The Devil's Cinema Read online

  “No, no. That’s not a problem,” said Traci, trying to reassure them. “I’m fine.”

  The two detectives drove back to Edmonton, but before returning to headquarters, they took a detour to the South Edmonton Common movie theatres. After a few hours they found what they were looking for: security camera footage of Mark Twitchell and Traci Higgins. The time matched the movie stub receipt found in Twitchell’s car. They had footage of Twitchell buying tickets to a film and leading Traci into the theatre. It was a matinee showing on Friday, October 10. The movie had ended around 5:15 p.m. – less than two hours before the time period when detectives believed Johnny had died in Twitchell’s garage.

  THE SURVEILLANCE TEAM HAD spent more than a day trying to find Twitchell – an eternity when a suspect is considered to be a potential threat to the community. He hadn’t been spotted since he left police headquarters at dawn on Monday. The team had followed his wife to a Wal-Mart, watched his sister buy groceries, but saw nothing of the suspect.

  Twitchell was gone.

  By late evening on Tuesday, October 21, with Twitchell unaccounted for over the past thirty-nine hours, a worry began to fester within the investigation. Clark thought Twitchell could have gone to his parents’ place. In the darkness, approaching 9:30 p.m., Clark decided to get the confirmation the team needed. He strolled up the sidewalk to a house in north Edmonton and knocked on the door. It was a single-storey modest home, overlooking a park.

  A man whom Clark assumed to be Twitchell’s father answered. The mood was bright until Clark told him who he was. That tended to sour any atmosphere of cheer.

  “Is Mark here?” Clark asked. “I’d like to talk to him.”

  A woman came rushing up to the door to join them. Clark thought it was likely Twitchell’s mother. “I know where he is, but I’m not telling you,” she snapped.

  Clark expected this reaction. He was the bad guy, going after their son. Any parent would behave the same way. “Listen, a couple things are happening here,” he explained. “I am going to come back and arrest your son. It’s just a matter of time. I believe he’s involved up to his neck in this thing.” Clark had four boys of his own, so he tried to engage them as parents. “But if this was my kid,” he stressed, “I would sit him down and talk to him, find out what’s going on … That would only make sense. You’ll know as a parent if he’s lying.”

  Clark saw Twitchell’s father start to nod while his mother still looked suspicious.

  “Well, he can’t talk,” she said. “He’s been told by his lawyer that he can’t talk.”

  “And doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?” Clark figured by now that Twitchell was probably inside and maybe listening to their conversation from the staircase. Just in case he was there, Clark spoke loud enough to make sure he heard too. “He is a suspect in the disappearance and possible murder of a male. He was found in possession of the missing man’s car.… But I’ll give him a chance to turn himself in.” He paused and tried again. “Will you tell me where he is?”

  “I know where he is,” his mother repeated. “But I’m not going to say.”

  Clark and Twitchell’s father kept talking as his mother walked away. “Look, if he gets charged with this, you’re the ones he’s going to come to for the legal bill. So let me give you a piece of advice: I wouldn’t be paying for no lawyer bill if I thought my son did something bad. If there’s a grey area, maybe you would … I bet you this house is paid for?”

  Twitchell’s dad nodded. His mom walked back up to the door and began glaring at Clark.

  “So they’ll come to you because your son has no money. But he can get legal aid so you don’t have to worry. But they’re gonna try to get you to mortgage your house, and I’ll tell ya, I wouldn’t be standing here right now if I didn’t think your son did this. I take my job seriously. When you have homicide detectives come knocking on your door, there’s some serious –”

  Twitchell’s mother cut him off. “Enough talking to him,” she said. She turned to Clark. “I want you to leave our house.” She pointed behind him.

  Clark got the message. “Okay, okay,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’m gone.”

