And so it began.
The initial trickle of radio bulletins and website briefs burst into a flood of the bizarre and sensational. Twitchell had left a digital trail of his life all over the Internet. Even his personal Facebook profile was open to the public, feeding the media’s hunger for details. Suddenly he was the lead item on the six o’clock newscasts.
No one warned his friends. Most found out through the media. Twitchell’s old roommate, Jason Fritz, was at home as he caught his friend’s name on television. Joss and Mike had already been called by reporters. They were beginning to panic as the story went viral and sensational newspaper headlines emerged:
DEATH MASK?
DID LIFE IMITATE SLASHER FILM?
And later, as journalists continued chasing the story:
TERROR IN THE ‘KILL CHAIR’
It seemed unbelievable. But with no body, Twitchell’s friends wondered, surely this must be some kind of mistake?
The world took notice. A producer with ABC’s 20/20 flew to Edmonton and started interviewing a slew of locals about the bizarre slaying. CNN’s legal affairs program Nancy Grace had a producer call around, as did television news magazines Inside Edition and Dateline NBC. Detectives checking online found stories about the case had reached as far as the Philippines, Europe, Argentina, and Australia.
It even attracted the attention of Hollywood. Errol Morris, an Academy Award–winning director acclaimed for his documentaries The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War, was blown away by the outrageous details. His production team researched the case for months. Twitchell was the perfect subject for an episode of Tabloid, a half-hour television documentary series Morris was creating.
Of course, the Twitchell story also dominated the city newspapers.
But it wasn’t the first time he had grabbed the front page – a fact later republished as reporters discovered images of the newly arrested Twitchell had already been captured in their local newspaper archives.
Back in 1999, Twitchell and his sister were teenagers wanting to share in the thrill of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. They headed to West Edmonton Mall’s movie theatre in costume to celebrate the premiere of the long-awaited motion picture.
Their outfits attracted newspaper photographers who were looking for a colourful Star Wars photo for the next day’s edition. Susan had come dressed as one of Jabba the Hutt’s dancers, but Twitchell’s effort was far more elaborate. His face was painted red and black and it looked like he had a shaved head.
Twitchell was dressed as Darth Maul, an evil Dark Lord of the Sith. He had a crown of horns, a black cloak, and a sinister grin. As the photo was taken, he stared directly into the camera lens, his eyes shimmering like the devil himself.
THE XPRESS ENTERTAINMENT WEBSITE was shut down quickly. Twitchell’s closest friends stopped answering their phones. Others, like Rebecca, who had expected to meet Twitchell at the Halloween Howler the night he was arrested, thought it was some kind of sick joke when she began to receive Facebook messages from people she didn’t realize were journalists, asking about a murder.
As the news sunk in, these same friends severed their digital connections with him. Twitchell’s personal Facebook profile was being emptied of contacts. The Internet was being scrubbed clean as those who knew him tried to remove any mention of the man from their personal lives.
JOHN PINSENT PULLED THE newspaper off his front porch. He walked into the kitchen, flattened out the front page, and took a sip of his morning coffee. LOCAL FILMMAKER CHARGED; SCRIPT SEIZED BY POLICE. He grabbed his chest and read the headline a few more times. He had just given $35,000 to a man charged with first-degree murder. He reached for the phone. “Has that cheque cleared? Has it cleared?”
At the Venture Alberta group, investors had to be reassured that they had considered funding a different movie pitched by the filmmaker, not the short film the police were saying had been replicated to some degree as a real-life murder. Phones rang across North America as news spread of Twitchell’s arrest.
“Have you read the papers? Have you seen the story about Twitchell?” The voice was talking excitedly from investor Randy Lennon’s cell phone.
“What are you talking about?” he replied.
“Twitchell murdered a guy!”
In a strange twist, Randy was in Florida helping a businessman secure ownership of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team. His contact, Oren Koules, was one of the original producers of a serial killer movie franchise that hinged on elaborate storylines not unlike Twitchell’s own House of Cards. The series had a simple title: Saw.
A THREAD OF DISBELIEF spread through the Star Wars fan community. Many hard-core fans had either met Twitchell at sci-fi conventions or spoken with him over online message boards. Volunteers from the local Star Wars Fan Force and 501st communities had helped Twitchell during filming of Secrets of the Rebellion. Some were terrified they had met such a man. Their instinct was to protect their own – out of fear their hobby was going to be associated with a horrific killing. “This definitely puts the wrong kind of spotlight on our community,” one frightened fan wrote on theforce.net message boards. “Great, just what we need, another stigma,” added a second worried Star Wars enthusiast. “Hopefully this won’t have a lasting effect on the public’s already so-so impression of fan filmmakers,” another stated.
Their conclusions were based upon pure denial. They decided the forensic evidence must have been faked to draw out this very reaction, like some kind of sick joke used to gain media exposure. One of the forum moderators agreed, writing that the story was screaming “viral publicity stunt.” He noted the arrest occurred on Halloween. “Just sets off alarm bells in my head,” he wrote.
