In 2008, 38-year-old John Altinger emailed his friends that he was taking off to Costa Rica for a couple of months with a woman he just met. His friends were shocked by this turn of events. One refused to believe it and tried to find out what happened to John. Listen to the story of how good friends stopped Mark Twitchel. A budding serial killer who fancied himself after the television character Dexter.
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TuneInA Strange Email
On Oct 13th, 2008, friends of 38-year-old John “Johnny” Altinger received an email from him telling them that he had met the woman of his dreams, a woman named Jen and that they were leaving on an impromptu trip to Costa Rica. They would be spending the fall/winter at her home there and wouldn’t be back until December.
To all of Johnny’s friends, the email was very strange. Not only did they all receive identical messages but some of them even received multiple emails with the same thing. On top of that, it was very formal and didn’t sound like Johnny. One of his friends, Debra Teichroeb, found it especially disturbing because he always called her “sunshine” in his messages, but not this time.
He also sent a resignation email to work, but never responded when they asked where to send his last paycheck.
A few days after she got the e-mail about the trip to Costa Rica, Debra saw a status update for Altinger on MSN messenger. It said: “I’ve got a one-way ticket to heaven and I’m not coming back.”
Johnny’s friend Dale reached out to the police within a few days. They told him they needed more evidence that Johnny was missing, but they agreed to take a statement from Dale. The police told him that the officer would meet him to go over the facts, but the officer never showed up.
Johnny’s Friends Try To Figure Out What Happened
The friends went to his apartment trying to find him or any indication of what had happened. They broke into his apartment, but he wasn’t there. They searched the apartment but it looked completely normal, nothing was out of place. When they looked closer and went through his things, they found his passport, suitcase and shaving kit. All items which he would have taken with him. There was also uncovered food and dirty dishes which he wouldn’t have been left either.
His friends also noticed that his motorcycle was left outside uncovered. He never would have left if he was going somewhere, he would have asked his friend Dale to store it.
The group then went to the Edmonton police to report a missing person. A week after he was last heard from the police finally began investigating.
Edmonton has a 67% higher crime rate than average and a 30% high violent crime rate. This means an adult male going “missing” after sending emails was not the top priority.
John “Johnny” Altinger
John was born in April 1970. He was named Johnny because his older brother Gary, who was 7 at the time, wanted him to be Baby Johnny. He was always very tech-savvy and in the 80s was part of a bulletin board system or BBS, an early version of an online community. As he got older, his adoration for computers moved to motorcycles. He spent his weekends riding motorbikes with his best friend, Dale. John Altinger owned a Honda 500 cc and a Yamaha 1200 cc sport touring bike and treated them like children.
He was at the point in his life where he wanted to settle down and was looking for someone to do that with.
Police did take some information from his friend Dale Smith. Dale said that John was going to meet with a woman the night of the 10th. Her name was Jen and they met on the website Plenty of Fish.
Dale said that he was eerie about the meeting because she didn’t give a clear address or public place to meet. She had sent directions and asked him to meet her at the back of a garage. Dale was so uneasy that he asked John to call him when he got there and give him the address.
John did call when he got there but said the woman he was supposed to meet wasn’t there. There was a man who introduced himself as a filmmaker and was using the garage as a type of sound stage. Johnny left but emailed Dale about an hour later saying, “She’s home now. I’m heading over again. HEHE!”
Police Begin Investigation
That was the last that Dale heard from John and they were supposed to meet on the 12th for a motorcycle lesson but John never showed up. Dale called and texted multiple times, but never got a response.
Police began to investigate. They first checked local airports looking for his red Mazda 6. Then they checked flight rosters for his name, but nothing came up.
They then checked the address Dale had gotten from John and found the garage. When they went to investigate, they found Mark Twitchell, a 28-year-old local up-and-coming filmmaker.
Mark answered all of their questions and was extremely cooperative. He didn’t see anything that night and he didn’t know John Altinger. They had been using the garage as a sound studio for 2 films that he was working on.
Twitchell agreed to go to the police station to give a formal statement, and by the time they sat down, it was 3 am. He was happy to provide as much information as he could. In the interview, police noticed that Twitchell had a lot of energy, considering the time of night. He spoke to them about his career in filmmaking, his wife, Jess, and his 8-month-old daughter, Chloe. He also talked about some Star Wars fan fiction films he’d made in the past, and how he was now funding his films through investors.
One was a short suspense/thriller film that he was hoping to use to get investments for a full-length feature called “House of Cards.” The other was a comedy trailer that he was hoping he could get funding for as well. Everything appeared normal and police had no reason to suspect Mark had anything to do with the disappearance.
