Constable Michael Roszko from the police tech crimes unit was called upon to read aloud from the document he had recovered from Twitchell’s laptop. He read slowly as the jury followed along with their own printed copies. Twitchell’s defence lawyer had asked him to read the text with as little inflection as possible. And so he read aloud from the various pages, which explained how a garage had been chosen as a kill room, a street hockey mask and green hoodie purchased to hide his features, and disposable coveralls obtained. The officer continued:
I bought a hunter’s game processing kit, which, if you think about it, is ideal for this scenario. Why not use a whole set of tools designed to take apart large mammals in the forest on the fly? It reduces the spatter caused by power tools, takes the noise level way down too and there’s also just something more gratifying about sawing through tendons and bone with your bare hands than using something else that takes the fun out of the work.
My kill knife was different though. I wanted the weapon used for the deed itself to be simple, elegant, and beautiful in its own way, so I dropped by a military surplus store and picked up a well-crafted hunting knife with an eight-inch blade.
The jury listened closely and critically as the narrative detailed the failed attack on Gilles Tetreault and reached the point of Twitchell’s final encounter with Johnny Altinger in the garage. S. K. Confessions described how Twitchell tightened his hands around a metal pipe as Johnny returned to the property for a third time, expecting to finally meet his date.
Crouched, poised, I had a whole new plan. No mask needed this time. Just pretending to be poking around at the back of the set and then, WHAM! I would slam him unconscious and his survival would be a bonus, but not necessary.
He played into it perfectly. He reappeared from the garage door and I soon followed.
“I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment,” he shrugged.
“You have no idea.”
The room filled with the echo of the pipe crashing into the back of his skull as I could feel my predator self take over. That one single motion was the end all, be all. I had committed now and there was no going back. The jig was up and it was kill or get arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, maybe even attempted murder.
I won’t go to jail for an almost. But the son of a bitch didn’t drop like the sack of potatoes I was expecting. Are you serious? I asked myself. I continued thwacking him over the head repeatedly but it only seemed to fuel his adrenaline too.
He began screaming at the top of his lungs. “Police! Police! Police!” and I just about shat my pants. My fury doubled and I blasted him so hard blood spattered everywhere, but primarily on me. He hit the floor, but was still conscious.
Just like they all do, he offered money immediately. I always find this a little degrading for both my victim and myself. Like I couldn’t just kill them and take it anyway. No, please Mr. Victim, give me some petty cash from your wallet and run along to the cops only to lead them back here. Ridiculous.
I paused for a minute. “You promise?” I said.
“Yes, just please stop hitting me. Oh, my skull,” was his reply. And then in the instant he had to think about it, I wailed on him again. Despite receiving several mortal blows to the head, the shock and adrenaline of the situation gave him the fire to fight back a little.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he said as he feebly and dizzily tried to grab the pipe away from me. My anger resurged, I wrestled it from him, and that was the last straw for me. I pulled my hunting knife from its sheath and watching the shock on his face as he saw the blade, I thrust it into his gut. His reaction was pure Hollywood. The lurch forward with the grunt was dead on TV movie of the week.
I didn’t even notice the garage door was still part open. Wasn’t I supposed to close that? Will I never learn?
No one came. No one rustled, not even from across the alley. My little notices that I sent out to the neighbours about shooting thrillers here did their job and no one paid attention, assuming it was a scene or something. Oh, it was a scene alright.
He moaned and groaned. I plunged the knife deep into his neck. Days after the event I would reflect on this and wish I had tricked him by offering to call an ambulance if he just gave me his debit PIN code before I sliced open his jugular. Maybe I’ll save that for the next victim since they never seem to just fall the fuck asleep like they’re supposed to.
I let him bleed out right there on the floor, away from the plastic sheeting specifically put up to avoid that sort of thing. But hey, I had bigger problems. I had no real idea if a jogger, a dog walker, an unconvinced neighbour or some other random individual had actually called the cops, just as a precaution.
