Mark Latunski | I’m Related to a Killer | Forensic Files

[Music] of all the stories that I've told in 20 years if someone says Mark plunky I immediately get a pit in my
stomach it was shocking to think that a monster was living in this small town Mark latony killed his victim and
cannibalized him the details were horrific and Terri horrifying something out of a movie like Silence of the Lamb
something you'd expect of a serial killer the fact that the man I once loved could do this disgusts me he's not
my dad anymore the person that he is now is not who my dad was Mark lony's Behavior has all the signs of
potentially being a mass killer like Jeffrey Dalmer Mark should spend the rest of his
life in prison for what he did he's not predictable he won't stay on medic he has a mental
illness but I do wish it were different I wish I had a dad [Music] [Music] my name is Emily lonsky and I am Mark
lony's [Music] ex-wife this photo is of him in the house that we bought together after we
got engaged he was so excited about buying a house together and he wanted me to be happy with what the house looked
like it was very old and the foundation was crumbling so we had it lifted and put a whole new base underneath
[Music] it this is a photo of the house shortly after the basement was completed we bought this house with the
intention of raising our family and having love and laughter and fun and it being the house that we would be in
forever and I never could have imagined that it would be the scene of a horrific crime
in the future it was in this basement in Maurice Michigan that 50-year-old Mark latony killed 25-year-old Kevin
Bacon Mark picked him up brought him to his house they had consensual sex and then Mark stabbed
him and when that didn't work he slid his throat Mark lonky hung him up by his ankles and at his testicles
Mark had transformed the basement that he'd first built as a play area for his children this was Mark lony's Sex
Dungeon in the basement and this is the room where Kevin Bacon's body was found my name is David kuster I'm a
reporter in Michigan and we extensively covered the case involving Kevin Bacon and Mark lensky
this story was unlike any other story that we've ever told and I've been doing this for a couple of decades now when
someone brings it up immediately just sends chills down my [Music] spine when we think about maybe what had
happened in Kevin's final minutes it makes you sick to your stomach it's just hard to believe that another human could
do this to someone [Music] we are at Mark Lansky's house it's abandoned nobody's living in it and it
breaks my heart that this was the house where we were supposed to raise our family
[Music] together Mark and I met through mutual friends and they decided to set us up on
a date [Music] I liked his calmness he was very passionate about the things that he
believed in I liked that he was very hardworking and kind he was very kind at the time Emily was working as a
preschool assistant teacher Mark was a research chemist he went to school to be a
chemist graduated from Central Michigan University and then went went to Iowa State University and graduated from
there with his Masters Mark lunsky was an extremely intelligent person he was valid
dictorian of his class he graduated top of his class he went to college went to two different universities and then
moved back to his hometown he got a job at a chemical company as a lab manager Emily fell in love with Mark
over the course of a year of dating I liked the fact that Mark was a very gentlemanly person he was quiet he was
kind and he was also so active in our community and he was always willing to help people if they needed
help he always kept his hair short he was always clean shaven he might grow a mustache here and
[Music] there he wore khaki pants and button-down shirts and he always looked put together and clean cut
[Music] the couple got engaged in 2001 and then married in August of that same year this is a photo of our wedding he
proposed to me under a hickory tree in a field that he owned um he told me he wanted our love to last as long as the
hickory tree had been standing in longer I had been hoping that he would do it for a while and he was taking his
time he was making me wait and so when he finally proposed I was really excited the marriage was good we didn't
argue or fight at all he was always calm quiet when he was around we bought an old house and tore it down to the studs
and he was always working when he found a project he worked and worked on it until he was done he's always needed
something to do [Music] the couple went on to have four children our first child was born in
2003 after our son was born he was about 16 months old and we had a daughter when you were born he was
excited cuz he already had a boy so he was happy to have a girl and he loved to sit on the couch and hold you when you
were sleeping I remember him putting me on his shoulders and running around the living room when I was
little my name is Eliza Lansky I am 19 years old my earliest memory of my dad is
probably when he brought home a bunch of shredded up paper from work and he spread it all across one of our rooms in
our basement and we played in it and we called it the confetti room and one time
where we were down there just making balls of paper and throwing them at each other and having a good time
[Music] I would describe my family as normal traditional I feel like he was like any
other dad he loved me I loved him but everything in the lives of this happy regular family slowly began to
change there was one time I found a picture on his computer and it was of a naked
man he told me that he just wanted to make sure that he measured up that I was okay with how he looked and that he was
you know that he was okay for me and I was like you're fine you don't have to compare yourself to anybody else you're
fine just the way you are there could have been some internal battles with Mark's
