 00:01:26.900 --> 00:01:30.319 to the Liberal Party of Canada. Inside. A human 00:01:30.319 --> 00:01:32.900 left hand. And that's the moment the police realize 00:01:32.900 --> 00:01:36.019 this isn't some gruesome, isolated prank or a 00:01:36.019 --> 00:01:38.620 medical mix -up. This is coordinated. This is 00:01:38.620 --> 00:01:40.760 intentional. You could almost call it a campaign. 00:01:41.099 --> 00:01:43.400 It's a broadcast. I think that's the word we 00:01:43.400 --> 00:01:45.280 have to use from the jump. Most violent crime. 00:01:45.480 --> 00:01:48.000 You know, it's messy. It's hidden. The killer 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:49.840 tries to cover their tracks, clean the scene, 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.519 hide the body. This was the absolute opposite 00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:55.019 of that. The perpetrator, who we quickly learned 00:01:55.019 --> 00:01:57.560 was Luca Magnata, was using the national mail 00:01:57.560 --> 00:02:00.480 system, an arm of the state itself, to make sure 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:03.099 his crime was unavoidable. He was forcing the 00:02:03.099 --> 00:02:05.980 system to deliver his horror show to its own 00:02:05.980 --> 00:02:08.080 doorstep. So today we're going to take a deep 00:02:08.080 --> 00:02:12.479 dive into the murder of Jen Lin. And look. i 00:02:12.479 --> 00:02:14.979 know almost everyone calls this the luca magnata 00:02:14.979 --> 00:02:17.939 case if you watch the documentaries if you look 00:02:17.939 --> 00:02:20.139 it up online his name is always in the title 00:02:20.139 --> 00:02:22.840 which is exactly what he wanted exactly And as 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:24.460 we went through all the source material for this, 00:02:24.520 --> 00:02:27.020 the court transcripts, the police reports, the 00:02:27.020 --> 00:02:29.800 psychiatric assessments, it just becomes so clear 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:32.580 that focusing on Magnata is actually playing 00:02:32.580 --> 00:02:35.939 into his hands. He orchestrated this entire thing, 00:02:35.979 --> 00:02:38.199 this whole horrific performance, just so we would 00:02:38.199 --> 00:02:40.039 all be sitting here seeing his name. It puts 00:02:40.039 --> 00:02:42.139 us in a really tricky position, doesn't it? Because 00:02:42.139 --> 00:02:44.139 to understand what happened, we have to analyze 00:02:44.139 --> 00:02:46.759 him, the architect of it all. But we have to 00:02:46.759 --> 00:02:49.759 be so careful not to mythologize him or turn 00:02:49.759 --> 00:02:52.219 him into some kind of supervillain. Yeah, because 00:02:52.219 --> 00:02:54.819 the why and the how here are, I mean, they're 00:02:54.819 --> 00:02:58.000 genuinely fascinating in a really dark way. This 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:00.500 is, you could argue, one of the first truly modern 00:03:00.500 --> 00:03:04.360 social media murders. It unfolds physically in 00:03:04.360 --> 00:03:07.460 Montreal, Paris and Berlin, but its real stage 00:03:07.460 --> 00:03:09.879 was the Internet. A stage he built for himself 00:03:09.879 --> 00:03:12.139 over years. But before we get into the international 00:03:12.139 --> 00:03:15.949 manhunt and frankly. the bizarre cinematic elements 00:03:15.949 --> 00:03:18.830 of his trial we have to ground this story because 00:03:18.830 --> 00:03:21.050 while government workers in ottawa were reeling 00:03:21.050 --> 00:03:23.689 from these packages a group of friends in montreal 00:03:23.689 --> 00:03:25.789 were getting more and more worried their friend 00:03:25.789 --> 00:03:28.710 was missing we need to talk about jinlin we absolutely 00:03:28.710 --> 00:03:31.710 do because he is so often reduced to just that 00:03:31.710 --> 00:03:34.949 one label the victim a footnote in his own story 00:03:35.370 --> 00:03:37.689 But he was a real person with a complex life. 00:03:37.789 --> 00:03:41.169 He was 33 years old from Wuhan, China. He'd come 00:03:41.169 --> 00:03:43.810 to Montreal in 2010 and he wasn't just, you know, 00:03:43.810 --> 00:03:45.969 drifting. He was a student at Concordia University, 00:03:46.250 --> 00:03:48.110 an undergraduate in engineering and computer 00:03:48.110 --> 00:03:51.129 science. This was a smart, driven guy. And by 00:03:51.129 --> 00:03:53.669 all accounts, a really kind person. His friends 00:03:53.669 --> 00:03:56.710 called him Justin. The witness statements paint 00:03:56.710 --> 00:03:59.729 this picture of a man who was, well, the sources 00:03:59.729 --> 00:04:03.330 use the word romantic. He was optimistic, looking 00:04:03.330 --> 00:04:07.650 for love, but also pretty lonely. You can see 00:04:07.650 --> 00:04:09.729 why. He's juggling full time studies, a part 00:04:09.729 --> 00:04:11.909 time job at a convenience store and just trying 00:04:11.909 --> 00:04:14.389 to figure out life in a new country, a new language. 00:04:14.689 --> 00:04:17.529 That's incredibly isolating. And on top of all 00:04:17.529 --> 00:04:19.810 that, there was this other huge pressure in his 00:04:19.810 --> 00:04:23.180 life. Jun Lin was gay in Montreal. He was out 00:04:23.180 --> 00:04:25.139 and trying to live that life. He had a boyfriend 00:04:25.139 --> 00:04:28.060 for a while, but his family back in Wuhan had 00:04:28.060 --> 00:04:30.660 absolutely no idea. That's a heavy burden to 00:04:30.660 --> 00:04:33.139 carry. He was living this kind of fractured existence. 00:04:33.540 --> 00:04:35.199 The sources mentioned he'd actually been married 00:04:35.199 --> 00:04:37.399 to a woman back in China and they divorced. Right. 