The Devil's Cinema

by Steve Lillebuen

  Copyright © 2012 by Steve Lillebuen

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Lillebuen, Steve

  The devil’s cinema : the untold story behind

  Mark Twitchell’s kill room / Steve Lillebuen.

  eISBN: 978-0-7710-5034-3

  1. Twitchell, Mark, 1979-. 2. Murderers – Alberta – Edmonton Biography

  3. Murder victims – Alberta – Edmonton. 4. Murder – Investigation – Alberta – Edmonton.

  5. Trials (Murder) – Alberta – Edmonton. I. Title.

  HV6248.T95L55 2012 364.152’3092 C2011-904266-5

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.,

  P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011931119

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  The Dexter Morgan quotations on this page and this page are from Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  75 Sherbourne Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

  www.mcclelland.com

  Cover Photograph: Mark Twitchell self-portrait: reprinted by permission.

  v3.1

  For Sarah,

  with my love and gratitude

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map: Edmonton and Surrounding Areas

  A Note to Readers

  Epigraph

  PART ONE

  Down the Rabbit Hole

  Photo Insert

  PART TWO

  Origins of Madness

  PART THREE

  The Prestige

  EPILOGUE

  A Return

  Author’s Notes and Sources

  Acknowledgements

  Image Credits

  A NOTE TO READERS

  IN A CITY OF oilmen, an aspiring filmmaker imagined he could be something better than working class, more fantastic, grand even – take a chance at Hollywood fame. Hardened financial investors were already opening padded wallets to support the young man’s outlandish concepts. Friends adored him, viewed him as a ticket to riches. And actors were flying into the prairie capital of Edmonton, Canada, for their chance to work with him.

  The man they trusted, however, had been guarding an appalling secret. One of his strange new plans would soon consume him, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, sending studio executives into hiding at the horror they were accused of inspiring: a murder in the most incomprehensible, post-modern way.

  In the following pages I tell a story of love, death, and the World Wide Web. It is a book of determined friendship and determined madness, of veteran detectives left to question long-held understandings of their usual suspects.

  But no matter how unlikely these events may appear, this remains a work of non-fiction. In fact, this true-crime narrative has been drawn from years of journalistic research.

  Anything in quotation marks is taken from a written document, court testimony, or interview. Detectives and witnesses shared their experiences over hundreds of hours. Last of all, the killer himself granted unparalleled access into his life, revealing the foundations for his startling ideas through extensive interviews and more than three hundred pages of personal writings. But even then, parts of this story rely heavily on sworn evidence presented in court. It was a trial I witnessed first-hand, a month-long criminal proceeding that finally revealed the unimaginable details of what had really transpired within the darkest of minds.

  STEVE LILLEBUEN

  “I was a near perfect hologram.…

  A neat and polite monster, the boy next door.”

  – DEXTER MORGAN, fictional serial killer

  “Anyone can turn out to be a psycho

  without being overtly obvious about it.”

  – MARK TWITCHELL, real-life filmmaker

  PART ONE

  DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

  THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

  WELCOME TO DEADMONTON:

  Standing atop the rolling prairies of western Canada, the city is the last major stop heading north before the uninhabited, the unfamiliar, the unknown. Its real name is Edmonton, but nobody calls it that. Within the sprawling city streets, the civic slur surfaces and flows from home to home, mouth to ear, like a morbid whisper. And no one really knows how it all started.

  Historians joke that the epithet likely began more than one hundred years ago, when European fur traders built the first fort above the steep banks of the North Saskatchewan River. Whether explorer or modern tourist, there’s never been much of a reason to visit the place since. Even elected officials have accepted this region’s lacklustre image with their own brand of dark humour. “Edmonton is not the end of the world – it’s just easier to see it from there,” once quipped Ralph Klein, a colourful and well-known politician. Many have adopted a similar self-deprecating attitude, wielding such an ethos like an invaluable tool while residing in the northernmost major city of North America.

  Edmonton has a certain charm despite its remoteness – an atmosphere of progressive conservative values that is neither pretentious nor condescending. As the capital of the western, landlocked province of Alberta, Edmonton has plenty of government jobs available, offering benefits, nine-to-five working hours, and weekends off. But the non-stop buzz of big-city living certainly lies elsewhere. The downtown core still shuts down on the weekends, and most stores close when the office drones head home. The rat race runs in a lower gear in Edmonton, which is polite and kind, like a country town but nearing a million residents. Everybody seems to know everybody.

  Snowy winters this far north can blanket half the year. Indoor activities tend to thrive in these cases, whether citizens huddle under the comfort of shopping malls, restaurants, or movie theatres. It is no surprise then that the city is home to one of the world’s largest shopping centres. West Edmonton Mall often overflows with frantic shoppers, scurrying its vast corridors and eight hundred stores like ants in a colony disturbed by the curious prodding of a destructive child.

