Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: The Dexter Killer

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

In October 2008, Johnny Altinger headed out to meet up for the first time with Jen, a woman he’d met on a popular online dating site. They had plans to meet at her place for a casual hook-up, and Johnny diligently followed the driving directions she’d emailed him earlier that day. But when he walked through the door of her detached garage in Edmonton, Alberta, it wasn’t love he found but something much more sinister.For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-dexter-killer/ 

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt. And today, I'm going to tell you a story about a man who met what he thought was the woman of his dreams, but he ended up walking into an absolute nightmare. This is the story of how Johnny Altinger fell victim to the Dexter Killer. It's a Friday night before the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend in October 2008. And Johnny Altinger is getting himself ready for a date. I mean, he's pretty excited about this date. He's been talking to this woman Jen online and by email and, you know, texting for the

past few days, and he's really into her and even better, she seems really into him. Now Johnny has already told several of his friends about the woman and about his plans to meet up with her Friday night. Now her profile on Plenty of Fish shows a beautiful brunette in a bikini on a beach. And you know, his friends are like a little surprised that this woman is into their nerdy friend, but they're excited for him. Like Johnny is a great guy and he deserves to find some happiness and have a little fun. But one of Johnny's friends, Dale, is a little bit concerned about this plan.

I mean, he's happy for his friend, but concerned because the woman doesn't give Johnny an address for where they're supposed to meet. She just gives him these really cryptic directions that have him like going through a garage and into an alley so that then she can guide him to the house without giving him her street address. Okay, that seems a little strange. And that's what Dale thinks too. But on the flip side, like listen, she's a woman meeting a stranger from the internet.

So I mean, at some point I would get it. I mean, I would probably even be this girl like, look for that big rock, go two houses down from that, get out of your car, like put your hands raised, walk slowly to the corner. And if I like you, then I'll reveal myself. So like, again, I get precautions, be weird, be rude, stay alive, but it feels a little bit off. Okay, fair enough. And if you're that concerned, why not just meet in a public place, like a restaurant

or a coffee shop or something? So I get the sense from my research that this was more of a hookup than like a full blown you're the one kind of date, if you know what I mean. And that's another reason that Dale thinks this is strange, like a beautiful woman reaching out to a random guy, again, nerdy and awkward, no less for just like a one night stand. To Dale, this doesn't add up like this woman could probably get anyone. Why is she scoping the internet to find some random guys to give random directions to her house?

It feels off. But what's he going to do? Johnny is 38 years old, he's a grown man, he can handle himself. And anyways, Dale thinks he's probably overreacting, but just in case out of an abundance of caution, he asked Johnny to shoot him the address of her place when he gets there, just in case. But that never happens. Instead, at 6.30, Dale gets a call from Johnny. He says the woman that he was supposed to meet wasn't there when he arrived.

Instead of finding his date, according to a 2011 article from the CBC, Johnny said that he found some random guy who said that he was making a movie there. In her house? No, in the garage, the one that he's supposed to walk through to get to that back alley that leads to her house. And so Dale's like, okay, that's strange, but all right, whatever. And they just kind of like hang up. Johnny was just calling to tell him, hey, this was super weird.

And he thinks Johnny's probably heading home now since the date clearly didn't pan out. But then sometime around 7.30, Johnny sends a short email saying that Jen is home and that he's headed back to meet her. So Dale kind of goes back and forth. He's like, okay, well, there you go. I was wrong. Everything's fine. He's going in.

He's going to have a great night. But he just can't shake his worry. So later that night before he goes to bed, he calls Johnny's cell. According to the devil's cinema by Steve Lillenbaum, the phone rings six times before Johnny's voicemail kicks in. Dale hangs up still not feeling great about this, but he goes to bed anyway, just hoping for the best. The next day comes and the next day goes with no word from Johnny.

Dale ends up calling a few more times and every time he keeps getting voicemail. He mentions his worry to another friend who shares a bit of his concern, but they both just try and shake it off. It's not like they talk to Johnny every single day before. Like again, they're all grown men. They all have their own lives. But when Sunday comes around and Johnny is a no show for a motorcycle ride with Dale, now Dale knows something isn't right.

