48 Hours - Scripting A Murder

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Mark Twitchell was an aspiring filmmaker who wrote screenplays about murder and compared himself to TV's fictional serial killer, Dexter Morgan. In 2008, police were investigating the disappearance of 38-year-old John Altinger and discovered Twitchell's garage where he had just filmed his latest project about a serial killer. “48 Hours" Correspondent Troy Roberts reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 7/10/2012. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rolling once again. In five, four, three, two, one. Action. To hear how everything happened, it's like you're watching the movies. You see this stuff happen. And you know it's a movie, but now we have it happening in real life. Actor, you ready?

When I was first telling the story, when it first happened to me, everyone thought it was a movie. They couldn't believe this happened me. It's a crazy story. When early October 2008, Jill's Tetra was online on the plenty of fish.com website, which is a dating site. I saw this lady. She had blonde hair.

She was about five, six. She was very attractive looking. And what was her name? Her name was Sheena. Sheena. Yeah, I messaged her. She messaged me back. How about we go to dinner in a movie?

I thought that was a great idea. She wouldn't give me the house number, but she just sent me really. really good directions on how to get there. He thought, what's the worst that could happen? I was actually late, so I was driving quite fast to get there. She said, I'll just leave the garage door open for you. And then you just go in, go through the garage.

I don't think he ever imagined in a million years what would happen to him in that garage. It was dark. Then I kind of looked around for the door. She told me to go through. And that's when somebody, buddy came out and attacked me from behind. Somebody puts me in this hold, and he's prodding me with this thing.

And all I can see is it's kind of almost like a baton, and it's turning blue. Finally look back, and that's when I see this man with this painted up hockey mask. This is just unbelievable. This is what movies are made of. We're just both standing there looking at each other. and that's when he pulls out this gun.

He finally yells at me and he says, get down on the ground, put your head down, close your eyes and put your hands in the back. I didn't know if he's gonna kill me or not. He's a cold-blooded heartless killer. I started tearing up while I was down on the ground. And he's deciding that I've got to do something or die. I mean, it's a life and death decision.

All I could think about was that I never told anybody where I'd be. If I died right then and there, no one wouldn't know what happened to me. Screenplay for murder. Tonight's 48 hours mystery. I first saw him. I look back and I see this man kind of hovering over me with a hockey mask. I was just chill down my back. Wow, this is no date.

Lured to a garage on the pretense of a date with an attractive woman he thought he met online. 33-year-old Jill Tetra was now being held hostage by an apparent madman in a scene straight out of a horror film. It's built like six foot and has this black and gold hockey mask. The hockey mask-wearing man had ordered him to the ground at gunpoint. And he tore a piece of tape and he covered my eyes with it. I start hearing different things, like a jingling noise and stuff like that. In my head, it's just racing, like it's like thinking what's going on, what's he going to do? Is he taking another weapon out?

Jill decided he wasn't waiting to find out. I can't do this. I've got to fight back. So I got up and ripped the tape off my eyes. He was stunned that I got up and started yelling at me to get back down on the ground. Instead, he grabbed the attacker's gun. When I grabbed the gun, I felt the gun was plastic. This is the greatest feeling I ever felt my life because then I knew I had a fighting chance to get away.

I punched him, and I felt really weak. I'm like, wow, why was my punch so weak? What Gilles didn't realize was that he had been weakened by the effects of the stun baton. And then he starts punching me on the side of the head. Just about then, he came up with a little bit. plan. He grabbed my jacket. I jerked forward to make sure he had a good hold on it. I thought that's a perfect time. That was part of your plan. You're thinking, okay, he grabs my jacket,

and I can get free. So that's when I slipped out of the jacket, rolled underneath the garage door, and then got up, and it worked. But the developing real-life horror movie plot was far from over. And I tried to run and I'll sign my legs wouldn't work. I just fell, boom. and run on the gravel, trifling. 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 do now? I'm dead.

Gilles was thrown back in the garage, but he surprised himself and the assailant by rolling out again. Terrified, Gile ran into the alley collapsing in front of this couple out for a stroll, Marissa Garhini and Trevor Hosinger. We were stunned. Yeah, we were just totally stunned.

