User:SkyBlueCat/Drafts/Luka Magnotta

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<1--- Magnotta is born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman in Scarborough, a suburban community on the eastern outskirts of Toronto, to mother Anna Yourkin and father Donald Newman. He is the eldest of three kids. His parents split while Eric is still young. Newman later goes to live with his grandmother, Phyllis.

At some point, Newman's grandmother and grandfather also divorce. Newman is home schooled for a period of time; in one blog post, he later writes that it was because he was told the world is a dirty and dangerous place. However, for at least two years, from 1998 to 2000, he does attend I.E. Weldon Secondary School in Lindsay, a rural community in the Kawartha Lakes region of southeastern Ontario. Former teachers and classmates remember him for his vanity and preoccupation with looks. He changes his hair colour often.

Around 2002 or 2003, Newman begins stripping at Remingtons, a nightclub in Toronto. By 2003, he has appeared in his first two pornography films, both as a straight man turned gay. The following year, he appears in at least two other pornographic films, including one where he appears as Jimmy – a name he would also adopt while working as a male escort.

Newman catches the attention of the Toronto Police after he befriends a 21-year-old woman with the mental capacity of a child eight to 12 years of age, convinces her to apply for credit cards and then racks up $10,000 in unpaid bills. He is charged with fraud. Initially, police allege he sexually assaulted the woman and videotaped it, but the Crown drops the charge before the case goes to trial. Newman's lawyer at the time, Peter Scully, now says that the decision changed the course of Newman's life "immeasurably, with huge ramifications to our society eventually."

June 2005: Newman pleads guilty and is convicted of four fraud charges. Before sentencing, Newman's lawyer shows the court a medical report revealing his client has "significant psychiatric issues." In handing down the sentence, Madam Justice Lauren Marshall issues a stern warning: "You have a medical problem and you need to always take medication. If you do not, your life is going to get messed up." Newman is given a nine-month community-service sentence and 12 months of probation.

Newman continues to appear in low-level porn films. He also appears in Fab Magazine, a gay bi-weekly in Toronto, on the "Fab Boy" page as "Jimmy." There, he describes himself as a "22-year-old soccer fan" born in Russia and living in Toronto who hopes to become a vice or homicide police officer.

Early in 2006, Newman meets Barbie, a transgendered woman, and they begin dating. "He said he wanted to be famous one day," Barbie told the fifth estate in a recent interview. She recalls his apartment looking like a shrine dedicated to himself. "He would always beg me to take pictures of him," she says. In April, several months after meeting Newman, Barbie breaks up with him. That summer, Newman legally changes his name to Luka Rocco Magnotta.

March 2007: Magnotta files for bankruptcy, listing the cause as "illness, lack of employment and insufficient income to pay off debts." He claims that he had to pay $200 each month in expenses relating to an unspecified medical condition.

2007-2008: Throughout 2007, Magnotta continues his attempts to make a name for himself. In the summer, he auditions for the reality show Cover Guy, telling the judges, "Some people say I am devastatingly good-looking." The judges reject him. In February of 2008, he also tries out for the reality show Plastic Makes Perfect. "I've had my nose done. I've had two hair transplants," he tells them. "And I'm planning on having muscle implants in my pecs and my arms."

The Toronto Sun publishes a story by reporter Joe Warmington about how Magnotta had dropped by the newspaper's headquarters to deny online rumours he was dating notorious schoolgirl killer Karla Homolka. The rumours were likely started by Magnotta himself. In later years, a tribute video to Homolka was created by a Luka Magnotta alias account on YouTube; all the videos uploaded/favourited are Magnotta- or Homolka-related.

Magnotta continues to try to garner attention online, posting comments about himself to create rumours and then using other profiles to deny them. Twice this year, he loses battles with Wikipedia to keep a page up about himself. He also posts an online escort ad under the alias Jimmy. One client posts an unflattering review describing him as cold and remote.

Magnotta meets a 70-year-old man in Toronto who ends up becoming his travel companion. Together, they visit Russia, Italy and France. Henry, a fake name used to protect his identity, told the fifth estate they met at the Pickle Barrel restaurant located near Toronto's Yonge and Eglinton intersection. "He walked as if he was on a stage or as if he was on a ramp for modeling clothes," said Henry.