00:04:37.519 --> 00:04:40.199 And at 33, the cultural pressure from his parents 00:04:40.199 --> 00:04:42.180 to, you know, settle down, find another wife, 00:04:42.220 --> 00:04:44.910 have children, continue the family line. That 00:04:44.910 --> 00:04:46.910 was immense. It was a constant weight on him. 00:04:47.069 --> 00:04:49.810 It's that classic double life story that so many 00:04:49.810 --> 00:04:52.029 immigrants and people in the LGBTQ community 00:04:52.029 --> 00:04:54.509 face. You have this authentic self you're trying 00:04:54.509 --> 00:04:56.990 to build in a new, more accepting place, but 00:04:56.990 --> 00:04:59.509 you're still so deeply tethered to the expectations 00:04:59.509 --> 00:05:01.670 from back home. In fact, the source material 00:05:01.670 --> 00:05:03.829 suggests he had recently ended a relationship 00:05:03.829 --> 00:05:05.850 with his boyfriend, and it was specifically because 00:05:05.850 --> 00:05:07.810 of this family pressure. He was feeling lost. 00:05:08.029 --> 00:05:10.329 He was feeling torn. So he was vulnerable. That's 00:05:10.329 --> 00:05:12.850 the key word here. He was looking for a stable, 00:05:12.889 --> 00:05:15.529 loving relationship. But in the meantime, he 00:05:15.529 --> 00:05:17.370 was just looking for connection. He was on apps 00:05:17.370 --> 00:05:20.610 like Grind. He was checking personal ads on Craigslist. 00:05:20.730 --> 00:05:23.110 Which is just normal. It's how people meet in 00:05:23.110 --> 00:05:24.829 the modern world. It's not some deviant behavior. 00:05:25.029 --> 00:05:27.569 It's just dating. But it was that search for 00:05:27.569 --> 00:05:29.769 a simple human connection that tragically... 00:05:30.110 --> 00:05:32.430 put him in the path of a predator, a predator 00:05:32.430 --> 00:05:34.790 who wasn't looking for a partner, but for a prop. 00:05:34.949 --> 00:05:37.509 OK, so let's pivot to that predator, to Luca 00:05:37.509 --> 00:05:41.509 Rocco Magnata. Even the name, it's a stage name. 00:05:41.569 --> 00:05:44.430 It's complete fabrication. He was born Eric Clinton 00:05:44.430 --> 00:05:47.589 Kirk Newman in Scarborough, Ontario, in 1982. 00:05:48.269 --> 00:05:50.430 And if you weren't to write a backstory for a 00:05:50.430 --> 00:05:52.730 future killer, I mean, his childhood would be 00:05:52.730 --> 00:05:55.629 a textbook example of developmental trauma. It's 00:05:55.629 --> 00:05:58.089 just chaotic. The reports describe his mother 00:05:58.089 --> 00:06:01.930 as having this like pathological obsession with 00:06:01.930 --> 00:06:04.310 cleanliness to the point where she would lock 00:06:04.310 --> 00:06:07.509 her own children out of the house for hours just 00:06:07.509 --> 00:06:09.879 to keep it sterile. There's one story about her 00:06:09.879 --> 00:06:12.180 putting the family's pet rabbits outside in the 00:06:12.180 --> 00:06:14.360 winter to freeze to death because they were dirty. 00:06:14.540 --> 00:06:17.040 And then his father was diagnosed with schizophrenia 00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:20.420 in the mid -90s, which led to a very messy divorce. 00:06:20.699 --> 00:06:22.939 And Magnata himself was actually diagnosed with 00:06:22.939 --> 00:06:25.420 paranoid schizophrenia as a teenager. So there's 00:06:25.420 --> 00:06:27.639 a real history of mental illness there, which... 00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:29.699 you know, becomes central to the trial later 00:06:29.699 --> 00:06:31.519 on. It does, but we have to be careful how we 00:06:31.519 --> 00:06:34.100 frame that because his actions show a level of 00:06:34.100 --> 00:06:36.279 organization that complicates that diagnosis 00:06:36.279 --> 00:06:38.839 significantly. Right. And this is where we have 00:06:38.839 --> 00:06:40.540 to tackle one of the big myths that came out 00:06:40.540 --> 00:06:43.360 of the media coverage in 2012, the porn star 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:46.300 killer headline. It created this image of him 00:06:46.300 --> 00:06:48.759 as some kind of dark, glamorous figure from the 00:06:48.759 --> 00:06:52.540 adult film world. When the reality was, well, 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:55.959 it was just sad. Porn star implies some level 00:06:55.959 --> 00:06:59.360 of success, a career. Magnata had none of that. 00:06:59.579 --> 00:07:02.279 He appeared in like maybe fewer than a dozen 00:07:02.279 --> 00:07:05.279 very low budget obscure videos over a five year 00:07:05.279 --> 00:07:07.660 span. Industry insiders were interviewed for 00:07:07.660 --> 00:07:11.579 some of the reports and they were not kind. They 00:07:11.579 --> 00:07:13.540 basically said he was awkward on camera. He had 00:07:13.540 --> 00:07:16.399 bad skin. He just wasn't good at it. The consensus 00:07:16.399 --> 00:07:18.699 was that not even the porn industry was particularly 00:07:18.699 --> 00:07:21.379 interested in him. It was a failure. A reject? 00:07:21.459 --> 00:07:24.259 He actually declared bankruptcy in 2007, owing 00:07:24.259 --> 00:07:27.180 something like $17 ,000. He couldn't even make 00:07:27.180 --> 00:07:28.660 it in the one industry he thought would bring 00:07:28.660 --> 00:07:31.300 him fame. And that rejection seems to be the 00:07:31.300 --> 00:07:33.459 engine for everything that follows. There's that 00:07:33.459 --> 00:07:35.399 story about him auditioning for a reality show 00:07:35.399 --> 00:07:37.680 called Pinup Boys. He was apparently convinced 00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:39.620 he was going to be the breakout star. And he 00:07:39.620 --> 00:07:41.699 was cut almost immediately. And you see this 00:07:41.699 --> 00:07:45.060 pattern. When legitimate fame, even fame in a 00:07:45.060 --> 00:07:47.939 fringe industry, rejected him, he decided to 00:07:47.939 --> 00:07:51.360 pursue infamy instead. If the world wouldn't 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:53.180 give him a platform, he was going to build his 00:07:53.180 --> 00:07:55.399 own. This is where the internet fabrication begins. 00:07:55.699 --> 00:07:58.779 And the scale of it is just, it's staggering. 00:07:59.060 --> 00:08:01.560 It's a full -time job. The police uncovered over 00:08:01.560 --> 00:08:05.279 70 Facebook pages he had created. 70 for himself. 00:08:05.660 --> 00:08:08.800 All for himself. And more than 20 websites. All 00:08:08.800 --> 00:08:11.959 dedicated to promoting the myth of Luca Magnata. 00:08:12.240 --> 00:08:14.800 So what was on these pages? Just photos of himself? 