And what did Jill say to you? He said that he was getting robbed, and can you help me? They didn't know what to do. And all of a sudden, the masked man came back out. And then I pointed to him, and I said, that's the guy. And then the mask guy, he went around the corner here by the garage. He just watched us. He started pretending he was my best friend.

What did he say? He said something like, come on, Frank, or come on, friend. And he kind of gestured to me like we were playing. You thought this was a trap? Yeah, we thought we were going to get robbed. Fearing for their safety, Marissa and Trevor walked quickly away, leaving Gilles to fend for himself as he retrieved his truck. So I started walking back to the girl.

and then sure enough I see his feet in the garage and he's pacing back and forth in the garage. So I quietly, I got out my keys from my pocket, I stuck the key in the ignition, and then I just spit away. When Gilles went home, he discovered the profile had been deleted, and he did his best to erase his own memory. Why didn't you go to the police immediately? At first I was in shock, I said, I told myself,

I'll do it tomorrow, and tomorrow came, and then I was, um, I felt so ashamed that I got duped. Embarrassed and confused, Gilles convinced himself that perhaps it wasn't as serious as he first thought. I really thought it was a mugging at the time. But Gilles didn't know how wrong he was. Just one week later, another lonely bachelor,

Johnny Altinger, would answer a similar dating ad and disappear. Where is he? what's going on. He wouldn't do this to us. Gary Altinger, Johnny's older brother, says the last time anyone heard from him was on October 10, 2008, when the 38-year-old computer enthusiasts left for a date with a woman named Jen. Not a message, nothing. And then not showing up for work, totally out of character. John was very, very, very responsible.

What happened next made no sense at all. Oh. And when did you grow concerned? When I received that email. And this email was completely out of 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 call you at Christmas time. I just thought right away, after I had read this, that's got to be the weirdest message I've ever received. That identical strange message had gone out to all of Johnny's friends.

as well. What did John's friends do? They've contacted the police and say, okay, I think it'd be appropriate to send out a missing person. There's something wrong. Something doesn't feel right. Something isn't right. But police paid little attention.

Desperate for some answers, Johnny's friends broke into his apartment. They found his passport and they found dirty dishes and they found everything just like as if he were going to return an hour or something. an hour or two later. And with that information, then they went to the police and they said, hey, listen, you've got to do something. This time, the police were listening. Veteran homicide detective Bill Clark

was part of the investigation. So we talked about it and decided, obviously our first priority was to try and find John. You know, his red Mazda was missing. He had taken his vehicle, it couldn't be found. So obviously, that's what we're going to look for first. easier to find a car than a person. Based on the emails and they talk about Costa Rica,

the officers search all the parking lots at the airport. It's not found. Everything's turning up negative. But there was one clue that would give police their first big break in the case. On the day he disappeared, Johnny Altinger had forwarded the directions of where he was going to friends. Well, John's friends were concerned. And his friend even questioned one email.

You know, be careful. And John said, yeah, well, here's the directions. And if anything happens to me, you'll know where to look. Armed with the directions, police are led directly to this garage. He learned the garage is rented out to an individual named Mark Twitchell. Action. Mark Twitchell, a 29-year-old married father and aspiring filmmaker, had used the garage as a set for a recent movie project.

I'm glad I got the chance to work with you all, and I hope I see you all in the industry. Mark denied knowing anything about a missing man or Red Mazda, and he has no problem with the police wanting to search the garage. But he points out something odd about the lock. He had gone to the garage and made some comments about a lock being changed. And, you know, based on what I'd been told, I'm going, okay, this sounds like someone else has been to this garage and tampered with it.

Police pried the lock off, and in they all went. They have a look around and they see some what looks like blood and Mark Twitchell's explaining, oh no, that's my movie prop. We did a film about killing a guy in here and I filmed it all and I've been cleaning it up over the last couple weeks.

There were some things that were, you know, raising your spidey sense in this one going, yeah, this isn't right. Something going on here. For detectives, the disappearance of Johnny Altinger was a mystery in more ways than one. It's a missing person's case. We don't know what foul plays happened here,

or we don't have a body, we don't even know if we have a crime. Their only lead was Mark Twitchell's film set garage. Voluntarily, the amateur filmmaker came down to the Edmonton Police Station to speak with detectives. All tanger, does that name a ring of bell to you? No.