  SPELLING IT OUT

  THE HOWL OF A late autumn breeze had ripped away the yellow leaf canopy from the city’s trees, exposing the naked bark beneath like a network of veins. The grass was turning brown. The October sky faded to a light blue as the sun reached midday. Wednesday, October 22, was a suitable day to begin the search of Twitchell’s residence. Police activity would draw far less attention during the afternoon, when neighbours had deserted their homes for work in the city, far away from this quaint St. Albert crescent. The last thing the detectives wanted was the media to start sniffing around the investigation.

  Pulling up and parking, forensic team members Randy Topp, Nancy Allen, and Gary Short arrived at the Twitchell home to begin their usual routines of documenting and gathering evidence as the chilly air warmed with a rising sun. It had been two days since Jess had fled her home. The team would have been here earlier, but they were caught off guard by the scale of work in searching Twitchell’s vehicle.

  Topp opened the front door and slowly climbed the stairs. As the videographer for the team, he entered first to document the undisturbed state of the property before the rest of the team walked in and started moving things around. The home was quiet and the air inside had turned stale. The only sounds now were Topp’s breathing and his soft footsteps as he wandered through the rooms with a video camera, barely uttering a word.

  He passed a baby gate and a vacuum on the landing leading toward the living room. On the messy coffee table were an empty baby bottle, a diaper, and a few Cheerios piled in a mound on a tissue. A big flat-screen TV hung in the corner, hooked up to a PlayStation 2. The kitchen counters were littered with empty glass bottles. A half-eaten chocolate chip cookie had been left near a stack of dirty plates on the stove.

  Topp moved deeper into the residence, descending the stairs to Twitchell’s basement office. There was a second bedroom and bathroom down there. Twitchell’s clothes were crumpled up near the bed. A shaving kit rested on the bathroom sink. In the furnace room, Topp found a medieval sword hidden behind paint cans and, later that day, a black samurai sword.

  Twitchell’s desk was cluttered with empty cans of energy drinks and juice bottles. A half-eaten bowl of noodles sat by the keyboard. Topp spotted an external hard drive and the tower for Twitchell’s home computer. Both would have to be seized and examined. The computer monitor was still on, flickering under the harsh glow of fluorescent lights. Above the monitor he noted stacks of DVDs and an unusual possession: a single handcuff key. Among Twitchell’s computer desk shelves were burned copies of all twelve episodes of the second season of Dexter.

  His desk stretched out along the basement wall to an adjoining sewing table that was partially buried by a collection of fabrics, string, and costumes. A Star Wars alien mask with three eyes watched Topp from a corner. Next to a black “JEDI” baseball cap, he noticed a street hockey mask. It had been painted black with three stripes of gold shaped to form a vicious animal claw. Topp moved his video camera closer. The bottom of the mask had been cut away. Underneath the sewing table he found an air pistol handgun in a cardboard box.

  As Topp circled each room, it became evident how two very different lives had come together in this marriage. All one had to do was examine the living room bookshelf. On the top shelf, Twitchell’s love of fantasy had merged with the practical realities of Jess and the baby. Women’s magazines, baby books, and a photo of Chloe seemed jarring beside Power vs. Force, a text that analyzed human behaviour, and Troy: Shield of Thunder by British fantasy writer David Gemmell. The shelf below was stacked high with hardcover editions: Dexter in the Dark, another Dexter Morgan serial killer novel, and Sweetheart, a novel by Chelsea Cain about an icy-eyed female serial killer. There were Star Wars books, an IKEA catalogue, books on what to expect as a new parent, and DVDs of
violent movies and video games like Kill Bill and Grand Theft Auto. One of the lower shelves contained several travel guides, notably a 2007 Frommer’s travel guide to Costa Rica. A stack of blank postcards from Costa Rica was found as well.

  With Topp done filming, Allen and Short walked in for a detailed search and uncovered two more samurai swords tucked into the front entrance closet. Other items the team noted were a book titled The Crime Scene: How Forensic Science Works and a stash of DVDs and VHS tapes, many violent or horror-themed like Fight Club and Predator. There were a few home videos too.

