Crown prosecutor Avril Inglis placed a binder full of typed questions on a podium atop her desk so she could check each one off as they were answered. Inglis had gone head to head with some of the city’s toughest criminals and made a name for herself by winning a high-profile rape case. Twitchell, with no prior criminal convictions, would be a pussycat compared to some of her previous cross-examinations. As a bonus, she had no shortage of material to draw from. She planned to force Twitchell into an uncomfortable paradox: to have his own testimony believed meant also having to admit to every lie he had ever told. There were so many that by the end of her questioning his credibility would most certainly be destroyed.
“Good morning, Mr. Twitchell,” she began.
Twitchell offered no greeting in return. He was about to be interrogated for nearly four hours until he was weak, tired, and out of breath. As he stood, he kept his elbows locked, hands clasped tight on the wooden edges of the witness box, and his body leaned backwards, as if bracing himself against a hurricane-force headwind. And then the storm blew in.
On the witness stand, Twitchell admitted to breaking into Johnny’s condo by using his key and stealing his printer and laptop. Johnny had left himself signed into all of his personal accounts on his computer, giving Twitchell the ability to send messages as the dead man for days before he finally threw out the equipment in a random city dumpster. Johnny’s friends, family, employer, and acquaintances had therefore all been lied to through these impersonated emails and MSN Messenger and Facebook messages.
These acts were not the extent of his lying. Both victims, Gilles and Johnny, had also been lied to repeatedly, whether part of a hoax or intentional luring – that much Twitchell had already admitted during his earlier testimony. But when asked by Inglis in cross-examination, he confirmed he had also lied to his friends and loved ones too. Repeatedly. Joss had been thrown unwittingly into a murder investigation because of Twitchell’s dishonesty. Nearly every single police officer Twitchell had come into contact with had heard lies, even a traffic cop who caught him speeding. Traci was told lies for years, as was Jess, who thought for months Twitchell was going to work when he had no job. And later, he had lied to her about attending Friday-night therapy appointments. Finally, he had lied to Jess about being at the gym when in fact he was standing in the garage with Johnny’s blood soaking into his clothes, the man’s lifeless body lying before him.
Inglis focused on this last point for several minutes as she summed up a half-hour of exposing Twitchell’s constant and elaborate deceptions.
“Right after Mr. Altinger died you were still able to smooth that one over with some lying to your wife, right?”
But Twitchell had some fight in him. “You have to remember, again, how those events took place and what happened in that timeline,” he said with confidence. “Before I could even go anywhere near John’s body, I had to emotionally separate myself from that situation in order to even handle it.”
“And you did it so successfully that you were able to carry on a perfectly normal conversation with your wife that required you to come up with a snap-decision lie.”
“Definitely not nearly as easy as you make it sound.”
“But you were able to do exactly what I just described.”
“Sounds like it.” He shrugged.
In the back row, all three detectives sat with arms crossed, shooting crooked glances at him. Twitchell saw their doubting faces as he stood in the witness box and it annoyed him. In the front row, Gary Altinger was getting angry. He couldn’t stand the litany of pathetic lies and the hideous things Twitchell had admitted doing to his brother.
Inglis raised her voice. “Well, you wrote it down that you were able to do exactly what I described, and your wife, Jess, told us you did exactly what I described. So does it sound like it or is that actually it?“
“I guess I’m just trying to reconcile what other people are perceiving versus what was going on inside of me. So if I had to, if you’re asking me based on what’s in the document and what Jess heard, then yes.”
“That’s true?”
“Right.”
Inglis circled back to her main point: “Moments. After. Mr. Altinger bled to death, in your garage, in front of your eyes, you had a perfectly normal conversation with her and were able to come up with a quick lie. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Twitchell sighed. He had admitted to a lot of damning evidence. He tried to compose himself, but it was clear he had already been made a fool. During the cross-examination, he started rocking on the balls of his feet. He furrowed his brow, started to blush, and at points he curled up his fists like an angry baby. He drained a cup of water in one big gulp.
An early morning break was his only relief.
The public gallery stood as Twitchell hurried off the witness stand. But before he could make it back to the holding cell, Gary Altinger leaned over the brass banister and hissed: “You piece of shit!” Gary was so infuriated his head was vibrating up and down as he spat the words.
Twitchell jumped back, startled. He had no idea who was yelling at him, but he assumed correctly it was Johnny’s brother. He kept walking as another sheriff came over to warn Gary to tone it down or he would be tossed out of the courtroom. “I know what’s going on here,” the guard said. Gary nodded, sat, and tried to calm down.
The prosecution’s attack on Twitchell was even more scathing upon his return to the witness stand. In response, he became rudely defiant, sticking his nose up at one point and rolling his eyes several times. He tried to justify lying to the cops by saying they had lied to him too. Inglis asked him if the cops were questioning the right man, and he had to meekly reply that in fact they were. When asked, he couldn’t provide a name for anyone who knew of MAPLE’s existence or provide any document to prove it was true. “I know my own concept,” he said.
“So you weren’t planning on using that pipe on Mr. Altinger?”
“No.”
