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Budding Filmmaker Obsessed With Dexter Series Kills Man for His Art: "Rush of Pure Euphoria"
After John Altinger vanished, details found in a 40-page story narrated by an aspiring serial killer led to Altinger's murderer, and his body.
In October of 2008, 39-year-old John Altinger, who worked in the oil industry, disappeared from his Edmonton condo in Alberta, Canada.
Friends received emails from Altinger's account on October 13 of that year, stating that he'd just met a mystery woman named “Jen,” and that the two had left for Costa Rica.
His relationship status on Facebook changed from “single” to “in a relationship.”
Altinger’s abrupt decision puzzled his friends, but “stranger things have happened,” Bill Clark, a former detective with the Edmonton Police Service, said on the "Deadly House of Cards" episode of Dateline: The Smoking Gun, airing Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
At Altinger’s residence, concerned friends didn't find much amiss. However, his wallet, keys, and red Mazda coupe were nowhere to be found.
A police investigation was launched, with Det. Clark at the helm. Authorities searched for Altinger’s car at the airport and inspected airline passenger lists, but nothing indicated that the missing man had left town. During a second search of Altinger’s condo, it was discovered that his passport had been left behind.
“There were no answers to anything,” said Altinger’s friend, Debra Teichroeb. “He just vanished out of thin air.”
Investigation leads to aspiring filmmaker
Soon, someone came forward to police, sharing that on Friday, October 10, 2008 — just three days before the emails were sent from Altinger's account that mentioned a new love interest, "Jen" — Altinger had sent an “if anything should happen”-style message. In that email, Altinger stated that he'd planned to meet a woman he’d met on a dating website.
The blind date didn’t provide Altinger with a specific address; instead, instructions were given to go to a detached garage in Edmonton. Police would later learn that the structure was rented by someone named Mark Twitchell, a local aspiring filmmaker making a name for himself around town for his independent films.
Twitchell seemed more than happy to assist authorities and offered to show them the garage, which provided the budding director with the space he needed to film some shots for one of his features, he explained. When they arrived at the then-empty garage, the locks had been changed.
At that time, Twitchell theorized that perhaps a crewmember had used the facility without his knowledge. He also said that he'd never heard of anyone named “Jen.”
“There were no signs of deception,” Det. Clark recalled of his interview with Twitchell.
Police look into Mark Twitchell
A background check into Twitchell and his production company, Xpress Productions, showed he was a well-liked, hardworking professional in the film industry, having recently been paid a few million dollars for an upcoming comedy feature.
One financial investor, speaking to Dateline: The Smoking Gun, referred to Twitchell as “a sharp, bright, young, articulate entrepreneur.”
But though Twitchell seemed to be going above and beyond to be helpful in the ongoing search for Altinger, Det. Clark discovered that on the night of Altinger’s disappearance, Twitchell came into possession of Altinger’s Mazda.
In a follow-up interview with a seemingly open and relaxed Twitchell, he said he purchased the vehicle from an agitated man mere blocks from the rented garage, and parked it in a friend’s driveway, as seen in a recorded interview obtained by Dateline: The Smoking Gun.
Twitchell told Clark that the man had told told him, "Well, I shacked up with this really rich lady... like a sugar mama situation, and she’s gonna take care of me, and she’s even gonna buy me a new car when we get back from a vacation that we’re gonna take,’”
Twitchell also said that he purchased the Mazda with all the money he had in his pocket: $40.
Clark’s “gut instinct” told him that Twitchell was lying.
Concerning details about Mark Twitchell emerge
Investigators couldn’t get a warrant to search Twitchell’s garage, though Twitchell allowed them to enter for a preliminary walk-through. While digging into his background, police learned that Twitchell was a married father of one who’d recently been been kicked out of his home for cheating on his wife, according to Clark, forcing Twitchell to move in with his parents.
Around that time, Twitchell — who'd replaced his profile picture with a photo actor Michael C. Hall, who starred as the titular serial killer on the Dexter series — struck up a romantic relationship online with Ohio animal trainer and aspiring filmmaker, Renee Waring, The pair shared “disturbing” thoughts, and Twitchell professed his obsessions with murder and bloodlust.
“We would talk about our hypotheticals about, ‘How would you kill somebody and get away with it?’” Waring told Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison. “He told me, ‘Well, you do it like Dexter because Dexter shows you how to do it all the time.’”
Waring said she grew concerned when the man whom she corresponded with daily — and who she initially thought could have really been actor Hall — went radio silent. It happened to be on the weekend following Altinger’s Friday disappearance, when Twitchell said he “had something” keeping him busy.
“I’m really concerned about telling anyone because of the implications,” Twitchell messaged Waring. “Suffice it to say, I crossed the line on Friday, and I liked it.”
On October 31, 2008, Halloween, as the search for Altinger continued, officers arrested Twitchell on suspicion of murder.
