The Devil's Cinema (38 page)

Their conversations remained jovial when he did take time to visit Twitchell in remand. But one meeting before the trial changed everything. Jason had stared a bit longer through the prison glass this time, watching Twitchell's eyes as he talked. And something clicked; something was different, unsettling. “He gave me this look and I just suddenly went, ‘Jesus!' “ he recalled later. “There was just something in the expression, something there I had never seen before. It was just a creepy look.” Jason didn't go back.

Rebecca found her suspicions were also being raised as time passed. A few members of Twitchell's film crew wanted to discuss the case, which made her uncomfortable. “I was thinking if he didn't do it, then it had to be one of these other guys who had access to the garage,” she said later. “There was no way I was going to meet up with any of them.”

Twitchell's sister, Susan, had visited him a few times during his incarceration, but by the time the trial neared she had stopped and only Twitchell's parents remained in regular contact. They usually booked an appointment to see their son once a month, depositing cash in his remand account to buy better food at the prison canteen, more pens, more notebooks.

The approaching trial made Johnny's closest friends incredibly nervous. They feared the police didn't have enough to secure a conviction, considering there was an information blackout. The continuing sealing orders and publication bans prevented all of the evidence from being made public until the trial began. One of his friends' greatest concerns was the inability to find Johnny's remains. Without a body, could the case collapse? How
could it be a proven that Twitchell committed a murder with no human remains? “Admit to your crime and start to serve your time like a man,” one of Johnny's Vancouver friends begged online.

Even if Twitchell could have heard the message, he wouldn't have listened. He had something going on behind the scenes. He had a plan he had been sitting on for years, hinting at it repeatedly with detectives and his friends. He believed he was still holding the cards.

When the trial began, he was going to offer a paradigm shift he was certain would change everything. “They are convinced they see a train,” Twitchell wrote of the prosecution shortly before his trial. “From their perspective, they can clearly identify the tracks, the wheels, the grill and even the window with an engineer in it. But back up a little and soon we see that the reality is not a train at all but a painting of a train, sitting on an easel in the middle of a studio.”

While many friends had abandoned Twitchell, such cryptic cloak-and-dagger assertions encouraged a select few to remain loyal. Mike did not waver in his support through the years from arrest to trial. In one of his only media statements issued after his letter in defence of Twitchell was published, Mike still publicly defended his friend. “The evidence will speak for itself, and I hope and believe that it will find Mark innocent,” he stated. Scott stayed committed to his beliefs as well. “I don't believe Mark did it,” he told a friend over the phone. “He's going to be proven innocent. You just wait and see what happens at the trial. Just wait.”

Scott repeated such strong opinions online. In one of his last posts on “Friends of Twitch,” he wrote how he had received a court summons in the mail and he was going to testify in a few days. “Make no mistake,” he told the group. “I'm still on his side.”

It was the kind of talk that made Twitchell very pleased.

T
HE FOG HAD ROLLED
in. As the sun crested the horizon, Twitchell slid his feet out from his prison bed and peered out the tiny rectangular window. Outside, a thick blanket of grey and white drifted low among downtown office towers and skimmed the top of the six-storey courthouse. The building stood across the street and one block south from Twitchell's cell. One wing of the courthouse heard provincial matters and had a main-floor counter where drivers paid speeding tickets; the taller wing housed the Court of Queen's Bench, which was reserved for the most serious of crimes. The square-shaped building looked like an upside-down pyramid with the top floor much wider than the bottom. Its concrete walls tended to glow white in the summer heat, but on an overcast day like today they turned a shade darker, to a soft light brown. Twitchell had worked his way to trial from the provincial side, starting in a massive docket court. He then was transferred to the Queen's Bench – Alberta's Superior Court – and moved slowly up the tower, floor by floor. By the time a trial began, most facing a murder charge would end up on the fourth floor. The fifth was reserved for appeals; the top floor held the offices of the chief justice.

Twitchell rubbed his face, pausing for a moment at the view, but his thoughts were interrupted by mumbling sounds from within the room. Sleeping in the other bunk was a new roommate, some homeless dumpster diver who had been talking to himself and snoring all night. A pile of stale food sat near his bed. Twitchell sighed. He wasn't used to waking up so early, and the lack of sleep from this nuisance didn't help. He started getting ready anyway just as morning radio programs were blasting previews of his case. Between weather and traffic updates, announcers were making wisecracks, calling him the “small-time filmmaker with big-movie dreams” who would soon have the “lead role” in a riveting courtroom drama. He would stand trial for the murder of Johnny Altinger in a matter of hours, more than two and a half years since his Halloween arrest.

It was March 16, 2011. The fog retreated into smaller patches within the river valley as journalists began their trek to the building. Melting piles of late-winter snow crunched under boots and shoes, mixing with chocolate-brown mud and road salt. Reporters joined a growing crowd that jammed the security gates at all three entrances. Everyone had to remove their belts and jackets, empty their pockets, and dump everything into grey plastic bins. Their belongings were sent through an X-ray machine. Guards then swung metal detectors around each person in the search for weapons.

The first reporters to arrive spotted Twitchell's name in the docket list displayed on a flat-panel monitor and took the elevator to the fourth floor to gather in a central foyer with black leather chairs. Room 417 was a quick stroll down the hallway, where clerks were busy preparing the chosen courtroom. Producers from American television programs
48 Hours Mystery
and
Dateline NBC
had already arrived. National broadcasters, wire agencies, and newspapers had called in their prairie correspondents to cover the trial. The
Edmonton Journal
assigned two journalists, as did the
Edmonton Sun
. Three
CBC
reporters were in attendance, joined later by a producer with the national network's investigative program,
the fifth estate
. Every local television station was there. Photographers and camera operators huddled around each entrance on the off chance someone who knew Twitchell would show up or make a statement. Deadmonton history was being made under the gaze of the awaiting media, ready to broadcast the story around the world.