Never heard it before, no. Mark was eager to help. He came from a good home, had no history of violence, and was hardly a suspect. Action. In fact, he seemed guilty of nothing more than wanting to brag about his film career. I'm working on a comedy right now, which is a, it's actually a full-blown feature that's actually going to have a decent budget in the neighborhood of about $3.5 million. Mark Twitchell's first film project, a Star Wars fan film, had received some media buzz back in 2007.

The word has gotten around that I'm making a $100 million movie for $60 grand, and some production and directing jobs have already come my way. Chewy, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Jimmy C. Okas, an actor and screenwriter who played Hans Solo in the film, was struck by Mark's enthusiasm. He was a big kid at heart like a lot of Star Wars fans are. There's a little bit of a gap in between there. He set up everything.

We were just excited to get the ball rolling and start filming. On the surface, everything looked great. Action. But it soon became clear, though, that Mark may have had grand plans, but he didn't think them through. He was not prepared at all. He had gotten his money. He had permission to use this big studio.

That was the extent of it. This fan film fell apart. Yet reality didn't seem to dampen Mark's ambition in the least. He hears this guy saying, directing is in my blood, and I'm going to do this the rest of my life, and I'm going to make great movies. He was as delusional as any person I've ever made. in my life. He wanted to be somebody at any cost. As the police interview continued,

detectives question mark about his last production, a suspense thriller called House of Cards. The plot? A hockey mess serial killer lures a man to a garage via the internet and kills him. I mean, it's kind of odd that you're filming that kind of thing. And we end up drawn to that garage because of a missing person who's supposed to. supposedly went there.

That's really freaky too. And as soon as they called me on the phone, I get this weird chill. He looked pretty comfortable in the interview, and when it was done, and I watched it, I went, wow, that guy interviewed well. Hours later, Mark Twitchell even agreed to let officers back into the garage, where he had filmed House of Cards. Little did they know, the case was about to take an unusual turn. Detective Murphy goes, you know, and meets him and talks to him, and there's this huge revelation about, Oh, yeah. I bought a red car off a guy.

It's like I remember getting the phone call at the police station just thinking, holy crap. That's because police were still looking for Johnny Altinger's red Mazda. So investigators called Mark again. And again, he voluntarily agreed to answer more questions. This time, Bill Clark conducted the interview. So as you know, Mark, we're just here. Clark listens, while Mark tells him how he came. into possession of a red car, a detail he failed to mention when he spoke with police earlier.

This guy taps on my window, you know, 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 car, so I'm just looking to unload buying, how much do you have on you? Mark claimed he bought the red Mazda for just $40 and that it was parked at her friend's house. So what are you thinking when you hear that, that he purchased a car for $40. I just thought that's unbelievable. That's just right away I'm taking to myself,

this is a bunch of crap. The serial killer movie being filmed, the strange story about the red car. For Clark, it could only mean one thing. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that you're involved in the disappearance of John Altinger. No doubt in my mind at all. Why?

Why? But it was only a hunch. Clark had no hard evidence against Mark and was forced to let him go, though he wasn't going to make it easy. Then when we walked outside and I said, oh, by the way, I'm taking your car. And he said, he kind of fumbled for a bit and said, well, I need to get something out of it.

And I said, well, you're getting nothing out of it. We're really worried that he was going to be destroying some evidence. I said, I'm going to get a search warrant to search that car. While waiting for the warrant, police began digging deeper into Mark's background. They were interested in speaking with anyone who had worked on House of Cards, Ennerchris Heuard, whose character meets an untimely, bloody end in the film. My character was killed with the samurai sword.

They said they would have a mannequin or a dummy to run the sword through, and when I got there, there was none. I looked at the weapons, that was my first time. When I saw that they were real, I thought, this is off? I'm thinking, why didn't I tell somebody where I am? Heward left the garage film set unharmed, but rattled, And its unease only escalated when police asked him about that allegedly fake movie blood they had spotted in the garage. How much of the blood splatter on the wall was from your filming?

