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The ‘1 Lunatic 1 Icepick’ video was posted on a website called “Best Gore,” and would lead to Luka Magnotta being convicted of first-degree murder. Here’s the origin story for the gruesome video.
Before he uploaded 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick to the internet, Magnotta uploaded many other gruesome and viral videos, including one in which he placed two kittens in a plastic bag and suffocate them. He also posted a video where he fed a kitten to a python, and more. These two first videos are the origin for the name of the Netflix docu-series about Magnotta: “don’t f*ck with cats” is an unsaid rule on the internet, according to many people profiled for the series.
The first video was posted by Magnotta under the alias “uonlywish500,” on December 21, 2010. This video would provide a number of useful details for internet sleuths to use when they tried to track Magnotta down in the coming year, including the blanket seen in the video, a North American pack of cigarettes, and a yellow vacuum. That same room would later be the site for the brutal murder and dismemberment of Chinese student Lin Jun in 2012.
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Then, there was 1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick. The video was uploaded to a Canadian fringe site called Best Gore (which is still up and running) on May 25, 2012, and was 10 minutes long in its entirety. The name of the video was a play on the viral meme 2 Girls, 1 Cup, a gross pornographic video. Like 2 Girls, 1 Cup, reaction videos showing the face of a person watching 1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick for the first time also spread across the internet.
Here’s what you need to know:
1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick Video Explained [Warning: GRAPHIC]
The 1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick video still circulates in some corners of the internet, but no longer exists on Best Gore and will not be linked to in this article. Here’s a description of what happens in the video.
The video opens to the song “True Faith,” by the band New Order. That song also plays at the open of the movie American Psycho, which internet sleuths deemed to be the opposite of coincidence.
From the vantage point of the video camera, one can see a man, who is naked and is tied by the wrists and ankles on the bed. There’s a Casablanca movie poster on the wall behind him, and a man standing near him. That man strokes the nude man in a gentle manner, in the same way he did with the videos of the kittens before he suffocated them.
The nude man in the bed was later found to be Lin Jun, a Chinese student studying in Montreal at the time. The man standing over him was later determined to be Magnotta. He was dressed in all-black.
Here’s a summary of what happens in the 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick video:
Over the course of those 10 minutes, Magnotta stabs Lin with a knife fashioned to look like an ice pick upwards of a 100 times. He then slices parts of Lin’s body with a steak knife. Before the video reaches its halfway mark, Magnotta has decapitated Lin and sawed at his arm. By the end of the video, Magnotta has sawed off both of Lin’s arms, his right leg, and nearly severed his left leg. Though Lin moved his head and arms in the first few minutes, it’s unclear if he was conscious at the time of the stabbing, or for anything that happened after. There’s more information about Lin’s death below.
In the second half of the video, Magnotta proceeds to commit sodomy and necrophilia on Lin’s torso. A black and white small dog can also be seen, whining and chewing on a part of Lin’s body, too. Investigators would later confirm there were signs of cannibalism found on Lin’s body, though the video does not directly show Magnotta eating any body parts.
Though the video is traditionally known as “1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick,” web surfers should be warned that it’s also been posted under different names in the past, including “Time to Shake Things Up” and “1 Icepick.”
Magnotta’s identity would remain unknown for just under a year. Then, on April 12, 2013, he was indicted for first degree murder, offering indignities to a human body, distributing obscene materials, using the postal service to distribute obscene materials, and criminal harassment.
Internet Sleuths Talk About Their Experience Watching 1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick
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On Netflix’s Don’t F*ck With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, many of the sleuths who helped bring Magnotta’s crimes to justice shared their experiences watching the “1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick” video.
One sleuth, John Green, said he got a message from a friend that there was a new video up. “It opens a browser, I see a video, and I press play,” he says. “In the previous videos, the objects on the bed were cats. In this video, there was an actual person. And I’m like, ‘what the f*ck?'”
The sleuth said he immediately jumped out of bed and watched the video full-screen on a large computer screen. “Holy shit,” he said.
Green later said, “We told [authorities] this was going to happen. And now we’re looking at a dead person.”
Lin’s Autopsy Offered No Concrete Answers as to When, Exactly, He Died
Lin’s severed torso was found a month after the video was published. It had been stuffed in a suitcase and found by a janitor who noticed the smell. The other parts of his body would later be mailed in packages to various locations throughout the spring of 2012. His left foot was mailed the office of the Prime Minister of Canada.
The autopsy of Lin’s mutilated body took several days, authorities said. Other pieces of evidence were also found in the trash, authorities said, including a blood-soaked blanket and the body of the dog seen in the video.
Dr. Yann Daze, a forensic pathologist who investigated the body and served as a witness for Magnotta’s trial, said, “I cannot say if the victim was alive when he was decapitated. What I can say is he was when an edged weapon travelled through all the structures of the neck,” AKA when his throat was slit.
Daze explained that he came to this conclusion because of how much blackened blood was found around the neck; if Lin had died prior to his neck being slit, that much blood wouldn’t have left the site of the wound.
Other details were revealed throughout the investigation. Surveillance footage showed Lin and Magnotta entering the building together, and Magnotta leaving the building several hours later alone, wearing the shirt Lin had entered with. There was also traces of a sedative found in Lin’s blood, which might have explained why his movements are so muted in the video.
Claudette Hamlin, a Montreal Detective/Sergeant, said to Netflix that this sedative residue was found in a wine glass in the apartment. “I do hope that Mr. Lin was knocked out before Mr. Magnotta cut his throat,” she said.
Magnotta Pleaded Guilty to the Crimes; His Lawyers Argued He Was Not Criminally Responsible by Way of Insanity
Surveillance footage of Lin entering Magnotta’s building with him.
Magnotta would later say that he met Lin on the evening of May 24, when Lin responded to a Craigslist ad looking for someone interested in sex and bondage.
During his trial, Magnotta’s lawyers argued he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions, because he was criminally insane. Luc Leclair, Magnotta’s defense lawyer, pointed out Magnotta’s apparent schizophrenic diagnosis, and showed the jury a number of surveillance videos from his apartment building in the days leading up to the murder. In the clips, Magnotta can be seen wandering the hallways with a wig on, according to Global News Canada.
Leclair asked the jury, per the publication, “What is Magnotta doing, walking around the apartment building, wearing a wig at 11 at night? Why does he appear to be cleaning, taking garbage to the basement at 4 in the morning?”
Magnotta is currently serving out a life sentence in prison.
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