Date to prepare Magnotta dismemberment-killing trial set for Oct. 9

MONTREAL – Lawyers for accused killer Luka Magnotta will meet with Crown prosecutors for a pre-trial conference on Oct. 9.

Quebec Superior Court set the date Tuesday as the fall session of the court opened.

Jean-Pascal Boucher, a spokesman for the Crown, says the purpose of the meeting is to prepare for the trial, which will begin Sept. 15, 2014.

Magnotta, a former porn actor and stripper, was arrested last June in Berlin following an international manhunt.

He faces five charges in connection with last May’s death and dismemberment of Jun Lin, a 33-year-old Chinese national studying engineering at Concordia University.

The 30-year-old Magnotta, a native of Scarborough, Ont., has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Parts of Lin’s body were mailed across Canada in a gruesome case that made international headlines. Some parts were mailed to a British Columbia school while others were directed to poltical offices in Ottawa.

Magnotta is charged with first-degree murder, committing an indignity to a body, publishing obscene material, criminally harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament and mailing obscene and indecent material.