I said, none of the blood splatter was from us. The detective's concern for Altinger's safety intensified when they made an unexpected discovery in Mark Twitchell's Maroon Pontiac, which bore the plates, Dark Jedi. In that vehicle, we found a laptop computer. They pulled off a hard drive, a deleted file titled S-KKKK. Confessions. SK Confessions. Police believed S.K. was shorthand for serial killer.

One of the first lines it says, I'm not sure when I decided to become a serial killer, but it was a feeling of pure euphoria. SK Confessions told the story of a man who was lured to a garage and stowed to death. A plot strikingly similar to House of Cards. I plunged the knife deep into his neck. It was unbelievable.

I just remember reading it all and just was fascinated by this document going holy mackable. But was the document a screenplay or was it in fact Mark Twitchell's confession of murder? It just doesn't make sense. And when it doesn't make sense, whether there's smoke, there's fire. Two weeks after the disappearance of Johnny Altinger at a garage film set, police had sharpened their focus on filmmaker Mark Twitchell. Police cameras were rolling as a forensics team processed his car in the garage he rented. And seven miles away, detectives had been at the Twitchell home,

where they found Jess Twitchell, Mark's unsuspecting wife of two years. What I said was we're investigating a missing person. I believe your husband's got something to do with it, and it's quite possibly, you know, could be a homicide. I didn't really go into anything more, but I think that was enough. I mean, she was emotional. Police soon discovered that the Twitchell marriage was already fractured. They had been living in basically sleeping in separate bedrooms.

She was basically living on the main floor. He was living in the basement. So there was obviously troubles in paradise there. We knew that. Twitchell had been having an affair with an old girlfriend and lying to his wife about having a job. We found out that he was telling his wife he was going to work every day. He had no job.

He was getting his friends to invest in his alleged most movie-making business with his Hollywood connections, and basically Mark Twitchell was living off their money. Curiously, the document police had found in Twitchell's laptop, titled SK Confessions, also referenced a crumbling marriage and secrets. It read, I went through great lengths to bring my wife over to the comfortable belief. I wasn't cheating on her. It was basically almost like a movie script.

But what was real and what was fiction? The closer police looked, the more the lines blurred. Police discovered Twitchell spent countless hours making elaborate hollowing costumes. It's almost like at times Mark Twitchell lives in a fantasy world. But it was Twitchell's Facebook page, comparing himself to TV's fictional serial killer Dexter Morgan that really raised eyebrows. Mark has way too much in common with Dexter Morgan read Twitchell status. He talked a lot about how he loved the show Dexter. I need to kill him.

Tretel even posed as Dexter Morgan on Facebook. We all have a dark side, some darker than others. And you're not the only one to relate to Dexter. It sometimes scares me how much I relate. I mean, look at this profile. That profile had caught the attention of Renee Waring from Cleveland, Ohio. I am a huge fan of the Showtime show, Dexter. So I thought, oh, well, you know, I'll be friends with him.

Eventually, Twitchell revealed his true identity. He was a filmmaker. We are rolling. And he was working on a new thing called House of Cards. Camera's rolling. Renee was intrigued. After all, she was an aspiring writer, and her friendship with a movie maker could open doors. I thought it was going to be like a working relationship, a working friendship.

You know, we had a lot in common. So, I mean, you spoke to him a couple of times a day online? A couple of times a day. Was it flirtatious? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I'm just a flirt, you know, with anybody. Their email exchanges soon became dark. It was shortly before Johnny Altinger disappeared.

We talked about, you know, serial killers and, you know, the psychology behind a serial killer. At the time, Renee was upset with her ex-husband's new wife. And I wanted her dead at the time. But I said I couldn't do it. And hypothetically, how would you get away with it? How do you get away with it? He said, you cut her up in little pieces. You put her in trash bags like Dexter.

And since I was close to the lake, you run a boat and dump her out in the middle of Lake Erie. For Renee, all the dark talk was just a twisted fantasy. That is until she received a disturbing. email from Twitchell in mid-October. He said over the weekend he did something and he liked it. I crossed the line and I did something and I liked it. And what did you take that to me? That he killed somebody.