Johnny wasn't the kind to stand him up and he would never miss a chance to ride, especially with his best friend. By the time Dale wraps up Thanksgiving dinner with his folks, he is determined to start looking for Johnny. So he and his wife and another friend of theirs decide to drive out to Johnny's place. Like, what if he just lost his phone or something? What if something was wrong and he's like, hurt at his place? Like it can't hurt to just go check on him.

They arrive at Johnny's place and they bang on the door, bang, bang, bang, bang, nothing. Nothing knocking, nothing. They peek through the patio door and don't see anything. Now the door is locked so they can't get in, but they go down to like the parking garage area in his building and they do see that his car is gone. But he has two motorbikes that are still there and they're uncovered. Now Dale, being like a budding motorcycle man himself, knows that if his friend was going somewhere for longer than like a single day, he would have covered up those motorcycles.

So his bad feeling starts getting worse. But then on Monday morning, this is now October 13th, three days after Johnny's date, Dale finally hears from his friend. There in his inbox is an email and Brett, I'm going to have you read it for us. Okay. So the email says, Hey there, I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who has offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation. We'll be staying in her winter home in Costa Rica, phone number to follow soon.

I won't be back in town until December 10th, but I'll be checking my email periodically. See you on the holidays, Johnny. Now on the one hand, that sounds pretty amazing, right? Like I would love to be whisked away to a tropical vacation for like two months, but Dale immediately gets that gut sinking feeling like this isn't right. I mean, first of all, it's totally out of character for Johnny. Second of all, he knows his friend hates the heat. And listen, he could have overlooked both of those things if he thought Johnny had found

the woman of his dreams. But Dale can't get himself to that conclusion because the email just didn't sound like his friend. I mean, Johnny usually ended his emails with something funny like a joke or a one liner. And maybe this is a small detail, but he also usually didn't sign his name at the end of emails. I totally get this. Like I feel like I would know immediately if I got an email from you that wasn't actually

from you, just because I know your writing style and how you usually communicate. Yeah. I mean, if you got an email that were like everything was spelled right and there weren't like a thousand dashes where comma should be, I was going to say that everything would be spelled correctly and I would know it wasn't you, but I wasn't going to throw you under the bus like that. No, can't spell. No.

And that's Dale's point though. Like I know Johnny and this isn't Johnny. Now he's suspicious enough that he's like, all right, let's test this out. So Dale responds with an email back to Johnny that says, well, you know, who's going to pick up your brother at the airport? Now it's a lie. Johnny does have a brother, but not one that needs to be picked up at the airport. And so if it really was his friend on the other end, like he'd be like, I have no idea

what you're talking about. My brother doesn't need a ride, but instead he just gets no response. Dale is worried enough by this point that he decides to call the police and file a missing person's report. But when he reaches out to Edmonton police, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, your buddy's an adult. He met a girl online, like let the man live. They're certain that Dale just needs to give it more time and that Johnny will either be

back in town or at least he'll reach out. So Dale tries to set aside his worries because the police are probably right. And we've said it on the show a million times, you just never really know anyone. And maybe this was just a side of Johnny that he didn't know, a spontaneous side, a side that loves the heat when there's a beautiful woman there. So Monday rolls to Tuesday, and according to Ben Jelinas from the Edmonton Journal, the next person to hear from Johnny is his boss who arrives at work to find an email in his inbox, a straight up resignation.

It's a short email and Johnny basically says like, thanks for everything, but I'm going to be leaving my job effective immediately to follow a new life altering path. Now his boss replies, wishes Johnny well and asks him where he can send his final paycheck. And again, when someone responds, Johnny never replies back. It seems like Johnny just vanished, ran off to start a new life, not giving a second thought to the ones he left behind. But then, just as quickly as their friend Johnny disappeared, he's back again and showing up all over the internet.

