The Devil's Cinema Read online

  Rebecca dragged her girlfriends over and they too were stunned by Twitchell’s costume. “What’s it made out of?” She took a photo of him, and then the two of them posed for another one together. Rebecca noticed how Twitchell was loving the attention. “He liked feeling like a famous person,” she later recalled.

  But the huge party came with a whiff of anxiety for Twitchell. After several hours, he was still waiting for the winners of the costume competition to be announced. He began to doubt his efforts. Twitchell took off pieces of his Transformers gear, preparing to leave and give Rebecca a lift home, when the speakers pumped out the one word he had been waiting all evening to hear.

  Bumblebee!

  Giant TV screens broadcast a photograph of his yellow costume as an announcer screamed the name of the winner. The crowd erupted in cheers of appreciation. For a second, Twitchell did not believe it. As the big win slowly sunk in, his smile grew until his teeth finally bucked out like a horse.

  He was elated.

  The next evening, Twitchell was still bathing in the afterglow. He dragged Susan to West Edmonton Mall to repeat their Halloween experience and hopefully win another prize. He stood inside a massive nightclub, once again dressed as Bumblebee.

  As the night reached its peak, Twitchell rose to the stage. A large audience before him was left to decide the costume winner with a screaming vote. The chanting swelled as he gazed at the sea of hands and faces. The howling and whistling mixed in a blur of tones. And it didn’t take long for the announcer to proclaim the crowd’s favourite.

  It’s Bumblebee!

  The nightclub exploded in excitement.

  Twitchell’s face bloomed once again in a sublime grin. He had secured two wins in two days.

  He was a hero.

  Between the two Halloween parties, Twitchell had won a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and thousands of dollars in cash. He quickly sold off the bike and his costume, earning a total of $16,000 from a handmade effort that cost him a mere $300 to build.

  He had won a small fortune. Adoration. New-found respect.

  Finally, he felt like he was on top of the world.

  BORN IN EDMONTON ON July 4, 1979, Twitchell had shown a passion for costume-making, performance, and fantasy from an early age, reaching its pinnacle when he was nearing thirty and still dressing up to win money.

  Both of his parents were equally encouraging of his creative pursuits. His mother, Mary, was a career graphic artist; his father, Norman – or “The Normster,” as Twitchell liked to call him – was a maintenance worker for one of the city’s downtown office towers. Both grew up on Alberta farms outside of Edmonton, and Mary was one of twelve siblings. His parents met in their twenties and had now been married for more than three decades. And Twitchell viewed his childhood as a “textbook upbringing” with parents who did everything right and gave him a stable and positive home. They were the typical suburban family: mom, dad, two kids, and a dog.

  His sister, Susan, had been a close friend for many years, though they fought as teenagers, as siblings usually do. Twitchell viewed his sister, four years his junior, as an “Amazon” woman. She was tall, always active in kick-boxing, skiing, or mountain climbing. Susan was a tomboy and probably had more muscle than him. And she was smart. Growing up, the family used to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation after dinner, which led to Twitchell calling her “Q” as a nod to one of the show’s omnipotent, genius characters. It was no surprise to the family when she decided to pursue a career in engineering.

  The family had always lived in the north end of the city. Their single-storey home had been built during the 1950s when the city expanded rapidly in all directions, creating a new grid of picket-fence neighbourhoods. Their small house sat near the outer edge of the Killarney suburb, 132nd Avenue separating it from a nearby Catholic school. It was a home Twitchell would return to as an adult, when the police were watching his every move.

  Despite how ordinary the family seemed, Twitchell’s childhood best friend remembered how Twitchell craved attention while getting noticed at school for all the wrong reasons.

