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[Music] I'm Julia Cowie, retired FBI agent and profiler and former special agent, forensic scientist
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with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. This podcast is about criminal profiling.
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This is certainly an unusual case. I've never seen anything quite like this one.
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With many serial killers, it's the killing part that they enjoy and once they've killed the person, they're done.
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Not Mark Twitchell. Action. Mark Twitchell was an aspiring filmmaker. [Music] I interviewed him for my book and we
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corresponded uh for a number of years. He wrote me probably 30 or 35 different letters up to about 350 pages of
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letters. In one letter, Mark Twitchell wrote wrote back to me and this is what he said. The fact is society in general
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has a deep and profound fascination with the dark side of human nature. I do think Mark Twitchell was using the
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film making as an outlet to live out his fantasies and it ultimately wasn't enough for him and that's why his
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fantasies crossed into reality. I think Mark Twitchell believes that he is very smart, very methodical,
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very logical, very levelheaded, much like the character of Dexter Morgan. And so I think he got ideas from the
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show. I think he was drawn to the character because that's what he wanted to be.
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There's significant links to Dexter. He had a kill room set up with plastic sheeting. He had a table set up for his
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victims. He had this kind of processing kit that was very similar to what Dexter
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uses. Never once did it cross his mind he'd ever be caught. They aren't going to
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catch me. I'm too smart. Nothing's going to lead him to me. Our job is to put together the pieces of
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the puzzle. And in this case, we had a written document. There was this document titled SK Confessions found in
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a deleted form on Mark Twitchel's laptop and it appeared to read like a diary. This is the story of uh my progression
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into becoming a serial killer. and it documented luring people off the internet. His first victim was a man
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named Jill Tetro. I saw this uh lady. She had blonde hair. She's about 56. She she was very
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attractive looking. And what was her name? Her name was Sheena. Sheena. Yeah. I messaged her. She messaged me
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back. How about we go to dinner in a movie? I thought that was a great idea. She wouldn't give me the uh house
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number, but she just sent me really really good directions on how to get there. He thought, right, what's the
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worst that could happen? [Music] [Music] It would appear that I'm unique in the world. There is no key, no root cause.
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If there's no school, if I really were capable of premeditated murder, normal, healthy, welladjusted, 30 old men. I
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once heard the legend of another worthy victim. wonderful young children and great futures. I dealt with his remains
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in a disrespectful manner that traumatized me forever into psychopathic serial killers. My compassion, I quickly
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grew to resent and hate this man. These are the words of Mark Twitchell written to author Steve Liuan.
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It is what it is and I am what I am. For the first time on television, Liuan is revealing the contents of Twitch's
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letters. It's a rare look inside the mind of a killer. Nobody would side with Dexter Morgan if he went around
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slaughtering school teachers and mail carriers on a whim. Police say Twitchell was fascinated by
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the fictional character in the hit Showtime series Dexter. I need to kill him. Twitchel's been dubbed the Dexter Killer
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because of the numerous links between the television series and the real life crimes. So, how did this young Canadian
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filmmaker end up accused of horrific acts? The story begins in October 2008. To hear how everything happened, it was
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like you watching the movies. Edmonton police detective. It's hard to say. I mean,
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Bill Clark, but now we have it happening in real life. Jill's Tetro was online on the
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plentyfish.com website, which is a a dating site. Tetro, who was 33 at the time, was excited to meet the woman who
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called herself Sheena. I was actually late, so I was driving quite fast to get there.
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She said, "I'll just leave the garage door open for you." And then you just go in, go through the garage.
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I don't think he ever imagined in a million years what would happen to him in that garage.
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It was dark. Then I I kind of looked around for the door she told me to go through and that's when somebody came
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out and attacked me from behind. Finally looked back and that's when I see this man
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with this painted up hockey mask. I just chill down my back. Wow. This is no date.
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He's about like 6 foot and and has this black and gold hockey mask all painted up on his face.
