RedHanded - Episode 12 - The Dexter Copycat Killer

Episode Date: September 14, 2017

Exasperation station this episode as Suruthi & Hannah take you through the crimes of aspiring horror filmmaker, The Edmonton Killer and the cracking police work that stopped him in his tracks. Incapable of a single original idea in addition to a desperate need for fame, Mark Twitchell impersonated TV show character Dexter Morgan online and took on his dark passenger.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And this is Red Handed. And today we are going to Edmonton, Canada, the capital of Canada's Alberta province. And here in October 2008, a series of bizarre events unfolded that left one man dead, gruesomely murdered, and another lucky to be alive. So what happened? Well, a hockey mask wearing, urban legend dreaming, Dexter-inspired copycat killer let his fantasies seep into reality and the men who fell into his path had no idea what was about to come. So it's early October 2008 and Jules Tetra, a 28 year old single man on the search for love, is browsing the Plenty of Fish

dating website when a profile of an attractive blonde woman Sheena caught his eye. Excited, Jules messages her and to his delight she replied, asking if he fancied dinner and a movie. He agreed and said he'd even pick her up. Now she wouldn't tell him exactly the address but instead sent him perfect directions on how to get there and she says, I'll leave the garage door open, let yourself in and come on up to the house. I'll just be getting ready. Jules never could have imagined what was about to happen to him in that garage just never go to their house like someone isn't following saruti's online dating tips but i also think is it slightly like it's a man he thinks he's off to meet a woman like how much danger could he think that he was going to be in even still man public place always and never a garage why and when you see pictures of this

garage later on it's not attached to a house it's like seven miles from his house the guy so it's literally like a lock-up yeah it's like a lock-up exactly and so he just turns up and then goes inside very strange behavior so he arrives at the garage and enters it was dark he goes in and starts looking for a door connecting to a house presumably but suddenly someone came out and grabbed him from behind and got looking for a door connecting to a house presumably but suddenly someone came out and grabbed him from behind and got him in a choke hold jill's managed jill's manages to turn around and see his attacker and his attacker is a man wearing a painted up black and gold hockey mask literally like friday the 13th is it friday the 13th? It's Friday the 13th. Jason wears the hockey mask.

Yeah, Halloween is my highest. Okay, it's different. Yes, it's Jason Friday the 13th Halloween hockey mask. You're right. But a little bit more jazzy because he's painted his black and gold. A jazzy hockey mask. It's such a cliche. I mean, this is what we

see throughout this case. It's literally he just wanted to make a horror film a real life thing. And it's not the first time that that's ever happened. But this is just, like, the details are so specific. No originality. No, none. So, they both just stand there looking at each other for a moment. Before the masked man pulls out a gun and screams at Jills to get down on the floor and put his hands

behind his back. Jills recounting the story in the interview later is horrifying. He said that he felt the tears in his eyes as he lay down and just remembers thinking, I never told anyone where I was going. If I die here, no one will know. Then Jills remembers his attacker taping his eyes shut. And a sharp pain. Now totally blind, Jills starts hearing strange noises. Jingling and the sound of chains. It's a scene straight out of a horror film and Jills' mind was running mad. Imagining all the horrendous things that might be about to come.

So he decides, I have to fight back. And he stands up, rips the tape from his eyes, and the attacker starts screaming, clearly surprised at Jill's actions. Jill's managed to grab the gun. But it was fake. Firstly,

taping someone's eyes shut is like very aggressive. Why wouldn't you just... And then he rips it off. That's got to be so painful. But the gun isn't even real. So he's just staging this whole thing. Yes, it was fake.

And Jules says that as soon as he picked it up and felt that the gun was plastic, that's when relief flooded through him. Because now he knew that he had a fighting chance. So Jules drops the gun and goes in for a punch instead. But this is when it gets weird. So Jules is like absolutely stunned at how heavy his arm felt and how weak the punch felt. He didn't realise it then, but he had been weakened by a stun gun. It was the pain from before that he felt.

And the attacker, seeing Jules' weakness, punches him in the head and grabs Jules' jacket. But in this struggle, Jules manages to slip his jacket off and he rolls under the slightly open garage door and tries to make a run for it like indiana jones literally like indiana jones this man is in full-on survival mode he is what can i do to get the hell out of this situation but this is when it gets horrifying he finds when he gets outside that his legs just don't work and he falls face first into the gravel i mean just imagine the frustration you've managed to get away from this person you've slipped your jacket off you've rolled under the garage door. You're out now,

outside of the garage, but your legs don't work and you just fall over. And this is when the attacker follows him and grabs Jules's legs and starts pulling him back inside the garage. But somehow Jules again manages to roll out and back out into an alleyway. And this is where he collapses again, but this time in front of a couple who are out on a walk. He screams at them that he's being robbed and begs them to please help him. The masked man comes running out but stops when he sees the couple and this is when the masked man starts pretending that he and Jill's are best friends. He's laughing and saying come on Frank get back here ha ha ha stop messing around you what would you do in that situation i mean i don't