sexuality he may have been bisexual or it may be that he had a wife cuz he felt that that's the thing he should do then
in 2010 Emily became concerned about her husband's state of mind we noticed his mental health
slipping on the day of my son's birthday party where he came out with these stories that he believed he was going to
be the heir of a big trust fund and that it was being kept for him by somebody but he didn't know who a lot of the
things he was saying were very concerning they were very paranoid thoughts and and thoughts that were not
[Music] realistic he was starting to have something called delusions almost losing touch with
reality and that can be indicative of psychosis and schizophrenia he was such a gentle
person he didn't hunt animals he didn't kill anything and I can't even imagine him killing anything now sometimes I
still think about it and can't believe that he did [Music] it Emily and Mark lensy had been happily
married for 9 years and had four children when Mark started to exhibit signs of mental illness their
relationship began to change he came out with a theory that he was not actually his mother's son but he was
his mother's brother and that there was a family fortune that it was his to inherit he
said that he was a person who was protected with an alternate name that Mark lonsky wasn't
actually his real name Emily convinced Mark to check into a mental health hospital where he remained for 5
days my mom sat me and my brother down on the couch and told us he was in the hospital and I couldn't understand it at
the time cuz I was little they said he was under extreme stress there had been some issues going
on with his family at the time and they sent him home on a medication that he stopped taking as
soon as he got home he told me he didn't need medication there was nothing wrong with
him Mark also made a shocking Revelation he had admitted to me that he had slept with men on his business trips
and that he had gone on the internet and found people to sleep with Emily and Mark agreed to attend
marriage counseling to try and keep their family together he told me he did not want to
break up he wanted to stay together he he was going to stop having affairs he wanted our marriage to work he didn't
want me to leave and so I told him I would work on it for a year he didn't take it seriously it
didn't really work and eventually he started going back to doing the things that he was
doing as Mark wasn't taking his medication his mental health only got worse that combined with Mark's Affairs
meant that in May 2012 Emily asked him for a divorce I was upset because I wanted to be
married forever I wanted my children to have a stable home I didn't want to have
them have divorced parents I was upset that he had cheated Emily took the children and went
to live with her parents picking up her old job as a teaching assistant after the divorce we saw him
every other weekend the visits with my dad were unsupervised being at his house we would
do fun things almost every weekend I remember going to the zoo and playing in the
yard just a month later Mark was readmitted to a mental health facility they diagnosed him with
paranoid schizophrenia and extreme depression he came home on medication and again refused to take
it and he believed that we were trying to poison him and that we were all against
him with schizophrenia it can be that it's been lying dormant and actually stressful life events can trigger an
episode it could be hypothesized that he was dealing with an internal struggle about his sexuality and then stress that
he was experiencing triggered an episode of schizophrenia Mark was permitted custody
of the children for 2 weeks during the summer of 2013 but when he was due to give the
kids back to Emily they didn't show up I called him and I said hey are you on your way and he said no and I said
you need to bring the kids back and he said I'm not going to bring them back and if you don't like it you can call
the police so I called the police and the police told me there was nothing they could
do my lawyer was able to get an order ordering the immediate return of my kids for the next day and so when we went to
his house with the order um he was gone he wasn't there and the kids were not there and the police called him and he
answered the phone and he told them he was at a water park with the kids and he was not bringing them
back I was only 9 we all sat down outside on a picnic table and he told us we were going to a water park and that
was kind of exciting from what I remember and we all got in the car and drove there and then at the water park
we were playing and splashing around I did not realize that we were kidnapped the police went to the water
park arrested Mark and safely returned the children to Emily he was charged with two counts of
attempted kidnapping and custodial interference he was found not competent to stand trial for those charges and so
they eventually dropped them because they decided it wasn't worth Prosecuting him
for it's difficult to work out in that period of time whether Mark is losing his connection with reality and in his
head he strongly believes that um Emily is a bad person and he needs to hang on to his kids or is this part of a battle
with her where he feels AG grieved that she's left him and he wants to hang on to the kids as a form of
punishment He was ordered only supervised visits with the kids the judge told me that I could set up
supervised visits with him and so I did that the first visit he came to and then
after that he didn't show up he didn't like being supervised so he decided not to see
them I had no contact with my dad for 4 years after the incident I feel like I got quite angry
in those four years because he wasn't there and I no longer had a normal family during the four years Eliza
didn't see her father Mark got remarried this time to a man named Jamie Jamie described Mark as a loving
