So Anstey was forced to wait for the lab results before he could act. He had two types of tests on the go. One was from a stained carpet sample ripped from the trunk of Twitchell’s car. That would be used to build a profile of the victim. Then Anstey needed a DNA profile to be built off the items taken from Johnny’s apartment. If the two matched, he would have enough to lay a charge. He could complete the DNA testing on all the other exhibits later.
Crime lab scientists aren’t normally too fussed over standard DNA sequencing, a routine and daily procedure these days, but detectives saw how this particular file had the lab unusually excited. The results had come back early after the lab worked through the weekend. But the detectives would be disappointed by what had happened.
The lab had created a profile for the blood in Twitchell’s car, but for some unknown reason, the materials Allen had pulled out of Johnny’s condo were insufficient to extract a DNA profile. They had only solved half the puzzle. Without the rest, the police remained powerless to lay a charge and Twitchell could continue living at his parents’ house a free man.
ON MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, Constable Nancy Allen from the forensics team swung open the door to Johnny’s condo, bringing along two people from the crime lab to help her. They weren’t taking any chances this time.
The three scoured the place for everything Johnny might have touched to secure a DNA sample. Swabs were taken from a glass in the bathroom, nail clippers, and inside Johnny’s razor; from a bottle on the floor of the living room, Johnny’s keyboard, a straw in a cup, and three forks. Another swab was taken from a grapefruit juice container and a Mike’s Hard Lemonade bottle on the kitchen island.
Allen hoped that would be sufficient.
They would need DNA from Johnny’s relatives eventually. But for now, this would at least prove that the DNA for whomever had access to Johnny’s condo, assumed to be Johnny himself, would match the DNA found in Twitchell’s trunk.
THE MEDIA HAD PICKED up on the case. The St. Albert Gazette broke the story. Twitchell’s neighbours had found the police activity “unsettling” and “wished there was more information about what was taking place,” the newspaper reported. Nobody knew why Twitchell’s house had been seized. The local police, a detachment for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, weren’t saying a word.
Farther south in Edmonton, Johnny’s name appeared in print for the first time. A routine police press release had been sent out suggesting there were concerns for his safety. A few of the local newspapers had published a small article on the missing man, but no one was pursuing the story further. At least, not yet.
But down at the garage, anxious neighbours were calling newsrooms. A police car had been parked in their alley for more than a week. Neighbours saw officers in white jumpsuits. But the officers at the scene refused to say what was happening.
Journalists told them not to worry. It was Mill Woods. It was probably a drug house or the cops were seizing some gang member’s car. Typical police activity.
But the neighbours wouldn’t let up. The oddest things were happening. Homicide detectives were dropping off flyers, looking for information on a movie filmed in the garage. “A couple, believed to be living in that neighbourhood, may have observed what appeared to be a struggle between two men inside or just outside that garage,” the flyer stated.
The story gained some traction. But it would be days before the media finally realized that all three stories – the missing man, the activity around Twitchell’s house, and the seized garage – were all one and the same.
IT WAS A BRILLIANT idea from the investigative team. Anstey was thrilled. A call was made to the hate crimes unit in late October to make it happen. There was an officer there who was skilled in using the Internet and in undercover work. Twitchell would have no idea what they were up to.
The officer had a little experiment to conduct, a way of testing human behaviour. All he had to do was sign up for plentyoffish.com and design a few fake female profiles of his own.
The first woman the officer created was looking for romance. She wanted a relationship, to find the right guy. The second woman was looking for sex and nothing more. The officer sat back, waited an hour, and then recorded the results. He would later state, as diplomatically as possible, that “the results were markedly different.” No one had contacted the relationship-seeker, but the woman wanting casual sex had her profile viewed nearly four times more often and had received more than fifty instant message requests. “There were a number of repeats as well, guys that were repeatedly trying to get a hold of me,” he said.
The experiment didn’t say much for men, but it said a lot for the investigation: it proved another fact in Twitchell’s diary was true. The document had stated the very same differences in responses based on the type of interaction the woman was seeking. The officer could cross that one off the list of 301 tasks from the diary to prove.
But this was just one of the two duties assigned to the officer by homicide during the Twitchell investigation. The other would require an elaborate plan. The cop would need to be cunning and determined. It was to be a covert operation, requiring him to get as deep into Twitchell’s life as possible while remaining completely undetected.
THE SURVEILLANCE TEAM HAD been given orders to arrest Twitchell only if he tried to flee or commit a crime. Sometimes officers crawled into the yard at night to peer into a window to confirm he was still in the basement. But twenty-four-hour surveillance was expensive. The team had to include a half-dozen officers at any given time. After only a few days of steady monitoring, a decision was made to pull the night crew. Surveillance started leaving at 1:30 a.m. and returning at 5:30 a.m., giving Twitchell a four-hour window each night when no one was watching.
They could only hope he was staying put.
ANSTEY HAD BEEN WAITING for lab results for three days, trying to be patient, but he was frustrated. Detectives started each day rolling their eyes when told the lab results for the new items taken from Johnny’s condo still weren’t back. They would joke that lab techs from television crime shows like CSI could get DNA results in an hour. In real life, there were city cases that had been stalled on DNA analysis for weeks, sometimes months. Even with a case as high priority as Twitchell’s, it would still take time. No one knew how long.