know you would just hope that the sheer panic and desperation and fear in your eyes would translate to another human being that stood in front of you yeah i mean i would hope so but i was thinking about it during the research and i was just like what what would i do though if this man who looks like he can't walk properly sort of wiggles towards me like what what would you do if i if i was on my own i don't think i do no if i was on my own i don't think i would but this couple were there and i don't know they didn't do anything they didn't do anything the couple marissa and trevor get freaked out and they think it's a trap trying to rob them how rough is this area is this i don't know about the area but it it's kind of a fair assumption to make it's weird

behavior this guy lying on the floor behaving like that maybe you do think fuck i just want to get out of here yeah so they they quickly walk away leaving jills with with the masked man but by the time the couple walk away clearly freaked by what's happened the attacker had retreated to the garage so they they could have just i don't know they could have gone to get him and they didn't can you imagine being them though like after this so they're in the interviews afterwards and they're just like talking about what happened and you can tell that they're absolutely riddled with guilt i think it would have been so much worse had jills died but he yeah Whoops. Well, we said one survived.

Never mind. Yeah. So Jill's managed to get up and get back into his truck that was parked in the driveway. And he can see the masked man pacing in the garage. With relief and fear coursing through him, he starts the truck and drives away as fast as he can. He gets home and goes back on the Plenty of Fish website only to see that the profile has been deleted. I'm unsure that that would be my first reaction

if I just escaped a masked man. I think I'd probably ring my mum. But that is what I did. And he didn't report anything to the police because he was just too embarrassed. So he just tried to play it down, convincing himself it was just a mugging. I mean, how wrong he was.

And how little he knew what he had just escaped. Because just one week later, another man, Johnny Altinger, would answer a similar profile on Plenty of Fish and disappear. Gary, Johnny's older brother, said that the last time anyone heard from him was October the 10th 2008 when the 38 year old computer enthusiast left for a date with a woman he had met online named Jen. Gary was immediately concerned when Johnny didn't turn up for work the next day. It was totally out of character because Johnny was described as everyone who knew him as very

very very responsible. Then something really weird happened. Gary received an email from Johnny and it read, I've met a woman named Jen. We're going to Costa Rica. I'll call you sometime around Christmas. What? I know. It's just very odd. And I think that Who goes on one date and is like, fuck it, let's move to Costa Rica? Definitely

not Johnny. Because Gary knows that this isn't the behaviour of his brother. Johnny was described by everyone again as a really straight-laced kind of man he was incredibly close to his family and he was not a risk taker I can't think of anything more risky than going on a date with somebody for one date that you've never known and then moving to Costa Rica until Christmas what like it makes no sense but then that identical email was set again sent to all of johnny's friends so just that same message saying i've met this woman jen we're going to costa rica

call you guys at christmas and it sends to everybody so and this is in october so he's just like oh just chill for like two months i'll get back bye and this is when they're like oh no this is really strange they call the police but the police pay little attention because johnny is a 38 year old man who as far as anyone can tell actually contacted everyone in his life to explain that he was going away why would the police intervene only the family and friends are able to say this isn't normal behavior for him but the police i think rightly were just like there's nothing we can really do about this but desperate for answers, Johnny's friends don't give up and they break into his apartment. And what they found confirmed to them that Johnny had not run off to Costa Rica. Because they found his passport, piles of dirty dishes, all of his clothes and everything completely in place.

It was like how you would leave your house if you were just planning on coming back home a few hours later. And this time, the police listened. A veteran veteran homicide detective bill clark led the investigation he said we started with the car because it's easier to find a car than it is to find a person oh i don't like that but it's so true bill's great though bill's like a fucking super cop so they searched the airport car park that's a sensible place to start seeing that he said he'd gone to Costa Rica without his fucking passport. But they didn't find anything. However, one clue finally emerges.

Johnny, on the day he disappeared, had forwarded the email from Jen with the address to the garage to his friends. Because they had been nervous for him. Smart boy. That's what I do if I'm going on an internet interweb state. It's like, this is where I am.

If you don't hear from me, I've been murdered. I think it probably has to do with the podcast, but also just because of me being a generally paranoid person. I stayed on the bus a bit too long the other day, and I text my friend being like, if I'm not home in an hour, I'm dead. Because I had to walk a little bit further than I normally would at night time.

Brilliant. Better safe than sorry. That is what I say. It brilliant better safe than sorry that is why it's good to be safe Anna it's good to be safe exactly a bird was just like you're being very dramatic shut up you would be saying that if I was dead would you like oh I doubted her better Better safe than dead. Yeah. Okay, thanks. That can be your epitaph on your tombstone. Better safe than dead is what Anna always said. And sadly, she didn't live up to it this time round. And now she's dead. That's quite long, though. I think they'll charge too much to get that engraved on your tomb.