All of a sudden, Johnny is super active online, and when his friends see his activity kick back up online again, they breathe a huge sigh of relief. Johnny's posting updates on Facebook, he's changing his MSN screen name, he even deletes his profile on plenty of fish, so they figure he must be out there, somewhere, out there with Jen, happy and living his life. But then, more and more days pass, more and more days with no direct word from Johnny. Dale just can't shake the feeling that something isn't right. By Wednesday, now five days after Johnny's date with Jen, Dale decides that he's had

enough. He calls police again and he says, you're not listening to me, Johnny is missing and I need to officially report him as a missing person. Finally, an officer agrees to at least send someone down to take a statement, so Dale and two friends get together, relieved to finally have police taking them seriously. They wait, and they wait, and the cop never shows up to take a statement. What? They just stood him up?

Exactly. So desperate and frustrated, when Friday rolls around, Dale and a couple of friends decide to take matters into their own hands. They head to Johnny's place again, and this time they get through an unlocked window. Now when Dale spoke to police, they said that they needed more evidence that something had happened to Johnny if they were going to start taking this seriously and start actually acting like it's an investigation. So Dale set out to find that proof himself.

He knew that this might be his only chance. As they walked around Johnny's house, what they saw was not the apartment of someone who just shoved off on a month's long vacation. There were like dishes in the sink, uncovered food in the fridge, but even more telling than that was all of Johnny's luggage, all of his toiletries, and most importantly, his passport. Now Dale knows right away, like bingo, this is what I need to get police to finally start looking for Johnny. But before he calls them, there's one more thing that Dale wants to see while he's there.

He wants to check the parking garage again. He was hoping that maybe his buddy had been back to cover up those bikes, but everything was exactly the same as when he saw it last time, car missing, bikes uncovered. So once again, Dale calls Edmonton police and finally, finally, they file a missing persons report. And finally, a week after his date with Jen, the search for Johnny officially begins. When police start working this case, they're still very much working from the theory that Johnny met a girl, hit it off, and ran away.

From their perspective, he was a grown man. He'd been emailing his friends, updating Facebook, and they figured that this would be an open and shut case. They just needed to find out where Johnny was. So they start by hitting all the places you'd look for proof that someone was off on a beach vacation. They look for his car at parking lots around the airport. They call airlines to see if Johnny had flown in or out.

They even call customs officials in Costa Rica to see if Johnny had been through at all. But these first few calls all turn up absolutely nothing. So okay, they start getting a little bit more suspicious and they realize that they need to start making some more calls. So they start to call anyone they can find who has any kind of connection to Johnny, personal, professional, in person, or online. And one by one, they find out that the last time anyone had seen or spoken to Johnny was Friday, October 10th, the day of his date with Jen.

Now some people had received those emails that we read before, and some had seen the status updates on Facebook, but no one had like a real time conversation with him at any point since that date. And this is when police are finally on the same page as Dale, like maybe there really is something going on here. And if he's not on a beach vacation, then where the heck is he? They start asking more about the date Johnny had the weekend before. That was the last time anyone saw or heard from him.

Dale tells them about Johnny's hookup date with Jen, Jen, the stranger Jen from the internet, and police ask Dale for the address. And this is when Dale tells them like, okay, this is the funny thing. She wouldn't give Johnny her address, just these really convoluted directions to her house that included instructions to go through a garage when he got there. So police follow these convoluted directions and end up just as they thought in front of a detached garage. It has these two big roll up doors.

It's kind of, you know, run down just an ordinary garage. Nothing is standing out about this thing. Now, they can't just go barging in without a warrant or probable cause. So they start talking to neighbors instead, and they learn that the garage is a part of a rental property that includes a house as well. The garage and the house are rented to separate tenants, and neither of those tenants is named Jen. In fact, no one has ever even heard of anyone named Jen.

Police probe a little bit more and start asking who then had been renting the garage. When they find out it's a local guy named Mark Twitchell, who's been using the space as a film set, police reach out to Mark by phone and ask him a few basic questions. Do you rent the garage? Do you know anyone named Jen? Did a guy show up unexpectedly last Friday night and like all these, you know, questions that we have? Now, Mark is super cooperative.