  Kirk Paetz met Twitchell in the fifth grade, when they were both ten years old. Back then, Twitchell was a socially awkward Catholic schoolboy with reddish-brown hair, big glasses, and ears that stuck out. Before he underwent corrective surgery to flatten his big ears, Twitchell was often taunted for his nerdy appearance. One classmate recalled how he was even nicknamed “Twitch Hell.” He tried to diffuse the teasing with his wits, but his various passions ensured negative attention: Star Wars, video games, comic books, science fiction, drawing and dressing up in homemade costumes. He was never part of the “in-crowd,” never joined a school group or sports team. He was an outcast.

  Twitchell appeared happiest when he was playing make-believe. He doodled in his notes, drew fantasy characters frequently. After class, he would rush home to hang out with Kirk, who had been transferred in junior high to another school. As teenagers, they would goof around with a video camera and make up stories.

  It soon spawned the creation of The Video, Twitchell’s first effort in writing and filmmaking. As a compilation of various skits and short film ideas, Twitchell used The Video to take established concepts or shows and change them slightly to make them his own. One summer video project concluded with a parody movie trailer for the comic book icon Judge Dredd. Twitchell tried to copy the character’s signature helmet – which hid his entire face except for the chin and mouth – by using an old street hockey mask and cutting away the jaw. While Judge Dredd was a character from a dystopian future where he acted as the police, judge, jury, and executioner, Twitchell turned him into Judge Fred, from The Flintstones, and played it up for laughs. “I am the law!” Judge Fred shouted in the video. “Yabba-Dabba Do!”

  As his family watched the trailer, Twitchell would giggle and his parents would burst into hysterical laughter. “From that point, a reaction from them or any audience was what drove the rest,” Twitchell wrote years later in explaining his progression into filmmaking.

  Later skits became more violent. A parody of Wheel of Fortune became Wheel of Torture, with contestants spinning the wheel to determine which painful scenario they would be subjected to next. Kirk liked making these videos. Twitchell, however, often treated these efforts far more seriously. Kirk thought his friend was becoming too attached to his hobbies, more than any normal person should, until they became all-encompassing ventures. If something interested Twitchell, he never seemed to go halfway with it; the new hobby would take control.

  When Twitchell felt inspiration strike, it was like a rush of blood to the head, something he began calling his “Internal Creative Genius” (ICG). When it hit, he had to keep writing, filming, or drawing as his mind was flooded with new ideas. Twitchell began writing so frequently that his friends and classmates thought he was bordering on obsessive-compulsive. He wrote stories about a world like Earth but with little blue aliens. A girl who sat behind him in high school was handed an expansive two-hundred-page report he had written on the Star Wars universe. “He wanted me to read it. He wanted to get me interested in Star Wars,“ she recalled.

  Twitchell also had a rebellious streak. He’d lie to get his way or tell tall tales Kirk knew couldn’t possibly be true. Twitchell started stealing money from his mother’s purse to buy junk food. He was arrested twice for shoplifting at grocery stores but dodged a criminal record through the court’s alternative measures program for first-time offenders. “He was a storyteller and a liar. There’s no doubt about that,” said Kirk.

  In his twenties, Twitchell began sympathizing with darker characters as his love of fantasy storylines continued. He was especially fascinated with Anakin Skywalker, whose progression into becoming Darth Vader is the major turning point of the Star Wars prequels. “It’s so easy for someone on the outside looking in to judge why Anakin’s choices were stupid, but it’s different when you’re the one in the position,” he wrote on theforce.net, a website hosting the po
pular online messages boards used by the most dedicated Star Wars fans around the world. He penned long and plentiful posts about Star Wars through the years on the same website under multiple accounts. He watched each prequel film at least a half-dozen times while they were still in theatres. He was even moved to tears. When the message boards began discussing the pure evilness of Anakin, who, in one scene, slaughters innocent children in a fit of rage, Twitchell wrote: “I know, isn’t it sweet? The pure calculated precision of it all. It’s admirable how he manages to have the stomach for it. I wonder what was going through his mind?”

