Luka Rocco Magnotta
Magnotta, known in the press as the Canadian Psycho, murdered his lover Jun Lin and mailed parts of his dismembered corpse to the Canadian government. Reuters

Luka Rocco Magnotta, known in the press as the Canadian Psycho who murdered his gay lover Jun Lin and then mailed parts of the dismembered corpse to the Canadian government, is a ticking time bomb and must be apprehended immediately, a family friend said.

I hope that he is caught because he is a ticking time bomb, an unidentified woman said in an interview with QMI News Agency. Because he's unstable, if he gets cornered, I just don't think it will be a good outcome, so the faster he is caught the better.

The anonymous woman reportedly knew Magnotta since he was a child. She said he grew up in a very dysfunction family, in which his grandparents raised him without proper supervision.

Magnotta, 29, faces first-degree murder charges in connection with the grisly videotaped death of 32-year-old Chinese student Jun Lin, Reuters reported. He also reportedly consumed part of his victim before Lin's dismembered body was found in parcels and mailed to Canada's Conservative and Liberal Party headquarters. Authorities also believe Lin's throat was slashed and that he was stabbed several times by Magnotta before he was decapitated and dismembered. Lin and Magnotta had a prior romantic relationship, the Daily Mail reported.

In a homicide case like this, having images of the crime is very rare, said Montreal police spokesman Ian Lafreniere at a press conference on Friday. Media around the world have circulated his [Magnotta's] photograph, the media have been talking about this ... so I'm very hopeful that all that assistance will help us put him behind bars.

After murdering Lin, authorities claim that Magnotta fled the country. It is believed that he is hiding out in France and possibly dressed as woman, reported the Daily Mail.

He's obsessed with the Eiffel Tower and the Moulin Rouge and is confident that he can lie low in a country he loves, an unidentified police officer in France said. All efforts are being made to arrest him.

As the murder story continues to unfold, the small-town Canadian boy-turned-murderer and cannibal is slowly being revealed.

His unidentified relative claims that Magnotta's real name is Eric Newman. He was born in Scarborough, Ontario, to Don Newman and Anna Yourkin. He has a younger brother and sister and two younger half-siblings, the Peterborough Examiner examined.

His relative said he was an odd and effeminate teenager who grew up in Scarborough, Ontario, and later in Lindsay, Ontario, to attend the I. E. Weldon Secondary School. His real name is Eric Newman.

This family, from the head down, is very dysfunctional, she said. He's a nut job. I did not trust him ... I think he's mentally ill. He has delusions of grandeur. He concocts stories that he tends to believe and they in turn become fact in his mind.

Magnotta was raised by his maternal grandmother, Phyllis Yourkin.

[Phyllis] tries to be the typical matriarch of the family, the relative said. She is very domineering, controlling and if you have a submissive personality she will beat you up and do what she wants.

Magnotta left his community and later resurfaced in a Toronto courtroom. He was charged with a dozen counts of fraud as well as using a woman's credit card. He was also charged with sexual assault on the woman who owned the credit cards. However, those charges were dropped.

He had a very weird way to him, Antonio Minakaksi, 30, an acquaintance, told the National Post. Very weird. His eyes. He was very unstable, very shaky. I don't know if he was on meds or what ... He was schizo. That's what we used to say: 'The guy's schizo.'

In the summer of 2006, Magnotta allegedly changed his name and began using a fake Internet moniker to pose as a male model and a gay porn star, the National Post reported. However, neither claim has been substantiated.

I honestly can't say that I have ever heard of him before the coverage started, said Sophie Delancey, a Toronto-based PR and marketing director who works in the porn industry, according to the National Post. It's possible that he was quite small-time and went under some [other] alias.

Magnotta also claimed he was a semi-finalist on the Toronto-based reality show CoverGuy, which featured amateur models vying to be discovered. However, the director of the show said he was never a consideration.

He was trying to project himself as a confident person, but I think it was quite evident that he was not, said Larry Peloso, according to the National Post. You wouldn't have necessarily picked him out in the crowd as being anyone particularly odd. This goes back five years ago -- who knows what happened between then and now to create these terrible circumstances.

There were also rumors that he once dated Karla Homolka, a notorious Canadian serial killer. However, Canadian police said that Magnotta started the rumors himself, possibly to gain attention.

He will create a conflict, then he will take himself out and he will deny the content of the story, which he,in fact, started, explained Magnotta's relative.

She also gave a final warning to Canadian residents to keep their eyes out for him, even though reports suggest he may have fled.

People need to be aware that he does have a connection to Peterborough, he does have a connection to Lindsay, she said. Eric thinks he's smarter than he is.

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