Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He's a Real Life Dexter - The Mark Twitchell Story

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

Mark Andrew Twitchell was a Canadian filmmaker–aspiring from Edmonton who was convicted in 2011 of first-degree murder.

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There's no going back. Our directive is clear. Hang on! Tron Aries, now streaming on Disney Plus, rated PG-13. So this guy gets inspired by the TV show Dexter and he tries to become a serial killer. Now the guy's name is Twitchell and Twitchell is a 29 year old filmmaker living in Canada and bro really really wants to be just like the serial killer from the TV show Dexter. Like he is obsessed with Dexter. In fact, he's so obsessed that one day in 2008 he starts working on a nine-minute short horror film called House of Cards that is inspired by a. the show Dexter. House of Cards is about a killer who lures a man to his garage and then murders

him. And at some point, Twitchell even starts journaling all these crazy thoughts he's having in a diary he calls S.K. Confessions, which stands for serial killer confessions. And so here he's writing down all of his evil thoughts and plans in detail. And he really gets into this idea of murdering someone just like Dexter would. Here's the thing, though. In the show, show, the character Dexter would mostly murder other killers or just like really bad people. While Twitchell, he's open to murdering anyone, anyone who he could get alone. So he clearly missed the whole point of that show. Anyway, so Twitchell gets on the dating site plenty of fish, and he starts catfishing guys

pretending to be a woman, like using a fake name and fake pictures, because he's trying to pick up guys so that he can lure them back to his garage and murder them, which just has to happens to be the exact plot of the short film he made, House of Cards. So he's on plenty of fish, and eventually, bam, he meets a guy. We'll call him G. And G, of course, thinks he's talking to a woman. And so they start chatting and they hit it off. And G thinks this fake woman is foin.

And Twitchell invites him over to hang out in his detached garage, which, yeah, sounds shady to me, but I guess G really wants to smash. And so G shows up to the garage. And Twitchell is there high. waiting for him inside, wearing an old school hockey mask like a weirdo. And the door is open, so G goes inside and he looks around and suddenly, Pow! Pow! Twitchell starts punching him from behind.

Then, he zaps him with a stun gun. Then Twitchel pulls out a pistol, and he points it at him and he orders him to lay down on the ground. Then he puts tape over G's mouth and he tries to handcuff him. But G, G, G's not going down without a fight. He jumps to his feet and he lunges at Twitchell, and he grabs the pistol in his hands and they struggle over it. And that is when G realizes the pistol is fake.

It's plastic. There's no weight to it. He can feel it. So he's no longer scared. And boom, he punches Twitchell, but his punch is weak because he's weak because he just got hit with a stun gun. And so he runs away. And once he's outside, he falls because his legs don't work

because again he was hit by a stun gun and he's weak. So now he's crawling away and he crawls toward the street. And he crawls toward this couple passing by, walking their dog. And so G is like, help, there's this dude trying to kill me. And then Twitchell comes outside in his

hockey mask, looking all suspicious as hell, and he sees these people, and he's trying to play it off like, oh, we're just playing a game, you know, goofing around. And I guess the couple believes him and they leave. But luckily there's enough time for G. to get

up and get back in his car and get away too. So I guess from here, Twitchell's like, damn it, that didn't work. But he's not done yet. And so, of course, he writes this whole experience down in his diary, SK Confessions. Now, lucky for Twitchell, G, doesn't go to the police. I'm not actually sure why. I read that he was too freaked out and he thinks that like, if he does that, Twitchell might find him and finish the job. I also read that he was embarrassed by the whole ordeal. I'm not sure why he would be embarrassed, but either way, he doesn't report it to police.

And so Twitchell doesn't get in trouble, and this emboldens him to try again. But this time, he's not going to fail. And so Twitchell goes back to plenty of fish, and there he pretends to be a woman again, and he cruises for lonely dudes looking for a date. And within a few days, he meets this guy, John. Now, John obviously believes that Twitchell's a woman, and he's immediately interested. And they start talking about meeting up. And Twitchell is like, come on.

Let's hang out in my garage. Now, John must think something is up. Like, he's smart enough to know that meeting up in a detached garage sounds a bit shady. So before he goes there, he emails a friend. And he says he's meeting up with a woman from a dating site, and he gives that friend the address just in case he goes missing. Smart guy. Then John heads over to Twitchell's garage to meet up with the woman that Twitchell is pretending to be.

And so he gets there, and the door is left open, and so he enters. enters. Once he's inside, suddenly, pow, Twitchell hits him in the head with a pipe and it knocks him out. Once he's out, Twitchell stabs him, and he unfortunately unalives him. So now, just like Dexter, Twitchell's got to cover his tracks. So he tries to burn the body, and that fails for some reason. Then he dismembers it, and he dumps the remains in a storm sewer. Then he takes John's keys and he goes over to John's apartment. When he gets there, he lets himself inside and he gets on John's computer and he starts sending emails to some of John's friends saying that he met this woman online and that they're going on an extended vacation to Costa Rica

and he'll be gone for a while but to not ever come looking for him. Then to sound really convincing, he changes John's Facebook status to in a relationship. Not only that, he also emails John's workplace and he resigns on his behalf so that none of his coworkers or his employer come looking for him. Now, John's friends, they're not dumb. They know John. They know that him randomly leaving town with some hoochy he just met and going to Costa Rica is way out of character for him. He would never do that. Plus, the email he supposedly sent isn't worded the way John would word things. Something is off. So his friends are calling him and calling him, but he's not answering. Then some of them meet up and go over to his apartment and they somehow break in and they look around but they don't find anything necessarily wrong. His keys are gone, his car's gone, his wallet's gone, but all of that seems normal if you were to go on an extended vacation Except they find his passport. How can you go to Costa Rica without a passport? So the friends keep calling him, but of course John never answers and they know something's not right and so they go to the police and the police are like I don't know Maybe your friend really did go to Costa Rica but then the friend that John had emailed about his his date finally sees that message. I guess he hadn't checked his messages in a while. And he's like,

holy shit, John gave me the address. And he goes to the police. So now police have something to go on and they start investigating. And so they end up going to the address from the email John sent his friend, which ends up being Twitchell's detached garage. And Twitchell is there and police see that he has John's car. And they question him about it and he's like, oh, no, I bought that car from a random guy. Now at this point, police don't have enough on him to arrest him, but they know something is up, and so

they keep questioning him, and his stories are all so inconsistent. And so officers end up searching his car, and inside the car is Twitchell's laptop. And so they search his laptop, and there they find SK Confessions,

Twitchell's serial killer diary. And in it, he has laid out his whole crime, in detail. And so, bam, they arrest Twitchell. Here's his mugshot. And of course, he gets convicted, and he ultimately gets sentenced to life in prison.