00:08:15.240 --> 00:08:17.800 Photos, yes, but also just manufactured hype. 00:08:18.040 --> 00:08:21.529 He would create... dozens of fake profiles, sock 00:08:21.529 --> 00:08:24.110 puppet accounts, and then use them to have conversations 00:08:24.110 --> 00:08:26.550 with himself in the comments. Oh, wow. So he'd 00:08:26.550 --> 00:08:28.769 post a picture and then have five of his fake 00:08:28.769 --> 00:08:31.829 accounts chime in with you look amazing or you're 00:08:31.829 --> 00:08:34.330 the next James Dean. That's literally it. He 00:08:34.330 --> 00:08:36.669 was trying to create this digital illusion of 00:08:36.669 --> 00:08:39.669 popularity and stardom, hoping that if he faked 00:08:39.669 --> 00:08:41.870 it enough online, it would somehow manifest in 00:08:41.870 --> 00:08:44.409 the real world. It's so pathetic on one level, 00:08:44.450 --> 00:08:46.269 but also deeply disturbing. And he wasn't just 00:08:46.269 --> 00:08:48.850 pumping his own tires. He was actively manufacturing 00:08:48.850 --> 00:08:52.090 scandal to get attention. Which brings us to 00:08:52.090 --> 00:08:54.730 the Carla Homolka rumor. This is just next level 00:08:54.730 --> 00:08:57.799 manipulation. For listeners who might not know, 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:00.399 Carla Homolka is one of Canada's most notorious 00:09:00.399 --> 00:09:03.179 killers. She and her husband, Paul Bernardo, 00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:06.539 were the Ken and Barbie killers. She is arguably 00:09:06.539 --> 00:09:09.019 one of the most hated women in the country. Her 00:09:09.019 --> 00:09:12.049 name is pure tabloid gold. And Magnata knew that. 00:09:12.110 --> 00:09:15.789 He knew it was radioactive. So around 2007, he 00:09:15.789 --> 00:09:18.309 starts planting rumors on online forums that 00:09:18.309 --> 00:09:21.970 he is dating Carla Homolka. He even poorly photoshopped 00:09:21.970 --> 00:09:23.830 some pictures of them together. And his goal 00:09:23.830 --> 00:09:26.289 wasn't just to start a rumor, right? He had a 00:09:26.289 --> 00:09:29.830 multi -step plan. Exactly. He knew the tabloids 00:09:29.830 --> 00:09:31.529 wouldn't be able to resist a story like that. 00:09:31.570 --> 00:09:34.110 And sure enough... The Toronto Sun newspaper 00:09:34.110 --> 00:09:36.409 reached out to him for a comment. And that was 00:09:36.409 --> 00:09:38.850 the whole point. He then gives them this big 00:09:38.850 --> 00:09:41.730 dramatic interview where he tearfully denies 00:09:41.730 --> 00:09:44.190 the rumors that he himself started. It's genius 00:09:44.190 --> 00:09:46.950 in a diabolical way. He created the fire just 00:09:46.950 --> 00:09:48.929 so he could be the one to call the fire department 00:09:48.929 --> 00:09:50.929 and get his name and picture in the paper for 00:09:50.929 --> 00:09:53.309 putting it out. It's the ultimate any press is 00:09:53.309 --> 00:09:57.350 good press strategy. But this need for attention 00:09:57.350 --> 00:10:00.009 started to take a much darker turn well before 00:10:00.009 --> 00:10:02.440 Jen Lynn's murder. We have to talk about the 00:10:02.440 --> 00:10:05.179 kitten video. We do. This is the crucial precursor. 00:10:05.340 --> 00:10:08.840 In 2010, a video titled One Boy, Two Kittens 00:10:08.840 --> 00:10:11.600 appears online. It shows a young man whose face 00:10:11.600 --> 00:10:14.419 is obscured putting two small kittens into a 00:10:14.419 --> 00:10:16.600 vacuum seal bag and then substituting them with 00:10:16.600 --> 00:10:20.259 a vacuum cleaner. It's just horrific, gratuitous 00:10:20.259 --> 00:10:22.299 cruelty. But the key part of the story is what 00:10:22.299 --> 00:10:24.960 happened next. The Internet saw this and, well, 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:27.440 the Internet got angry. Very angry. This is the 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:29.320 whole story that the documentary Don't Frack 00:10:29.320 --> 00:10:31.759 with Cats is about. A group of ordinary people, 00:10:31.899 --> 00:10:34.700 just animal lovers on Facebook, formed a group 00:10:34.700 --> 00:10:37.220 to find the person in that video. They became 00:10:37.220 --> 00:10:39.639 amateur Internet sleuths. And they were incredibly 00:10:39.639 --> 00:10:41.879 good at it. They weren't police, but they used 00:10:41.879 --> 00:10:44.519 digital forensics. They analyzed the model of 00:10:44.519 --> 00:10:46.019 the vacuum cleaner to figure out it was sold 00:10:46.019 --> 00:10:48.179 in North America. They looked at the design of 00:10:48.179 --> 00:10:49.919 the electrical outlets in the background. They 00:10:49.919 --> 00:10:52.279 even enhanced a reflection in a shiny object 00:10:52.279 --> 00:10:54.679 in the room to get a blurry glimpse of the person 00:10:54.679 --> 00:10:58.039 filming. And through this painstaking work, they 00:10:58.039 --> 00:11:01.879 identified the killer as Luca Magnata long before 00:11:01.879 --> 00:11:04.019 he was on the radar of law enforcement for anything 00:11:04.019 --> 00:11:07.379 like this. But here's the twist. He loved it. 00:11:07.480 --> 00:11:10.299 He knew they were hunting him. He started interacting 00:11:10.299 --> 00:11:13.019 with them. taunting them. He'd create new profiles 00:11:13.019 --> 00:11:14.940 and join their Facebook groups to throw them 00:11:14.940 --> 00:11:17.480 off the scent or leave cryptic clues. It was 00:11:17.480 --> 00:11:20.340 a game to him. Yeah. And it validated his strategy. 00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:22.860 The kittens were props, but the violence worked. 00:11:23.019 --> 00:11:26.120 It got him an audience, an engaged, obsessive 00:11:26.120 --> 00:11:27.919 audience. And once you have an audience that's 00:11:27.919 --> 00:11:30.220 hooked on horror, you can't just keep doing the 00:11:30.220 --> 00:11:32.179 same trick. You have to escalate. The stakes 00:11:32.179 --> 00:11:34.139 have to get higher. Kittens weren't enough anymore. 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:36.820 He needed a human victim to get the level of 00:11:36.820 --> 00:11:39.200 fame he craved. Which brings us to that apartment 00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:41.879 on Decary Boulevard in Montreal, May of 2012. 00:11:42.340 --> 00:11:44.440 He's been posting ads on Craigslist for a few 00:11:44.440 --> 00:11:47.399 weeks, looking for people to participate in filming. 