'Psycho' killer suspect to appear before German judge Berlin
A porn actor dubbed the 'Canadian Psycho' for allegedly killing and chopping up his lover is due to appear before a Berlin judge on Tuesday after being captured while on the run in Germany.
"The suspect will be presented today to the judge who will confirm his detention," Martin Steltner, a spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor, said, adding it could take several days to arrange his extradition to Canada.
Police in Berlin picked up Luka Rocco Magnotta, 29, at an Internet cafe on Monday after a global hunt for the man believed to have murdered his Chinese lover with an ice pick, dismembered his body and filmed the grisly killing.
The case came to light after body parts of the victim were mailed to addresses in Canada including to political party offices in Ottawa.
German police faced little resistance when they picked the suspect up in Neukoelln, a working-class district of the capital, after a witness tip-off. He said simply, "You got me," a police spokesperson said.
A video from the cafe's security camera circulating on German media showed police leading a suspect wearing sunglasses and a dark hooded jacket with his hands handcuffed behind his back out of the cafe.
Tuesday's hearing will take place behind closed doors.
German authorities have asked Canada to provide the necessary documents for Magnotta's extradition.
"We are waiting for these documents and as soon as they have arrived, a judge will rule on an extradition," Steltner said.
"We expect the extradition to be approved," he added saying that the procedure normally took several days.
Canadian authorities have already said they are working on the documents needed to secure Magnotta's extradition, after the manhunt for the porn actor that started in Montreal and shifted to Paris before ending in Berlin.
Magnotta, dubbed the 'Butcher of Montreal' and the 'Canadian Psycho', has been wanted since last week when body parts -- a hand and a foot -- from Chinese student Lin Jun, were sent by mail to Liberal and Conservative party offices.
Lin's torso was found in a suitcase left for garbage collection outside Magnotta's Montreal apartment.
However Chinese media reports quoted his friends as saying Tuesday that Lin, 33, was not Magnotta's lover and was in a relationship with another man when he met his death.
Interpol had issued a Red Notice wanted-persons alert for Magnotta, also known as Eric Clinton Newman and Vladimir Romanov, to its 190 member countries after a video purportedly showing the gruesome murder surfaced online.
In the video, which Canadian police have reportedly said shows the crime, a man repeatedly stabs another man with an ice pick and dismembers him, as a song from the soundtrack of the film "American Psycho" plays in the background.
Magnotta travelled to Berlin from Paris under a false name -- of Tramell, French police said.
Catherine Tramell was the main character in the 1992 film, "Basic Instinct", played by Sharon Stone, who uses an ice pick to murder a lover.
Canadian investigators said he boarded a France-bound plane on May 26 in Montreal.
Two passengers who said they sat next to Magnotta on the six-hour flight told French radio he had appeared nervous and was crying.
"He was nervous during the flight. He was clearly hiding his face," one passenger said.
"At one he point he disappeared and I got worried -- we're all a bit paranoid on flights -- and I thought 'He's put a bomb in the toilets.'
With the help of Magnotta's cell phone signal, police traced him to a hotel in the Parisian suburb of Bagnolet which they visited Saturday on a tip-off from a witness, a police source said.
In the hotel room, police found items such as pornographic magazines and airsick bags bearing the logo of the airline on which Magnotta travelled from Canada to France, the source said.
The hunt then turned to an international bus station in Paris Monday where video surveillance footage showed he had boarded a bus to Germany.
Post new comment