“You just talked about it, you talked about using it as a weapon, you prepared it as a weapon, and, ultimately, a day after buying it, when you did use it as a weapon …” She snapped her fingers. “That was an unfortunate turn of circumstance. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I understand how bad it looks, but yes.”
A trickle of chuckles drifted from the public gallery. Twitchell scowled in the direction they had come from.
Inglis intensified her line of questioning to portray him as an uncaring, ruthless killer. She didn’t believe Twitchell had put his emotions behind a piece of Plexiglas, as he had testified, and suggested he was acting for the jury when he cried the day before. She used his own writings as evidence, pointing out how he had even revealed that he felt no empathy.
“The reason you had no remorse is because you did exactly what you intended to do – and that was to murder someone, and unfortunately for Mr. Altinger, it was him.”
“No,” he said loudly.
“It’s quite obvious that you had no remorse because you enjoyed not one but two Thanksgiving Day dinners while his corpse was in your garage.”
Twitchell fell silent.
Inglis continued. “Correct? You enjoyed your time with your family that weekend?”
“When you say enjoyed?“
“You participated just fine with your family that weekend, correct?”
Twitchell mumbled, and Inglis cut him off.
“And then you dismembered Mr. Altinger not once but twice?“
He stopped and in a lowered voice finally stated, “Yes.”
“You tried to burn his body.”
“Yes,” he replied even quieter.
“You put his body in garbage bags and hauled it around like it was garbage.”
“I certainly didn’t think of it that way.” His face flushed.
“That’s how you conducted yourself, isn’t it?” she shouted. He didn’t answer. “Mr. Twitchell?”
“I physically did those things, yes.�
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“And then you dumped his body into a sewer.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
She attacked him for hours, flaying his reputation into tatters. How convenient it was that he had an armoury of weapons in that garage, she suggested. “And because of your savant inspiration for your project, you just happened to have all these tools lying around to help you dismember the body and get rid of the evidence.… Correct? That’s what you’re saying?”
Riled up, Twitchell thought in silence for a moment, placed his hand on his hip, and stared down Inglis with eyes as black as marbles. He raised his voice and snarled: “You can paint it as any kind of coincidence you want!”
THE PROSECUTION CALLED TWITCHELL’S MAPLE concept “the most elaborate lie of all.” The defence countered during closing arguments by comparing Twitchell to the boy who cried wolf. “The stakes in a criminal trial like this are too high.… We don’t have the luxury of simply turning our back and saying, ‘You’ve lied too many times. We’re going to ignore what you say now.’ “
The jury, however, needed only five hours of deliberations before they reached a decision. And that included time off for lunch.
It was 5:25 p.m. on Tuesday, April 12, when word spread that the jury was back with a verdict. The Altinger family had been waiting on couches in the fourth-floor foyer. Journalists were hovering at the ready. Everyone rushed inside Room 417 when guards opened the doors.
Davison was in court three minutes later, followed by Clark, Mandrusiak, Johnson, and Kerr. Prosecutors Van Dyke and Inglis spotted the row of cops already gathered inside as they entered the room shortly afterwards. “That was quick,” Van Dyke said.
Inglis dropped her books and binders on the desk and turned to Johnny’s mother, Elfriede, who was waiting in the front row. She was sandwiched between her partner, Dennis, and her good friend. At the end of the row, two of Johnny’s relatives joined them. Gary had already flown back to British Columbia.
“Are you okay?” Inglis asked the bereaved mother.
“Oh yeah,” Elfriede said. “We’ve been waiting for this.”
Twitchell was led in shortly and took a seat beside Davison. The judge and the trial clerk also arrived and took their places. When the jury arrived a minute later, Twitchell stood and attempted to read their faces, but no one lifted their eyes toward him as they shuffled to their seats.
“Members of the jury, have you arrived at a verdict?” the clerk called out. “If so, say so by your foreperson. Please stand.”
A woman in the back row of the jury rose and met her gaze. “Yes, we have,” she replied.
“What is your verdict against Mark Twitchell?”
There was no hesitation, no sign of emotion or conflicted thoughts in her response. She was direct and clear: “Guilty of first-degree murder.”
Twitchell swallowed hard as loud gasps and exhales overtook the courtroom. He looked straight ahead as his face blushed to a light pink. He tried to show no emotion, but every line in his body looked like it had trembled, ever so briefly. In that moment, he seemed to have been stricken by a terrible realization, a deepening blow that had at last brought him down as he tumbled to his chair.
In the front row, Elfriede’s tears flowed as she was hugged by everyone around her. The crowd wept as the room rumbled in a low hum. Inglis spun her chair around and gave Elfriede a knowing smile.
One by one, the trial clerk polled each juror to confirm they were all in agreement with the guilty verdict.
Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Elfriede looked at each juror as they stood and replied.
Yes. Yup. Yes. Yes.
She dabbed her tears with a tissue, then bobbed her head in thanks, giving each of them a bright smile.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Looking puzzled, Twitchell adjusted in his seat as he chewed on his lip. He had expected this was coming after his disastrous cross-examination, but it was still surreal.