00:11:47.639 --> 00:11:50.299 And on the night of May 24th, the apartment building 00:11:50.299 --> 00:11:52.620 surveillance cameras capture him walking into 00:11:52.620 --> 00:11:55.840 the lobby with Jun Lin. That footage is just, 00:11:55.940 --> 00:11:58.899 it's so chilling because of how normal it looks. 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:02.000 It's just two guys walking into a building. But 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:04.419 you're watching it knowing that only one of them 00:12:04.419 --> 00:12:06.659 is ever going to walk out. Junlin is last seen 00:12:06.659 --> 00:12:09.159 alive on that footage. The very next day, May 00:12:09.159 --> 00:12:12.039 25th, the video appears online. It's titled One 00:12:12.039 --> 00:12:15.240 Lunatic, One Ice Pick, and it's uploaded to a 00:12:15.240 --> 00:12:18.840 gore website called bestgore .com. Now, we are 00:12:18.840 --> 00:12:20.840 absolutely not going to describe the graphic 00:12:20.840 --> 00:12:22.860 contents of that video. There is no need. It's 00:12:22.860 --> 00:12:25.340 monstrous. But what we do need to talk about. 00:12:25.769 --> 00:12:27.509 from an evidence perspective, is the production 00:12:27.509 --> 00:12:29.870 value. Right. This wasn't some shaky, frantic 00:12:29.870 --> 00:12:32.769 cell phone video shot in a panic. This was a 00:12:32.769 --> 00:12:35.129 production. It's an 11 -minute video, but the 00:12:35.129 --> 00:12:37.070 forensic analysis showed it was edited together 00:12:37.070 --> 00:12:39.970 from hours of raw footage. It has a soundtrack. 00:12:40.070 --> 00:12:42.370 The song is True Faith by the band New Order. 00:12:42.629 --> 00:12:45.429 He had props. There's a poster for the movie 00:12:45.429 --> 00:12:47.710 Casablanca prominently displayed on the wall 00:12:47.710 --> 00:12:50.429 behind the bed. He clearly set the scene. He 00:12:50.429 --> 00:12:52.309 thought about lighting, about camera angles. 00:12:52.769 --> 00:12:55.120 This was a film set. And there's a detail from 00:12:55.120 --> 00:12:57.159 the investigation that is maybe the most disturbing 00:12:57.159 --> 00:12:59.799 proof of premeditation I have ever heard. The 00:12:59.799 --> 00:13:01.539 opening shot of the video. The opening shot. 00:13:01.539 --> 00:13:03.919 The video begins with footage of a different 00:13:03.919 --> 00:13:07.580 man already tied to the bed, writhing. For a 00:13:07.580 --> 00:13:09.799 long time, the assumption was that this was Jun 00:13:09.799 --> 00:13:12.179 Lin in the moments before his murder. But it 00:13:12.179 --> 00:13:14.559 wasn't him. It wasn't him. Police were eventually 00:13:14.559 --> 00:13:17.080 able to identify and find that man. He was alive. 00:13:17.220 --> 00:13:19.379 He had been on a date with Magnata about a week 00:13:19.379 --> 00:13:21.899 earlier. So what happened? Magnata drugged him, 00:13:22.059 --> 00:13:25.019 tied him up, and filmed him. But for whatever 00:13:25.019 --> 00:13:27.720 reason, maybe the man woke up. Maybe Magnata 00:13:27.720 --> 00:13:29.940 lost his nerve. He let him go. So that was a 00:13:29.940 --> 00:13:32.779 dress rehearsal. It was a complete dry run. He 00:13:32.779 --> 00:13:34.799 was testing his methods. He was checking his 00:13:34.799 --> 00:13:37.980 camera angles. He was practicing. It proves beyond 00:13:37.980 --> 00:13:40.539 any doubt that what happened to Jun Lin wasn't 00:13:40.539 --> 00:13:43.539 a spontaneous act of psychosis. It was the fulfillment 00:13:43.539 --> 00:13:46.059 of a script that had been written weeks in advance. 00:13:46.179 --> 00:13:49.360 The murder happens. The video goes online. The 00:13:49.360 --> 00:13:51.519 Internet sleuths who are tracking him for the 00:13:51.519 --> 00:13:55.960 kitten videos. They just explode. They're flooding 00:13:55.960 --> 00:13:59.080 the Montreal police with calls saying it's him. 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:01.899 We told you he finally did it. But while all 00:14:01.899 --> 00:14:04.460 this is happening online, Magnata is in the apartment 00:14:04.460 --> 00:14:07.320 cleaning up or well, cleaning up isn't quite 00:14:07.320 --> 00:14:10.200 the right word. He's dismembering the body. He 00:14:10.200 --> 00:14:13.700 packs the torso into a suitcase and just dumps 00:14:13.700 --> 00:14:15.960 it in the alley behind his building. A janitor 00:14:15.960 --> 00:14:17.820 for the building actually found that suitcase 00:14:17.820 --> 00:14:21.600 on May 25th, the day after the murder. He noticed 00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:24.159 it because of the smell on the flies, but because 00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:26.200 it was a busy week for garbage collection, it 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:28.820 just sat there. It wasn't officially discovered 00:14:28.820 --> 00:14:31.639 and opened for several more days. Unbelievable. 00:14:31.860 --> 00:14:34.179 So by the time the police finally get a warrant 00:14:34.179 --> 00:14:37.159 and breach Magnata's apartment on May 29th, he's 00:14:37.159 --> 00:14:39.919 long gone. The apartment is almost totally empty, 00:14:40.059 --> 00:14:42.639 scrubbed clean. Almost. They found traces of 00:14:42.639 --> 00:14:45.320 blood on the mattress, in the fridge, on a table, 00:14:45.419 --> 00:14:48.299 but he also left something else, a message. In 00:14:48.299 --> 00:14:50.539 the closet. written in red ink on the inside 00:14:50.539 --> 00:14:53.360 of the door. It said, if you don't like the reflection, 00:14:53.580 --> 00:14:56.080 don't look in the mirror. I don't care. It's 00:14:56.080 --> 00:14:59.179 so theatrical. It feels like a line from a bad 00:14:59.179 --> 00:15:02.240 movie. It's him talking directly to his audience, 00:15:02.440 --> 00:15:04.860 to the internet sleuths, to the police, to us 00:15:04.860 --> 00:15:08.059 right now. He's breaking the fourth wall. He's 00:15:08.059 --> 00:15:10.259 basically saying, I know you're watching this. 00:15:10.379 --> 00:15:12.399 I know you're horrified, but you can't look away. 00:15:12.519 --> 00:15:14.320 You're part of the show. You're the reflection. 