It was new territory for fans used to heated debates about trivial details within a fictional universe. Now moderators had to consult theforce.net’s terms of service to determine what should be done with Twitchell’s own account, Achilles of Edmonton. The moderators made the announcement: “We have not banned his account. Murder is not a bannable offence here on TFN.… Well, it isn’t. I do not expect he will be dropping by the forum anytime soon, however.”
JOHNNY’S FRIENDS POURED OUT their raw emotions online as well. As the shocking news trickled out onto Facebook, condolences overtook the initial purpose for the group “Find Johnny Altinger.” Everyone had been dreading the worst, but this was beyond anyone’s most fearsome nightmare.
Marie was hit hard. “Oh my God. Johnny was like a brother to me,” she wrote on his group page. “I will miss him terribly.”
Hans was speechless, only able to post a link to the latest news story. Others were bewildered. “I catch myself wondering if this is just a dream as I’m reading the articles, thinking it can’t possibly be reality,” wrote a relative who had helped set up the Facebook group.
Darcy Gehl aimed his message at their spiritual connection. “May his memory live on.”
Johnny’s former girlfriend offered her own plea directly to him: “Hope they find your body soon so that they can grieve for you properly,” she wrote. “You will be missed.”
His mother had the simplest of messages: “Johnny, wherever you are, I love you.”
THE INTRIGUE WAS IRRESISTIBLE. From her Greenview home next door, Lynda Warren noticed a stream of vehicles slowing down as they neared the property on the corner with the detached garage. Cars rounded the corner and parked nearby. They were the morbidly curious. The gawkers. The rubberneckers.
The odd person would even get out to take a look at the police tape around the garage, maybe take a picture. “The more it was in the news, the more people would drive by,” she recalled. “I got so sick of it, half the time I didn’t even want to see what was going on.”
The kill room had become a drive-by shrine.
ANSTEY’S STRATEGY TO GET media attention had worked far too successfully. Police command was mortified that international news agencies were now swooping in on the town. The head of homicide never liked seeing criminal files be
so exposed before a trial. He was furious. He blasted Anstey for days about his little press conference. But Anstey fought back. He had received clearance from the Crown’s office to do it. In essence, Anstey had gone over his head.
Their office rift deepened.
Clark was at his desk, soaking in the world’s disbelief at their career case, when the police switchboard put through a call from the public to his office line. “I think I know the guy you’re looking for.” It had been a day and a half since Anstey’s press conference. Clark grabbed a pen as the caller described someone he used to work with. “His name is Gilles Tetreault.”
TWITCHELL AWOKE TO THE sound of a metal latch clicking in the early morning. His cell door swung open and light streamed in, spilling on to his clammy face. A gruff-looking prison guard with tattoos snaking up both arms was standing over him. “Come on, let’s go.”
He had spent his first night at the Edmonton Remand Centre, a notorious tower known for its poor conditions and overcrowded cells. It was designed nearly three decades earlier for around 350 inmates awaiting trial, but on some days 800 people could be crammed inside. An underground tunnel connected the tower to police headquarters, and the courthouse across the street. Twitchell had been on the fourth floor, but the guard told him they had to move him to the sixth, and top floor, known as “the zoo” with its twenty-three-hour lockup and cells designated for solitary confinement.
“Why am I being moved?”
“You’re probably on the front page of every newspaper,” he replied.
The remand had a responsibility to protect him, and now, due to media exposure, he was the most infamous inmate in the entire country.
Twitchell was in a daze. He fumed over his treatment, his arrest with no warning, the long interrogation, and media interest. He hated how the police had found Traci and turned her against him. He thought back to the detective who was at the centre of all of this, the man who put him behind bars and had driven him around for hours demanding he give up the body.
Twitchell began to hate Bill Clark and everything he stood for.
The guard continued on a brief tour of his new unit cast from cinder blocks. Twitchell would likely be housed here for two years, the average time it took to disclose an entire murder file to both the prosecution and defence, prepare the case, book court time, and hold a preliminary hearing and then a public trial. The police had gathered more than seven thousand pages of evidence, which filled twenty-one thick binders.
The guard led him down the hallway and ran through a list of prison rules, like he had recited it a hundred times before. He showed him the showers, the laundry, the common areas. The guard then turned to ask Twitchell if he was aware of the risk of being “shit bombed.”
Twitchell drew a blank.
The guard smirked. He’d have to explain prison life to the rookie later.
FRIENDS OF TWITCH
MIKE YOUNG DIDN’T BELIEVE it. Couldn’t believe it. Scott Cooke wasn’t convinced. Neither was Jason Fritz. They lashed back at the unsavoury media coverage. Twitchell was a lot of things to his film crew and his larger group of friends, but they had never feared him as a potential killer.