  In contrast to the bleakness of winter, the remaining seasons can be quite glorious. Festivals emerge from the spring thaw. Long summer evenings transform the river valley into a lush forest. Historical inner-city neighbourhoods that date back to the Klondike Gold Rush are crammed with people, each pub dusting off its patio for a round of cold Canadian beers. But when autumn returns, everyone heads back indoors to hibernate. The hockey season entertains. Town pride has been hinged on the long-past success of the Edmonton Oilers, once an NHL sporting dynasty and home to the greatest player of all time, Wayne Gretzky. Edmonton began calling itself the “City of Champions.”

  There’s plenty of cash to go around – almost too much at times. For when oil booms, the town explodes. In 1947, drillers struck oil at Leduc Number One, sparking the region’s first black gold rush. As oil prices boomed again
in the 2000s, an oil sands deposit with more recoverable oil than Saudi Arabia became feasible for extraction on a massive scale. Such potential attracted thousands of young men craving a quick job, a fast buck, and a dirty weekend. The city’s nickname therefore took on deeper meanings through the years as successive oil booms fuelled immigration, untold wealth, and surges in violent crime.

  This landscape and culture can appear strange to outsiders. The city is often misunderstood and criticized. It is a community on the edge, a “boiler room” to the New York Times, and a “visually unappealing corner of Canada” to London’s Daily Telegraph. The city has fought back against such insults, but a prolonged defence has had little impact. No matter what the city does, no matter what its people say, no matter how things may change here for the better through the years, Edmonton has always been treated as a dull, boring place to ever call home.

  Truth be told, the city is isolated. A road trip to Jasper and its world-class skiing resorts in the heart of the Rockies is a four-hour drive straight west. A visit to the southern big-sister city of Calgary takes more than three hours, even when speeding past the late-summer burst of yellow canola on a near-straight-shot highway. And the money pump of modern oil revenue linked to the city’s prosperity is a gruelling, six-hour drive up north to Fort McMurray along a road dubbed “Death Highway” for its staggering fatality rate. Young oil workers are killed every year, flipping their pickup trucks into ditches, striking others head on, causing crushing, gruesome injuries. They are often speeding, drinking and driving recklessly in some cases, trying to cut that long, boring drive into something more manageable. Instead, their blood is spilled over a highway they thought was paved with gold.

  BY 2005, THE OIL money was flowing again and so were the drugs. Crime levels reached new heights as old records were broken, one by one. People were killed in homes, outside bars, and at parties. The bodies of prostitutes were being strewn like garbage on the city’s eastern outskirts. Three people were stabbed at a wedding, and two pregnant women were slain. A girl’s eighteenth birthday party was shattered when a passing driver pulled out a gun and began firing from his car. The mall proved dangerous too. A thirteen-year-old girl who liked to hang out in the food court was lured from West Edmonton Mall and found on the fourth fairway of an out-of-town golf course. She had been raped and beaten to death so viciously it took days to identify her body. Even those in custody and watched by prison guards weren’t safe. An inmate awaiting his dangerous driving trial was beaten to death over a minor debt. His bruises looked like footprints. It was the first homicide at the city’s remand centre, and while the police had every suspect behind bars, they could never prove which one did it.

  Edmonton was in the middle of a crime wave. Many were terrified. Politicians were asked repeatedly how crime rates could be brought back under control. Detectives were working double shifts to keep up with the rising body count and even then they fell behind.

  The year ended with a record thirty-nine homicides. There were eleven more murders than the previous year, which had set its own record. While some North American cities routinely witness far more murders each year, Edmonton’s small population meant the prairie community had been elevated to an unwanted status: the most violent city across the nation. On a per capita basis, no other city in the country had suffered more homicides. At least seventeen gangs were active, with roughly eight hundred members. Drugs were everywhere.

  “Deadmonton” had become a startling reality.

  Few outside the city knew or cared that this sordid tale was unfolding. In fact, few even thought of Edmonton at all. For these ill fortunes were not unlike those of any other major city, and life moved on. But what no one noticed at the time, especially those who were closely watching the city’s highs and lows, was that something strange, an oddity, had taken root in the shadows of this bloodbath.

  A young salesman who had spent years living in the American Midwest ultimately decided this was the year to do the opposite of what so many of his Edmonton-born peers had been doing: he was moving back to the city, by choice, to launch his new career.

  He was going to become a film director. Charismatic and cheerful, he believed his birthplace was well suited to help him begin this astonishing journey. While he didn’t fit in with the masses – he hated hockey, didn’t drink beer – he envisioned likeminded sci-fi geeks and film fans would come out of the woodwork and help him craft his grand plans until they came to fruition.