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The hockey maskwearing man had ordered him to the ground at gunpoint and he tore a piece of tape and he
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covered my eyes with it. I start hearing different things like a jingling noise and stuff like that. In my head is just
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racing like it's like thinking what's going on? What is he going to do? Is he taking another weapon out? Jill decided
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he wasn't waiting to find out. I can't do this. I got to fight back. So, I got up and uh ripped the tape off
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my eyes. He was stunned that I got up and he started yelling at me to get back down on the ground.
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Instead, he grabbed the attacker's gun. When I grabbed the gun, I felt the gun was plastic. This is the greatest
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feeling I ever felt in my life because then I knew I had a fighting chance to get away. That's when I I was ready to
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fight. I punched him and I felt really weak. I'm like, "Wow, why was my punch so weak?"
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What Jill didn't realize was that he had been weakened by the effects of the stun
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baton. And then he starts punching me on the side of the head. Just about then, he came up with a plan.
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He grabbed my jacket. I jerked forward to make sure he had a good hold on it. I thought, "That's a perfect time."
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That was part of your plan. You're thinking, "Okay, he grabs my jacket." Yeah. And I can get free.
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So that's when I slipped out of the jacket, rolled underneath the garage door, and then got up and it worked. And
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I tried to run, and all of a sudden, my legs wouldn't work, and I just fell. Boom. Right on the gravel driveway.
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That's when he grabbed my legs and he started pulling me back to the garage. So I'm like, "Oh no, what am I going to
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do now? I'm dead." Gio was thrown back in the garage, but he surprised himself by rolling out again. This time, Gil
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managed to get into his truck. I stuck the key in the ignition and then I just sped away.
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When Gil got home, he discovered the profile on the dating site had been deleted, and he did his best to erase
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his own memory. Why didn't you go to the police immediately? At first, I was in shock. I said I told
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myself I'll do it tomorrow. And tomorrow came and I was um I felt so ashamed that
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I got duped. Embarrassed and confused, Gil convinced himself that perhaps it wasn't as
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serious as he first thought. I really thought it was a mugging at the time. But just one week later, another man,
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Johnny Alteringer, would answer a similar dating ad and disappear. Where is he? What's going on? He
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wouldn't do this to us. Gary Alteringer, Johnny's older brother, says the last time anyone heard from him
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was on October 10th, 2008 when the 38-year-old left for a date with a woman named Jen.
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Not a message, nothing. And then not showing up for work, totally out of character. John was very very very
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responsible. And when did you grow concerned? When I received that email and this email was completely out of
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character. What did it say? I've met a woman named Jen and I'm going away with her to Costa Rica and I'll
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call you at Christmas time. I just thought right away after I had read this, that's got to be the weirdest
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message I've ever received. That identical, strange message had gone out to all of Johnny's friends as well.
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Desperate for some answers, Johnny's friends broke into his apartment. They found his passport and they found
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dirty dishes and they found everything just like as if he were going to return an hour or two later. And with that
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information, then they went to the police and they said, "Hey, listen. You've got to do something."
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You know, he was his red Mazda was missing. He had taken his vehicle. It couldn't be found. So, obviously, that's
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what we're going to look for first. Easier to find a car than than a person. Based on the emails and they talk about
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Costa Rica, the officers search all the parking lots at the airport. It's not found. Everything's turning up negative.
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But there was one clue that would give police their first big break in the case.
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On the day he disappeared, Johnny Alteringer had forwarded the directions of where he was going to friends.
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Well, John's friends were concerned and his friend even questioned him on the email. You know, be careful. And John
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said, "Yeah, well, here's the directions and if anything happens to me, you'll know where to look."
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Armed with the directions, police were led directly to that garage. They learned the garage is rented out to
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an individual named Mark Twitchell. Action. Twitchell, then 29 years old, a married
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man with a young daughter, had used the garage as a set for a recent movie project.
