Bookmarks: Luka Magnotta • German Lopez examines the spike in murders
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“Canadian cannibal” follow-up
There is a tendency for a grisly crime to effect a massive media splash from the time it occurs until a suspect is apprehended — and then fall off the radar, possibly forever.
A few weeks ago, I was able to follow-up on the case of Kimberly Leto. This left me to wonder whatever became of another high-profile, only international, case.
In May 2012, about fourteen months after I became homeless, Luka Magnotta posted a video online that showed him (1) murdering his roommate with an ice pick, (2) sexually abusing the corpse, and (3) eating some of the flesh. He dismembered the body, and in the next several days mailed severed body parts to a prestigious private school and the offices of several political parties.
The Wikipedia article is thorough.
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German Lopez doesn’t answer the question, but rather examines a half-dozen competing theories about it.
Notable to me, he points out: (1) Arrest rates were down, and murder rates up, already in Baltimore before Freddie Gray died. The same was true in St. Louis prior to the death of Michael Brown. (2) Black Lives Matter was a reaction to, not the cause of, dismal police-community relations. As I’ve said before, the bad state of police-community relations had been a front-burner issue for the Baltimore City police department months before Freddie Gray’s death. In fact, the Sunday Freddie Gray died, Commissioner Batts attended worship at my church in a bridge-building gesture, and was called away when the death required his attention.
Lopez attends to the social conditions that are often blamed for the crime spike. I remain convinced that “Black lives matter” must be an inside job.
Originally posted 2016-01-18.
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