What other line is there to cross? Something inside my head just gave me red flags and said he did it. Renee tried to get Twitchell to confess to her, but he never did. did. However, one of his last emails confirmed her fears. There's an enormous missing person, possible homicide investigation, going on centralized around a location I've been renting for film work. So of course the police have tossed my house and impounded my car. Not fun considering they won't find anything. But Twitchell had underestimated the police. He thought he was way smarter than the police. 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 advantage to us. Adding to their circumstantial case, Twitchell possessing Altinger's card, the SK Confessions document, and his Dexter obsession, investigators finally had hard evidence. They had found Altinger's blood in Twitchell's trunk. When we got the word that the DNA matched, we briefed our tactical team, our arrest team,

and we had officers ready to make the arrest. On Halloween morning 2008, while Twitchell was putting the finishing touches on his Halloween costume at his parents' home, police were busy laying a trap. We got an undercover operator to work the internet and pretend he was going to, an investor. He was lured out on the promise to meet this guy at this coffee shop. And when he got about three blocks from his house, tactical team swooped in on him and took him down. Tough guy Mark Twitchell peed his pants. He was so scared. and it was a little taste of his own medicine, I guess.

Back at the station, Detective Clark and Twitchell came face-to-face in the interrogation room once again. As I told you that night, I knew that you were involved in the disappearance at that time of Johnny Altinger. That's changed slightly. I now know that you killed John Altinger. Three weeks after Altinger's disappearance, police charged Twitchell with first-degree murder, The once talkative movie director barely uttered a line. You didn't get much of a reaction, did you? No, he's, well, he knows not to say anything.

Talking to his lawyers, he's not going to admit to anything. He didn't have to. S.K. Confessions, which police have been dissecting word by word, spoke volumes. They were now convinced it was no screenplay, but rather a diary of murder. One passage about a knife read, I thrust it into his gut. His reaction was pure Hollywood. We do believe as investigators that the account written by Mark Twitchell in that S.K. Confessions is exactly what he did to John Altinger.

But there was a crucial part of the story they couldn't verify about a victim who had survived. It was just a huge piece of evidence because not only would it verify what was written in S.K. Convessions. It would also have a living witness. So it was paramount that we find this person. Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart starts pounding, horrors, hauntings, and mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Kailan Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of the Darkly Curious, check out Heart Starts pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

And remember, stay curious. Detective Bill Clark's fears in the hockey rink have taught him a valuable lesson that keeping your eye on the goal is often the key to victory. And now the game plan was finding the alleged victim who had escaped from Twitchell's garage. You know, one of the first things we did was check the police records, figuring hopefully someone called the police on this, and we have nothing. But police had found a helpful clue during the search of Twitchell's home. One of the things they had found was a hockey mask.

The SK Confessions talked about how Mark Twitchell had worn this mask when he attacked both victims. But we figured it was something the first victim would key on. Police soon took to the airwaves. We have some details on this male victim who was attacked and we would like him to come forward. Gilles Tetra was at home oblivious to the horror he had escaped when a friend told him to watch the news. To date, we do not know who this victim is. I believe the victim entered the garage and was attacked by another male who was wearing a hockey mask. And it's the same hockey mask that I saw. Wow, yeah, this is, this is the guy. This is what happened to me. It's the same mask,

everything. What Gilles heard next came as an even greater shock. Another man had been lured to the same garage and met a gruesome end. We have not found John Altinger's body. And what were you thinking when you heard this? I couldn't believe it. Once you find out the whole story, I knew at that point it was not just a mugging. It was actually, he was probably going to kill me. I'm like, wow, I have to go forward now. I have to come forward.

Exactly one month after he was attacked, Gilles Tetra walked into the Edmonton Police apartment and told police his incredible story. I was all off-bounds. I couldn't run. I fell down from the gravel driveway. and basically crawling. It was just an unbelievable interview. It had me on the edge of my seat.