husband he said he was happy in the relationship they had a lot of things in common they enjoyed each other's company
and it was just a great start to their relationship I never tried to contact Mark during that time he was still
paying child support so I never had a reason to contact him the kids were dis connected from him they were upset with
him that he had taken them and not returned them so they never really asked to see
him in 2018 Mark suddenly got back in touch with Emily Mark contacted me through my
lawyer with a letter and he told me that he wanted to start seeing the children again it was just us being told one day
that we were going to have visits with our dad again there was no connection anymore he
was my dad and I did love him but it was still [Music] awkward I was angry because it felt like
he abandoned us and now he just got back like nothing happened there was no I'm sorry it was
just he was my dad again you've got a father who has gone away and then returns as if nothing has
happened and for a child that is incredibly difficult to wrap your head around because in that moment you feel
angry abandoned rage fueled because he how could you do this to me Eliza's response is entirely natural
for the circumstances that she's in when Eliza met up with her dad again she hardly recognized him
his hair was pretty long and his beard was long and braided his appearance changed drastically he always was clean
cut and then he had long hair long beard and he looked very unkent then suddenly Mark's relationship
with both his kids and his husband would come to an end the kid stopped seeing Mark in
February of 2019 he lost his job and after he lost his job he his mental status deteriorated to the point where
he was very adamant that the kids were not his and he was not going to see them anymore we didn't know that they were
going to stop they just stopped I think it was because he was degrading mentally Jamie said he left Mark in
September of 2019 because he felt he wasn't the only one in the relationship he said Mark was online a lot and trying
to find sexual partners he started to tell jimie that people were out to get him and that
people were listening to him and surveying him so Jamie started to notice these signs and became a little
concerned and Afraid for [Music] himself I was not aware of what Mark was doing for work after he lost his job
I learned later that he was selling himself on various websites he would do whatever the men wanted to if they
wanted to have sex he would have sex with them if they wanted just to cuddle he would cuddle with them he was open to
doing whatever as long as they paid [Music] him these crime scene pictures are really quite shocking here we can see
what is basically a torture room he's got all different types of parapan falia to
torture and to engage in sexual acts I think it's quite obvious that there was a lot of planning and this is
something that he enjoyed doing in late 2019 Mark latony had deteriorating mental health he was now living alone
after his husband had left him and he was no longer in contact with his ex-wife and
[Music] children he had also lost his job and had started selling himself for sex on
different websites there were two separate incidents where two men had been reportedly escaping from Mark Lansky's
home one man in October had escaped called 911 said he was being held captive in Mark's basement said he
needed help wanted police to come but when police arrived he said that it was all consensual and didn't press charges
another incident very similar to that had happened in November another man had escaped Mark Lansky's home he ran to a
neighbor's house he was pounding on a neighbor's door screaming help me help me police
spoke to the man briefly and again determined that there was no crime and said that it was consensual
he's telling us one side of the story we want to get yours us that man was obviously really fearful which suggests
that he was actually running for his [Music] life on Christmas Eve 2019 a young man
called Kevin Bacon had been chatting to mark lunsky on grinder and they were discussing what they would like to do to
each other sexually Kevin Bacon was a hair stylist in the Flint Michigan area he was
attending University at the University of Michigan Flint he was described by his co-workers and friends as a nice uh
empathetic kind-hearted person he often would get on apps like grinder for sexual
hookups Mark picked Kevin up at a shopping center he had a play scenario going on
where he let Kevin choose things to wear and from what I understood he wanted a kidnapping type scenario so Mark brought
handcuffs and other things with him for Kevin to put on when they got there he put them on he got in the back of
Mark's Car Mark drove him to his house blindfolded and covered with a [Music] blanket the next morning on Christmas
Day Kevin was expected by his family but when he didn't show up they started to look for him his car was found at the
shopping center Kevin was reported missing to the police while everyone was searching for
Kevin and trying to find him Mark latony was at Jim's house celebrating Christmas
jimie had invited him over because he told me that he didn't want anybody to be alone on
Christmas nothing was out of the ordinary he wasn't acting unusual he wasn't nervous he was acting like
himself completely normal when I saw the posters of Kevin Bacon I didn't think anything of it he
was from a town that was about 15 or 20 miles away from us so I never suspected anything 3 days passed during which the
police had been able to investigate Kevin's vehicle when the police searched Kevin's
vehicle they they found a bag with Kevin's clothing and his cell phone that's when they knew something
was suspicious and they had gained access to his cell phone they had discovered the communication between
Mark lunsky and Kevin Bacon on grinder and that's what led them to Mark Lansky's
