Jun Lin: The sweet and gentle student 'butchered by his porn star boyfriend Luka Rocco Magnotta'

Jun Lin always seemed happy, friends say. Police believe he was murdered and dismembered by his alleged lover Luka Magnotta, right (Rex Features)

As the man they call the "Canadian Psycho" sits in a Berlin jail awaiting extradition to Montreal for murder of the most sickening kind, a portrait is emerging of his victim – an assiduous, self-deprecating student who had travelled from China to discover new horizons.

"I'm going to Canada!" Jun Lin, 33, wrote on his blog as he prepared last July to leave Wuhan in central China to enrol at Concordia University, Montreal, to study engineering and computer science. There, he would fret about eating bread and butter breakfasts – "I'm so fat" – and being older than his fellow students: "They call me uncle, it's so crushing". He was never late for work at a corner shop and adopted a tabby cat for company.

Now his family has arrived in Montreal to take Mr Jun home. Or what's left of him. The man in Berlin, a small-time former gay porn star, Luka Rocco Magnotta, 29, is suspected not just of killing him but of posting a video on the internet which, police say, shows the naked victim being stabbed with an icepick and dismembered.

Mr Jun's torso was found in a suitcase nearly two weeks ago outside the Montreal apartment where Mr Magnotta was living before he fled to Berlin. A foot and a hand arrived in the post at the offices of Canada's main political parties. Police suspect that another hand and foot that turned up at two schools in Vancouver this week may also be from the victim. They are waiting to find the head.

What they have of Mr Jun, the police are keeping for evidence. The family must wait and grieve. They are being looked after, in part, by the Concordia Chinese Students Association. "The entire scene was heartbreaking," its president, Yan Shi, told The Canadian Press news agency. "Lin's mother was very emotional. She was crying the entire time. We didn't understand a word she was saying. She was barely walking. We had to help her."

A fund has been set up to help defray the costs of the family's stay in Montreal. Small shrines have popped up in the city. Flowers lie outside the shop where Mr Jun worked.

How the paths of Mr Jun and Mr Magnotta crossed is not known. The police have intimated that the two men were dating, but nothing has been found in Mr Jun's blog postings to confirm that. His friends are perplexed.

"I don't know under what circumstances they knew each other, but for someone to target him, I never would have thought this," Zoya De Frias Lakhany, a fellow student, told the Associated Press. Her friend seemed happy. "He would take pictures of the snow and post them. He was sweet, never complained and smiled all the time."

Mr Yan, though he never metMr Jun, would agree. "The more I know about him, the more he seems to be a very, very nice guy," he said. "He just doesn't deserve this kind of fate. It's so cruel."