I was standing there covered in blood. It was all over my face, my hoodie, my coat and my jeans. I was holding the murder weapon in my hand, standing over what would be in moments, a corpse, and not nearly enough time to make it go away.
I got my things ready and I did the only thing I could do. I waited. I waited for a sign on what to do next. I waited for the fast approach of sirens as a cue to leave and come up with a damn good story for later. I waited and I was rewarded with silence. Sweet, sweet silence. I got lucky. No one freaked out, no one reacted, no one inadvertently witnessed it and no one called the boys in blue. I was home free.
I assessed my situation and went to town on my improvised solution. I had a dead guy that needed processing, so that’s what I did. I processed him.
A juror covered his mouth.
Most seemed to be descending into a deep trance as Twitchell’s words were read into the record and entering their minds. They tried to remain stoic as Constable Roszko continued, reading aloud passages that came with even more disturbing detail as Johnny’s body was hoisted on the table and the hunter’s game kit opened for use:
I decided the best course would be to go from the feet up. First things first, I pulled out his wallet and keys and placed them on my computer table. Then I used the scissors to cut his pants apart and pull them away.… I poked and prodded the joints to find the path of least resistance. I began cutting the legs off at the knees, all in one piece. I didn’t even bother to take his shoes or socks off. The knife went through flesh like it was nothing. I was surprised at how utterly non-resilient human tissue can be. Even the tendons and ligaments separated cleanly.
There was almost no blood. Not surprising since the grand majority of it was pooled on the floor, thankfully soaked up primarily by his jacket, which had come off during our struggle.
I put the severed leg in the trash and moved on to the thigh, which was essentially the same routine, only thicker, more fatty.… I took the arms off at the elbow joint and used the scissors to cut off fingertips for added confusion in identifying the body. This man was very common with no special internal additions to speak of.
Severing the head was also a simple matter, and going through the vertebrae in the back of the neck didn’t take much at all by going through connective tissue.
The torso was surprisingly heavy all by itself and I cut that in two across the diaphragm. Human intestines just look like one long roll of uncooked sausage as opposed to the gruesome mileage of stringy nastiness they appear to be on film. I was surprised. Funny sounds and pressure releases took place on my table as the torso sank.
The jury listened with furrowed brows as S. K. Confessions revealed Twitchell’s own written feelings about such horrendous acts:
Dismembering a human body was a relatively unexciting event. But I had my ways of making it more fun. I sang to myself as I worked, talked to myself, reflected on the new tools I would get to make the next one easier.… Once in a while I would take a break, check my email, answer a few phone calls, check the status of my eBay page and have a bag of chips.
A woman sitting in the public gallery scowled in disgust.
It reminded me of emptying a pumpkin for Halloween. Somehow every single event in life would have a whole new level of perspective to it. Carving a pumpki
n and spilling its guts would now carry a double meaning. So would slicing up a steak, carving up Thanksgiving turkey or laying plastic down to prepare for painting the family room.
This experience changed my sense of place in the world forever. I felt stronger, somehow above other people. I felt like the proud owner of a very dark secret that no one would ever be in on. Things that I said to people would carry double entendres like they hadn’t before. “Oh, honey, work was murder today” would be more literal.…
I felt good about this.
Some in the public gallery were brought to tears as the constable continued reading, a muted repulsion drifting through the courtroom with every spoken passage. Twitchell had written with amusement of dismembering his victim. S. K. Confessions told of severed body parts being thrown into garbage bags, the plastic walls of the kill room torn down and trashed. And Twitchell wrote of his surprise in seeing pools of blood seeping under his plastic sheeting, soaking into his table, and down on to the floor.
He cleaned the garage vigorously. Two bottles of ammonia were used, Twitchell explaining in the document how he believed the liquid would destroy DNA and fingerprints. He then changed out of his bloody clothes and drove home to his family, leaving the bagged-up remains behind in his darkened property, undisturbed for the long weekend.