Anstey passed Clark in the hallway. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. He wanted Paul Link’s role in the case changed. “If he doesn’t believe this guy did it, then I can’t have him interview him. You guys decide amongst yourselves how you wanna do it.”
Clark talked it over with Link, and they figured they would work as a tag team when an arrest interview took place. Clark would bombard Twitchell with the facts and see how he responded. Then he would introduce Link as the biggest cop in town. He would be addressed as an “Inspector,” the top dog in every criminal investigation. They thought Twitchell may think it was beneath him to talk to a detective; they would stroke his ego by making him think his actions had attracted the attention of the most senior officer in the city.
But the truth was, they didn’t know the man at all. They had a lot of evidence, but they still didn’t know what really made him tick. The guy was weird, some kind of Star Wars and horror film fanatic. He was a father, a businessman, and a wannabe serial killer? It didn’t make any sense. What was his motive?
The police theory was that Mark Twitchell had decided he wanted to become a serial killer, documented that decision in writing, and embarked on that career by luring strangers to their deaths. No one knew why. It started with the shooting of a short film called House of Cards, about a killer who attacks cheating husbands for their infidelity. The movie plot was then replicated in real life, but with single men as the victims. According to the diary, Twitchell failed in his first attempt on Friday, October 3, and the man got away. But he must have learned from his mistakes when he lured Johnny Altinger to the garage exactly one week later on Friday, October 10. From the forensic evidence gathered at the garage,
it was clear the film plot had been amended slightly – a stun gun baton replaced with a metal pipe. It all reeked of Dexter Morgan, the fictional serial killer: there was that metal table in the garage and Twitchell’s own references to the character in his movie script and the discovered diary. Was he the inspiration for these acts?
They still hadn’t found any evidence of a possible snuff film. Roszko in tech crimes was looking through all of Twitchell’s computer gear. Already, he had found hard drives full of video footage from various movie projects. But even if there were some record of a real murder, it could be hidden anywhere within that footage and searching through it all could take weeks. Some of the cops thought that if a snuff film existed, it could be at Twitchell’s parents’ house. They would need a search warrant for that house too.
Anstey was stuck on the motive. He wondered what kind of market there might be for a snuff film. With Twitchell’s background in sales, he figured money could be a driving force. A detective was assigned. To his surprise, they found a buyer for a real snuff film on the Internet. Anyone who could provide proof of a real murder on video would be paid a handsome sum: $1 million.
The case had other loose ends.
Anstey needed to find the first victim. He assumed he was a married man who was concerned that phoning the police would expose his cheating. Why else would he have failed to report the incident after being attacked by a man in a mask?
He also needed to confirm whether Johnny was alive or dead. The team still had not found any trace of his body. Johnny could still be alive somewhere. It was looking unlikely, but with no body, he couldn’t rule it out.
How much could he trust what Twitchell had written to be the truth? Maybe he wrote about the sewer to throw them off the real location. Maybe there was no dump site at all. Without a body, it would be difficult to prosecute him for a planned and deliberate murder. He could argue Johnny simply ran away after a fight – instant reasonable doubt.
As Anstey kept working, another thought crept into the investigation: what if this was all just a hoax?
IT WAS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2008. Halloween. In the sub-zero chill of early morning, a man left his house for a walk with his dog. They rounded a large park a few blocks north of where Twitchell was staying with his parents and cut across the moist grass. Under a grove of trees, the dog walker spotted a strange shadow. When he moved closer he realized it was a man lying down.
His dog pulled ahead and scampered up to the man. The dog licked his face.
But the man didn’t move. The dog walker leaned down and tapped the man gently. No movement.
He touched his clammy hand.
The man was dead.
It was clear this person had died some time ago. The body was cold and stiff, likely dumped in the shelter of the trees during the night.
The police were called. Schoolchildren were rushed inside away from the horror. A forensics team arrived and took photographs. Police tape went up. Homicide detectives arrived at the scene.
They turned the man over. He was black, in his early twenties.
The body had surfaced less than ten blocks away from Mark Twitchell, the biggest suspect in town. But to the relief of many officers, it was quickly determined that there was no connection to their ongoing serial killer investigation. Pulling the night crew hadn’t given Twitchell an opportunity to commit another crime.
The homicide office had been emptied with the discovery of the body, but most of the officers dedicated to the Twitchell file had stayed behind. Including Anstey.
He wasn’t going anywhere. Anstey had been waiting on lab results for four days now.
He had been trying to concentrate on his work but was constantly distracted by anticipation of the phone call that never came.
Anstey felt like an expectant father.
It was frustrating.
He was willing that phone to ring.
With every call he jumped to pick up the receiver, and when he realized it wasn’t the call he was waiting for, he got off as quickly as possible to free up the phone.
He just needed that one call.
Just one ring.
Whenever it came.
