An attempted murder charge against convicted killer Mark Twitchell was stayed in Court of Queen’s Bench on Friday.
Crown prosecutors have one year to resurrect the attempted murder charge, which was laid for an attack by Twitchell on Edmonton resident Gilles Tetreault almost three years ago.
Twitchell appeared briefly in court wearing a blue prison-issued T-shirt. The defence lawyer who recently represented Twitchell during his recent murder trial, Charles Davison, asked to be removed as the counsel of record for the case.
Twitchell told court he understood and agreed to the request.
Twitchell was convicted earlier this year of first-degree murder for the killing of Johnny Altinger, who Twitchell lured to a rented garage by posing as a woman on the Internet looking for a date.
During Twitchell’s murder trial, Tetreault testified that he was lured to the same Mill Woods garage the week before Altinger was killed. Tetreault said he went to the garage on Oct. 3, 2008, thinking he was going to meet a woman he had met on a dating website.
In a day of dramatic testimony, Tetreault told court he was attacked in the garage by a masked man who prodded him with a stun baton and threatened to shoot him. Tetreault testified that when he lunged at the gun, he realized it was fake. He fought with the masked attacker before he was able to escape.
Twitchell admitted during the trial that he had attacked Tetreault, but denied he ever intended to hurt him. He said he had staged the attack as part of an elaborate hoax for a book, movie, and online entertainment project. He said he hoped Tetreault would write about the experience in the garage on the Internet, which he hoped would generate buzz for his project.
Twitchell wants to appeal his first-degree murder conviction. As part of his appeal notice, Twitchell claimed there was “sufficient evidence to raise reasonable doubt” in his case, but argued his defence lawyer did not adequately explore that evidence.
He also blamed media coverage of his trial for influencing the jury.
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