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I'm glad I got the chance to work with you all and I hope you I see you all in the industry. Mark denied knowing
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anything about a missing man or a red Mazda and he had no problem with the police wanting to search the garage.
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They have a look around and they see some what looks like blood and Mark Twitch's explaining, "Oh no, that's my
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movie prop. We did a film about a killing a guy in here and I filmed it all and I've been cleaning it up over
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the last couple weeks." There were some things that were, you know, raising your Spidey sense in this
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one going, "Yeah, this isn't right. Something going on here. [Music] For detectives in the Edmonton Police
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Department, the disappearance of Johnny Alttinger was a mystery in more ways than one.
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It's a missing person's case. We don't know what foul plays happened here. We We don't have a body. Uh we don't even
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know if we have a crime. Their only lead was Mark Twitchel's film set garage voluntarily. The amateur
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filmmaker came down to the Edmonton Police Station to speak with detectives. All
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does that name ring a bell to you or mean anything to you? No. Never heard it before.
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No. Mark appeared to be eager to help. He had no history of violence and was hardly a suspect.
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Action. In fact, he seemed guilty of nothing more than wanting to brag about his film
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career. I'm working on a comedy right now, which is a it's actually a full-blown feature
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that's actually going to have a decent budget in the neighborhood of about 3.5 million.
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Mark Twitchell's first film project, a Star Wars fan film, had received some media buzz back in 2007. Word has gotten
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around that I'm making a $100 million movie for 60 grand. And uh some production and directing jobs have
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already come my way. But the police were more interested in Mark's latest production, a suspense thriller called
00:13:53
House of Cards, where a hockey mass serial killer lures a man to a garage via the internet and
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kills him. I mean, it's kind of odd that you're filming that kind of thing. And we end up going to that garage
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because of a missing person who supposedly went there. That's really freaky, too. And as soon
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as they called me on the phone, I get this weird chill. He looked pretty comfortable in the
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interview. And when it was done and I watched, I went, "Wow, that guy interviewed well."
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Hours later, Mark Twitchell even agreed to let officers back into the garage where he had filmed House of Cards.
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Little did they know, the case was about to take an unusual turn. Detective Murphy goes, you know, and
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meets him and talks to him, and there's this huge revelation about, "Oh, yeah. I
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bought a red car off a guy. It's like I remember getting the phone call at the police station just thinking, "Holy
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crap." That's because police were still looking for Johnny Alteringer's red Mazda. So
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investigators called Mark again and again he voluntarily agreed to answer more questions.
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This time Bill Clark conducted the interview. So as you know Mark, we're just here
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trying to find John Alinger. Clark listened while Mark told him how he came into possession of a red car, a
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detail he failed to mention when he spoke with police earlier. This guy uh taps on my window, you know,
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hey buddy, do you want to buy a car? I have shacked up with this really rich lady and she's going to buy me a new
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car. So, I'm just looking to unload vine. How much do you have on you? And Mark claimed he bought the red Mazda for
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just $40 and that it was parked at a friend's house. So, what are you thinking when you hear
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that? That he purchased a car for $40. I just thought that's unbelievable. That's just right away I'm thinking to
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myself, this is a bunch of crap. The strange story about the red car, the serial killer movie being filmed. For
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Clark, it could only mean one thing. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that you're involved in the
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disappearance of John Altinger. No doubt in my mind at all, Mark. Why? But it was only a hunch. Clark had no
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hard evidence against Mark. Police began digging deeper into his background. They
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were interested in speaking with anyone who had worked on House of Cards, where actor Chris Huard's character meets an
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untimely bloody end in the film. My character was killed with the samurai sword. As I said, they would have a
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mannequin or a dummy to run the sword through. And when I got there, there was none. When I looked at the the weapons,
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that was my first time. When I saw that they were real, I thought, "This is off." I'm think, "Why didn't I tell
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somebody where I am?" Huard left the garage film set unharmed but rattled. And his unease only escalated when
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police asked him about that allegedly fake movie blood they spotted in the garage.
