Luka Magnotta trial: Jury sees unedited clips from infamous video

Six days before Jun Lin was killed in Luka Magnotta’s Montreal apartment, another man had been kept there, bound to the bed, unconscious and gagged.

The man has never been identified, and police say they still don’t know who he is.

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But this morning, through photos and video clips shown to the jury at Magnotta’s first-degree murder trial, it became clear how lucky the mystery man was to escape with his life.

In the video sequences, unedited recordings used to create the 10-minute video that was posted online shortly after Lin’s death, an unidentified man is seen tied to the bed, gagged and blindfolded.

The man is heard snoring on three video clips, as Magnotta stands beside the bed, leans over and looks intently at the bound man’s face, at one point with a mini-saw in his right hand.

Magnotta briefly straddles the man, who looks to be in his early 20s, and is heard twice calmly asking him, “Are you OK?”

At the end of the last video showing the man, he is seen jerking around slightly and shifting his weight, as if awakening.

Photos of the sleeping man, with Magnotta appearing beside him with eyes closed, were also entered into evidence. The court heard those photos were taken after the video was shot. 

Graphic video

The jury members remained impassive, and some jurors took notes, as they were shown 15 video clips in total, many graphically depicting Magnotta stabbing and dismembering Lin’s body.

In the prisoner’s box, a clean-shaven Magnotta dressed in a wrinkled grey shirt stayed bent over, with his head on his knees as the video sequences were played.

The court also saw a few dozen photographs that police discovered, along with the videos, from a memory card in a camera found in the trash near Magnotta’s apartment.

Files found on memory card, laptop

Sgt-Det. Panagiotis Sarganis, of the Montreal police computer forensics team, testified that some of the photos had been deleted but he was able to recover them.

Police also found some of the same video and photographs when they examined files on a laptop seized when the accused was arrested in Berlin on June 4, 2012.

The jury saw the edited video, which includes music and still photos and was posted online shortly after Lin’s death, last week. In it, the unidentified man tied to the bed is seen briefly at the beginning.

Sarganis deduced, using other police evidence, that 12 of the video clips presented to the jury were recorded on May 25, 2012.

In those clips, Lin is stabbed repeatedly and dismembered. The video also captured other lewd acts committed by a man dressed in dark clothing, whose face is hidden.

On the last clip, the camera catches Magnotta’s face as he sits on the bed and commits a lewd and repugnant act with a body part.

The three other clips were recorded six days earlier on May 19, 2012, police determined.

That’s the same day an unidentified man was captured on surveillance video entering Magnotta’s apartment and leaving the following day, with the accused helping him down the front steps of the building.

The court heard the person operating the camera switched frequently from video mode to camera mode, with photos taken in between video clips.

Magnotta has admitted to the physical acts behind the five charges against him, including killing Lin and committing an indignity to his body, but has pleaded not guilty.

His lawyer argues he should not be held criminally responsible for his actions because of mental illness.