  He assumed other identities online as his interest grew in communicating with others through the rapidly expanding Internet. On his favourite Star Wars websites, he became Grinning Fisto and Achilles of Edmonton, an allusion to one of his favourite mythological characters. For months, he also identified himself online as Psycho Jedi.

  Twitchell enrolled in a diploma program in radio and television production at Edmonton’s Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). By this time, his reddish hair had darkened and he had ditched the glasses for contacts. He met a woman. Traci Higgins was a few years older than him, taking the same upgrading classes, and quickly became his first love. They had a raw attraction to each other, despite protests from friends that they were incompatible. The couple’s romance was heated. But Traci slowly noticed that her new boyfriend told her lies. He had lied about his age and things that seemed pointless to lie about, like details about his family background. After a year together, she ended the relationship. Traci felt she couldn’t be with someone if she couldn’t trust him completely. He was heartbroken.

  Kirk and Twitchell stayed close until their mid-twenties. The pair even lived together for a year during this time before they drifted apart. Twitchell was succeeding in sales jobs and liked to call himself “Logan” at work – a reference to Wolverine, the brooding comic book character and member of the X-Men whose alter ego is James “Logan” Howlett.

  In 2001, as a recent college graduate, Twitchell met an American girl through an online chat room. He quickly married her and moved to the American Midwest. The couple lived in Iowa and Illinois. He hoped the move was an opportunity for him to gain an American work visa while getting out of the snowy city in which he had spent his entire life. But he ended up spending most of his time away logged on to the Internet. He started making fake online profiles, accounts for Satan, Jesus, and even a woman. His new wife would watch him pretend to be a girl online, chatting with random men, just to mess with their heads. He thought it was a laugh.

  Four years flew by. Kirk barely stayed in touch with his old friend, even when he returned to Edmonton in 2005, a divorced man seeking a new relationship and a new start as a filmmaker. Twitchell was putting together a fan film, telling everyone that he decided to return to Edmonton because the Star Wars fan community was strong in the city and could help him complete the ambitious project. But Kirk had no interest in the film effort. He stopped hanging out with Twitchell altogether or even returning his calls. Kirk didn’t attend Twitchell’s wedding when, in 2007, he got married for the second time, his new wife, Jess, becoming pregnant within months of their nuptials. “We had totally different interests by then,” Kirk explained. “Every time we got together, all he wanted to do was talk about Star Wars.“

  It was a slow end to a close friendship that had begun in childhood. Kirk still fondly remembered walking to his friend’s house as a child and playing basketball with Twitchell at the community hoops across the street. It was during one of their regular get-togethers when Twitchell, then a teenager, had revealed a secret to Kirk, who at the time was his only real friend. “He told me he had a little hit list for people who he hated,” Kirk recalled. “He was very descriptive about how he would do things to people who bullied him.” For each of his enemies, Twitchell had imagined a unique way to end their life. “He had come up with some pretty good ideas on how to kill people,” said Kirk. “He was going to get rid of a body in a trash compactor in the grocery store where he worked.”

  At the time, Kirk didn’t think anything of it. He accepted that his friend was a bit weird and he knew teenagers talked tough and can be prone to bouts of rage.

  It just seemed like another one of Twitchell’s bizarre and comical fantasies. But his fantasies were far more elaborate and far more gruesome than Kirk could ever imagine.

  MAGNUS

  JOHNNY ALTINGER HELD A diamond ring in his hands. He twirled it between his fingers, pressing the metal into his skin. When he saw it for the first time, the stone had sparkled so brightly, the light reflecting into his silver-rimmed glasses. It had brought him such joy and filled him with promise. But now, many months later, he leaned back into his chair, eyes drifting to his computer screen. And with a heavy sigh, his fingers rested on his keyboard. “Silly me,” he typed. “I jumped the gun some time ago and thought I was ready for marriage. Well … I am … just not to her. So here I am, single again and have no need for this ring.”