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How much of the blood splatter on the wall was from your filming? I said none of the blood splatter was from a
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and then in a search of Twitchel's belongings, police found his laptop. They pulled off a hard drive a deleted
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file titled SK Confessions. SK confessions. Police believe SK was shorthand for serial killer.
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One of the first lines it says, "I am not sure when I decided to become a serial killer, but it was a feeling of
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pure euphoria." SK Confessions told the story of a man who was lured to a garage and stabbed to
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death. A plot strikingly similar to House of Cards. I plunged the knife deep into his neck.
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It was unbelievable. I just remember reading it all and just was fascinated by this document going, "Holy mackerel."
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But was the document a screenplay or was it in fact Mark Twitchel's confession of
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murder [Music] [Music] It just doesn't make sense. Where there's smoke, there's fire.
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2 weeks after the disappearance of Johnny Alteringer at a garage film set, police had sharpened their focus on
00:18:35
filmmaker Mark Twitchell. Police cameras were rolling as a forensics team processed Twitchel's family car and the
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garage he rented. And a few miles away, detectives have been at the Twitchel home where they
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found Jess Twitchell, Mark's unsuspecting wife of two years. What I said was, "We're investigating a missing
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person's. I believe your husband's got something to do with it, and it's quite possibly, you know, could be a
00:19:03
homicide." I didn't really go into anything more, but I think that was enough. I mean, she was emotional.
00:19:10
Police soon discovered that the Twitchel marriage was already fractured. They had
00:19:15
been living in basically sleeping in separate bedrooms. She was basically living on the main floor. He was living
00:19:20
in the basement. So there was obviously troubles in paradise there and we knew that
00:19:26
Twitchell had been having an affair with an old girlfriend and lying to his wife
00:19:31
about having a job. He found out that he was telling his wife he was going to work every day. He
00:19:36
had no job. He was getting his friends to invest in his alleged movie making business with his Hollywood connections.
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And basically Mark Twitchell was living off their money. Interestingly, the document police had
00:19:49
found in Twitchell's laptop titled SK Confessions also referenced a crumbling marriage and secrets. It read and went
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through great lengths to bring my wife over to the comfortable belief I wasn't cheating on her.
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It was uh basically a almost like a movie script. But what was real and what was fiction?
00:20:10
The closer police look, the more the lines blurred. Police discovered Twitchel spent
00:20:17
countless hours making elaborate Halloween costumes. It's almost like at times Mark Twitchel
00:20:24
lives in a fantasy world. But it was Twitchel's Facebook page comparing himself to TV's fictional
00:20:30
serial killer Dexter Morgan that really raised eyebrows. Mark has way too much in common with Dexter Morgan. read
00:20:39
Twitchel status. He talked a lot about uh how he loved the show Dexter. I need to kill him.
00:20:48
Twitchel even posed as Dexter Morgan on Facebook. We all have a dark side, some darker
00:20:54
than others. And you're not the only one to relate to Dexter. It sometimes scares
00:20:59
me how much I relate. I mean, look at this profile. That profile had caught the attention of
00:21:05
a woman named Renee from Cleveland, Ohio. I am a huge fan of this Showtime show,
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Dexter. So, I thought, "Oh, well, you know, I'll be friends with him." Eventually, Twitchel revealed his true
00:21:18
identity. He was a filmmaker. We are rolling and he was working on a a new thing
00:21:26
called House of Cards. Camera's rolling. Renee was intrigued. After all, she was
00:21:32
an aspiring writer and her friendship with a movie maker could open doors. I thought it was going to be like a
00:21:38
working relationship, a working friendship. Um, you know, we had a lot in common.
00:21:43
I mean, you spoke to him a couple of times a day online. Couple of times a day. Was it flirtatious?
00:21:48
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Their email exchanges soon became dark. It was shortly before Johnny Alteringer
00:21:56
disappeared. We talked about, you know, serial killers and, you know, the psychology behind a serial killer.