  So he packed up his vehicle that summer of 2005 and hit the highway, driving northwest across America as he headed back to the Canadian prairie city he had once called home.

  He would find friends quickly, get married for a second time, and cherish this new life. And in just over three years, by the later months of 2008, he would finally achieve the recognition he was so desperately seeking, but perhaps not in the way he had first intended: ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN – even Hollywood. They all wanted a piece of him.

  Before he was finished, everyone would know his face, everyone would know his car, the world would know of his work.

  He believed his ideas were some of the greatest of all time.

  MISSING THE ACTION

  REMOTE IN HAND, BILL Clark turned up the volume on his television as the NFL pre-game show rolled on. It was nearing two o’clock on a Sunday in October and while the sun had chewed away the morning chill, it was still slightly below freezing. Clark was happy to be inside and sitting on his couch, heat drifting out of the furnace, as he settled in for the afternoon game.

  Veteran homicide detectives like Clark were well into the home stretch of the year. There were twenty-two homicides so far in 2008, and while it wasn’t looking like another record-breaking year, many of the cases remained unsolved. It was the same old story: lack of evidence, uncooperative witnesses, guys who didn’t see nothin’ or hear nothin’, and triggermen who lied or blamed others. All too often murder victims were about to pull themselves up and out of a “high-risk lifestyle” when multiple gunshots rang out in the night. Edmonton’s homicide cops treated the trend like a sick joke. When the body of another gangbanger was found dumped in a park, someone in the office would inevitably ask, “Hey, was he turning his life around? Don’t ever turn your life around or you’ll end up dead.” Laughter would ensue. It was a way of dealing with the relentless trauma of a high-stress job few people outside of the police force would ever understand. But on this Sunday, in front of the TV, Clark could hopefully put all of that job stress behind him. His biggest problem at the moment was deciding what type of snacks to eat while his wife left him alone with his beloved NFL season.

  The first play was about to begin when Clark’s cell phone started vibrating. He cringed. He was on call and it didn’t look good. On the line was his buddy Mark Anstey, another homicide detective working in their office at downtown police headquarters.

  “Sorry, Bill. We gotta go out,” Anstey said. He was on call too, having just been pulled away from a Sunday buffet with his family. He had got a call from their boss, who relayed how officers at southwest division station had a file, but they wanted it escalated to the homicide unit. “It’s a missing person and they suspect foul play.”

  Clark rolled his eyes and threw his head back in the air. “And why do they suspect foul play?” He thought the officers who were trying to pass on the file better have something more than just a missing person. It wasn’t the homicide unit’s mandate to take on such cases.

  The city had been divided like a grid into five police divisions, with each division station given its own batch of criminal detectives. But whenever a case appeared to be more serious, something that might involve a possible suspicious death, the files were often handed to homicide cops at downtown headquarters. Clark and Anstey were detectives in the unit on a rotation of more than a dozen other veterans of the same rank. Each had competed for years to earn a coveted spot on the roster and a desk in the unit’s third-floor office. Seemingly pointless cases were now supposed t
o be behind them.

  Clark knew there were thousands of these types of files every year. He had to screen these calls or they’d be bombarded with investigations. In his experience, nearly all missing persons were found quickly, with nothing criminal to blame anyway. They were sometimes runaways or suicides, their bodies found floating down the city’s river, another jumper off the High Level Bridge. Clark pleaded with Anstey on the phone: “Tell me something more.”

  “There’s some funny stuff,” Anstey explained. The missing man’s friends had been looking for him for a week. They had emails from him saying he was away, but they didn’t believe it. Their boss wanted the two of them to go out, just take a look and decide whether homicide even had to be involved. If they did, they’d call in the whole team.

  Clark sighed. He shut off his television, put on a coat, jumped in his car, and was down on the south side within forty-five minutes. Football would have to wait.

  In the station, Clark spotted Anstey. Both were seasoned cops, bald, and sporting police moustaches dusted with grey. Clark was heavy-set while Anstey was tall and thin. They were fathers with teenaged sons and daughters. Clark was known as the bulldog in the office, sounding bad-tempered when needed, his piercing blue eyes dissecting his suspects. But he had a soft side too. He had saved an infant during Edmonton’s 1987 “Black Friday” tornado that killed twenty-seven people and taken the time to reconnect at the twentieth anniversary of the disaster with the “miracle baby,” now a young woman, who was eager to thank him. Anstey was far more restrained than Clark. He was a cop who loved to chase leads, not interrogate suspects. His reading glasses dangled on the tip of his nose as he scanned police reports and evidence. He had even won a policing award for solving the slaying of an elderly woman in her own home; the killer, a prostitute on the run from the botched robbery, was tracked down far away on the West Coast.