home on December the 28th the police paid Mark a visit he invited them in he acted as a he wasn't trying to
hide anything when police were looking around the house they had noticed that there was a
secret room in the basement behind what they described as a sliding barn door and when they gained access that's
when they had found Kevin's body still suspended upside down hanging in that room Mark latony was arrested and placed
in the back of a police [Music] car do I look like a blacked blackeyed [ __ ] what do you mean
lski oh is that that means yeah the lonskis are all blackhaired blackeyed [ __ ] what's your other name that you go
by you're saying that lonsk is in the system lonsky is the name in the system my name is not lonsky what is
it Thomas Hill oh yeah he's doesn't seem stressed he doesn't seem agitated he he's not showing any signs that Kevin
Bacon's body has been hanging there dead in his house for so many days right now but is also saying he's not who he
says he is which kind of shows signs that he suffers some severe mental illness just by the way that he's acting
in this police cruiser he's claiming to be Edgar Thomas Hill how did they get lony I was raised by Loni oh
okay that's quite a specific name and a specific spe ific thing to say this could indicate that either he
was trying to fake mental illness or it actually was a symptom of his psychosis so it is likely that some of the bizarre
things that he said was a symptom of his [Music] schizophrenia words soon spread around
the community about Kevin's body being discovered in Mark's basement I found out that Mark was involved in
Kevin's death a couple days after it happened when it all hit the news at the time I thought maybe it was
a fetish gone wrong that something had happened on accident I never never expected Mark to hurt Kevin on
purpose many people in the community thought maybe this was a roleplaying situation that had just gone bad no one
ever thought that this was an actual murder Mark was taken in for questioning where
he continued to insist that he wasn't Mark latony no my name is at Thomas Hill I went I am a
Thomas of Wales and I reached out to the people in Great Britain to find out if there are anymore okay
because as I have looked amongst my blood relatives I don't think there are any other Thomas of Wales of the Thomas of
Wales Clan left except for [Music] me there's signs then that Mark seems to be struggling with his connection with
reality and he can't tell what's real and what's not but from his point of view he is absolutely fine there's
nothing wrong with him but there's something wrong with the people around him Mark vonsky told the police officers
that Kevin Bacon had asked him to kill him he said it was part of the sexual fantasy that Kevin Bacon had wanted to
live out and Mark told police that he fulfilled that and that he was going to make Kevin
disappear as the investigation progressed the true depravity of the murder emerged when they arrived at the house
there was sexual intercourse between Kevin and Mark and then Mark LED Kevin downstairs into the basement he was
still wearing the blindfold and he stabbed Kevin in the back of the neck and then slit Kevin's
[Music] throat and then he used a rope and tied it around Kevin's ankles and he had some
kind of poliy system and he suspended Kevin hanging him upside down to kill Kevin and slit his
throat and then get his body up and Tied by his ankles would have taken a lot of effort
so this shows the conviction that he used when he did [Music] this after he suspended Kevin and he was
hanging upside down Mark then took that knife and mutilated Kevin's body and he removed his
testicles this is really quite gruesome knowing the absolutely brutal nature of what he did
to Kevin's body [Music] [Music] Mark was questioned about cannibalizing Kevin's testicles where did you do that I mean
on the kitchen stove um FR P it would do with the griddle I mean I I eat Rocky Mountain leg there's anyway sure um I
have a a a c of them that I bought um and so it's really very simple you some you Dr to with some worship SAU and then
once there once they're done you [Music] just I believe that Mark thought he was
going to gain some sort of strength from eating parts of Kevin on December 30th 2019 50-year-old Mark latony was charged
with the murder of 25-year-old Kevin Bacon I was shocked and there were lots of Tears lots of
crying I couldn't believe it absolutely couldn't believe that he would ever do something like that he was never
aggressive he never hurt anything when we were together I didn't think he was capable of hurting anybody on
purpose I I knew he would never have done it if he was in the right FR frame of mind
mentally this is the father of her children and he was part of that family system and he's very very ill he has
done some heinous crimes she's not forgiving that nor is she forgetting that but she's coming
from a place of kindness and understanding Emily sat down with her children and broke the news to them about what their
father had done I was 15 years old when I found out I was just kind of astonished like it was surprising I
didn't know that he could do something like that I was kind of worried about what
other people might think because of our relation the fact that my dad had killed
Kevin and eight parts of him is just uncomfortable he's not the person that I knew is not something that I ever
thought would happen this is a photo of Mark at Christmas time with her oldest child
Christmas after what happened with Kevin was different I had people sending messages
telling me that I had no right to celebrate Christmas and be happy with my kids because of what happened with Kevin
and even though we had nothing to do with it it still affected Christmas for [Music]
us it would be nearly 3 years before lunsky was deemed mentally competent to stand trial for the murder of Kevin
[Music] Bacon the date was set for October 18th at shasi County Circuit Court it came by a surprise to everyone that
