Cops: Hand, foot delivered to Vancouver schools

After two Vancouver schools received packages in the mail containing body parts, authorities are investigating whether there is a connection with Luka Magnotta, the Canadian porn star arrested in Berlin for allegedly murdering and dismembering an acquaintance. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.

By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com and NBC News

Updated at 8:22 a.m. ET: Police have confirmed that a human hand and a foot were delivered to separate elementary schools in Vancouver, B.C., just days after body parts were delivered to the headquarters of Canada?s federal Liberal and Conservative parties.

At a news conference Tuesday, Vancouver Deputy Police Chief Warren Lemcke could not say whether the body parts were connected to the killing and dismemberment of Chinese student Jun Lin in Montreal. The suspect in that murder, Luka Mangotta, 29, was arrested Monday at an Internet caf? in Berlin where he had been reading about himself. He appeared in court behind closed doors at a district court in Germany on Tuesday where he was presented with an arrest warrant, according to NBC News' Andy Eckardt.

Back in Montreal, authorities have discovered several of murder victim Jun Lin?s body parts, although his head, hands and a foot remain missing, according to the Toronto Star. Police there also said that video footage from the killing taken by Magnotta seems to show him eating Lin?s body.

---

Interpol began searching Thursday for Magnotta, who faces first-degree murder charges in Lin?s death.

Authorities believe that Magnotta flew from Montreal to Paris after posting the grisly murder online, and partied there for days before moving on to Berlin. Witnesses told police that he partied in the Bastille area in east Paris, according to The Associated Press.

Magnotta may be extradited this week, according to the AP.

Grisly murder posted online
Montreal police say?Magnotta filmed the Chinese student's murder and posted it on a website specializing in gore. The video shows a man with an ice pick stabbing another naked, bound male. He also dismembers the corpse and performs sexual acts with it in what police called a horrifying video.

Interpol / EPA

Luka Magnotta, a Canadian porn star accused of murdering and dismembering a Chinese man in Montreal, was arrested in Berlin after partying for several days in Paris.

The warning signs apparently were already there. For nearly two years animal activists had been looking for a man who tortured and killed cats and posted videos of his cruelty online. Since Jun Lin's murder, Montreal police have released a photo from the video which they say is of Magnotta.

Magnotta was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2005, but the charges were dropped, the lawyer who represented him at the time said.

In a crime scene Montreal police say is the worst they have seen, his Montreal apartment included a bloody mattress and pools of blood on the floor and in the refrigerator. The police said a janitor found a torso with no head or limbs in a suitcase in an alley behind the building.

Toronto lawyer Peter Scully said he represented Magnotta in a fraud case in 2004 and a sexual assault case in 2005.

"I've had lots of creepy characters and Eric did not stand out as one of them," he said. Scully refers to his client by his previous name, Eric Newman.

Deputy Chief Warren Lemcke briefs reporters about human remains delivered to two Vancouver, B.C. schools on Tuesday.

But Nina Arsenault, a Toronto transsexual who said she had a relationship with Magnotta over a decade ago, described him as a drug user with a temper, who sometimes turned his anger on himself, hitting himself on the head, and other parts of his body.

While Magnotta described himself in an online video interview with a site called "Naked News" as a stripper and male escort, Lin was registered as an undergraduate in the engineering department and computer science at Concordia University in Montreal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

lifehouse al gore la dodgers supreme court lawrence o donnell magic johnson jetblue pilot