He answers every single question. He says, I've been running the space for a film project that just wrapped. I have no idea who Jen is. I don't know anyone by that name and I don't know anything about a missing guy. Now, while they're on the phone with him, like they tried to peek in the garage, but they can't see anything inside because the windows are all blacked out. I mean, remember it's a film set. So they ask Mark if he would mind if they took a quick look around, you know, just to

see for themselves that like there's no sign of Johnny, nothing fishy's going on. And Mark says, yeah, for sure, like I will head over there right now to let you in. When Mark arrives, he and the officers walk to the back of the building to get in. But as they start approaching the door, Mark stops, holding his tracks, and he points to the padlock on the door and he says, this isn't mine. Someone's changed it. Now apparently whoever changed the lock was apparently an idiot because according to Steve Lillam Buen's book, the eyelet part of the lock, like that's the part that you loop the

lock through was attached to the building from the outside. So one of the officers just took out a key or something from his pocket and literally just like unscrewed the screws and the eyelet came off still attached to the lock. So the door just like swings wide open. Now the first thing that police notice when they step inside the garage is the smell hanging in the air. It smells like something at one point in time had been burned in the garage. And the second thing that they notice is this huge stainless steel table, like something

you'd see in a butcher shop or something like that. Now the only thing on this table is a paper receipt from a hardware store showing someone had bought a bunch of industrial cleaning supplies. Paper towels, rubber gloves, industrial solvent, and plastic sheeting. Yeah, totally normal garage stuff. Yeah, so maybe not super normal for you or I, but Mark tells them that the movie he made in this space was a horror film. One where they had to use a bunch of fake blood, like a lot of fake blood.

So he tells the officers that they use a mix of like corn syrup and food coloring on movie sets and it's super, super messy. And if you don't clean it up quickly and do a really good job that it attracts a bunch of bugs pretty fast. So he says, you know, this is what all this is about. I had to clean up this movie set. Even the smell and the receipt, nothing else in the garage is super suspicious, especially not considering that it was a film set, but they still want to get an official statement

from Mark. So he heads to the station with the police. By the time he's one on one with an investigator, it's the middle of the night, like three o'clock in the morning. But Mark is a really good sport about it all. He's friendly, confident, and forthcoming with all of his answers, trying to be as helpful as possible. Now, even though it is the middle of the night, everyone notices that Mark has a ton of energy.

He talks about Star Wars fan films that he's made, about the movie industry in general, about how he makes his living, which he says is partly from investors and partly from selling Star Wars memorabilia on eBay. And he goes on to tell the police about his wife named Jess and their eight month old daughter, Chloe, and how they share this home on the outskirts of town. Like on the surface, this guy seems fine, nerdy for sure, a little quirky, yeah. But fine. As far as police are concerned, he's not a suspect or really even a person of interest.

He's just there to answer some questions about his garage as the potential last known whereabouts of a missing person. Now, according to an episode of True Crime Canada, one of the lead investigators even watches the tape of the interview back a second time, looking for any sign in his body language that maybe Mark was being deceptive, but he finds nothing. No stuttering, no hesitation, nothing to suggest that he was being anything other than honest and helpful. So after a few hours of questioning, they thank Mark for his time and let him go.

But there is one thing that the investigators can't get out of their heads. What are the chances that Johnny had gone missing from the exact spot that this guy was making a bloody horror movie? Like maybe it was a huge coincidence. But it would turn out to be one of many, many coincidences in this case involving Mark Twitchell. The movie Mark had just made in the garage was a thriller about a serial killer. And not just any serial killer, one who targets bad guys, tortures and kills them, just kind

of like a vigilante justice type of thing. Didn't they already make a show about that, like Dexter? Exactly like Dexter. Yes. So Mark was actually a huge fan of the books and the TV show. And this short film that he had just finished shooting in the rented garage was about as close as you can get to the Dexter storyline without actually being an episode of Dexter. Like the main character is a police officer turned serial killer who, like I said, targets

bad guys and in the case of Mark's film, unfaithful husbands. And do you want to know how he lures them in, Britt? Oh my God. Does he use dating profiles? Exactly. He sets up a fake profile on an online dating site and poses as a beautiful and interested woman. And when the unknowing victim arrives at what they think is this woman's house to meet

them for the first time, instead of a woman, they're confronted by a killer. And a mask who knocks him out before torturing him for all of his passwords and bank information. In Mark's movie, the killer gets away with murder by making the victim's family and friends think that he's still alive, just off on an extended vacation. You've got to be kidding me. Right? Now what's even crazier is that the protagonist in the movie, he's a screenwriter who uses real life murder to do research for horror movie writing.