00:22:04
At the time, Renee was upset with her ex-husband's new wife. And I wanted her dead at the time, but I
00:22:11
said, "I couldn't do it." And hypothetically, how would you get away with it? How do you get away with it?
00:22:17
He said, "You cut her up in little pieces. You put her in trash bags like Dexter.
00:22:24
And since I was close to the lake, you rent a boat and uh dump her out in the middle of Lake Erie.
00:22:33
But then she began to wonder. He said over the weekend he did something and he liked it.
00:22:42
I crossed the line and I did something and I liked it. And what did you take that to mean?
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That he killed somebody. What other line is there to cross? Something inside my head just gave me
00:22:56
red flags and said, "He did it." And her suspicions kept growing with another email he sent.
00:23:05
There's an enormous missing person, possible homicide investigation going on centralized around a location I've been
00:23:11
renting for film work. So, of course, the police have tossed my house and impounded my car. Not fun considering
00:23:19
they won't find anything. But Twitchel had underestimated the police. He thought he was way smarter than the
00:23:26
police. Uh, one of the biggest mistakes I think that he made was he had no idea how we do our job. And that was a huge
00:23:33
advantage to us. Adding to their circumstantial case, Twitchel possessing Altering's car, the
00:23:40
SK Confessions document, and his Dexter obsession, investigators finally had hard evidence.
00:23:47
They found Alteringer's blood in Twitchel's trunk. When we got the word that uh the DNA
00:23:53
matched, we briefed our tactical team, our our arrest team, and we had officers ready to make the arrest.
00:24:00
On Halloween morning 2008, while Twitchel was putting the finishing touches on his Halloween costume at his
00:24:06
parents' home, police were busy laying a trap. We got an undercover operator to work
00:24:12
the internet and pretend he was going to an investor. He was lured out on the promise to meet
00:24:18
this guy at this coffee shop. And when he got about three blocks from his house, tactical team swooped in on him
00:24:24
and took him down. Tough guy Mark Twitchell peed his pants. He was so scared and it was a little uh
00:24:33
taste of his own medicine, I guess. Back at the station, Detective Clark and Twitchell came face to face in the
00:24:43
interrogation room once again. As I told you that night, I knew that you were involved in the disappearance at that
00:24:50
time of Johnny Alteringer. That's changed slightly. I now know that you killed John Alteringer.
00:24:56
3 weeks after Alteringer's disappearance, police charged Twitchel with firstdegree murder. The once
00:25:03
talkative movie director barely uttered a line. You didn't get much of a reaction, did
00:25:11
you? No, he's uh well, he knows not to say anything. Talking to his lawyers, he's not going to admit to anything.
00:25:18
He didn't have to. Es confessions, which police had been dissecting word by word,
00:25:24
spoke volumes. They were now convinced it was no screenplay, but rather a diary of murder. One passage about a knife red
00:25:34
I thrusted into his gut. His reaction was pure Hollywood. We do believe as investigators that the account written
00:25:41
by Mark Twitchell in that SK confessions is exactly what he did to John Alteringer.
00:25:49
By now, Renee had called the police. As authorities began building their case, there was one crucial part of SK
00:25:56
confessions they wanted to verify about a victim who had survived. It was just a
00:26:03
huge piece of evidence because not only would it verify what was written in SK confessions, it would also have a living
00:26:10
witness. So, it was paramount that we find this person Detective Bill Clark knew his next move
00:26:35
was finding the alleged victim who had escaped from Mark Twitchel's garage. You know, one of the first things we did
00:26:42
was check the police records, figuring hopefully someone called the police on this, and we have nothing.
00:26:47
But police had found a helpful clue during the search of Twitchel's home. One of the things they had found was a
00:26:55
hockey mask. The SK Confessions talked about how Mark Twitchell had worn this mask when he attacked both victims, but
00:27:02
we figured it was something the first victim would key on. Police soon took to the airwaves.