  Later on, when Allen examined the hockey mask they had found, she noticed two spots on the bridge of the nose that looked like bloodstains. She circled them with a white marker. A more detailed sweep of the home over the following hours also uncovered a pair of men’s faded jeans with a single red spot just below the knee. The pockets on both sides were covered with what also looked like bloodstains. It appeared as if someone had been rubbing their hands on their thighs. Allen made a note of it.

  Another odd discovery in the home, however, prompted a call for a special police expert. In the basement laundry room, the forensics team had found a strange stain in the interior bowl of the washer. It wasn’t dark red in colour, which was of course expected if it was blood. Instead, the stain was more of a soft pink and stretched out in a long streak like a comet, circling the glossy white universe inside.

  BACK AT HEADQUARTERS, CLARK began packing up his things scattered across his desk in a cascade of papers and trinkets. Clark liked to keep knickknacks under his computer monitor, whether it be a stuffed crab or a little kitten statue, which contrasted with police reports detailing brutal acts of violence.

  It was half-past five on October 22. After a couple of long days and late-night interviews, Clark was getting ready to head home when one of the steel doors to homicide creaked open.

  Anstey walked in with a huge grin. Behind him was Jeff Kerr, another detective on the Twitchell investigation. Clark took his eyes off his desk as the two of them approached. Anstey was beaming. “Bill, you won’t believe what we’ve just found.”

  “What?” His ears perked up.

  Kerr had a stack of paper in his hands. He lowered them briefly so Clark could read the top of the first page he was holding:

  This story is based on true events. The names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty.

  This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer. Like anyone just starting out in a new skill, I had a bit of trial and error in the beginning of my misadventures. Allow me to start from the beginning and I think you’ll see what I mean.

  Clark’s jaw dropped.

  Anstey couldn’t contain his excitement anymore. “It’s a diary of how he killed the guy!”

  “Holy shit!” Clark smacked his head. “Gimme a copy! Come on! Come on!”

  Kerr yanked the papers away from Clark. “No, no, no. Hang on, hang on here. This is the original. We’ve gotta be careful how many of these we make.”

  Eventually a few photocopies were made – on Clark’s insistence – but only enough for all the major detectives. They wanted to keep this unexpected development very quiet.

  The text had been pulled off the laptop found in Twitchell’s car. Constable Michael Roszko in the tech crimes unit had found two temporary files buried in the hard drive and stitched them together. Both files had been made automatically in Microsoft Word by a user logged in to an account titled “Xpress Entertainment.” One temporary file was likely created when the text was copied to the clipboard; the second was likely made during an auto-recovery backup. The original Word document, however, had been deleted. There were thirty-five pages of writing. The document appeared to have been saved as “SKConfessions.doc.”

  Clark huddled around his copy at his desk, reading as fast as he could.

  I don’t remember the exact place and time it was that I decided to become a serial killer, but I remember the sensation that hit me when I committed to the decision. It was a rush of pure euphoria. I felt lighter, less stressed, if you will, at the freedom of the prospect. There was something about urgently exploring my dark side that greatly appealed to me and I’m such a methodical planner and thinker, the very challenge itself was enticing to behold.

  “This is incredible!” Clark kept repeating as he read, at times covering his face in disbelief or clutching the back of his head. “Wow!”

  The first page described the decision to begin killing as the “hand of fate,” an idea taken from a fantasy book by David Gemmell. The second page detailed the method: targeting men through online dating websites. At first, the diary stated, the plan had been to lure cheating husbands, a way of “taking out the trash” – a line borrowed from the fictional Dexter Morgan, who justified his actions because he only killed bad people society already held in contempt. But the plan of targeting married men was too risky, the diary concluded, so it was changed to luring “middle-aged single men who lived alone.” The writer reasoned it would be easier to get away with killing such men undetected. With no roommates or wives to worry about them, a victim could disappear for longer before people would notice. A fake female profile would do the trick: an attractive girl, using photos of a real woman’s profile living in another city, but under a fake name and fake personal details. The girl would be flirty, toying with the man until he was so eager his guard would drop and he would fall for the trap.