00:15:14.600 --> 00:15:19.259 It's pure, uncut narcissism. So he flees. On 00:15:19.259 --> 00:15:22.980 May 26th, just two days after the murder, he's 00:15:22.980 --> 00:15:26.019 on a plane to Paris. And this is when he initiates 00:15:26.019 --> 00:15:28.860 the next phase of his performance. The mailing 00:15:28.860 --> 00:15:31.000 of the limbs. We mentioned the first two packages, 00:15:31.139 --> 00:15:33.080 the foot and the hand, sent to the political 00:15:33.080 --> 00:15:35.240 parties in Ottawa. That's what puts the case 00:15:35.240 --> 00:15:37.899 on the national stage. But he wasn't done. No. 00:15:38.120 --> 00:15:40.759 About a week later, on June 5th, two more packages 00:15:40.759 --> 00:15:43.000 show up. This time on the other side of the country, 00:15:43.120 --> 00:15:45.740 in Vancouver. And the targets are even more disturbing. 00:15:45.919 --> 00:15:48.240 They were sent to two schools. St. George's School. 00:15:48.730 --> 00:15:51.090 a private boys' school, and False Creek Elementary. 00:15:51.509 --> 00:15:53.789 That's a whole other level. Sending body parts 00:15:53.789 --> 00:15:56.250 to political parties, as grotesque as it is, 00:15:56.309 --> 00:15:58.169 is a kind of political statement. Sending them 00:15:58.169 --> 00:16:00.490 to elementary schools, that's just pure psychological 00:16:00.490 --> 00:16:03.850 terrorism. He's aiming for maximum public fear. 00:16:04.009 --> 00:16:06.169 He's targeting children, the most vulnerable 00:16:06.169 --> 00:16:08.809 people in society, to guarantee that the story 00:16:08.809 --> 00:16:11.450 leads every newscast. And the notes he included 00:16:11.450 --> 00:16:14.269 were just. Oh! They were taunts. One of them 00:16:14.269 --> 00:16:17.480 had a twisted little poem. Roses are red, violets 00:16:17.480 --> 00:16:19.240 are blue, the police will need dental records 00:16:19.240 --> 00:16:22.100 to identify you, bitch. It's so childish and 00:16:22.100 --> 00:16:24.440 mocking. He's playing the role of the Joker, 00:16:24.659 --> 00:16:27.000 the cartoon supervillain who's always one step 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.460 ahead of the police, leaving clues and riddles. 00:16:29.559 --> 00:16:32.100 He wants to be a character. And for a brief period, 00:16:32.279 --> 00:16:35.889 it worked. The whole world was watching. Interpol 00:16:35.889 --> 00:16:38.169 issued a red notice, which is their highest level 00:16:38.169 --> 00:16:40.690 international alert. His face was on the front 00:16:40.690 --> 00:16:42.889 page of the Interpol website on every news channel. 00:16:43.070 --> 00:16:45.830 He got his wish. He was famous. So let's follow 00:16:45.830 --> 00:16:48.090 the trail of the manhunt. He lands in Paris. 00:16:48.289 --> 00:16:50.889 He checks into a budget hotel in a suburb called 00:16:50.889 --> 00:16:53.049 Bagnolet. The French police are actually on to 00:16:53.049 --> 00:16:54.769 him pretty quickly. They managed to trace his 00:16:54.769 --> 00:16:56.919 cell phone to that hotel. But they just miss 00:16:56.919 --> 00:16:59.159 him. By a matter of hours. By the time they raid 00:16:59.159 --> 00:17:02.039 the room, he's gone. But he was sloppy. He left 00:17:02.039 --> 00:17:04.660 things behind. Pornographic magazines, an air 00:17:04.660 --> 00:17:07.000 sickness bag from his flight from Canada. But 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:08.900 the most important thing he left behind was the 00:17:08.900 --> 00:17:11.680 name he used on the hotel register. He checked 00:17:11.680 --> 00:17:15.119 in using an alias. The name was Kirk Trammell. 00:17:15.619 --> 00:17:19.259 Trammell. Now, that name is the absolute skeleton 00:17:19.259 --> 00:17:22.259 key to this entire case. It's the piece of evidence 00:17:22.259 --> 00:17:24.819 that unravels his entire defense later on. So, 00:17:24.819 --> 00:17:26.890 just... Put a pin in that name for a minute. 00:17:27.109 --> 00:17:29.890 Okay, so he slips out of Paris. He gets on a 00:17:29.890 --> 00:17:32.730 bus and travels across the border into Germany, 00:17:32.890 --> 00:17:35.009 heading for Berlin. He's running out of money 00:17:35.009 --> 00:17:37.750 at this point. He's on the run. And on June 4th, 00:17:37.750 --> 00:17:40.309 Emma wanders into an internet cafe in the Neukölln 00:17:40.309 --> 00:17:43.490 district of Berlin. So think about this. You're 00:17:43.490 --> 00:17:45.730 the most wanted man on the planet. Your face 00:17:45.730 --> 00:17:48.349 is everywhere. What do you do? Do you try to 00:17:48.349 --> 00:17:50.890 contact someone for help? Do you look for a way 00:17:50.890 --> 00:17:54.109 to get a new identity? No. You do what Luca Magnata 00:17:54.109 --> 00:17:56.289 would do. You sit down at a computer and you 00:17:56.289 --> 00:17:58.549 Google yourself. It's unbelievable. He just sat 00:17:58.549 --> 00:18:00.809 there for hours clicking on news articles about 00:18:00.809 --> 00:18:03.250 the international manhunt for Luca Magnata. He 00:18:03.250 --> 00:18:05.470 was basking in it. He was drinking in his own 00:18:05.470 --> 00:18:08.509 notoriety. And that is what got him caught. The 00:18:08.509 --> 00:18:11.450 owner of the Internet Cafe recognized him, not 00:18:11.450 --> 00:18:13.710 because he looked suspicious, but because his 00:18:13.710 --> 00:18:16.750 face was literally the main image on the front 00:18:16.750 --> 00:18:19.430 page of the news website he was reading. So the 00:18:19.430 --> 00:18:22.799 owner walks outside. calmly flags down a passing 00:18:22.799 --> 00:18:26.180 police car and tells them who's inside. The police 00:18:26.180 --> 00:18:28.339 go in. Magnata tries to give them a couple of 00:18:28.339 --> 00:18:30.599 fake names at first, but then he seems to realize 00:18:30.599 --> 00:18:32.720 the performance is over. He just looks at them 00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:35.099 and says, you got me. It wasn't a confession 00:18:35.099 --> 00:18:37.339 of guilt. It felt more like a director calling 00:18:37.339 --> 00:18:40.380 cut. The show is over. Yeah, it was a curtain 00:18:40.380 --> 00:18:42.279 call. So they put him on a Canadian military 00:18:42.279 --> 00:18:45.079 transport plane because no commercial airline 00:18:45.079 --> 00:18:47.700 wanted the liability of flying him back. And 00:18:47.700 --> 00:18:50.160 the case moves to the trial phase. And this is 00:18:50.160 --> 00:18:51.819 where the deep dive has to get a little more 00:18:51.819 --> 00:18:55.960 technical. Because this was not a whodunit trial. 