I'm sitting there going, well, it's like watching a movie on TV going, well, what's going to happen next? But in reality, Detective Clark knew exactly what had happened next. So he dragged me back to the garage. Gilles' story matched nearly word for word what was in SK Confessions. I 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 true. After this all happened, I realized how lucky it was. Seven days after Gilles was attacked, police say Tutschel wasn't going to make the same mistake, twice. How did he kill, John? We know that he lured him to the garage in the same way he lured Jules Tetro. And then in this case, because he learned from Jules that the taser didn't work, he hit him over the head with a lead pipe. Following the narrative, police believe Altinger was then stabbed and dismembered on a makeshift autopsy table.

What was the most damning piece of evidence that you discovered? We had a luminal test done on the floor. Large amounts of blood had been spilled on the floor of the garage. Probably one of the biggest pieces, a piece of tooth that was found inside there. That piece of tooth matched up to our victim. According to SK Confessions, the killer then broke into Altinger's apartment and sent out those emails about taking an exotic vacation. The killer then attempted to burn the remains in a barrel, but failed.

He next tried to dump them into the river, but was afraid of being seen. Ultimately, Mark Twitchell drove around with it, according to the SK Confessions document. He even talked about driving around with them and pulling up beside people at red lights and looking at them and thinking that they don't know I have a dead body in the trunk of my car. But where was Johnny Altinger's body? SK Confessions described the killer finally choosing a sewer to dump the remains, but that's where the page is stopped. It was a story without an ending.

In any homicide investigation, you obviously want to bring closure to the family. So not only do you want to make that phone call saying we got the guy that did this to your loved one, but in this case we wanted to say to him, look, we found Johnny. Detective Clark hoped Twitchell would provide the final chapter. I'm going to get the car ready. We're going to take a drive. You guys were driving around and there was a camera trained on him in the back of the police car. Tell me about that.

When you read all the experts books about these type of individuals, they tend to like the media attention. So we thought, well, maybe if we drive him around and we'll put a camera on him, maybe he'll just, we'll just take him to places. Because we had no idea where Johnny's remains were at that time. So in order to finish the movie, we find the body, take it back to the people. Family. Done. Movies over.

We ride it all down. Detective Clark was relentless, taking Twitchell on a tour of his old neighborhood. And we first drove to his parents' house where he had been staying. We actually demanded that he tell us he wouldn't. Look familiar, Mark. Are we parked right on top of the sewer where you dump the body? Next stop.

The scene of the crime. So here we are back at the killing garage, the Dexter garage. Bring back any memories? You want to tell us where the body is now? I can get this over with. But Twitchell remained silent. So police kept searching on their own,

looking in sewer after sewer. So all these manhole covers were pulled off in this alley. So anytime I'd see one, I always had my flashlight with me and would get out and actually take a look. Weeks, then months passed, and still no luck. Frustrated, police would pay Twitchell many visits at the jail, at the jail where he awaited trial, trying to get it out of him. Then on June 3rd, 2010, a year and a half after Johnny Altinger disappeared,

the homicide unit received a call. Mark was willing to turn over something to the police. And right away, when I heard about I go, and he's going to turn over Johnny. But did the filmmaker have one last plot twist? Nearly two years after his arrest, Mark Twitchell was finally ready to break his silence about the whereabouts of Johnny Altinger's body. They had three conditions, though. One was the police couldn't ask him any questions.

The second one was no media could be present and no Bill Clark. So I kind of chuckled at that, so I thought I got to him. So detectives met Twitchell in jail, where he gave them a Google map to the location where they would find the remains. Just up here on the left, it's about a block south of his parents' house.

Police followed the map to an alleyway, ironically, just a half block away from where they had stopped their search. And he had marked an X, X marks a spot, and took it straight to this sewer cover here. We could see what looked like pieces of human torso down there. For Johnny's brother Gary, the news was devastating. When something like that happens to somebody you love, you don't want to believe it. because the truth is really, really difficult. In March 2011, Gary Altinger faced his brother's accused killer in court. Edmonton Crown prosecutors Averill Englis and Lawrence Van Dyke had a lot to work with.

Considering Mr. Altinger's blood wasn't just all over the garage. It was on Mr. Twitchell's clothes when he was arrested three weeks later. That's a lot of evidence. We felt it was just, like I say, without a doubt, the strongest case of the strongest case I've ever gone to court with. But you always go in with a jury trial going, you never know. Adding to the evidence was the infamous S.K. Confessions document. Prosecutors called multiple witnesses to prove that it was Twitchell's diary.