  The document revealed that a “kill room” had been chosen: a double-door detached garage with a dirt driveway in the south end of the city. All the killer had to do was remove the address sign from the back wall of the garage and give out strange directions so nobody would know the physical address. The diary detailed the killer’s disguise: a black hockey mask, the forehead painted with gold streaks. It served the “double purpose of facial protection and identity shield to give the victim a false sense of security in thinking they would be let go.” Then he picked out his “kill knife” from a military surplus store to help with the “nasty mayhem” about to transpire:

  The trap was set, and now it was time to bait the hook … My kill room was perfectly prepped. Plastic sheeting taped together and around my table; a large green cloth screwed into the drywall ceiling to shield view of it from my guest’s line of sight, and to shield me too, of course. I now stood but a few feet way from the front door, which I had locked of course. The plan was to wait in the shadow of my curtain until he approached the door and shock him with the stun baton followed by a sleeper hold that would sap away his consciousness so that I could tape him up and set him on my table.

  Clark’s eyes flared as he kept reading. He knew what was coming next: Johnny was going to show up at that garage and be killed by Mark Twitchell.

  But that wasn’t what happened.

  Apparently, Johnny wasn’t the first victim.

  The document described another attack on October 3, the Friday before Johnny disappeared. During the earlier attempt, the attacker’s stun baton had failed and the victim had fought back, reached for the man’s gun, and somehow managed to escape.

  Clark realized they had to find the surviving victim. And the Twitchell file had suddenly become something much bigger: a serial killer investigation. Thank God the detectives had the foresight to order twenty-four-hour surveillance, he thought. Now that the surveillance team had confirmed a positive sighting of Twitchell at his parents’ house shortly after Clark’s visit, he was at least being watched while they gathered more evidence.

  AT THE OTHER END of the office, Johnson drew his own conclusions as he read the diary. About halfway through the text, he noted how the author began paying homage to a young woman:

  Oh my sweet Laci. Just in case you are wondering, Laci is not my wife or my daughter. Laci is my ex-girlfriend. On paper she’s the complete opposite of everything that should be my perfect match. She has two small dogs that she treats like children and those people usually drive me up the wall … But I love her u
ncontrollably and always will.

  The diary described his encounters with “Laci” at the movies while his wife, “Tess,” was at home and caring for their baby, “Zoe.” He later received a speeding ticket on the way to the woman’s home for a late-night rendezvous. The diary then evolved into an erotic narrative with an entire page devoted to the extramarital affair.

  Johnson thought it was pretty clear what was going on: Twitchell simply changed the names, but everything else was true. It meant Traci had been downplaying her contact with Twitchell. Perhaps she was embarrassed about having an affair with a married man. Little did she know, however, that the object of her affection was secretly writing about being a wannabe serial killer with a lust for blood and violence.

  CLARK TOOK THE DIARY home with him that night, as did every other detective on the file. For the first time in his thirty-year career, he was overwhelmed with evidence in a homicide file. Reading the diary was an odyssey, a startling descent into the criminal persona, with the depths of human depravity presented to the reader in the form of entertainment. A detective usually never knew this level of detail about their suspects. Eyewitnesses were unreliable, even an admission from an accused was often embellished or twisted in some way. But what Clark and the team believed they had found this time was a virtual blow-by-blow account, an honest and full confession, relishing in every sordid detail. They had total insight into what the killer was likely thinking. Twitchell had written an extremely comprehensive account of how Johnny was killed. The descriptions were disgusting, some too graphic to repeat, words strung together about unspeakable and grotesque acts. Twitchell wrote at length about the difficulty in trying to hide Johnny’s body. He had scoured the river valley for the perfect spot, but there were too many people around so he had to think of another plan.