Diary of a serial killer far from fiction: Crown

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This article was published 17/03/2011 (5518 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EDMONTON — Filmmaker Mark Twitchell lured, killed and dismembered a stranger just like in one of his movies, then described it in graphic detail in what he termed the diary of a serial killer, a Crown lawyer alleged Wednesday.

“Mark Twitchell’s plan was quite simply and shockingly to gain the experience of killing another human being,” prosecutor Lawrence Van Dyke told jurors in his opening address before a packed gallery in Court of Queen’s Bench.

The challenge, said Van Dyke, will be to sort fact from fiction in the case of a man who played in the fantasy world of film, killed in the real world and then wrote a story the Crown alleges was tantamount to a confession. Earlier Wednesday, Twitchell, 31, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder but offered to admit to interfering with a dead body. The Crown refused to accept the plea bargain and the trial continued.

“This story is based on true events,” reads the opening portion of a 30-page document found on Twitchell’s laptop after he was arrested in the fall of 2008 for the murder of Johnny Altinger, 38.

“The names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty. This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer.

“I had a lot of trial and error in my misadventures. Allow me to start from the beginning and I think you’ll see what I mean.”

Van Dyke said the story eerily matches evidence that shows what happened to Altinger on the evening of Oct. 10, 2008, and what almost happened to another man a week earlier.

Van Dyke said jurors will hear about events that took place over a five-week period starting on Sept. 26, 2008.

Twitchell, a fringe amateur filmmaker, was with some friends making a short film in a garage he had rented behind a home on Edmonton’s south side. The movie, titled House of Cards, revolved around a killer who lures a man to a garage on the premise of an Internet date and kills him.

A week later, said Van Dyke, Twitchell crossed from fantasy into reality.

He said jurors will hear Altinger, a pipeline inspector originally from White Rock, B.C., was lured to that same garage for an Internet date with someone named Jen.

Instead, said Van Dyke, Altinger was ambushed by Twitchell.

“He (Twitchell) killed Johnny Altinger by bludgeoning him over the head with a copper pipe,” he said. “He then stabbed him to death with a hunting knife, then dismembered the body and dumped the remains down a sewer.

The same fate almost befell another man a week earlier, Van Dyke suggested. That man, too, came to the garage for a date and was jumped by a male wearing a hockey mask and wielding a fake gun. The man managed to escape, but didn’t come forward until after he heard about Altinger.

The trial is set to last six weeks.

 

— The Canadian Press