The Devil's Cinema (47 page)

Brad Mandrusiak moved on to investigate homicide cold cases after being praised for his efforts on the case from arrest to prison interview; Brian Murphy, the first detective to hear Twitchell's forty-dollar car story, was transferred into the arson unit; Jeff Kerr was promoted one rank to staff sergeant in crime prevention programming; the head of homicide retired from the squad in mid-2011.

And then there was Paul Link, one of the city's best interrogators, who, like Clark, had failed to draw out a confession from Twitchell. Link knew he had initially got it wrong. He had been convinced of Twitchell's guilt once he saw all the evidence, but the team never forgot about his doubts in the case – and made sure it didn't slip his mind either. Shortly after the trial, with a murder conviction secured, an email arrived in Link's inbox. “Still fifty-fifty?” the sender had teased.

T
HE COURTS CLOSED THEIR
records on the Twitchell trial with a few parting words for the detectives. It was an unusual move. The judicial system typically looked down on the police force, but the response this time was far more eloquent. “You should be very proud of a job exceptionally well done,” Justice Clackson wrote in a letter to the entire team after the trial. “The time and effort expended was obvious. The result of the trial was determined by the excellent work that you did or directed to be done. I wanted to acknowledge your exceptional efforts.” Such praise was a thrill for every detective. The letter found its way into personal scrapbooks.

M
IKE
Y
OUNG, WHO REMAINED
Twitchell's friend and his power of attorney, emerged from the experience with his passion for the arts intact. He co-wrote several plays for the city's theatre festival, which showed he had no fear in continuing to produce works of stylized violence and dark humour. One play featured hordes of zombies roaming the countryside and attacking Captain Hook and Peter Pan. He called it “Tarantino-esque.”

He continued to work in set design and construction, hoping one day to break into the film industry. It was a path forged from his days on Twitchell's movie set, but Mike appeared hesitant to give him any credit
in public. During a thirty-minute recorded interview about his play with a community website, Mike described beginning his new career because someone “tapped him on the shoulder” for help. The journalist had no idea that the shoulder tapper he was referring to was none other than convicted killer Mark Twitchell.

T
HE FILM CREW DRIFTED
apart. David Puff never worked as a director of photography with the rest of the group again. Joss Hnatiuk remained distant but was still fascinated with the movies after working as a soundman on Twitchell's projects. Mike continued his friendships with Jay Howatson and Scott Cooke. They were all upset at how their names had been forever associated with a horrible crime but most decided to stay silent. When reporters called, Scott started saying they had the wrong number before hanging up the phone and moving on with his life.

I
N
H
OLLYWOOD
, C
HRIS
H
EWARD
finally achieved his shot at fame. He landed a gig at The Laugh Factory – a performance that led to a sprinkling of bookings in comedy clubs across America. But within the celebration there was a tinge of loss. He remained confused about his surreal experience as the original movie victim, strapped to the metal chair in Twitchell's
House of Cards
. “I'm not sure what to do with it,” he said. “It's not funny. You can't do anything to even
try
to make it funny.”

A
FTER A COURT BATTLE
stretching on for fifteen months, John Pinsent finally received his film investment money back, minus legal fees. It had been a straightforward case until his lawyer realized Twitchell's brother-in-law was claiming the same funds simultaneously. A judge ruled in favour of John Pinsent's company and a cheque was written for around $35,000, or every penny Xpress Entertainment still had to its name. Joss Hnatiuk and his family never sued, and Joss was left with a $30,000 hole in his pocket, most of his life savings.

In contrast to his early attentiveness to Twitchell's affairs, Mike Young appeared to have quickly given up. He didn't file a single piece of paper during the entire investment legal battle and rushed into one court hearing more than twenty minutes late. While the judge gave him a chance to
speak, the court had already ruled against him. He didn't fare much better with Twitchell's personal finances. While he notified the court that he was Twitchell's power of attorney, these same court documents reveal few other details. His friend's house was repossessed, sold, and stuck with a $21,000 debt from the property loss, growing each day with interest.

J
ESS AND HER BABY
had the city's deepest sympathy, but she told a neighbour she was too mortified to continue calling Edmonton home. She moved away and adopted a different last name. Some of her family members weren't even sure where she ended up. Jess also kept her lawyer in place after the trial. In seeking as much privacy for Jess and her daughter as possible, her attorney wouldn't even offer the media a “no comment.”

T
WITCHELL'S FIRST LOVE
, T
RACI
Higgins, continued to suffer from personal hardships. She wanted to become a dental hygienist, but her grades were too low. Yet one bright spot in her life remained constant too. Long after Twitchell's arrest, she still cuddled inside her trailer with her two little dogs, always a great comfort as unconditional companions.

T
HE POLICE TRIED TO
shelter Gilles Tetreault from public view before, and even after, he testified at Twitchell's murder trial on the off chance the attempted murder charge was ever pursued. But gradually he began telling his story beyond an inner circle of friends and granting interviews with the press. He even shared his feelings of guilt for not calling the police earlier, and of his surprise at unexpectedly meeting Johnny's mother at the trial. “She grabbed my hand and said, ‘I'm so happy that you're still with us.' And that meant so much to me,” Gilles told
Dateline NBC
. “I didn't know what she'd feel toward me, but when she did that, it was wonderful. It was almost another closing moment for me.” And life moved on.

Gilles became a father with a long-time girlfriend, but the couple later drifted apart. He found himself drawn back into the world of online dating. Maybe he was playing with fire, but Gilles soon decided it was time, once again, to open another dating account on
plentyoffish.com
.