A Man With A Hockey Mask
At the same time, police were canvassing the area near the garage to see if any witnesses could give information. One couple, Trevor and Marissa, said that they had been out for a walk one evening with their dog when they saw a man running and collapsing in front of them. The man claimed that someone was coming after him and begged for help. Within seconds a second man wearing a hockey mask came running up almost colliding with the couple.
The couple didn’t know what was happening and it seemed like the men knew each other. The man with the hockey mask said, “come on Frank,” and walked back to the garage.
The couple thought they were either playing some sort of prank or setting them up for a robbery. They returned home and called the police, but when the police came by, no one was there.
When police reports were checked, this incident was the week before John’s disappearance.
Mark Twitchell Is Brought In For Questioning
A few days later Detective Clark brought Mark back in to question him about John’s car, the red Mazda.
Mark Twitchell tells them that he bought the car from someone the same day John went missing. He said a guy came up to him near the garage and wanted to sell his car for $40 CAD. The man told Mark that he had a new girlfriend who was a sugar momma and she would be buying him a new car. He just wanted to get rid of it and Mark gave him whatever cash he had on him. Mark parked the car at a friend’s place.
Police continued questioning and it was towards the end of this interview that Detective Clark announced to Mark, “there is no doubt in my mind that you have something to do with the disappearance of John Altinger.”
Mark did not ask for a lawyer, but he did choose to leave as they didn’t have any evidence to charge or hold him. As he was leaving, Detective Clark told Mark that they were confiscating and searching his vehicle, immediately.
A search of Twitchell’s car turned up Altinger’s DNA via blood on a knife and in the trunk of the car. This was verified on Oct 31st. Police then charged him with 1st-degree murder.
Don’t Forget To Clean The Kill Room
In the car, there was a yellow sticky note that reminded him to clean up the “kill room.” Then go and have sex with a woman who wasn’t his wife. They also discovered a novel about Dexter, and a search of his Facebook showed that Mark Twitchell had an obsession with Dexter and even referred to himself as “Dexter.”
The Police found his laptop, and through deeply searching the hard drive for deleted files, they found a story.
“This story is based on true events. The names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty. This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer.”
Mark Twitchell
The 42-page narrative goes into detail about 2 attempts at murder, one unsuccessful and the other a success. The document read that the killer wanted to target married men who were cheating on their spouses, but he feared that they’d be missed. Instead, he decided to focus his killing on middle-aged, single men.
The first thing investigators had to do was see if this narrative was fact or fiction. As they read, the first attack described the attacker wearing a hockey mask, but police checked reports and couldn’t find anyone having reported being attacked by someone with that description.
An Unsuccessful Murder Attempt
As a last resort, police issued a request for information asking anyone that had info about a potential attack involving a hockey mask to come forward.
It was on November 3rd that Gilles Tetreault came forward, with a harrowing story.
He described being lured to a garage by a woman he had met online. When he got there he went through the garage to knock on the back door of the house as she requested, but she never came to the door.
When he walked back through the garage he was reaching for the door when someone grabbed him from behind and used a stun baton. It didn’t completely knock him out but it did greatly weaken him. As he fought back he saw the man was wearing a black and gold hockey mask. Then he saw him pull out a gun.
Gilles stopped and did what the man said, laying on the ground and allowing him to put ducktape over his eyes. Gilles concluded that he was not going to survive this, but then he heard what he thought was a belt buckle being undone.
When he heard that, he decided that if he was going to die, it was going to be his way. Gilles got up and pulled the ducktape off. When the man pulled the gun again Gilles reached for it and realized it was plastic.
Gilles Fights Back
He fought back even harder but he was so weak from having been stunned. Finally, he was able to move towards the slightly open garage door. He was able to drop to the floor and roll under the door getting out of the garage. When he tried to run through, his legs could do nothing. He collapsed trying to crawl away, but the attacker came behind him and pulled him back into the garage.
He continued to fight back, letting the attacker punch him in the head until he could get away again. Again he rolled out under the door and using everything he had, he ran until collapsing right in front of a couple walking their dog.
He begged them for help, and the attacker came after him, but when he saw the couple, pretended they were friends and walked back to the garage. Gilles was able to use the opportunity to get in his car and get away. For weeks he was fearful and having nightmares but never went to the police.
Now the police knew 2 things, 1 was that the garage was being used for much more than a filming studio, and 2, the SKConfessions story was not just a narrative, it was reality. If Gilles was the victim of the unsuccessful murder attempt, Johnny had to be the 2nd story and it would have taken place 1 week after the first attack.
Mark Twitchell Second Murder Attempt
In the 2nd story, Mark describes an attack in which again, he lured a man to the garage, but instead of a stun baton, he used a pipe to beat the man over the head.
“I blasted him so hard blood spattered everywhere,” writes the author of the document found on Twitchell’s laptop. “He hit the floor but was still conscious.”
