EDMONTON — An Alberta sheriff gave accused murderer Mark Twitchell a speeding ticket just days after a man was killed and dismembered in a suburban garage.
The testimony Tuesday of highway patrol officer Bob Reich about the ticket closely resembled part of a diary found in a deleted file on Twitchell’s laptop computer. The passage relates how a self-described serial killer laughs about police stopping him for speeding when he had a dead body in a nearby rented garage.
Reich told Twitchell’s first-degree murder trial that he remembers joking with the driver about the movie Star Wars when the officer pulled Twitchell’s car over on Oct. 13, 2008.
The licence plate on the maroon Pontiac Grand Am read DRK JEDI.
“I made a comment about his licence plate being Dark Jedi. I said the force wasn’t very strong with him that night because he just passed a fully marked patrol car oblivious to what he has done,” Reich said.
He testified that Twitchell told him he was a movie producer shooting a film and was on his way to the airport to pick up a famous person.
He pleaded with the officer to give him a break.
After some more bantering about Star Wars, Reich issued Twitchell an $89 ticket for driving 128 km/h in a 100 km/h zone — half the usual fine.
“With our conversation I kind of joked regarding his DRK JEDI (licence plate). I made a comment, asking if he was Darth Vader, and made kind of joking comments to him, so I wasn’t going to issue him a full violation.”
Parts of the diary read in court Monday recounts in the first-person how the author was pulled over by police for speeding a few days after he had killed a man, cut up the body, burned the parts in a barrel and then dumped the remains in a sewer.
“I was back on the road in five minutes flat,” reads the diary.
“I remember thinking how hilarious and dramatically ironic it was that the cop had pulled over a cold-blooded murderer, who had a dismembered body in his rented garage not too far away, and had no clue what was going on.
“Now every time I pass a police car on the road, I chuckle to myself.”
The Crown contends that Twitchell, 31, wrote the diary after luring Johnny Altinger, 38, to a south-side Edmonton garage on Oct. 10, 2008, where he killed him, cut him up and burned the remains in a barrel before dumping them into a sewer.
The diary doesn’t mention Twitchell or Altinger by name. The text says the story is based on true events and that names were altered slightly to protect the guilty.
“This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer,” it reads.
The Crown has already entered into evidence Twitchell’s books and DVDs about Dexter Morgan, a fictional TV character, who works as a Miami police blood spatter expert and moonlights as a vigilante serial killer.
A police forensics expert also testified Tuesday. He told court that he found 1,644 pictures relating to the Altinger homicide investigation on Twitchell’s laptop computer.
Const. Mike Roszko told the jury the pictures were found on the hard drive by using powerful software normally used to find hidden images of child pornography.
Roszko said the photos included women from a dating website called plentyoffish.com and images of weapons, an incinerator and pictures from the Dexter TV show.
Prosecutors have said Twitchell posed as a woman on an Internet dating site to lure Altinger to the garage with promises of an intimate encounter. The diary calls the garage a “kill room” where the writer says he will enjoy his “play time.”