T
HE CREATOR OF
DEXTER
eventually did speak publicly of the Mark Twitchell case, albeit indirectly and without acknowledging him by name. After another case of a killer infatuated with Dexter Morgan had emerged in the United States, author Jeff Lindsay finally felt a need to address the nagging concern.

Writing in
The Huffington Post
, he called accusations that he inspired criminals and murderers “stupid.”

“Reading
Dexter
will not make you a killer,” he wrote in his opinion piece. “If you are not already capable of killing another human being in a cold, cruel, deliberate way, no book ever written will make you capable of doing so. There are no magic words that will turn you into a psychopath.”

He was adamant that both the
Dexter
books and the TV show should be seen as a form of entertainment, not voodoo. “Don't try to make it into some kind of Satanic incantation that creeps into your subconscious and transforms you into an avatar of evil,” he wrote. “It just can't happen, and pretending that you think it might and I am therefore somehow guilty of conspiring to turn us all into killers is completely brainless and it makes me so angry.”

Obviously, he was hypersensitive to the question. His opinion piece, however, also revealed a trace of hurt feelings woven throughout the intensity of his argument. He was treating accusations that he inspired killers to mean he was to blame, even though the two concepts were markedly different.

When asked to elaborate on his comments, however, he refused.

As the end of 2011 approached, the opinion piece remained his first and final words on the issue.

J
UST AFTER SUNRISE, THE
clouds reflecting a golden hue, Mark Twitchell emerged from his remand cell to be crammed into the steel compartment of an enormous armoured van. His wrists were shackled to a chain belt, his body seated in his own private metal chair. He was on his way to a maximum-security prison and it was another Friday: April 15, 2011. Authorities had taken less than two days to sort out where he would be transferred to serve out his life sentence. And it was a surreal moment for the remand guards. They had come to know him over the past two and a half years. Despite the fact that he was a killer, he had been oddly charming, always good for a story and a quick laugh. “It was almost like it created a pause,” one guard said of Twitchell's departure. “It didn't feel like it was done, that it was really over.”

The city streets blurred past. Twitchell stared out for the last time at his hometown. He was heading out of the city – and not by choice. While the Edmonton Max was a few minutes away, Johnny's friends still worked there and Corrections Canada had a mandate to restrict convicted murderers from having contact with anyone connected to their victims. Twitchell would have to be sent elsewhere.

The nearest maximum-security prison he could be sent to was an eight-hour drive straight east into the flatness of the central prairies. Constructed of red brick in the early 1900s, it also happened to have a reputation for housing the worst offenders in the nation: Saskatchewan Penitentiary. High-profile gang members and troublemakers made up the population of more than five hundred inmates. It was the dumping ground for the baddest of the bad in western Canada and for decades housed many of the country's notorious “rats and skinners” – informants and rapists. They were prisoners with no hope of rehabilitation, the vile and the evil. Inmates were killed in frequent brawls. Even gang leaders weren't safe. Yet, the selection of this location for Twitchell's life sentence seemed almost fitting, considering the
circumstances. The prison lay on the outskirts of Prince Albert, which had an unintended resonance with the filmmaker's long-held view that he was the creator of an out-of-control idea. For the town was once home to Boris Karloff, an actor who played the original Frankenstein monster in the 1931 Hollywood classic. Twitchell was amused at his twist of fate.

Upon his arrival, he was locked up in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day until prison officials could decide what to do with him. He was allowed to shower every second day. His cell was no bigger than a small bedroom, and he had only the tiniest of windows to let in a stream of natural light. The walls were concrete blocks. His meals were slid through a slot in his metal cell door. His high-school pen pal stopped writing him while the frequency of William Strong's letters slowed. He had no television, no radio, no magazines. Just a pen, some paper, and a hard bed.

But Twitchell was already plotting his next move.

He dreamed of being granted a transfer into medium security as soon as possible. Then he'd get a computer. He'd sign private art contracts. He'd go back to school and take advanced classes. He fantasized about completing a doctorate while in prison so one day he could be called Dr. Twitchell. “It has a nice ring to it,” he wrote from his cell.

The film industry remained top of mind. Twitchell wanted Mike to chair a new production company on his behalf. He thought they could finally finish
Star Wars: Secrets of the Rebellion
, a film he refused to admit was never going to be released. The two of them would make features and made-for-web film content. Twitchell thought he could develop the ideas inside prison and Mike could produce them on the outside. Using the profits from their various endeavours, he dreamed of paying back everyone that he owed money. And he would never stop writing. Stories, novels, journal entries, scripts. He would complete them all. “I can't shut my creative engine down and wouldn't want to if I could. I'm also not going to turn off my Internal Creative Genius, shunning its influence over an isolated event. That would be like never getting behind the wheel again because you crashed your car once.”

Whether before, during, or after the trial, Twitchell often stressed that he wanted to fight the “absolutely ridiculous” notion that he was a murderer.
“I still can't accept what just happened as reality,” he wrote. He maintained that MAPLE had become a trap from which he could not escape. And anything he did say at sentencing would have been taken as “sour grapes,” he said, which is why he refused to address the court. He often stated he was one of the wrongfully convicted who would some day, against all odds, clear his name and be restored to his rightful place in society. Twitchell stated of his conviction: “They built a monster up in their minds. They wanted one and now they feel they've gotten what they wanted.”

His goals remained focused on loosening the prison system's stranglehold until one day he'd be living in minimum security, counting the days until he could apply for parole. In such a setting, he pictured having near-open access for personal visits. He imagined his daughter coming to visit him. She'd be old enough to be in school.

In his mind, the future remained bright. Grand plans were forming, he still had friends, associates who would offer a helping hand, and loved ones who would never leave his side.

His reality, of course, was far less majestic, far more uninteresting to ever admit.