PART TWO
ORIGINS OF MADNESS
SUITING UP
OCTOBER 26, 2007: HALLOWEEN drew near and the moon was full. Ghouls and revellers, zombies and princes, men seeking cheap laughs with cheap costumes and the scantily clad – all had gathered along with Mark Twitchell in a long line descending the covered steps of Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre, snaking into one of its vast halls. Rock music pounded. Concert lights burst in shards of purple and green. Alcohol flowed. Loud talk and laughter rose against the backdrop of pumpkins, skeletons, and cobwebs. It was the night of the Howler, the city’s largest Halloween celebration. There was an energy in the air. The electricity of youth was channelled into dressing up, dancing, and losing control.
The party’s annual costume competition was underway with a cash prize on offer. Thousands were in attendance as Twitchell awaited the announcement of the winner – and his own chance at becoming a star. It was a weekend he had dreamed about since moving back to Edmonton from the American Midwest. Now his fantasy of winning the contest was close to coming true.
At this moment, at the age of twenty-eight, Twitchell believed he had it all. He was enjoying his first year of marriage to a wonderful woman, Jess, who was at home and six months’ pregnant with their first child. His film career was looking promising. He had wrapped up shooting Secrets of the Rebellion, a Star Wars fan film that had taken over his life for the past two summers. He was now finalizing a script called Day Players, a buddy comedy he hoped to produce with investor funding. He had steady work in sales to pay the bills too. The coming weeks would prove to be some of his happiest.
But it was all about to crumble. The next twelve months would see him embark on a journey leading from suburbia to bedlam, from expectant father and filmmaker to serial killer suspect. Until then, a year away from his destruction, he was still an unknown, a prospect on the cusp of a potential greatness he had worked so hard to achieve in film, in business, and, now, in costume design.
“Wow! Did you make it yourself?” a curious woman asked about Twitchell’s costume.
“How long did it take?” another queried.
A girl brushed past and pinched his ass.
Twitchell enjoyed being the centre of attention. Eager admirers took pictures of him and his costume. And anyone walking past could see why: he stood nearly two feet taller than everyone else, his head high above the crowd like that of a proud warrior guarding the lobby of the main hall. His mask was hiding a beaming smile with every new inquiry.
His interest in costume-making had begun more than a decade earlier in classes with his aunt, who ran the fashion program at his high school. In his spare time during those teenaged years, Twitchell made a trench coat and designed his own Peter Pan costume. Later efforts included Spider-Man, Darth Vader, and Wolverine. But if he was going to get noticed this year, he knew his costume had to be spectacular. He decided on a Transformers theme since most attending the party would remember the recent summer movie release based on the series. He then settled on designing a costume of the character Bumblebee, the sporty yellow car that turns into a playful robot. If he pulled it off, he could win the Howler’s coveted cash prize.
In preparation, Twitchell had bought thick sheets of Sintra, a brand of plastic foam board that can be boiled in hot water or heated with a hairdryer to bend in various ways. Over a period of two months, he cut through sheet after sheet of foam to shape the robot’s gigantic body. He used a motorcycle helmet, parts from a Chevy dealership, props from his own Star Wars film, hockey gear. Everything was painted yellow and black. The costume required multiple fittings, adjustments, and the construction of large robot feet that amplified his height like stilts. “What kind of masochistic weirdo does this?” he asked himself as he toiled away. His pregnant wife could only shake her head as she wat
ched her husband lock himself in the basement for hours at a time, fiddling with his creation. He was like a big kid when it came to Halloween. It was his Christmas. And after weeks of work, he was finally ready for his public debut.
His sister, Susan, stood beside him in the lobby as the crowd grew in size. More pictures were taken. She had played along with his theme and came dressed as “mini-Bumblebee.” Her long brown hair held back with cute antennae, she was wearing a black-and-yellow-striped sweater, fairy wings, and holding three sunflowers. It looked like a last-minute costume, but it was in good fun and received a few chuckles from passers-by who noticed how she was playing off her only sibling’s massive effort.
As the night rolled on, streams of partygoers circled and strolled around them. Twitchell didn’t drink or dance. He chose instead to soak up the attention in the lobby, watching the party from the sidelines and away from drunkards who could destroy his costume. But even in the lobby, a few people brushed past and accidentally knocked off pieces of his foot or his fake metal parts. Susan became an impromptu assistant at times, using tape for makeshift repairs on her brother’s outfit.
His friends soon arrived, squeezing through pockets in the crowd. One of the first was Rebecca, a business student whom Twitchell had met on plentyoffish.com. While it was primarily a dating site, she had not been looking for romance and viewed Twitchell as a big brother, nothing more. After several get-togethers, Rebecca thought he was a tad arrogant, a loud talker, and too much of a geek. But she also discovered they both knew Joss Hnatiuk, one of Twitchell’s closest buddies, and the random connection made her uneasiness subside. They began hanging out as friends at the movies, car shows, and coffee shops.
Twitchell spotted another friend, Mike Young, bouncing along in his own robot costume. “Hey, what’s going on there, robot buddy?” Mike shouted as he strolled past in his cardboard Bender outfit from the TV show Futurama. He was off to dance, “throwing the horns” with his fingers as he rocked out to the blaring music of the hall with a group of girls.
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