Like, at this point, police are wondering if this is a fictional story or some kind of autobiography. By now, as you can imagine, the search for Johnny is starting to get really urgent. With no other leads, police decide that the next best step is to go back to Mark's garage. It was the closest thing they have to a last known location for Johnny. But when they make the request for a search warrant, the judge says, nope, like you don't even have enough evidence to prove a crime has been committed. I can't just let you go searching this guy's garage.

And police can't really disagree on this point, but it doesn't change the fact that they need to look around that garage again. So they try a different angle. One of the investigators calls Mark up again and ask if he'll let them in again. And to everyone's surprise, Mark says, sure, come on by. But before they can even get to the garage, Mark tells the officer about a bunch of weird things that have been going on over the last few weeks. He said his car had been broken into.

A few of his things had been stolen, papers, monies, sunglasses, that sort of thing. And not long after his car was tossed, he arrived home to find his front door unlocked when it should have been locked. He hadn't seen anything out of place or missing, but he was still uneasy about it, especially since it was the house that he shared with his wife and baby. But, Mark says, that's not even the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing was what happened to him just a few nights ago. Mark said that he was sitting in his car at a gas station when a stranger came up to him

and knocked on his window and asked him if he wanted to buy a car. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, according to CBC News, apparently out of nowhere, this stranger just offered to sell him a car. And not just any car, a red Mazda hatchback, which was the exact car that Johnny drove. But an even more bizarre coincidence, Mark tells the officers that the reason this guy was selling his car to a stranger at a gas station was because he'd met a woman. And she was super rich and she was taking him away on a beach vacation for three months.

And he says, I don't need my car, she's going to buy him a new one when they get back. And so Mark offers him $40 for the car, just the amount he had in his wallet at the time. And the guy says, sure, I'll take it. Now I can only imagine the side-eyeing happening with the officers who are hearing this story. Like, yeah, you can't see me, but I am not looking like I like this. Exactly. And he's like, listen, time out. We're going to need you to come back to the station so we can get like this in an official

statement. And Mark, the ever-willing witness, says, sure, yeah, I can do that. Let's go back and rehash the story again. Oh my God. When Mark arrives at Edmonton Police Headquarters, it's late on Sunday night heading into Monday morning. They ask him to write up a statement about this guy with the Mazda, and so he does. He writes an eight-page statement.

And he outlines all the stuff that he told the officers before, his car being broken into, the house, the man who sold him the Mazda, the switched up padlock on the garage door. But now he also says that he thinks whoever broke into his car and maybe even into his house had maybe used some of his stuff because he says that supplies are missing, like specifically garbage bags, duct tape, paper towels, and it looked like something had maybe been burned in an oil drum. Now these are not rookie cops on this case. Even amateurs like us can feel the BS flowing from this guy's mouth, and the police know

a shifty story when they hear one. At this point, they've got nothing to lose, so they try and smoke Mark out. They say that they know Mark is involved in Johnny's disappearance. They know he did something to him. And they do this for hours, insisting that they're on to him. But even after hours of this, it doesn't work. He doesn't break. By the time they finish up, it's after 6 a.m. and everyone is exhausted.

Police are more confident than ever that they're on to something with this guy and that he's more than just an innocent filmmaker. But they don't have enough to hold him, so they have no choice but to cut him loose. But that doesn't mean that they just let him go unscathed. They put a 24-hour surveillance on him, and they seize both his house and his car, hoping praying that one of them would give them the evidence that they needed to make an arrest in their case. The search of Mark's house is like opening a door to the inside of his brain.