Justice Clackson discharged the jury, expressing regret for having put them through such an experience. “I know that this has been a very difficult case, even for those of us who have been in this business for a long time,” he said. “Some of what you witnessed … was difficult to see, difficult to hear, and especially difficult to have it repeated time and time again.” In a rare move, he offered counselling services to every one of them and praised how stoic they had appeared throughout some very lurid testimony.
Dismissed, the jury walked out of the courtroom and returned to their jobs and their own families. They would remain anonymous forever. By court order, their names would never be known publicly, and under Canadian law, their deliberations would remain secret. These six men and six women would live with this burden and experience in silence for the rest of their lives.
When the judge left a moment later, the courtroom blossomed with emotion.
Inglis walked over to Elfriede and reached out her arms. They embraced in a big hug. Van Dyke joined them and with one look at Elfriede, he was tearing up too. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he choked. And he embraced her in a warm hug as well. “You did a great job,” she said to both of them. “Thank you.” Clark strolled up to lavish praise on both prosecutors. The detective gave Inglis a hug and Van Dyke a sturdy handshake.
The room was brimming with love, tears, and memories of Johnny, of justice served.
“It’s over,” Elfriede’s friend said aloud to no one in particular.
Elfriede slumped back in the court bench, smiled once again, then sighed in agreement.
“It’s over.”
THE JURY’S DECISION MEANT the judge had no choice: Twitchell would be receiving an automatic sentence. Justice Clackson returned to the courtroom ten minutes after the verdict to go through the motions of this legal process. It was also a chance for the victims to speak up and have their own voices officially documented in court records, forcing the killer to hear and face the pain his actions have caused.
Van Dyke stood and began reading out loud a letter from Johnny’s brother, Gary:
I have the same recurring nightmare of not being able to help John in his time of need.… I continue to suffer from guilt, pain and anxiety of not being able to help him 29 months ago in those horrific minutes before he was butchered. I have had to take a lot of time off from my workplace.… My wife, who used to be the picture of health, has been off work for almost two years now with a debilitating and chronic affliction entirely the consequence of extreme stress. Our two children, left without their Uncle John, wake in the wee hours of the morning with nightmares about monsters. It’s impossible to be honest with them, living with the reality that monsters do live among us.
Inglis read Elfriede’s letter on her behalf:
I can’t imagine the fear, desperation and pain Johnny must have endured. As a mother, I feel I can’t think about it without going over the edge. I go through each day with a feeling of numbness. There is no joy in my life. It has been ripped away from me.… People have asked me if I wish there was still the death penalty and I must answer, ‘No.’ My wish is for the perpetrator of this unforgivable and horrific act to reflect on his actions and die a slow death every day of his life.
The trial had seen countless photos entered as exhibits. They were photographs of Twitchell, of his costumes, his movie props, his bloody knives, his messy car and home. They numbered in the hundreds, perhaps more.
But what all this documentation had failed to capture was the most important photo of all: an image of the victim himself. Both Gary and Elfriede filled that gap by including snapshots of Johnny in happier times as part of their victim impact statements. These three photos were entered as the final exhibits, the bookend giving a face to the name of the victim everyone following the case had come to know.
In the three photos, Johnny looks happy and loved. In one, he has the Rocky Mountains stretched out behind him; in another he is simply smiling; the final photo shows him pointing, trying to get one of his nephews, a toddler, to look a
t the camera.
A typical family.
THE JUDGE TURNED HIS attention to Mark Twitchell.
Justice Clackson told him it was now his last opportunity to offer whatever he wished to say before his sentence was delivered.
But Twitchell had fallen silent. Just like back at his first police interview with Clark, there was an excruciatingly long thirteen-second pregnant pause before he would stir to make a single sound.
An air fan hummed above as the gears grinded in his head.
“You know,” he began slowly, “I was actually going to address the court with some comments, but in light of everything that’s been happening here, considering what’s going on at the moment … I’ll pass on that.”
The judge spared Twitchell a lecture since he never considered it his role. Instead, Justice Clackson simply stated the hard facts: “You are sentenced to spend the rest of your life in prison and you are not eligible to apply for parole until you have served twenty-five years of that sentence.”
For many, Twitchell’s final comments seemed cowardly, a pathetic conclusion for a man who had refused to accept responsibility for his actions and who lied non-stop to everyone he knew to cover it up. Defiant until the ugly end, Twitchell, even now, offered no apology to the Altinger family, no apology to even his own family, his shattered ex-wife, or his daughter, who would now grow up with a notorious father behind bars.
Not that he’d get very far before the sheer magnitude of the situation would be rubbed in his face. Twitchell turned away from his lawyer to be led out of court by a sheriff for the last time. And standing tall beside the cell door to remand was his nemesis, Detective Bill Clark.
Clark had wanted his face to be the last Twitchell would ever see on the outside. He had taken a seat in the bench as close to the door as possible, and he had a smile of sweet satisfaction underneath his neatly trimmed moustache. It was a moment few detectives will ever experience in their careers. He had told Twitchell all those years ago that he was coming to get him. And he did. He got him.
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