00:18:56.160 --> 00:18:59.380 Not at all. Magnata, through his lawyer, admitted 00:18:59.380 --> 00:19:02.799 to all the acts. He admitted to killing Lin Lin, 00:19:02.900 --> 00:19:05.240 to dismembering him, to mailing the parts. The 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:06.980 question for the jury wasn't if he did it. The 00:19:06.980 --> 00:19:08.740 question was about his state of mind when he 00:19:08.740 --> 00:19:11.450 did it. The defense's argument was not criminally 00:19:11.450 --> 00:19:14.900 responsible or NCR. And we should probably clarify 00:19:14.900 --> 00:19:18.140 what NCR means under Canadian law, because it's 00:19:18.140 --> 00:19:20.579 not the same as the insanity plea you see in 00:19:20.579 --> 00:19:23.240 American movies. It's a very specific legal and 00:19:23.240 --> 00:19:26.519 medical standard. Right. To be found NCR, the 00:19:26.519 --> 00:19:28.819 defense has to prove that at the time of the 00:19:28.819 --> 00:19:31.079 crime, the person was suffering from a mental 00:19:31.079 --> 00:19:34.079 disorder so severe that it made them incapable 00:19:34.079 --> 00:19:36.460 of either appreciating the nature and quality 00:19:36.460 --> 00:19:38.720 of their act or knowing that it was morally and 00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:41.519 legally wrong. So a simple way to think about 00:19:41.519 --> 00:19:44.599 it is. If you kill someone because you're having 00:19:44.599 --> 00:19:47.420 a psychotic delusion that they are a shapeshifting 00:19:47.420 --> 00:19:50.279 demon about to eat your soul, you might be NCR. 00:19:50.319 --> 00:19:52.119 You don't know that what you're doing is wrong 00:19:52.119 --> 00:19:54.319 in a rational sense. But if you kill someone 00:19:54.319 --> 00:19:56.480 because you want to be famous or because you 00:19:56.480 --> 00:19:58.500 want their money, you know it's wrong. You're 00:19:58.500 --> 00:20:00.440 just choosing to do it anyway. That's just first 00:20:00.440 --> 00:20:03.160 degree murder. Exactly. And that was the battleground 00:20:03.160 --> 00:20:05.619 of this trial. Was he a man in the grips of a 00:20:05.619 --> 00:20:08.700 profound psychosis or a calculating narcissist 00:20:08.700 --> 00:20:11.519 executing a plan? The defense brought in their 00:20:11.519 --> 00:20:14.680 own forensic psychiatrists, a Dr. Watts and a 00:20:14.680 --> 00:20:17.259 Dr. Allard, and they both testified that they 00:20:17.259 --> 00:20:19.680 had diagnosed Magnata with schizophrenia. They 00:20:19.680 --> 00:20:22.299 pointed to his family history, his father's diagnosis, 00:20:22.440 --> 00:20:25.420 his own diagnosis as a teen. They talked about 00:20:25.420 --> 00:20:28.119 his claims of hearing voices, of being controlled 00:20:28.119 --> 00:20:30.619 by a figure he called Manny, who was forcing 00:20:30.619 --> 00:20:33.339 him to do these things. They argued he was in 00:20:33.339 --> 00:20:36.099 a full -blown psychotic break. But the Crown 00:20:36.099 --> 00:20:39.430 prosecution... They weren't buying a word of 00:20:39.430 --> 00:20:42.509 it. Not for a second. Their expert psychiatrists, 00:20:42.529 --> 00:20:44.829 Dr. Chamberlain and Dr. Paris, came to a very 00:20:44.829 --> 00:20:47.230 different conclusion. They agreed he had mental 00:20:47.230 --> 00:20:49.269 health issues, but they diagnosed him with a 00:20:49.269 --> 00:20:51.670 cluster of personality disorders. Specifically, 00:20:51.930 --> 00:20:55.289 narcissistic personality disorder. histrionic 00:20:55.289 --> 00:20:58.269 personality disorder, and antisocial personality 00:20:58.269 --> 00:21:01.589 disorder. And this is the absolute crucial distinction 00:21:01.589 --> 00:21:04.250 in the whole case. A personality disorder is 00:21:04.250 --> 00:21:06.430 not a psychotic illness. It's not a break from 00:21:06.430 --> 00:21:08.650 reality. If you have narcissistic personality 00:21:08.650 --> 00:21:10.690 disorder, you're not hallucinating. You know 00:21:10.690 --> 00:21:13.009 right from wrong. You just have an inflated sense 00:21:13.009 --> 00:21:14.950 of your own importance, a desperate need for 00:21:14.950 --> 00:21:17.609 admiration, and a complete lack of empathy for 00:21:17.609 --> 00:21:20.250 others. So the Crown's argument was that he wasn't 00:21:20.250 --> 00:21:23.599 crazy. He was just evil. and that he was organized, 00:21:23.900 --> 00:21:26.839 he was lucid, and that the entire murder was 00:21:26.839 --> 00:21:29.400 him acting out a pre -written script. And this 00:21:29.400 --> 00:21:31.420 is where we take out that pin we put in the name 00:21:31.420 --> 00:21:34.460 Kirk Trammell. Because the prosecution's masterstroke 00:21:34.460 --> 00:21:37.559 was connecting the entire crime to one of Magnata's 00:21:37.559 --> 00:21:42.480 favorite movies, the 1992 thriller Basic Instinct. 00:21:42.619 --> 00:21:44.559 When I first read this part of the trial transcript, 00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:47.180 my jaw was on the floor. It sounds like something 00:21:47.180 --> 00:21:49.539 from a movie, not a real legal argument. It sounds 00:21:49.539 --> 00:21:52.859 unbelievable until the prosecutor, Louis Boutilier, 00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:55.220 starts laying out the evidence piece by piece. 00:21:55.480 --> 00:21:58.019 And it's devastating. OK, so let's walk through 00:21:58.019 --> 00:22:00.799 it. Point one, the alias. In the movie, Sharon 00:22:00.799 --> 00:22:03.319 Stone plays a seductive, manipulative novelist 00:22:03.319 --> 00:22:05.700 who is a murder suspect. Her name is Catherine 00:22:05.700 --> 00:22:09.420 Trammell. OK, so Magnati uses her last name for 00:22:09.420 --> 00:22:11.759 his alias when he's on the run in Paris. That 00:22:11.759 --> 00:22:13.680 could be a coincidence. It could be. But then 00:22:13.680 --> 00:22:18.039 point two. The voice in his head. Magnata told 00:22:18.039 --> 00:22:20.160 his psychiatrist that this person named Manny 00:22:20.160 --> 00:22:22.440 was the one who controlled him, who told him 00:22:22.440 --> 00:22:25.559 to kill Jun Lin. And in the movie. In Basic Instinct, 00:22:25.700 --> 00:22:28.180 Catherine Trammell's fiancé, who she murdered 00:22:28.180 --> 00:22:30.859 before the movie begins, was named Manny Vasquez. 