The media coverage infuriated Mike. Journalists wouldn’t leave him alone, having discovered his connection to the accused through Facebook and Twitchell’s company website before it was shut down. Mike thought his number was unlisted, but calls from local newspapers soon became calls from American TV programs. He’d check his Facebook profile and find it was overloaded with messages from even more reporters. Mike had known Twitchell for four years. When he looked back at all their time together, he just knew deep inside that the police and the media had to be wrong. Obsessed with Dexter? Mike thought his friend was no more interested in the show than the typical fan. He didn’t understand how detectives could charge Twitchell with murder if they were only announcing a prop mask and the movie script as evidence. He couldn’t take it anymore. Mike logged in to his Facebook page, clicked on the messages section, and started typing out his feelings:
Mark is a very non-violent person, with no temper to speak of and an aversion to conflict, yelling, or physical violence.… There has never been a hint, a glimpse, even the slightest possibility, that Mark has it in him to even throw a punch, let alone kill a human being.…
This is an unfortunate coincidence of a man going missing in an area where a movie was being shot. I firmly believe that’s the end of the association. Mark Twitchell is a good man who has been caught up in an unfortunate series of coincidences, the most unfortunate of which is that the baseless police speculation makes for a really good news story. When he is acquitted, I hope the media sees fit to run his acquittal on the front page, just as big as they’re running the stories now.
Mike read it over and hit send. The recipient was a reporter with Metro, a free commuter newspaper in town. He copied and pasted the same message to a reporter at the city tabloid, the Edmonton Sun. He felt like he was doing his part by defending his good friend in public.
A day later, however, his strategy would change.
It was the evening of November 4, 2008. The first African American had just won the U.S. presidential election, but Twitchell’s friends were far more concerned with the dramatic change in their own lives. Everyone had come together for a secret gathering at Jason’s house. It had begun online, first as a private Facebook group where people could share thoughts about the arrest, but had now become a one-time meeting of Twitchell’s closest friends. It was called the “Friends of Twitch” assembly.
Sitting in Jason’s living room, his friends talked, discussed, debated, vented. And a decision was made: there would be a pact, a vow of silence among them.
“I’m going to go with the group consensus and not say any more,” Mike wrote on the “Friends of Twitch” Facebook page afterwards. “While it helps Mark to have people speaking up in his defence, it drags out the media coverage longer, which hurts him.” He had heard back from Twitchell’s sister too. Susan told him the family wasn’t going to say a word to the press either.
The pact stayed strong. “Friends of Twitch” became a private sounding board on Facebook for Twitchell’s film crew and close friends to complain about run-ins with journalists and unwelcome phone calls and emails. But two key people remained notably absent from this group and their views. The first was David Puff, the director of photography Twitchell had used for his movie projects. He wasn’t close with Twitchell’s film crew, but seeing excerpts of Mike’s letter in the press still made him cringe. He would need a few more facts before he ever played that game himself, and as far as he knew, the cops weren’t revealing their full hand just yet.
The second had been slowly distancing himself from their efforts. He knew a lot more about the case against Twitchell, but he didn’t dare share the details. How could he? How could Joss tell anyone that the missing man’s car had not only been parked in his driveway, but he had helped Twitchell move it there?
MIKE WAS THE FIRST to visit Twitchell in remand. A week after his friend’s arrest, Mike walked into the main floor of the concrete tower and strolled up to a man sitting behind a sheet of glass and beneath a sign that stated “Visitor Inquiries.” A little book sat on the white stone countertop. Mike signed and printed his name. He handed over his ID and the guard gave him a little gold key. He pointed behind him. A bank of square, taxi-cab-yellow lockers stood near fake plants hanging down from the ceiling by brown yarn. Mike emptied out his pockets, locked his belongings inside one of the lockers, and walked through a metal detector before taking a seat in the waiting room.
It was a soulless place of disease and distressed families. The room had floor-to-ceiling windows facing directly at downtown police headquarters, as if to remind visitors how their loved ones had got there. The bathroom was disgusting. The maroon tile circling a floor drain had been eaten away by urine and foot traffic. The exposed concrete underneath was flaked and moist. Mike had nothing to do while he waited. Th
ere were no magazines, no television. Everyone sat there on ottomans, staring at one another.
A guard shouted up to central command to open door 1016A. The electronic locks clunked. Mike rose to walk through the thick metal door and down a concrete corridor until he reached his assigned phone booth, which was no wider than a chair. He sat in a squeaky plastic bucket seat facing one inch of Plexiglas. In front of him were a black phone receiver and a small stainless-steel counter. The glass was scratched and carved with several decades worth of names and graffiti.
He could hear inmates being led to their booths, the sounds of clanging metal and creaking hinges. Guards shouted and doors slammed shut.
Mark Twitchell appeared. He was wearing navy blue overalls with a black collar. He looked tired. Twitchell collapsed into his seat and punched in his prison access code. He picked up the receiver and his eyes met those of his dear friend through the glass.
They talked for thirty minutes.
Twitchell complained about being in twenty-three-hour lock down with nothing to do. He was bored. There was no Internet access. No one to talk with. Seeing Mike again was a huge relief. Mike was relieved too. And he couldn’t wait to share his experience with the rest of the group. “He sends his best and is again very sorry at how this has affected everyone’s lives,” Mike wrote on the “Friends of Twitch” Facebook group page. “He’s in for the long haul in there until the trial starts, but he’s refusing to plead to a lesser charge and will defend his innocence to the last.”
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