00:27:07
We have some details on this male victim who was attacked, and we would like him
00:27:11
to come forward. Gil Tetro was at home oblivious to the horror he had escaped when a friend told
00:27:17
him to watch the news. To date, we do not know who this victim is. I believe the victim entered the
00:27:23
garage and was attacked by another male who was wearing a hockey mask. And it's the same hockey mask that I
00:27:28
saw. Wow. Yeah, this is this is the guy. This is what happened to me. It's the same
00:27:33
mask. Everything. What Gil heard next came as an even greater shock. Another man had been
00:27:40
lured to the same garage and met a gruesome end. We have not found John Altinger's body.
00:27:46
And what were you thinking when you when you heard this? I couldn't believe it. Once you find out
00:27:52
the whole story, I knew at that point it was not just a mugging. It was actually
00:27:57
he was probably gonna kill me. I'm like, "Wow, I I have to go forward now. I have
00:28:02
to come forward." Exactly one month after he was attacked, Gil Tetro walked into the Edmonton
00:28:09
Police Department and told police his incredible story. I was all off balance. I couldn't run. I
00:28:16
fell down on the the gravel driveway and uh basically crawling. So he dragged me
00:28:22
back to the garage. Jill's story matched nearly word for word what was in SK Confessions. I
00:28:29
grabbed him by the leg as if to drag him back into the garage caveman style. So I know that this diary we have is
00:28:37
true. After this all happened, I realized how lucky I was. 7 days after Gil was attacked, police say Twitchell wasn't
00:28:45
going to make the same mistake twice. How did he kill uh John? We know that he lured him to the garage
00:28:54
in the same way he lured Jill's tetro. And then in this case, because he learned from Jules that the taser didn't
00:29:00
work, he hit him over the head with a lead pipe. Following the narrative, police believe Alteringer was then
00:29:08
stabbed and dismembered on a makeshift autopsy table. What was the most damning piece of
00:29:14
evidence that you discovered? We had uh, you know, lumininal test done on the floor. Large amounts of blood had
00:29:20
been spilled on the floor of the garage. Probably one of the biggest pieces, a piece of tooth that was found inside
00:29:25
there. That piece of tooth matched up to our victim. According to SK Confessions,
00:29:31
the killer then broke into Alteringer's apartment and sent out those emails about taking an exotic vacation. The
00:29:38
killer then attempted to burn the remains in a barrel, but failed. He next tried to dump them into the river, but
00:29:46
was afraid of being seen. Ultimately, Mark Twitchell drove around with it. According to the SK Confessions
00:29:52
document, he even talked about driving around with them and pulling up beside people at red lights and looking at them
00:29:57
and thinking that they don't know I have a dead body in the trunk of my car. But where was Johnny Alttinger's body?
00:30:04
SK Confessions describe the killer finally choosing a sewer to dump the remains. But that's where the pages
00:30:11
stopped. It was a story without an ending. In any homicide investigation, you obviously want to bring closure to the
00:30:19
family. So, not only do you want to make that phone call saying, "We got the guy
00:30:22
that did this to your loved one." But in this case, we wanted to say to him, "Look, we found Johnny."
00:30:28
Detective Clark hoped Twitchell would provide the final chapter. I'm going to go get the car ready. We're
00:30:34
going to take a drive. You guys were driving around and there was a camera trained on him in the back
00:30:40
of the police car. Tell me about that. When you you read all the experts books about these type of individuals is they
00:30:46
tend to like the media attention. So we thought, well, maybe if we drive him around and we'll put a camera on him,
00:30:51
maybe he'll just we'll just take him to places cuz we had no idea where where Johnny's remains were at that time.
00:30:57
So in order to finish the movie, we find the body, take it back to the people, family. Done. Movie's over. You write it
00:31:07
all down. Detective Clark was relentless, taking Twitchel on a tour of his old neighborhood. And we first drove to his
00:31:15
parents house where he had been staying. We actually demanded that he tell us he
00:31:19
wouldn't. Look familiar, Mark? Are we parked right on top of the sewer where you dumped the
00:31:24
body? Next stop, the scene of the crime. So, here we are back at the killing garage, the Dexter garage.