Police find Star Wars fantasy stuff mixed with movies and books about serial killers and forensic science. And you know what else they find? A published guide to Costa Rica and a stack of blank postcards. Another crazy coincidence, I'm sure. Well it gets even better, because among the many, many items on the shelves and the closets of Mark's home was a terrifying black street hockey mask. Like think the one that Jason wore on Friday the 13th, and I'm actually going to send you

a picture of it that I found in the Vancouver Sun, because it's a little hard to explain. But here, take a look. Yeah, the mask that Jason wore is actually a really good descriptor, but this isn't like a complete mask either. Like the jaw portion is gone. It's black like you said, but it also has these like gold scratch marks through it. Like stripes basically down one side of it, and the whole bottom is like missing. Yeah, like I said, the jaw portion is missing, and it looks like it's maybe even been broken,

not like cut. Yeah, it's not like cut off in like a clean way. So it's super weird. It's like very distinctive. Yeah. The most important thing though about this mask is that when police look closely at it, they see two spots that look an awful lot like blood. So what detectives were finding in the house gives them a solid start, but even the blood

stained creeper mask would pale in comparison to what they would find in Mark's car. Police found a bunch of stuff in there, including handwritten post-it notes, like a ton of them, which were full of like lists and reminders and driving directions, that sort of thing. And most of them seem pretty irrelevant to the investigation, but a couple really stood out. And Brett, do you mind reading them for us? Sure. So here's the first one, and it's a list.

It says, ship phone while it's on, parentheses return Addie of Vic and parentheses, destroy wallet contents, and use laptop general Wi-Fi for email. And then there's a second one, which is also a to-do list, and it has three items on it, which one of them was kill room clean sweep. So there's that. Yeah. Then in the trunk of Mark's car, they find a large blood stain soaked into the carpet and a steak knife that seems to have blood stains still on it.

On the front passenger seat is Mark's backpack, and inside that backpack, they find a huge military-issued knife also stained with blood, and most damning of all, they find a laptop. And while it may sound like the laptop is the least interesting thing that police find in the car, it's anything but. Because when the police tech investigators get their hands on it, they uncover two temporary files, the kind that your computer makes all the time as a way to like store and back up your work, and their files that Mark thought he'd delete it, and files that together formed the closest thing to a confession that investigators had ever seen.

The file investigators uncover on Mark's computer was named SK Confessions, SK for serial killer. This document was a full 35 pages long, so obviously we're not going to read the entire thing here, and we'll link to it on our website if you want to read the entire thing, along with the source material for this episode. But let me at least share how it starts. 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.

Like anyone just starting out in a new skill, I had a bit of trial and error in the beginning of my misadventures. Allow me to start from the beginning, and I think you'll see what I mean. Now it goes on and on, and basically the protagonist in this story, or diary, or whatever it is that they're reading, this protagonist has a wife named Tess, and a baby named Zoe. Which those names sound an awful lot like Mark's real-life wife Jess and his daughter Chloe, right? Yeah, I mean listen, I never said this guy was a creative genius, this is just what

we've got. So in SK Confessions, he writes about his first instinct to target married men who were cheating. But he's worried that married men would be easily missed by their wives and maybe even kids, which is why he ended up targeting single middle-aged men instead. Single middle-aged men like Johnny. SK Confessions outlined what he wore for the initial attack. A hoodie to help keep himself in the shadows. A black hockey mask painted with gold stripes.

Wait, are we sure this is like a story or is this literally a diary? I mean it's supposed to be a story, but I mean the question obviously is like, is it fictional at all? I mean especially when you talk about a hockey mask with gold stripes, are you kidding me and they find one in his house with blood on it? So police don't think that this is any kind of fiction. They think that it's a blow-by-blow account of Johnny's murder. In SK Confessions, the killer uses a stun gun and a metal pipe.

He preps the kill room in advance. He uses the metal table, sheets of plastic, just like Dexter. There were pages and pages of gruesome details on how he killed his victim. First rendering him unconscious, later torturing and killing him, cutting his body into pieces and attempting to burn the remains in this old oil drum, but not being able to do it without drawing attention. So he ends up driving around with the remains in the trunk, looking for a place to dump them.

And finally, he settles on a sewer where he thought the remains would never be found and he would never be caught. SK Confessions also says how easy it was for the killer to get away with murder, how he covered his tracks, shopping at different stores, on different dates for different supplies, and making new email addresses and dating profiles each time that he'd lure a new victim. Wait, are there more victims? That's the thing, so police were sure that Mark was writing about Johnny's death. But SK Confessions talked about another man too, a man who actually got away.