Mark Twitchell’s first-person serial killer story, SK Confessions, surfaces
Due to one of the filmmaker’s short horror films, House of Cards — which was filmed in the detached garage where Altinger was instructed to go by an alleged blind date, and had a plot that could have been ripped from a Dexter episode — Twitchell’s arrest sparked some to wonder if Altinger’s disappearance was a publicity stunt by Twitchell.
The plot of House of Cards revolved around a killer posing as a woman on a dating site and luring men to their deaths.
Inside Altinger’s Mazda, authorities found Twitchell’s laptop, which contained a 40-page document narrated by an aspiring serial killer. Titled SK Confessions, it was unclear if the first-person story was fiction or not.
“This is a story of my progression into becoming a serial killer,” the story began. “I don’t remember the exact place and time it was that I decided to become a serial killer, but I remember the sensation that hit me when I committed to the decision: It was a rush of pure euphoria.”
Real-life crime detailed in SK Confessions story
One week before Altinger’s mysterious disappearance, a couple named Trevor and Marisa reported that while walking their dog at dusk, a man stumbled onto their path and collapsed. The stranger begged for help before another person in a hockey mask came next.
Fearing it was a setup, the couple went to police.
“It’s like every nightmare you had as a child after watching a scary movie... all of a sudden, it’s right here,” Marisa told Morrison of the frightening interaction.
Following Twitchell’s arrest, casino security officer Gilles Tetro — new to Edmonton after separating from his wife — came forward to say he was the man running from the masked assailant. Det. Clark called his interview with Tetro “spellbinding.”
Tetro told Dateline: The Smoking Gun that he’d met a woman named “Sheena” on a dating site and, like Altinger, he was instructed to follow directions to Twitchell’s garage. Soon after arriving, someone attacked Tetro from behind.
A play-by-play of the attack was detailed in SK Confessions, including the attacker’s use of a stun gun and putting duct tape over the victim’s eyes. Tetro said the assailant then tried placing him in handcuffs, and fearing he’d be sexually assaulted, he fought for his life.
“I said that I’d rather die my way than his way,” said Tetro. “If it kills me, it kills me.”
The attacker produced a gun, but when Tetro grabbed it, he realized it wasn’t real. Following a struggle, Tetro wriggled out of his jacket and got away, crawling out of the garage before collapsing.
What happened next was detailed in SK Confessions: “I grabbed him by the leg as if to drag him back into the garage caveman style, but my energy was depleting, and the human survival instinct is one of the most powerful forces on earth,” the story read.
Ultimately, Tetro escaped a second time and then ran into Marisa and Trevor.
“I stared back at them through my mask for half a moment and then headed back for the cover of my lair,” the story continued in SK Confessions.
Tetro never heard from “Sheena” from the dating site again.
What happened to John Altinger?
A search of Twitcher’s desktop computer revealed he’d stored a previous draft of SK Confessions, according to Det. Clark. In the document, the author wrote about killing a victim before trying and failing to burn the remains in a barrel on his parents’ property.
The details matched what investigators later found on Twitchell’s parents’ property: a round burn mark in the grass. However, according to SK Confessions, the killer failed to burn the remains and, therefore, put the victim in one of thousands of sewers around Edmonton.
“He talks about a specific sewer; he talks about how it’s off an alley; it’s in a grassy area; it’s in an older neighborhood. He talks about telephone poles in this alley, and only certain neighborhoods up here have telephone poles — the older ones,” Clark told Dateline. “Everything’s matching.”
But months and months of searches yielded no sign of Altinger.
In June of 2010, about 20 months after Altinger’s disappearance, Twitchell finally led authorities to the sewer that held Altinger’s dismembered remains, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Clark told Morrison it was just one block from Twitchell’s parents’ home.
Mark Twitchell goes to trial
A forensic search of the detached garage rented by Twitchell turned up “huge spots” of blood on the floor and “blood spatter all along the walls” and garage doors, according to Det. Clark. A piece of a human tooth was also found.
“The evidence was so overwhelming,” Clark told Dateline: The Smoking Gun.
DNA at the crime scene was tied to Altinger. More physical evidence led them to believe Twitchell used a big game processing kit — sharp-edged materials used for field dressing animals such as moose and elk, including toothed saws and hooked knives — to execute the gruesome crime.
During the murder trial, Twitchell said his motive was for artistic gains: to blend fiction and reality into something he called “multi-angle psychosis layering entertainment,” or MAPLE, for short.
Twitchell was convicted on charges of first-degree, premeditated murder, and he was sentenced to life behind bars.
“Ultimately, Mark Twitchell closed it on himself by writing all about it,” Clark said. “No doubt in my mind, he would have kept on killing.”
Watch all-new episodes of Dateline: The Smoking Gun on Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
