‘Don’t F**k With Cats’: Luka Magnotta Included Notes in the Packages of Body Parts He Sent to Government Offices

When it debuted on Netflix, Don’t F**k With Cats became the centerpiece of complicated internet discourse. The three-part series — about a group of amateur internet sleuths hunting for Luka Magnotta after he shared a disturbing video of himself using a vacuum cleaner to kill kittens — was one of the most-watched documentaries in 2019. Its grisly depiction of internet culture struck a chord with animal lovers and true crime fans. 

Though the series educated some viewers on how the unwell can indulge their darkest impulses online and the power of an internet mob with the right intentions, the legacy of Don’t F**k With Cats is far from spotless. Like many documentaries in this genre, it has come under fire for glorifying a serial killer. 

‘Don’t F**k With Cats’ was a viral Netflix hit in 2019

Don’t F**k With Cats explores a crime story that could occur only in the 21st century. The docuseries follows the collaborative detective work of a private Facebook group that initially led the search for a man who posted multiple videos of himself killing kittens in various ways. They eventually discovered that the person committing these crimes was Luka Magnotta, and the group alerted the police to his actions. 

Unfortunately, the authorities didn’t go after Magnotta until he murdered a Chinese student, Jun Lin, in Montreal and posted a video of himself desecrating the body. Magnotta was eventually arrested and convicted of first-degree murder and other crimes. He is serving a life sentence in Port-Cartier Prison in Quebec. 

Don’t F**k With Cats writer-director Mark Lewis provides plenty of details about Magnotta’s background and shows just enough of the carnage to churn viewers’ stomachs. The series discusses and even shows the killer’s sadistic acts, but only in short clips. However, further investigation into Lin’s murder made it clear that Don’t F**k With Cats isn’t as explicit about what happened. 

Jun Lin’s murder was even more grotesque than what ‘Don’t F**k With Cats’ showed

Don’t F**k With Cats‘ description of the video in which Magnotta murders Lin, which the killer titled “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick,” is not nearly as graphic as what happened.  

(Content warning: Don’t read this segment if you’re especially squeamish about descriptions of gore.)

The doc explains that Magnotta drugged Lin, tied him up, and stabbed him with a screwdriver tweaked to resemble an ice pick. But later reports allege the full video obtained by Canadian authorities includes necrophilia, cannibalism, and dismembered body parts fed to a dog. 

The docuseries shows Magnotta’s next heinous crime after committing the murder. He sent different parts of Lin’s body to the offices of opposing political parties and schools. Each body part arrived with a note in the package, but authorities have never disclosed the content of those notes over concerns of copycat killers, Digital Trends reports.

Critics took offense to the documentary’s focus

Don’t F**k With Cats was wildly popular, but a vocal minority took issue with the documentary’s choice to center Magnotta in the story. Critics thought the deep dive into his personal history mythologized the actions of a depraved killer at the expense of informing viewers about Lin’s life story. 

Lin’s path may not have been as salacious as Magnotta’s, but his life is worthy of exploration. He traveled to Canada from Wuhan to study engineering and computer science at Concordia University and to flee a culture where he felt unable to be himself. He was gay but still in the closet to most of the world, including his parents. Even the sleuths in the Facebook group were moved by him even though they had never met him. One of the group’s members, Deanna Thompson, spoke at a CrimeCon 2021 panel about her anguish at seeing the video of Lin’s murder.

“It was that moment, because knowing what I know about Jun Lin, he was such a fantastic person,” she said while choking up during the discussion. “Knowing what I know and what a great person he was, he deserved so much more respect than that” (via Oxygen).

Explaining how Lin ended up in Magnotta’s orbit would deepen the tragedy of the situation and make Don’t F**k With Cats a more thorough journalistic piece rather than a sensationalist one. That version would probably be less entertaining, but the sincerity might be helpful when dealing with actual events. The documentary has become part of a broader conversation about true crime projects’ responsibility to victims and audiences, most recently enflamed by Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Dahmer. 

Documentaries are based entirely on real life, but what the camera focuses on is ultimately the creators’ choice. Both producers and viewers should consider why they’re attracted to specific stories over others and if it’s worth resetting the direction of their lens.