Fall of 2010: In 2010, Magnotta's online postings get progressively darker. On his Facebook page, he posts a link to a video called, 3 guys 1 hammer that shows a man being viciously beaten to death. The video was not by Magnotta. The myth about Magnotta's relationship with killer Homolka grows. In one posting about Magnotta and Homolka, the user — likely Magnotta — writes, "Luka is unable to live unless there is chaos in his life, it makes him feel as though he matters."

Dec. 21, 2010: Shortly before Christmas, a video called 1 guy – 2 kittens started circulating on discussion boards. Posted on Dec. 21, the video depicts an unidentified man, whose face is concealed, placing two kittens in a sealed bag and then sucking out the air with a vacuum to suffocate them. Though the video is quickly removed from YouTube, animal activists learn of it.

Soon after, Ryan Boyle, a former U.S. soldier who uses the online name Save Kitty, forms a Facebook group called "Find the Vacuum Kitten Killer for Great Justice." About 4,000 people sign up. "These were not people who were doing it for money," said Boyle, referring to the online activists. "They all had the same thing in mind: we want to catch this guy." The group believes Magnotta joined the group under an alias, based on certain users' online patterns of behaviour. When the group goes astray in its search for the kitten killer, they believe that Magnotta himself anonymously went on a message board frequented by the group and posted pictures from the video with the face no longer blurred.

Rescue Ink, an animal protection group, posts a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the Vacuum Kitten Killer (VKK). "It's a gateway crime, animal abuse," Joe Panz, a founding member of the group, told the fifth estate. "Once somebody starts to open that door, that's when things start to get really dangerous."

Jan. 4, 2011: Magnotta, now in New York, makes contact with lawyer Romeo Salta, expressing alarm about the firestorm over the kitten killer. "He was convinced the animal activists were closing in," said Salta. Magnotta asks whether any arrest warrants are pending on him. There aren't any.

Early 2011: A new 11-member online group, called the Animal Beta Project or the AB Project, emerges in early 2011 with the goal of stopping Magnotta before he kills again. "We felt he would continue, that he would harm other animals and eventually move onto something even more violent, like hurting a person," said John Green, an online alias. He spoke to the fifth estate on the condition of anonymity. The amateur sleuths analyze the kitten-killing videos frame by frame. They claim that furnishings and the kitten killer's clothing in the videos are the same as those in other images of Magnotta posted on the web.

Though the secretive AB Project group discovers a wealth of information about Magnotta online, they struggle to track down his physical location. The AB Project had been using exif (exchangeable image file) data from pictures posted of Magnotta online that told them when and where photos were taken. One innocuous photo from October 2010 taken on a cellphone stamped with a GPS locator finally suggests to them that Magnotta was in Toronto. The group contacted the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with all their findings, who then reach out to the Toronto Police. The police open a file on Magnotta in February of 2011.

Late November and early December 2011: A year after the original kitten-killing videos appear online, more videos are posted. A man wearing a Santa hat is shown feeding a live kitten to a python. In another, a kitten is duct taped to a broom handle then drowned in a bathtub. "He was basically saying, 'Look, I've done it again. You're not going to catch me,'" said AB Project member John Green.

After The Sun in London, U.K., publishes a story about the kitten killer, Magnotta turns up at their office to deny that he had killed a kitten. The paper has not asked about him and reporter Alex West describes the behaviour as "highly suspicious." West wrote, "But behind the denials it seemed he was getting some sort of bizarre pleasure out of the attention." Two days later, threatening emails are sent to the Sun's offices, believed to be from Magnotta. "Next time you hear from me it will be in a movie I am producing that will have some humans in it, not just pussies," the email says. The London police are notified but say it was outside their jurisdiction.

Early 2012: Investigators with the AB Project receive a tip in early 2012 that Magnotta might have moved to Montreal. The project members then begin searching through their archive of Magnotta pictures looking for any that connects him to the city. One photo with unique streetlights catches their attention. The online sleuths begin systematically looking at Montreal intersections using Google's Street View and track the one in the picture to a neighbourhood in Montreal. Around this time, Magnotta's online activity begins to accelerate with blog postings about necrophilia and sedatives. --->