Twitchell then tried to incinerate the body parts in an oil drum he had taken to his parents’ backyard, but the poor results saw him abandon the plan quite quickly. He met an ex-girlfriend for a night of sex, then returned to the garage in the morning. He wasn’t satisfied with his first attempt at dismembering his victim, so he made another effort to cut up the body parts into even smaller pieces.
As the saga of Johnny’s second dismemberment was read out, a multipage description of stomach-turning detail far more graphic than the first, his mother’s friend began to openly weep. She sat in the second row of the court, tucking her chin into her chest as the tears streamed under her glasses. It was clear from the words being read aloud in court that this further dismemberment was no longer just an act of disposal, but fuelled by a morbid curiosity. Twitchell wrote of working so thoroughly that he had to stop several times to sharpen his knives. Every body part was dissected and examined, skin and muscle shaved down to the bone. And the document described the experience as if he was a child playing with a new toy, his warm hands sinking into the cold torso, picking it apart and exploring in delight at the visual, tactile prize. He knew these vile acts separated himself from those around him, reducing a man to the tiniest of pieces and tossing them into garbage bags, once again to be loaded into his car:
It’s an interesting feeling driving around town with what used to be a human body bagged up in your trunk. No one has any idea. They are stopped at a light right next to a serial killer with what could very well be one of their friends, now sacks of meat parts in a hidden compartment. It made me wonder, in all my ten years of driving around, had I ever unknowingly passed a vehicle or sat parked at a red light next to someone just like I would be one day? It blew my mind.
The jury kept reading along as the officer approached the final passages he had retrieved from Twitchell’s laptop. The document explained how Twitchell had hoped to use the city’s river to dispose of the remains. But his failure to locate a suitably secluded spot over several days eventually led him to decide on discarding Johnny’s body parts down a storm sewer grave:
With each bag I sliced the tops off and turned them upside down, letting the pieces fall into the sewer, hearing the splashing sounds as they touched down. I crumpled the bags up, put them back in the trunk and then closed it. I got back in the car, fired her up and took off. My total time there could not have been longer than three minutes max.
I drove back to the kill room to finish destroying evidence. Once there, I packed my trunk remnants into a garbage bag and put everything else in there that needed to burn … I had five full hefty bags full of garbage that actually would burn, this I knew for a fact. Plastic sheeting, cloth backdrops and paper towels. It may not have been good for the environment, but one less person creating pollution for whatever forty-some odd more years he would have walked the Earth more than evens that out.
A sombre change had come over the courtroom. These passages brought with them silence, a state of complete incomprehension.
Even when breaks were called, those sitting in the public gallery shuffled out of the courtroom as though they were departing a funeral. The lively chatter of the previous days was gone. No whispered conversations. Each life had forever been altered by the startling convictions of the darkest mind.
RABBIT HOLES
TWITCHELL WAS EXHAUSTED BUT tried to walk tall, chest out, in a confident pace toward the holding cell concealed just off the courtroom. A guard followed behind him and to his right as he hugged the wall. He had been unable to fall asleep until at least 2:00 a.m. and no amount of caffeine could lift his sluggish feet. He was moving slowly, plodding along in a dazed stupor.
It was Wednesday, April 6. Today was supposed to be Twitchell’s turn to finally fight back after two and a half years in remand. His lawyer was scheduled to open their defence case within minutes. Twitchell had impatiently sat through the entirety of the Crown’s case and now – either due to nerves, anxiety, or otherwise – he was suffering from a lack of sleep. It wasn’t going the way he had planned.
He viewed his forthcoming defence as a sustained attack on S. K. Confessions, a document even he had grown to hate. Now he wanted to make it vanish; he wanted to wipe the slate clean. Twitchell compared his strategy to bursting a giant bubble of misinformation. “The world is completely fooled,” he wrote. “Right now they think and believe only what I initially designed for them to think and believe.”