And who better to prove their case than Giel Tetro, who came face to face with this attacker at the trial? I wasn't really afraid of him at that time. I knew he couldn't hurt me anymore. How important was Gilles' testimony? One of the most important aspects was his ability to confirm the truth to the document that Mr. Twitchell had crafted. The courtroom was mesmerized as SK Confessions was read out loud.

When we actually were in front of the jury presenting that very graphic, gruesome, horrific evidence, it was a full courtroom and you could hear a pin drop. At times Mr. Altinger's family was present in the courtroom and you could hear them. You could hear their reaction. You could hear them crying. Jorrs heard a weeping Jess Twitchell, the filmmaker's now ex-wife, testified that Mark had confided in her

that he was incapable of feeling empathy for others. That was the first time Mr. Twitchell had seen her since the time he was arrested over two years earlier. Throughout at all, Mark Twitchell sat emotionless. That was until Detective Bill Clark took the stand, and the interrogation tapes were played. He watched his wife, testify, he watched his girlfriend testify with just a blank stare on his face, no emotion.

I don't know much about your life, but... Yet he's watching the video of me, and he starts to puff up and starts to cry. And he turns around to me, and he says to me, I'm sorry for lying to you, and then I put my hand up and said, whoa, Mark, you can't talk to me right now. And I just thought, oh, it was so phony. What did you say to Mark Tretcher in court? I called him a f***-be-s. And what did he say?

He didn't say anything. He would never look at me. No matter how often I looked at him, no matter how often I stared at him. No, he would never look. In the end, the only witness the defense called was Mark Twitchell. And the storyteller had one incredible tale, starting with S.K. Confessions, which he said was largely fiction and shorthand for a famous horror writer. If you believe Mark Twitchell in court, it was Stephen King.

But everybody knows it means serial killer confessions. Twitchell claimed that Altinger's death was nothing more than a House of Car's publicity stunt gone horribly awry. He called this PR scheme Maple, an acronym for multi-angle psychosis layering entertainment. He talks about how he was creating an urban legend and how he was going to lure Gilles in and Johnny in, and there was never any intent to kill him, and they were just going to be part of this urban legend, and then it would be about a guy who lured people to a garage, and they got away, that was the whole plan. Twitchell argued he had let Geel go so that he would create a buzz when the film came out

by telling people that this had actually happened to him in real life. But he claimed Altinger became enraged at being tricked and that he accidentally killed Johnny in self-defense. He actually expected everyone to believe him in court. I had a tough time not getting out of my chair and just going that sponge of crap, you know? And the jury agreed. They took just five hours to find Mark Twitchell guilty. He was sentenced to 25 years to life.

To me, he's a psychopathic killer that we've taken off the streets of this city. There's no doubt in my mind or I think any of the investigative team that he would have kept on killing. We caught him on his first one. The only question that remains is why? Detective Bill Clark is convinced that in Twitchell's mind, he thought he could make the ultimate serial killer film if he became one. I think that ultimately his goal was to produce a movie on what he had done. He could sit back while he's producing it and just go,

these guys are all acting this out, but in real life I've actually done it. For Johnny's family, the pain will never go away. I miss his intelligence, his wit, his helpfulness. If I ever had a problem, you could always count on him, and he would come and visit. You know, he'd spend some time with my kids. You said that your children suffer from nightmares. They have. They remember their uncle fondly, and they miss him.

Gilles Tetro struggles with feelings of guilt, but meeting Johnny Altinger's mother has helped in his recovery. I didn't know how she'd take to me, because I survived and her son didn't, you know, how she'd be with me. She was so nice. She grabbed my hand and she thanked, she said, I'm so happy, you're still with us.

Yeah, it was so nice. So emotional. Yeah. Yeah, that is. For Gilles, life has changed for the better. He now has a son. But the reality of just how close he came to death that day and how lucky he was is not lost on him.

If I would have died that day, my son wouldn't even have been born. I think about that all the time. I don't know if it's the willpower to live or some higher power was looking over me that day. But I thank God that I got away. Thank you.