just weeks before the trial was to begin that Mark latony pleaded guilty what we
don't know is what led him to make that decision was he influenced by someone did he have remorse did he wake up one
day feeling guilty it makes me really sad that Mark just pleaded guilty it makes me sad that
his mental capacity is not enough that he is willing to I don't know it's it makes me sad
that he is not mentally fit and even though he was deemed mentally sound to stand trial he still has a lot of ideas
that people are out to get him and he doesn't believe anything's wrong with him and he's so he didn't want that used
in court he didn't want his mental status talked about at all in court and it makes me sad that he's so far
diminished mentally that he just is isn't willing to save himself or help himself at
[Music] all on December 15th 2022 Mark was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole
for the murder of Kevin Bacon and an additional 11 to 120 months for mutilating Kevin's body I think that the
sentence is fair because I don't believe he would be safe to be in society anymore if he's capable of doing what he
did to Kevin he's capable of doing more I don't know if we will ever really know if Mark has remorse for Kevin's
murder considering he did plead guilty his defense attorney had said that he made this decision and he regretted the
actions of what happened to Kevin Bacon but Mark latoni himself has never said that he had any remorse for what he had
done to Kevin the impact of Mark's actions on his family has been profound it has such a deep
psychological impact they suffer shame embarrassment regret it's hard for them to face people
they often attacked themselves because people assume that they may have known things so to move on with life knowing
that your loved one did something so horrific causes a huge amount of damage being the ex-wife of Mark latony
is something that will affect me as long as I carry the last name my kids wanted
me to have the same last name as them so I kept it after I get divorced and now that last name is
there I have cried lots of Tears over it and now it's something that is far enough in the past that it doesn't make
me cry when I talk about it anymore the man who committed the crime is not my dad my dad was loving and never raised
his voice at me or my siblings and never vient there was never a time where I felt scared or anything and I couldn't
imagine my dad doing something like that I love the person that he was not the man who's in prison
[Music] now as a child with a parent like that I think it is a lifelong psychological and emotional
processing of coming to terms with that to do so is to see it as he's not well he has a mental illness and I feel sorry
for him but also she can't get past you know what he did to someone else the conditions
of Eliza has tried her best to move on with her life without her father I haven't spoken with my dad
since he's been in prison and I probably won't have any contact with him because
he's not the same person [Music] anymore Mark was once a person who had a great job he he had a great family he
had people he loved he worked hard and his mental illness caused him to spiral down into behavior that he never would
have been capable of in the past I think the turning point was him just not being treated for his mental
illness I think that he went so far down into his mental illness and his fantasies that there was no coming back
from it nobody could make him get help whatever the reasons behind the murder Kevin Bacon's life was
inexplicably cut short Kevin Bacon's family will never be at peace for what happened to Kevin on
Christmas Eve it was just something that will haunt them for the rest of their lives especially around Christmas which
had been such a happy time for this family now all of their memories of Christmas are going to haunt them
thinking about what happened to Kevin my dad was mentally ill him killing Kevin was part of his mental
illness and it's incredibly sad that he got to that point and I sympathize with Kevin's family because it should not
have happened my heartbreaks for Kevin and his family I can't imagine losing a son
in such a violent brutal way as he did I have a son and so I can't imagine what his mother is feeling I want to say
I'm really sorry to the bacon family I can't imagine anything would have happened like
[Music] this when I hear Mark's name my immediate thought is such a wasted life such a heartbreaking situation for
everybody involved [Music]

The story of Mark Latunski, who lured a man into his home and committed a heinous act of cannibalism. Featuring Mark’s ex-wife Emily and daughter Eliza.

Relatives of murderers tell their stories, discussing how the crimes affected their families and whether there were any signs on murderous intentions beforehand.

Brief Summary

Mark Lonsky's mental illness leads to the brutal murder of Kevin Bacon, impacting his family profoundly.

Key points

The Shocking Transformation of Mark Lonsky. Emily reflects on the horrifying changes in her ex-husband, Mark, who became a killer.
The Horrific Crime Scene. Mark Lonsky's basement, once a play area for children, became a torture room.
Emily's Struggle with Mark's Mental Health. Emily describes the alarming changes in Mark's behavior as he battled mental illness.
The Return of Mark Lonsky. After years apart, Mark reaches out to reconnect with his children, but things have changed.
The Disturbing Discovery. Police uncover a secret room in Mark's basement where Kevin Bacon's body was found.
The Gruesome Murder Details. The investigation revealed the shocking brutality of Kevin Bacon's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This story was unlike any other story that we've ever told.

David Kuster describing the uniqueness of the case.

3:32WatchDec 8, 2024

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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