A Canadian man on trial for murder sent dismembered body parts to two elementary schools along with sinister notes, a court has heard.
The two packages sent to schools in Vancouver contained pink tissue paper and included notes on pink notepaper, Reuters reports.
Luka Rocco Magnotta admits killing and dismembering his lover Jun Lin - but denies murder
One note included the poem: “Roses are red, violets are blue, the police will need dental records to identify you bitch,” jurors were told on Tuesday.
Evidence of police testimony on the smell of blood in Magnotta’s apartment and the discovery of a severed head in a city park weeks after the killing, was also heard.
It is reported that one of the boxes that were sent to the political parties included a note, which mentioned the name of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s wife.
A note allegedly sent to a Vancouver elementary school by Magnotta, along with a severed body part
Magnotta, 32, has admitted the killing but pleaded not guilty to charges which include first-degree murder, committing indignities to a body, broadcasting a video of the killing and posting severed body parts.
Magnotta’s lawyer Luc Leclair told a court in Quebec his client is schizophrenic and thus not criminally responsible for the crimes.
Prosecutor Louis Bouthillier said an alleged email from Magnotta to a British journalist in 2011 some six months before the killing, indicates Lin’s murder was planned.
On Monday the judge said the jury must determine Magnotta's mental fitness at the time of the killing.
The Luka Rocco Magnotta Case
"The issue of whether Mr. Magnotta is exempt from criminal responsibility will be the issue you will have to deliberate on," Leclair said.
His defence will also fight charges of criminally harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament.
In May 2012, a package containing a severed foot was found at the headquarters of Canada's ruling Conservative Party. That same day, a hand was discovered at a postal facility, in a package addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada.
Lin's torso was found in a suitcase at a garbage dump outside Magnotta's apartment building in Montreal. About a week later, the missing foot and hand were found mailed to two schools in Vancouver.
Magnotta eventually was arrested in Berlin after an international manhunt.
In his opening address, Bouthillier warned the jury to expect "graphic" and "gruesome" evidence, including a video of a naked man being dismembered and his torso being sodomised and photographs of Lin's dismembered body.
Luka Rocco Magnotta
The prosecution's first witness, crime-scene technician Caroline Simoneau, presented the jury with photographs taken in and around Magnotta's apartment in May 2012, including one of a torso stuffed inside a suitcase and a portion of a human leg retrieved from a garbage bag.
Lin, 33, was born in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. He had only been living in Canada since 2011, realising a long-standing dream by coming to Montreal.
His family has said that Lin had a comfortable life working in IT at Microsoft's Beijing office, but had sought a move to Canada to study and to improve his life.
At the time of his death, Lin was enrolled as a computer engineering student at Concordia University and worked as a part-time convenience store clerk in south-central Montreal.
The trial is expected to last between six and eight weeks.