00:31:35
Bring back any memories? You want to tell us where the body is now? We'll get this over with.
00:31:40
But Switch will remain silent. So police kept searching on their own, looking in
00:31:46
sewer after sewer. So all these manhole covers were pulled off in this alley. So anytime I'd see
00:31:51
one, I always had my flashlight with me and would get out and actually take a look.
00:31:57
Weeks, then months passed and still no luck. Then a year and a half after Johnny Alinger disappeared, Twitchel,
00:32:05
while awaiting trial, broke his silence and gave the police a map. just up here on the left. It's about a
00:32:15
block south of his parents' house. Investigators followed it to an alleyway just a half block away from where they
00:32:23
had stopped the search. And he had marked an X. X marks a spot. It took us right to this uh sewer cover
00:32:30
here. We could see what looked like pieces of human torso uh down there. [Music]
00:32:42
In March of 2011, Mark Twitchell went on trial for the murder of Johnny Alttinger. Prosecutors called Gil Tetro
00:32:50
to testify and to prove that what Twitchel described in SK Confessions was not a work of fiction, but an account of
00:32:59
what had actually happened. I wasn't really afraid of him at that time. I knew he couldn't hurt me
00:33:05
anymore. The only witness the defense called was Mark Twitchell and he had one unbelievable tale to tell. Steve
00:33:14
Liibuan, a college professor and did an investigative journalist was covering the trial for the Edmonton Journal and
00:33:22
went on to write a book, The Devil Cinema, about the case. Mark Twitchell testified that this was
00:33:28
all a big misunderstanding and he had killed Johnny in self-defense. Twitchell claimed that Alteringer's death was
00:33:36
nothing more than a publicity stunt gone horribly arry. He said he intended to let both men go so they would create a
00:33:45
buzz for his film by telling people that this had actually happened to them. But
00:33:50
he claimed Alteringer became enraged at being tricked and he accidentally killed
00:33:55
him in self-defense. He blames Johnny saying it was Johnny's reaction to his attempt at this promotion is what
00:34:02
happened. In the end, the jury took just 5 hours to find Mark Twitchell guilty. He was
00:34:09
sentenced to 25 years to life. But for Liibuan, there were still so many questions.
00:34:16
So the motive is the mystery, the why did he do this? What is Mark Twitchell's psyche? What led to this happening?
00:34:24
questions liab might be answered when he got a call out of the blue from Mark Twitchell himself. He just said straight
00:34:33
out, "If you're going to be writing a book about me, you might as well come straight to the source."
00:34:41
What do you think Mark Twitchel's motive was? See the evidence presented at trial
00:34:45
and more at 48 hours.com. [Music] The first time I met him, he actually had me laughing. He's very charismatic.
00:35:01
Mark Twitchell was nothing like author Steve Liibu and expected. Has very much that salesman slick
00:35:09
behavior. He knows how to put it on to get people to like him. Twitchel began writing to Liibuan before
00:35:16
he was even convicted in 2011. Over the course of almost 3 years, they exchanged
00:35:24
dozens of letters. I learned really quickly that he preferred to talk through writing.
00:35:29
These weren't ramblings of a crazy man. There was actually some substance in these letters.
