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Mark Latunski confessed to killing and eating the testicles and other body parts of the victim he met on the popular gay app.
A Michigan man convicted of killing, gutting, and eating the testicles and other body parts of a hairdresser he met on Grindr has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Mark Latunski, 50, pleaded guilty in September to the December 24, 2019, murder of Kevin Bacon, 25. Lawyers for Latunski had previously contended the man was mentally ill and unfit for trial. As a result of Latunski's confession, Shiawassee County judge Matthew J. Stewart was tasked with determining whether the crime was first or second-degree murder, and he ruled in October the crime qualified as the more serious premeditated first-degree. On Thursday, he sentenced Latunski to the maximum punishment allowed under Michigan law. Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1963.
"In your sick, twisted mind, you probably don't think you did anything wrong," Bacon's mother, Hannah, wrote in a statement that was read at the sentencing hearing, the Daily Mail reports. "This Christmas, I hope you suffer like we have."
Bacon, a successful hairdresser and a student at the University of Michigan-Flint, had told his roommate on Christmas Eve of 2019 he was meeting a man he had been speaking with on Grindr. Bacon was reported missing the following day after he did not show up at his parents' house in Flint for breakfast with family on Christmas Day. Police discovered his body the following Saturday, December 28, in Bloomfield Township, more than 20 miles from his home. Bacon's naked body was found suspended by the ankles from the rafters of Latunski's basement, with stab wounds in the back and neck and his body mutilated.
Latunski was not unfamiliar to local police, who had been called to his residence multiple times in the two months prior to Bacon's murder. In October, a New York man told a 911 operator he had awakened to find himself chained in the basement, believing he had been drugged. Police received a second 911 call a month later in November after a bloodied and terrified man had sought help from Latunski's neighbor. Latunski was found wearing nothing more than a leather kilt in this incident, but no charges were filed in either incident.
Latunski was married twice, both ending in divorce. His former wife, Emily Latunski, had filed a motion in court in August of 2019 seeking to suspend his access to their children. The motion stated he had been diagnosed several years earlier with major depression, paranoid schizophrenia, and personality disorder characteristics, and that he often failed to take prescribed medication. He had been arrested in the previous month for failing to pay child support and spent four days in jail.
Following their divorce, Latunski married former husband Jamie Arnold. The pair subsequently broke up in September 2019, with Arnold saying he only learned of Latunski's mental illness after Emily sued him for child support. He claimed Latunski told him the children were not his. He also expressed shock at learning that Latunki was accused of murder.
"Never in a million years did I think he'd be capable of doing such a horrendous crime," Arnold told M-Live after Latunski's arrest in 2019.