It says that the killer in SK Confessions tried to kill another man a week before Johnny disappeared. He lured the guy the same way that he did Johnny, a fake profile on a dating site, and when the man arrived and ducked under the partially opened garage, he was immediately hit in the back with a stun gun. When he turned to find out what the heck is going on, he sees a man towering over him in a hoodie and a black hockey mask. So this man decides if he's going down, he's going down swinging and he fights back. Somehow he escapes.

Mark, or I guess this fictional air quotes protagonist in the story, goes after this guy and is preparing to drag him back inside the garage when this guy gets loose again and runs down the driveway and into the street and right into a couple walking their dog. The attacker is totally spooked and slings back into the garage before the victim climbs into his truck and just drives away. If this is true, then it has to be somewhere in police records. This guy didn't just walk away from the situation, he reported it, right? So you would think, but no, whoever had been attacked that night had never come forward.

Police think that maybe the first victim could have been a married man like SK Confessions were trying to originally target, and maybe he doesn't want to out himself to his wife. But literally at this point, just a theory and just a hunch that they're running on. Now they do want to know if this guy is real and if he is out there somewhere. But before they start looking for this mystery man who got away, they need Mark in custody. And the only way to get him in custody was with physical evidence, like real solid proof that Johnny had been in that garage on October 10th. With everything they had found before, this time they're able to get their warrant for

the garage. And at first glance, the garage seemed really clean and orderly, but a closer look would tell a very different story. In Mark's rented garage, police found duct tape, handcuffs, garbage bags, a BB gun that was a dead ringer for the real thing, a stun gun, a long metal pipe wrapped in hockey tape, and absolutely covered in dried blood. They also found full body coveralls, industrial strength cleaning supplies, dust masks, which is pretty much like the entire Dexter Morgan wardrobe.

They also found in the garage a game processing kit, which probably isn't that creepy or damning if you live in the country and actually hunt for food, because the knives and tools within that kit are used to butcher large animals. But they knew that Mark wasn't a hunter, which made this find even more chilling. And here's the thing about everything they found. According to the Red Deer Advocate, everything in the garage, and I mean everything, was covered in blood, including every single tool in that game processing kit. The blood spatter evidence suggested that someone had been beaten to death with many

blows from many different directions. Police guessed that the weapon had been the steel pipe covered in hockey tape, and the blood evidence corroborated that. So finally, on October 31st, 2008, Mark Twitchell is arrested and charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder. Can they charge you with both of those charges in Canada? So I know it's a little confusing right on the face of things, and I think the public was probably a little bit confused too, because at this point, all they'd ever heard about

was Johnny. But during the press conference, when they're announcing the arrest, the officer holds up a picture of that black hockey mask with the gold stripes. And this is when they tell everyone that they have reason to believe Johnny wasn't the first person to visit Mark's garage. And they announce to the public that they're looking for a victim to come forward who may have gotten away. And two days later, that person comes forward.

Oh my God. The man's name was Gil Tetro, and according to him, the attack Mark wrote about in his quote, fictional confession piece was entirely accurate. Did he ever say why he didn't report the crime? Honestly, he was embarrassed. In a Toronto Sun article from 2017, Gil said that he was embarrassed that he'd even been tricked by someone on the internet. And when he found out that Johnny died in the same place under the same circumstances

just one week later, he realized how lucky he really was. By mid-November, Mark's wife Jess had filed for divorce. She hadn't seen or spoken to Mark since the day that their home had been seized by police. In the month or so since, she had learned that her husband had been unfaithful and that he'd been sleeping with his ex-girlfriend and talking to other women online as well. Jess also learned that her husband had been lying about his day job, which he'd quit apparently several months before. And instead of going to work, he spent all day at his rental garage or in his parents'

house while they were at work or just in random coffee shops. But here's the crazy part, he still left in the morning and came home at night on the same schedule as always, so she had no idea. But can we just add a life rule here? Sure, but it kind of sounds like rule number one, you never know anyone ever. Yes, definitely, but also I feel like any time I've heard about this happening of people lying about having a job and putting on the whole charade of going to work, there was always some real dark stuff happening behind that.