But at the moment, Twitchell looked no different than any other inmate. He was crammed within a pack of a dozen other prisoners, lined up in rows of two. Guards led the group through a lengthy underground tunnel connecting remand to the courthouse. Twitchell's right wrist was handcuffed to another inmate's as they shuffled into the basement of the court. The only televisions down here were within “the bubble,” where guards could monitor security camera screens from behind thick glass, watching closely as inmates were escorted individually from the holding tanks up to their respective courtrooms.

On the fourth floor, Twitchell's defence lawyer, Charles Davison, strolled out of the elevator in the customary black robes worn in Canada's superior-level courts, tugging a cart of boxes and binders behind him. Throughout
his legal career, the salt-and-pepper-haired barrister had secured case victories for many accused killers. And in preparing for this murder trial, he had spent months trying to have S. K. Confessions excluded from evidence, but the court had dismissed his pleas and decided that the writings could be read by the jury. This morning, Davison would try another approach. He was also planning a surprise for later in the day, while his competition had a few of its own.

The court held a voir dire a mere three hours before the jury would be called in. Such hearings, a virtual trial within a trial, are common practice in criminal proceedings, but not on opening day. A publication ban would also be placed over the entire voir dire, meaning nobody would know what was discussed, or even that it had occurred, until after a verdict. Twitchell was led in by one guard, emerging from the interior corridors. He took a seat at the defence counsel table and looked up at Davison just as the judge appeared and the courtroom was called to order. Everyone rose to their feet and bowed.

Justice Terry Clackson walked in at a brisk pace, smiling as he took a seat perched high above the room. The jury waited in a backroom, unaware of what was transpiring in the court. Davison stood up, pushed his glasses up his nose, and launched into his eleventh-hour argument.

The writings within S. K. Confessions were “not entirely true.” That was the defence's position. And the forty-two-page document contained statements that were far too prejudicial to Twitchell's right to a fair trial to ever be heard by the jury. Davison suggested some of the worst sections could be removed and still not seriously undermine the prosecution's case. He wanted the document edited with certain sections deleted or censored. A key concern was the sordid details of the dismemberment, which were so lurid and horrid, he said, that it would inflame the jury's passions. “What's on those pages is simply so graphic … that it could even bring on physical reactions.”

Twitchell blushed. Shifting his weight in his chair, he focused intently on a notepad on the desk in front of him. As his lawyer spoke, he rubbed his temples and started scribbling.

The prosecution's argument was that S. K. Confessions was a diary and a confession – to everything. It provided insight into Twitchell's state
of mind and his consistent levelheadedness in planning, executing, and cleaning up after the murder. The fact that he could dismember a human body with such a lack of emotion – to write about it methodically, clinically – was evidence in and of itself. The case was unavoidably gory, violent, sickening.

The judge listened carefully but reserved his judgment to a later date. The issue of the diary's contents would remain unresolved before the trial officially began later that afternoon.

T
EN MINUTES BEFORE THE
trial's scheduled start time, Detective Bill Clark emerged from the elevator, having taken the short walk to the courthouse from police headquarters. He pulled on the brass handles to the courtroom's creaky wooden doors and surveyed the crowd. Room 417 was already half full with fifty people as a stream of onlookers came in through the other entrance. Twitchell wasn't there yet. He was being held in the holding cell in an adjacent room.

Clark exchanged a glance with Lawrence Van Dyke, one of the two prosecutors, seated at their counsel table.

“Ready to deliver the opening?” Van Dyke quipped.

Clark rolled his eyes, chuckled, and slapped him on the back. He leaned in and whispered in his ear. Behind them, the crowd had grown to seventy. Few watching would have known that Clark was a detective, that this murder trial was his biggest homicide file to date, or that Twitchell hated him so deeply. Clark spoke with Van Dyke for only a minute to wish the team good luck. He would have to testify in a few weeks so he couldn't stay in the courtroom once the jury was let in. Clark stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled out the door with a smile on his face.

In the front row, a court sketch artist had pulled out a large sheet of paper and was madly scribbling. Behind her, a row of law students was crammed together, whispering about their weekend parties. Journalists took up the entire back row of the court, pens and notebooks clasped in their hands. Police officers sat nearby, close to a few curious lawyers who had a spare couple of minutes from their own cases. Twitchell's remaining friends and his film crew, as well as those who knew Johnny, would be called to testify and were barred from observing the trial until they had
given their evidence. But an elderly friend of Johnny's mother sat in the centre of the courtroom, to be joined later by the rest of his out-of-town family. Twitchell had no support. His parents and sister never appeared, even though they were allowed to attend. He was all alone.

Davison pulled up into the courtroom again, lifted his robe tight on the sides, and sat down. In a minute he would be entering Twitchell's plea. Two plastic cups half-filled with water sat on the desk in front of him. He pulled out a pen, leaned back, and scanned through his notes.

Across the court, Van Dyke was deep in a conversation with co-prosecutor Avril Inglis, their whispers drifting like a soft hiss over the murmur of the growing crowd. Together, they would be the tag team for the Crown, having been assigned the file hours after Twitchell's arrest. The sketch artist began to draw an outline of Van Dyke and Inglis: his short army-style haircut and square jaw, her long black hair and glasses. They were both tall and in their late thirties. As two rising stars within the Department of Justice, they had studied each page, every photograph, every video. Some seventy-two people had been included in their final witness list. They had been preparing for months.

The door to the holding cell suddenly thumped open. A hush spread, but the crowd roared to life once again. It was just one of the sheriffs entering the room. The remaining few seats in the public gallery were taken just as the trial clerk arrived from the judge's chambers, signalling that the start of the trial was finally moments away.