He says that then, Jim, the victim begged for his life. “I whaled on him again.”
Jim would not be subdued and made a dizzy, last-ditch attempt to grab the pipe.
“I wrestled it from him and that was the last straw. I pulled my hunting knife from its sheath and, watching the shock on his face as he saw the blade, I thrust it into his gut. His reaction was pure Hollywood.”
Mark Twitchell
Once his victim was dead he placed him on a table and began dismembering him. The most difficult part of the process was finding how to dispose of the body. He couldn’t emulate one of his favorite shows, Dexter, who disposed of his victims in the Atlantic.
First, he attempted to burn the body in a barrel, but he was unsuccessful. He considered throwing the body into the river but was afraid he would be spotted. But the story on the laptop ends there.
An Updated Version Of The Story Is Found
A few weeks later the IT teams continued to scour the hard drive and found an updated version of the story that describes the killer disposing of the body in a sewer with a detailed description of the area being older and having telephone poles around but not a specific location.
Police began searching sewers surrounding Mark’s parent’s house but came up with nothing.
The searches continued. Almost 2 years after Mark’s arrest police received a phone call from Mark Twitchell. He gave them a printout of a google map showing where Altinger’s body was located. The sewer that he led them to was ½ block from where they had stopped searching.
On June 4, 2010, in the bottom of a storm sewer between 86th and 87th Streets and 129th and 130th Avenues, they found the partially dismembered remains of John Altinger.
An examiner went into the sewer and recovered several large segments of human remains. Those segments, along with all the sediment, were retrieved and brought to the medical examiner.
In total, the remains were missing both arms and most of both legs, as well as the skull. The autopsy was able to determine that the description of the dismemberment in the SKConfessions narrative matched perfectly with how John’s body was handled.
The Mark Twitchell Trial
At the start of the trial, Mark tried to plead down to a lesser charge of interfering with human remains, but the Crown rejected the proposal.
During the trial, the prosecution brought forth multiple witnesses, from friends of the victim to friends of Mark Twitchell. His friends would testify to his obsession with dark material including emulating the show Dexter.
But the biggest shock of the trial was the reading of SKConfessions and the gruesome detail it held.
After the testimony and the narrative, the prosecution was able to bring in physical evidence. They found blood on the table in the garage and using luminol found blood pooling on the floor as well as a splatter on the walls and the garage door. They also found cleaning products including ammonia.
Among the items that had Altinger’s blood on them were a military knife found in Twitchell’s car, Twitchell’s jeans found in his St. Albert home, the running shoes and belt Twitchell was wearing at the time of his arrest, several knives from a game processing kit found in the garage Twitchell had rented, and a blood-soaked metal pipe.
Finally, they found a black and gold hockey mask in the basement of Mark’s parent’s house.
The Defenses Star Witness – Mark Twitchell
It was now the defense’s turn to state their case and they only had 1 witness, Mark Twitchell. Mark admitted that he killed John, but he says it was in self-defense.
He claimed that he had lured Altinger to the garage on the premise of telling him that it was all a big hoax, hoping that he would write about it on the internet and create a big buzz for his short film. He said that Altinger “did not seem humored at” the revelation that Jen wasn’t a real woman. According to Twitchell, he and Altinger then got into a physical fight before Twitchell grabbed a pipe and smashed him over the forehead. He said he then reached for a knife and stabbed Altinger to protect himself.
On April 12, 2011, after 5 hours of jury deliberation, Twitchell was convicted of first-degree murder for the death of Altinger, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole for 25 years.
Prosecutors initially wanted to charge Twitchell with attempted murder for his attack on Gilles Tetreault. He had admitted to the attack on the stand in his previous trial, but they eventually dropped the charges. The prosecutors had attempted to try the cases simultaneously but were unable to tie them together in a way that would meet legal requirements and please the court. Once they secured the first conviction of life in prison, they decided not to pursue a second trial, at first holding onto the option to reconsider within one year but eventually dismissing them altogether.
Looking For Love?
Mark Twitchell does have a profile on Canadian Inmates Connect.
Twitchell said he enjoys tennis, chess, and clever storytelling. He is looking for an “interesting, intelligent, open-minded, delightfully imperfect woman to relate to and share amusing observations with.”
“I’m insightful, passionate, and philosophical with a great sense of humor,” he wrote. “I love the rain and the music of artists like Sia, Jackie Evancho, and Arcade Fire.”
Resources
- Mark Twitchell – Wikipedia
- Mark Twitchell: A closer look at the evidence
- The Murder of Johnny Altinger. Dexter Morgan would not have approved… | by AW Naves | Dark Aberrations
- Mark-Twitchell
- ‘Dexter killer’ Mark Twitchell among members of dating site for inmates
- Mark Twitchell