The Devil's Cinema (11 page)

Anstey had several conversations with the prosecutor's office as he was preparing for Twitchell's arrest. He was told the same concerns each time: “How do you know that it's Johnny's blood? What happens if it's not a DNA match or it comes up as someone else's blood? Then where are you at?” The prosecutor's office was right. Without DNA, the case became an elaborate trail of circumstantial evidence that led to nowhere. It didn't help matters either that Anstey's relationship with the head of homicide was worsening. Things with his boss had been tense for some time, but their disagreements were becoming more frequent.

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.

O
N
M
ONDAY
, O
CTOBER
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.

T
HE 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.

I
T 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.

T
HE 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.

A
NSTEY 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.