00:22:31.220 --> 00:22:34.220 Okay, wow. That's getting pretty specific. It 00:22:34.220 --> 00:22:37.220 gets more specific. Point three, the murder weapon. 00:22:37.339 --> 00:22:39.960 The ice pick. The movie is famous for its ice 00:22:39.960 --> 00:22:42.819 pick murder scene. The title of Magnata's video 00:22:42.819 --> 00:22:46.500 was One Lunatic. One ice pick. But here's the 00:22:46.500 --> 00:22:49.900 picker. Magnata didn't actually use an ice pick. 00:22:50.079 --> 00:22:53.420 The weapon he used to stab John Lynn was a screwdriver 00:22:53.420 --> 00:22:55.680 that he had bought at a local hardware store. 00:22:55.920 --> 00:22:58.380 So that breaks the pattern. Right. Because what 00:22:58.380 --> 00:23:00.640 the police found in his apartment was a can of 00:23:00.640 --> 00:23:03.440 silver spray paint. And forensic analysis confirmed 00:23:03.440 --> 00:23:05.380 that he had painted the handle of the screwdriver 00:23:05.380 --> 00:23:08.180 silver to make it look like an ice pick on camera. 00:23:08.380 --> 00:23:10.519 That is the single most damning piece of evidence. 00:23:10.680 --> 00:23:12.920 You do not stop in the middle of a psychotic 00:23:12.920 --> 00:23:14.960 break to do arts and crafts. You don't paint 00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:16.900 your props to match a movie if you're not in 00:23:16.900 --> 00:23:19.740 your right mind. Precisely. The prosecutor argued 00:23:19.740 --> 00:23:22.680 that this one act proved planning, deliberation, 00:23:22.740 --> 00:23:25.319 and a conscious effort to stage the murder to 00:23:25.319 --> 00:23:28.670 mimic the film. It's incompatible with the defense's 00:23:28.670 --> 00:23:31.670 theory of a disorganized, chaotic mind. And there 00:23:31.670 --> 00:23:33.589 was one more parallel, wasn't there? With the 00:23:33.589 --> 00:23:36.829 opening scene of the movie. Yes. The very first 00:23:36.829 --> 00:23:39.210 scene in Basic Instinct shows a blonde woman, 00:23:39.369 --> 00:23:42.470 seen from behind, straddling a man who is tied 00:23:42.470 --> 00:23:45.410 to a bed. She then murders him with an ice pick 00:23:45.410 --> 00:23:49.089 during sex. Magnata's video visually mimics that 00:23:49.089 --> 00:23:51.789 exact scene and dynamic. He wasn't just taking 00:23:51.789 --> 00:23:53.809 inspiration from the movie. He was trying to 00:23:53.809 --> 00:23:56.609 recreate it. He wanted to be Catherine Tramiel, 00:23:56.769 --> 00:23:59.819 the brilliant... Beautiful killer who outsmarts 00:23:59.819 --> 00:24:01.859 everyone and gets away with it. This evidence 00:24:01.859 --> 00:24:05.000 just completely shredded the NCR defense. It 00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:07.440 showed the jury that the voices and delusions 00:24:07.440 --> 00:24:09.420 he was describing to the doctors weren't symptoms 00:24:09.420 --> 00:24:11.960 of schizophrenia. They were plot points he was 00:24:11.960 --> 00:24:14.799 plagiarizing from a Hollywood script. The jury 00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:16.940 deliberated for eight days, which is a long time. 00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:18.720 But when they came back, the verdict was decisive. 00:24:19.039 --> 00:24:22.210 Guilty. On all charges, including first -degree 00:24:22.210 --> 00:24:24.490 murder. Which in Canada means it was planned 00:24:24.490 --> 00:24:26.609 and deliberate. It carries an automatic life 00:24:26.609 --> 00:24:29.630 sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 00:24:29.630 --> 00:24:32.970 years. It was really the only verdict that made 00:24:32.970 --> 00:24:35.170 sense, given the evidence. The legal system, 00:24:35.250 --> 00:24:38.849 in the end, worked. But the cost of getting to 00:24:38.849 --> 00:24:41.809 that verdict... We have to talk about the collateral 00:24:41.809 --> 00:24:43.970 damage, especially for the family of Jun Lin. 00:24:44.289 --> 00:24:48.130 His father, Di Ren Lin, flew from China to attend 00:24:48.130 --> 00:24:51.359 the trial in Montreal. He sat in that courtroom 00:24:51.359 --> 00:24:54.380 every single day, listening through a translator 00:24:54.380 --> 00:24:56.700 to the most horrific details about his son's 00:24:56.700 --> 00:24:58.359 death. There were several moments during the 00:24:58.359 --> 00:25:00.319 testimony where the evidence being presented 00:25:00.319 --> 00:25:03.119 was so graphic, the description so vile, that 00:25:03.119 --> 00:25:05.220 he literally collapsed in the courtroom. He had 00:25:05.220 --> 00:25:07.160 to be physically carried out by court officers. 00:25:07.279 --> 00:25:09.519 I can't even imagine that pain. His victim impact 00:25:09.519 --> 00:25:11.519 statement at the end of the trial is one of the 00:25:11.519 --> 00:25:13.740 most powerful and heartbreaking documents I've 00:25:13.740 --> 00:25:16.980 ever read. He didn't rail against Magnata. He 00:25:16.980 --> 00:25:19.519 just spoke about his son. He said, in our hearts, 00:25:19.559 --> 00:25:22.839 we are crying out. Our child, our boy, we come 00:25:22.839 --> 00:25:24.960 to take you home. It just cut through all the 00:25:24.960 --> 00:25:26.859 noise about the killer, the internet, the movie 00:25:26.859 --> 00:25:28.680 plots, and it brought it back to the simple, 00:25:28.759 --> 00:25:31.200 profound tragedy of a father who had lost his 00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:34.180 only son. And the community did try to honor 00:25:34.180 --> 00:25:37.460 him. Concordia University, his school, set up 00:25:37.460 --> 00:25:39.660 a scholarship and an award in Jin Lin's name 00:25:39.660 --> 00:25:42.700 so his legacy would be about academic achievement 00:25:42.700 --> 00:25:44.819 and helping other students, not just about how 00:25:44.819 --> 00:25:47.690 he died. Which is so important. But then as a 00:25:47.690 --> 00:25:50.589 society, we kind of stumbled because we have 00:25:50.589 --> 00:25:53.569 to talk about the Newsmaker of the Year controversy. 