So spouse, partner, roommate, if you're ever suspicious, maybe just give work a call, ask for them, if the operator says they'll connect you like hang up super fast so your loved one doesn't know that you're a crazy crime junkie. And if the operator doesn't have them there, well, then being a crazy crime junkie just paid off. I'm totally with you. We've seen this happen a lot of times in different cases, but I'm always baffled on how they can pull it off, not just the ruse, but they have bills to pay and stuff, right?

Well, that's the thing, he did have bills to pay, but he'd been paying all the bills and like building his garage kill room with money that he'd secured from investors for his next film project. And like I have no idea what his investors thought about this, like can you even imagine just like watching the news and being like, oh my God, I gave this guy money for an indie film and he used my money. Murdered someone. Yeah, to murder someone.

So police and prosecutors were building a rock solid case against Mark. They had mountains of physical evidence, a victim who survived and escaped, and a 35-page written confession that they were never supposed to see. But there's one thing that they still didn't have, one important thing, Johnny. Police spent months combing Edmonton for Johnny's remains. They checked every sewer that matched the description in the SK Confessions and every time they came up empty-handed. It wasn't until June 2010, nearly two years after Johnny first went missing, that Mark

finally led detectives to Johnny's remains. What they found at the bottom of the sewer grate would leave absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that Mark Twitchell was a monster who deserved to be behind bars. Police uncovered about half of Johnny's remains that day, and the rest likely washed away over time. What bones they did find showed clear signs of damage. I mean, there was cutting marks, breaking, and sawing. Do we know what made Mark change his mind and finally tell police where he'd put Johnny's

body? That's my idea. As far as I can tell, no one knows for sure. Most people involved in the case think that he was probably trying to clear his conscience and maybe trying to give Johnny's family some closure, but truthfully, he's never explicitly said. Even on the day that he finally told them, he didn't even really tell them, meaning that he didn't say anything.

There was no talking at all during the meeting between Mark, his lawyer, and the police. He just handed over a sheet of paper with a Google Maps on it, and it said, location of Johnny Alzheimer's remains, like handwritten at the bottom. But it wasn't part of any sort of deal or plea or anything. Yeah, no. As far as I can tell, it didn't get anything off his sentence. He didn't get any leniency. Something just made him finally say where they could find him.

According to CTV News, the map led police to a sewer just two blocks from Mark's parents' house. Apparently, he ended up there in a bit of desperation after trying and failing to burn remains in their backyard while they were at work. Now, believe it or not, Mark pled not guilty to first-degree murder. He admitted deposing as a woman on the internet to lure Johnny to the garage. He even admitted to killing Johnny, dismembering the body, and dumping it in a sewer. He admitted to all of this, but he said that it wasn't premeditated.

He said it was accidental and that he killed Johnny in self-defense. According to Mark's own court testimony, which was covered by the Edmonton Journal, what he'd been trying to do was some kind of elaborate PR stunt? He said that the attacks were meant to create buzz for his movie. Mark said that his victims were supposed to escape like Gil had, but Johnny had gotten angry when he arrived at the garage to find a man and not his date Jen. And he said it was during a fight, an equally matched fight between both men, he said, that Johnny had died accidentally.

Mark said that everything that came after the dismemberment, the attempt to burn the sentence, the eventual resting place in the city sewer was all done in shock. A series of inexplicably bad decisions from who he says is a good man who made a terrible mistake. But the jury didn't think that this was any mistake. They deliberated just five hours before finding him guilty of first degree murder. Mark was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. And here's the thing, who knows how many lives were saved as a result?

Mark wrote about his plans for the future in his SK Confessions Diary, his plans to turn one murder into many, many more. He even had his next two victims all picked out. One was a former boss and another was his ex-girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. But because Johnny had the foresight to tell his friends where he was going that night, and because Dale was persistent enough to get police's attention, Mark Twitchell traded his Dexter-inspired kill room for the inside of a maximum security prison cell. If you want to see any of the pictures we talked about in this episode or to check out

our source material, you can find all of that on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production, so what do you think Chuck, do you approve?