Twitchell Mark - The devils cinema: the untold story behind Mark Twitchells kill room

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 devils cinema : the untold story behind
Mark Twitchells 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 364.1523092 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 Corporations 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 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

I N 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 mans 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.

S TEVE L ILLEBUEN

I was a near perfect hologram.
A neat and polite monster, the boy next door.
D EXTER M ORGAN , fictional serial killer

Anyone can turn out to be a psycho
without being overtly obvious about it.
M ARK T WITCHELL , real-life filmmaker

W ELCOME TO D EADMONTON:

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, theres never been much of a reason to visit the place since. Even elected officials have accepted this regions lacklustre image with their own brand of dark humour. Edmonton is not the end of the world its just easier to see it from there, once quipped the late Ralph Klein, a colourful icon of Canadian politics. 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 worlds 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.