00:25:54.049 --> 00:25:57.930 Yeah. At the end of 2012, the Canadian press, 00:25:58.130 --> 00:26:00.829 which is the national news agency, holds a poll 00:26:00.829 --> 00:26:03.930 among newspaper editors to decide the Newsmaker 00:26:03.930 --> 00:26:06.890 of the Year. And they chose Luca Magnata. Now, 00:26:06.910 --> 00:26:09.170 their defense was purely journalistic. They argued 00:26:09.170 --> 00:26:11.910 that the title Newsmaker is not an award. It's 00:26:11.910 --> 00:26:14.329 not Man of the Year. It's just a neutral recognition 00:26:14.329 --> 00:26:16.829 of the person or story that most dominated the 00:26:16.829 --> 00:26:18.849 headlines. And technically, they were right. 00:26:18.930 --> 00:26:21.210 He was the biggest news story. But it just feels 00:26:21.210 --> 00:26:23.650 so wrong. It feels like handing a trophy to the 00:26:23.650 --> 00:26:25.829 guy who did all of this specifically to get that 00:26:25.829 --> 00:26:28.289 kind of recognition. It was a complete validation 00:26:28.289 --> 00:26:31.619 of his entire life strategy. It sent the message 00:26:31.619 --> 00:26:34.160 that if your crime is shocking enough, if it's 00:26:34.160 --> 00:26:36.579 theatrical enough, we will reward you with the 00:26:36.579 --> 00:26:39.279 very thing you crave, a place in the history 00:26:39.279 --> 00:26:43.019 books. It led to a huge public backlash and a 00:26:43.019 --> 00:26:45.380 lot of soul searching within Canadian journalism. 00:26:45.720 --> 00:26:48.940 And he really was a prototype, wasn't he? He's 00:26:48.940 --> 00:26:52.759 often seen as one of the first of this new terrifying 00:26:52.759 --> 00:26:58.390 breed of killer. The online broadcaster. Absolutely. 00:26:58.450 --> 00:27:00.650 We've seen it happen since with killers who live 00:27:00.650 --> 00:27:02.849 stream their attacks on Facebook or Twitch or 00:27:02.849 --> 00:27:05.529 who upload manifestos and videos before they 00:27:05.529 --> 00:27:08.589 act. Magnata was the proof of concept. He showed 00:27:08.589 --> 00:27:10.630 that you no longer need the traditional media 00:27:10.630 --> 00:27:13.369 to be your gatekeeper. In the old days, a killer 00:27:13.369 --> 00:27:15.569 like Zodiac had to write letters to the newspaper 00:27:15.569 --> 00:27:18.170 and hope they published them. Magnata just bypassed 00:27:18.170 --> 00:27:20.170 all of that. He had his own distribution channel. 00:27:20.269 --> 00:27:22.250 He uploaded its product directly to the consumer 00:27:22.250 --> 00:27:25.230 on a gore website. He made every single person 00:27:25.230 --> 00:27:27.069 who clicked. on that link a part of his broadcast 00:27:27.069 --> 00:27:29.029 network. Which brings us back to that chilling 00:27:29.029 --> 00:27:31.750 message he left in the closet. If you don't like 00:27:31.750 --> 00:27:33.890 the reflection, don't look in the mirror. He 00:27:33.890 --> 00:27:36.630 was a monster, but he was a media savvy monster. 00:27:37.049 --> 00:27:39.890 He understood the dark side of human curiosity. 00:27:40.150 --> 00:27:42.509 He knew that millions of people would seek out 00:27:42.509 --> 00:27:45.029 and watch that video. Not because they were evil, 00:27:45.190 --> 00:27:47.490 not because they approved of it, but simply because 00:27:47.490 --> 00:27:50.079 they couldn't look away. It's the digital version 00:27:50.079 --> 00:27:52.460 of slowing down to look at a car crash. It's 00:27:52.460 --> 00:27:55.160 exactly that. And when he was finally caught 00:27:55.160 --> 00:27:57.619 sitting in that internet cafe in Berlin, staring 00:27:57.619 --> 00:28:00.599 at his own face on a news website, he was completing 00:28:00.599 --> 00:28:02.900 the circuit. He was the creator of the content, 00:28:03.059 --> 00:28:05.059 and he was also the consumer of the reaction 00:28:05.059 --> 00:28:09.059 to it. But we, the public, the media, we provided 00:28:09.059 --> 00:28:12.119 that reaction. Every click, every share, every 00:28:12.119 --> 00:28:15.140 horrified tweet was fuel for his narcissistic 00:28:15.140 --> 00:28:17.460 fire. So that leaves us with a really uncomfortable 00:28:17.460 --> 00:28:19.769 question, doesn't it? What do we do with that 00:28:19.769 --> 00:28:21.730 knowledge? We can't just stop reporting on crime. 00:28:21.849 --> 00:28:23.569 We can't stop being curious about the world. 00:28:23.650 --> 00:28:25.769 No, but maybe we can be more cautious about where 00:28:25.769 --> 00:28:27.660 we put the spotlight. I think that's the only 00:28:27.660 --> 00:28:29.640 answer. It's why we made a point of starting 00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:32.079 this deep dive with Jin Lin. It's why we focused 00:28:32.079 --> 00:28:34.920 on his life, his dreams, his struggles. The killer 00:28:34.920 --> 00:28:37.000 always wants to be the protagonist of the story. 00:28:37.119 --> 00:28:40.640 I think our job as people who consume these stories 00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:43.460 is to refuse him that role. We have to relegate 00:28:43.460 --> 00:28:46.839 him to what he actually is. The villain, the 00:28:46.839 --> 00:28:49.579 obstacle, the destructive force that ended a 00:28:49.579 --> 00:28:52.319 promising life. It's a conscious act of reframing. 00:28:52.569 --> 00:28:54.690 We study the perpetrator to understand the how 00:28:54.690 --> 00:28:56.470 and why, so maybe we can prevent the next one. 00:28:56.690 --> 00:28:59.309 But we remember the victim to understand the 00:28:59.309 --> 00:29:02.069 cost. We don't celebrate the performance. Exactly. 00:29:02.269 --> 00:29:04.609 Knowledge is our defense. Understanding the mechanics 00:29:04.609 --> 00:29:06.829 of his manipulation is the best way to make sure 00:29:06.829 --> 00:29:09.789 we're not manipulated ourselves. That's a powerful 00:29:09.789 --> 00:29:12.990 place to end. This was a really heavy one, but 00:29:12.990 --> 00:29:14.890 an important one. Thanks for taking this deep 00:29:14.890 --> 00:29:15.430 dive with us.