00:35:36
Yes, absolutely. So, he's not he's not crazy. He is he is lucid. At first, Lilibuan didn't want to push
00:35:44
Twitchel away with too many probing questions about his crimes. I asked him a lot of softball questions just about
00:35:51
who he was, his family, his upbringing, all that kind of background detail. He was newly married and a new father. So,
00:35:58
he was just a typical local guy who had dreams of making it big in Hollywood and really no red
00:36:06
flags, no warning signs that something like this was on the horizon. In letters, Twitchel clung to his
00:36:14
defense that he had no choice but to kill Johnny Alttinger and then dismember him. He writes, "I killed Joanie
00:36:23
Altinger in a horrific accident of self-defense." After cursily shoving aside my human
00:36:30
sensibilities, I dealt with his remains in the disrespectful manner that traumatized me forever. He still is
00:36:38
adamant that this was not a planned and deliberate murder. And to be frank, he's
00:36:42
he's wrong. Liibu and points to SK Confessions where Twitchell describes how he turned that
00:36:49
garage into a kill room, set up a makeshift autopsy table, had plastic sheeting, and a processing kit similar
00:36:58
to the one Dexter Morgan used. Mark Twitchell wrote to me quite extensively about his interest in Dexter.
00:37:06
Dexter on his mind, Twitchell drew this portrait of Michael C. Hall, the actor who plays him. And to Lil Buan's
00:37:15
surprise, even behind bars, Twitchell was able to feed his obsessions. Previously on Dexter,
00:37:23
Mark Twitch had actually been granted access to finish watching the series while he was incarcerated.
00:37:30
In 2012, Dexter star Michael Se Hall was asked about Mark Twitchel on a Canadian
00:37:36
radio program. It's horrifying to entertain the notion that something you did inspired that.
00:37:46
Twitchel's response to Hall's comments was to downplay his fascination with the Dexter character.
00:37:54
So, he wrote to me, "As you're aware, Dexter has almost nothing to do with my case."
00:38:00
Throughout their correspondence, Liabuan continued to grapple with what drove Twitchel.
00:38:08
And then Twitchel told him, "There is no key, no root cause. There's no school bully or impressional gory
00:38:17
movies or Showtime television series to point the finger at. It is what it is and I am what I am.
00:38:24
He's a depraved individual and he knows that. Retired FBI criminal profiler Julia
00:38:30
Calli didn't work on this case, but she spoke with Detective Clark and reviewed Mark Twitchell's writings and letters
00:38:37
for 48 hours. She thinks she knows what made Twitchel tick. I think he identified with Dexter to some degree. I
00:38:47
think he's different than Dexter. He's not killing bad guys. He's killing very innocent, good people, living productive
00:38:53
lives. And while he's technically not a serial killer, he was headed in that direction if they hadn't have caught
00:38:59
him. Calli believes Twitchell took pleasure in planning and executing his crimes as
00:39:08
if they were romantic trrists. I think the primary motivation was sexual. Sexual.
00:39:15
Yes. And he's targeting men that perhaps he would be interested in having a date
00:39:21
with. It's a combination of sexual motive and a thrill killing. He's pretending to be
00:39:28
a woman. He writes extensively about what he's going to wear, the weapon that he chooses. He sort of describes it in
00:39:38
seductive language. He said, "I wanted the weapon used for the deed itself to be simple, elegant, and beautiful."
00:39:46
And in a strange twist, Twitchel's been able to feed that obsession, too. In 2017, he was allowed to join an online
00:39:56
dating website for inmates, which, you know, I find quite surprising considering the way he ended up in
00:40:03
prison. I believe it's been taken down since then. The man who was tricked into that very
00:40:08
bad date in Twitchel's garage, Gil Tetro, continues to be haunted by the experience.
00:40:16
We caught up with him recently. I still think about the paired up hockey mask. I still think about the stun gun
00:40:28
and the fight for my life. Mark Twitchell cannot be rehabilitated. This is who he is.
00:40:39
Action. And for Mark Twitchell, the aspiring filmmaker, there may be one final plot
00:40:45
twist. Author Steve Liibuan sold the rights to his book, The Devil Cinema, to a film company. Twitchel's story may be
00:40:55
coming to the big screen. A son with secrets. He just lied to everybody. His parents vanish. You know, cars go
00:41:08
off the road. Things happen. What happened to the Haldersons? Not making any sense. And it's taking
00:41:13
weirder and weirder turns. Nobody saw this coming. 48 hours crime time double feature
00:41:19
continues next on CBS. [Music]