It had been two weeks since his breakdown in court, and a psychiatrist had cleared him to leave the mental health unit. He was feeling fine, bolstered by lengthy preparations with his lawyer. Over cups of jailhouse mocha – hot chocolate mix, coffee whitener, three sugars, and instant coffee – Twitchell had spent the past weekend digging into the far corners of his mind, recalling every tiny detail, anything that could be used to help in his case. A legal decision had been finalized: he would be taking the stand in his own defence. He was the only person who could refute that incriminating diary.
Davison had spent hours with him to prepare for his court appearance. He warned Twitchell repeatedly to reply to questions on the stand with very specific answers, to always tell the truth, and to certainly drop his wry sense of humour. The final point resonated with Twitchell. He had been hoping his testimony could begin on April Fool’s Day as a way to hint at his “inner prankster,” but the timing was off by five days. But he did understand the courtroom was no place for a comedy routine. “Although I often do have a morbid, inappropriate sense of humour at times, many times done for the sheer shock value, even I have my limits,” he explained later. “Cracking one-liners while I’m testifying at my own murder trial is too over-the-top – even for me.”
Between his restless nights and bouts of studying to prepare for his defence, however, Twitchell did find time to compile a fantasy cast for a future Hollywood movie about his life and trial. He decided Jim Carrey would be a great fit for the role of his own lawyer – “His last crack at drama” – or perhaps Hugh Laurie, who could use the role to shake off the typecasting from the TV series House. The prosecution would be played by Casper Van Dean, a chiselled James Dean lookalike who had starred in Starship Troopers, and Natalie Dormer, a British actress best-known as Lady Anne Boleyn in Showtime’s The Tudors. The judge would be given a tough guy image with Robert De Niro presiding over the courtroom battle. Twitchell couldn’t decide between his top three picks to play himself: Ryan Phillippe, Matt Damon, or Guy Pearce. Even on trial, he couldn’t help drifting into fantasy.
Davison clearly had his work cut out for him in bringing Twitchell back on task. His client had a burning desire to go on the attack the second he was confronted with the
evidence against him. As they prepared for court, Twitchell likened Davison to a disciplined piano teacher, slapping his hands whenever he ventured into territory that was pointless or out of bounds for his upcoming testimony. He appreciated Davison’s thoroughness and expertise.
Twitchell debated how realistic his chances were of winning his murder trial as he sat in the holding cell awaiting the start of court. Other inmates in the basement tank frequently asked Twitchell this very question at the beginning and end of each day. After all, he had attracted a certain notoriety in prison. Everyone knew of him as “the movie killer” and recognized his face from television and in the newspapers. Twitchell was expecting these kinds of inquiries. When asked, he would always reply that the extent of the prosecution’s evidence against him was no surprise, but he wouldn’t have waited years for a criminal trial if he didn’t honestly believe he had a fighting chance.
He still believed that as he waited for court to begin. Twitchell felt his defence was so strong at times that the jury would be overcome with a beautiful epiphany. He imagined jurors having a change of heart and deciding the possible life sentence he was facing should be reduced to a lesser charge, perhaps even going so far as to set him free for time already served.
Minutes later, Davison tried to “set the context” of the trial during his opening address to the jury. He compared this criminal trial to watching an artist paint a picture. “What you think he’s going to draw or she’s going to paint at the beginning isn’t quite what the finished project turns out to be.” There would be a new perspective put on this entire case, he said, and the defence was relying on only one piece of evidence to make its point. Today, Davison would call his first and final witness: Mark Andrew Twitchell.
Wearing his white polo shirt, now yellowing from being worn nearly every day of the three-week-old trial, Twitchell took an affirmation instead of swearing an oath to God. He wasn’t much of a believer. People sometimes thought he was an atheist since he often described the Bible as a “bizarre book,” but when asked directly he explained he was of two minds on the religion issue. “I have chosen my own purpose in life and it’s very empowering to do so. I’ll worry about the ethereal plane when I get there.”
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