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OTTAWA — Correctional Service Canada confirms Luka Magnotta, who made international headlines for the brutal killing of an international student in Montreal, now resides in a medium-security prison.
A jury found Magnotta guilty of first-degree murder in 2014 for the killing and dismemberment of 33-year-old Concordia University student Jun Lin in 2012.
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Magnotta admitted to causing Lin’s death, dismembering him and sending his body parts to political parties and schools with threatening messages.
Experts testified during trial that Magnotta suffered from schizophrenia and wasn’t of sound mind the night of Lin’s slaying.
The correctional service says the convicted killer was transferred to a medium-security prison in 2022.
Magnotta was in a maximum-security institution in Quebec before the transfer and continues to serve an indeterminate life sentence.
According to a transfer warrant signed in August 2022 and obtained by the Toronto Sun, Magnotta was authorized to be moved from Port Cartier maximum-security prison to La Macaza in Quebec.
The report notes Magnotta identifies as transgender and has asked to be called Violette.
In a partially redacted report by a team at the McGill University Sexual Identity Centre, four doctors recommended “offering space and support to explore around a proper gender identity exploration.”
The doctors found Magnotta doesn’t meet the criteria for gender dysphoria and instead had a “fragile identity and need to periodically reinvent himself,” as a defence against “internal homophobia” and as a strategy for protection from other inmates.
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In October 2021, Magnotta told a prison psychiatrist for the first time of a desire to transition and sought female hormones, the report said. Magnotta hopes to have vaginoplasty in the “later future.”
The doctors were unconvinced.
“The narrative of being born in the wrong body may be a way for this patient to wipe the slate clean once again,” they wrote, “and reshaping herself to preserve the illusion of specialness (and innocence).”
The doctors noted that Magnotta uses “pat phrases she repeats, as if rehearsed” to describe a “gender journey.” They noted Magnotta presented as masculine during all three of their interviews — hair, clothing, body language and intonation, despite professing to wanting to be as “feminine as possible” and to sometimes wearing makeup in private.
Magnotta also denied experiencing any distress while living as a male in prison.
Instead of undergoing physical transition, the McGill report suggested Magnotta deal with underlying psychological issues in the new setting.
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