Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, recently rolled out on Netflix which tells the story of Luka Magnotta of Canada, cat killer turned murderer. It all began when Magnotta circulated videos of himself on the web killing cats while hiding his identity. A group of what Netflix called “amateur online sleuths” formed a Facebook group for the sole purpose of tracking down the cat killer. They searched every frame of his videos to find clues of where he may be located including outlets, posters, and even blankets. They feared that the cat killer would eventually escalate from animals to people. They were right.
After releasing three videos of himself killing cats, Magnotta released a video dismembering the corpse of Lin Jun, an engineering student that he met online, and later mailed Jun’s hands and feet to the Canadian Conservative and Liberal Party headquarters. Magnotta was caught and taken into custody very soon after this incident.
What’s disturbing about the 3 episode short documentary, is the Facebook group’s dedication to the manhunt. Not only did they put their lives in danger to the point of Magnotta tracking them down, but their tactics were morally questionable. The two main characters went as far as checking the EXIF data of every single photo they could find of Magnotta. They spent hours and hours uploading thousands of photos to a website that extracts information such as the model of camera used to photograph the image, the date, and GPS location of where the photo was taken. How far is too far when hunting down a mentally unstable killer? On any other day, what do the internet searches of the Facebook group members comprise of?
Prescilla Kline
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I never watched the series because I am hypersensitive to animal cruelty, especially to cats. I believe that the “Amateur online sleuths” are able to look into cases that the authorities may not have time to. Especially because this case utilized so much of the internet capabilities online sleuths were the best detectives for this case.
I remember watching this series for the first time and I was not sure what it was going to be about. I have always found true crime docs to be very interesting and this was not a disappointment, however it was weird to see the people become so invested in solving this crime and going very deep to the point where they were putting themselves in harms way. It was an interesting dilemma between balancing personal safety and working for the public good, even when it was not a crime in one’s own place of residence. Internet crime is something that is difficult to stop and convict, so it was cool to see how non law enforcement went about of solving it, and maybe it could help for the future, or at least warn average citizens to not do what they did.