  The relationship had ended over the issue of children; his girlfriend had insisted on starting a family while Johnny thought otherwise. Now, in 2007, he knew it was finally time to face this final reminder of his failed relationship. He kept typing. The ring had been purchased with help from an oil royalty cheque given to every man, woman, and child living in Alberta, paid out from a budget surplus so big the provincial government didn’t know what to do with it. Concluding his thoughts a moment later, Johnny published online what he had just written. Someone over the Internet could read this, take the burden of what the ring had meant to him long ago, and turn it into something more meaningful in their lives. The ring was now listed for sale.

  It was like Johnny had come full circle.

  Born on April 28, 1970, in an Edmonton hospital, Johnny had spent more than a decade away from the city before returning as a grown man. As a child, his only brother, Gary, had asked for a baby Johnny, so that was what his parents named him. His mother, Elfriede, thought he was “pure joy” as a child. Her second child had not been blessed with the best of looks, but that never mattered. She watched him grow into a caring, quiet, and trusting man. He was tall and thin. Johnny may have been bullied as a child, but he had a gentle soul. He cared little about what others thought of him. “Everyone does as they will, in their own time, for their own reasons,” he had written down as one of his favourite quotations.

  When Johnny was a teenager, the family of four headed to the West Coast and settled in White Rock, a town just south of Vancouver and perched near Canada’s border with the United States. The community was a convenient two-hour drive north of Seattle and one of the few spots along the Lower Mainland of British Columbia that tended to remain sunny year-round.

  Johnny’s father was of German heritage and had worked as an auto upholsterer. The family garage in their new coastal home was often crammed with tools and men tinkering under car hoods. Johnny was inspired by the family love of mechanics and quality European engineering. He even called his kitten “Diesel” because it purred so loudly. After high school, he owned at least a half-dozen vehicles – all German brands like Volkswagen, Audi, or Mercedes-Benz – but some were more than a decade old by the time Johnny placed his hands behind the wheel. Frequent problems plagued these purchases. One of his cars had a heater that would never turn off, blasting scorching air at his feet as he drove. “In summer, I’m gonna bake!” he used to exclaim. Despite the difficulties, Johnny adored his aging cars. He polished metal or rubbed in leather cleaner, making sure his vehicles always looked their best.

  Johnny grew up within an emerging world of online communication. He had been raised with a keen interest in computers, often helping his brother with a word processor to write university term papers or playing games on his Commodore 64. But now, with technology rapidly expanding, he could finally connect with likeminded computer geeks without even leaving the house. His first modem, a clunky, archaic plastic dial-up, ran the phone line hot for
hours at a time. Back in the 1980s, he became a daily contributor to virtual bulletin board systems where users could read or post messages on newsgroups. Writing back and forth with others, reading their posts on cars and music, Johnny made friends across the Vancouver area – the original social network. One bulletin board system he used frequently was called Shoreline. He played online fighting games and donned the nickname or handle “Magnus” in honour of his favourite Transformers character. It was a name he used online for years. Whenever he won a game, other players scattered across the region would have to shout out “Hail mAgNUS!” They capitalized a few letters as a teasing parting shot at his supposed greatness.

  His extended network of Vancouver friends proved to be pioneers of the Internet age. Many went on to become video game or software developers. And their personal lives were featured in newspaper articles as examples of “e-romances” that were sweeping through singledom as couples met through their computers and married in real life. No one had the foresight then to realize that the trend of online encounters would transform the dating scene and become a normal and accepted practice for millions, not just computer geeks.

  When his father died, Johnny moved back into the family home to care for his devastated mother. His presence gave the new widow much comfort. But after three years in the house, the draw of returning to his birthplace of Edmonton soon became too great. In 1998, Johnny left a pharmacy warehouse job for a new life in the booming prairie capital. He drove inland with a few buddies, hoping to become a helicopter pilot. Through mutual friends, Johnny reconnected with an old elementary school classmate, Dale Smith. He even convinced Dale to buy a computer as the two drew close, often talking on a daily basis and playing paintball together.