I'll work on it. I'll work on it. I like that you wouldn't give me an alibi, but you would work on my epit that you wouldn't give me an alibi but you would work on my epitaph I'd give you an alibi I can't say that I'll give you an alibi on our podcast that is publicly released and then give you an alibi be better if I told everybody I wouldn't give you an alibi and then I would give you an alibi you see the double bluff just cut this bit out but don't so yes friends were nervous. And it's the early 2000s.

I think people were a little bit more sceptical about meeting strangers off the internet. It was all like stranger danger. And then it was like, well, actually, it's not stranger danger. It's people that you know that are going to attack you. I guess even when we first started using online dating, maybe just like five years ago or whatever, there was so much stigma attached to it. You know, if I had a date from a guy I met online, I was definitely lying to all my friends saying how I'd met him. Like, oh, I met him at a party. Not, oh, I was sat at home in my pyjamas eating like plates of like melted cheese and toast while I was looking for a guy online. And that's how I

found him. But then I think in the 2000s, yeah, I think people were a bit more nervous. I don't feel nervous at all now meeting strangers off the internet as long as I meet them in public, not in a fucking lockup. Yeah, no, I don't feel particularly nervous either. So he jokingly sent this message. If anything happens to me,

you'll know where to look. I feel like if his friends had presented this message to the police immediately when they were not bothered about Costa Rica, then maybe they would have had a little bit more to go on, no? I think it was like two sets of people being involved in this. So it was like Gary's brother and then like some of his like family friends. And then it was like his friends' friends who were the ones that had, they all knew about the date. They all received the email like we're off to Costa Rica

but it was like Gary and the family friends that picked up on it straight first went to the police went to the apartment etc and then these friends were the ones who were like mate do you really want to be dating some random woman off the internet and going on a date with her and then when he would he sent them that extra message so that extra message hadn't gone to like everybody so kind of think of it like two subsets. So then these guys then come forward and say, hey, we got this additional message. Right, okay. When the police track down the garage,

they find that it is registered to a man named Mark Twitchell. I am always astonished by people renting cars and hiring lockups and doing all of that shit and using their own goddamn name. Like it happens all the time. Also, you'll find as this case gone, there's a lot of people involved in this case who are just not very smart. So Mark Twitchell is a 29-year-old,

clean-cut, married father and an aspiring filmmaker. Anyone with a camera these days is an aspiring filmmaker. Oh yeah, totally. It's like those girls who, like, buy a Polaroid and, like, take a picture of an eye

and suddenly they're a fucking like award winning Instagram hero. Mark denied knowing anything about Johnny or his car, but he's more than happy to show the police the garage. And he said he had been using it as the set for a film he was making. So when the police arrive, they note that Mark says some weird things. He starts immediately talking about how the lock had either been changed or been tampered with since he'd finished filming. The police then obviously immediately think that someone else must have been using the garage so they pry the lock off and go inside. Now as they enter the police are shocked that there's blood on the walls but Mark laughs and tells the police it's from a movie he

had shot there and he says that he's been cleaning it up over the last few weeks but that he must have missed a few spots. Fucking hell Kim and Aggie would have him for breakfast. But already Bill Clark can tell that something isn't right but it's a hard situation. The police don't really know what they're looking for. They are just they just potentially have a missing persons case, but since the address led them to the garage, they do follow up. And Mark is really cooperative. He comes to the police station and allows himself to be questioned for hours. He was eager to help. In the interview tapes, you can see he's relaxed, open, affable.

He came from a good home, no history of violence, but he was a complete and utter insufferable bragger. He just kept talking about his films and how much money he had invested in his work. Millions and millions of dollars, according to him. I'm calling bullshit on that one. I think it was probably like his gran gave him like 50 quid. So what had he been filming in his garage? It was like shit looking like a suspense slasher called house of cards featuring a hockey mask wearing killer who lures a man into a garage and kills him sound familiar that's also basically the entire plot of the story how is that a suspense slasher or an interesting movie and why is it

called house of cards you can't lift the title of a political series and then nick the plot, well, nick the aesthetics from Friday the 13th and call yourself a filmmaker. That's just plagiarism. Definitely. But was House of Cards out in 2008? Probably, right?

The political drama. I'm sure we'll have people writing in to correct us. I feel like it's been going for a long time. He was just like, lacked so much origin he was just like a like a magpie he just picked things off of other pieces of work other horror films other thriller films and just like put it together and it's an amalgamation and passed it across as his own work even the only film that he did actually get quite a bit of media attention for was a film that he made before house of cards which was just literally a fan fiction of star wars oh for god's sake he's such he's such a loser i don't want to live on this

planet so the police unlike saruti and i are intrigued by his films and even question him on this and the similarities between the disappearance of Johnny Altringer. But Mark's good at dealing with these questions. He's confident. And even Clark remembers thinking that he interviewed well. He then took the police back to the garage, again being very, very cooperative. And this is when he makes a bizarre but huge revelation. He tells the police that he recently bought a red car.

They're immediately obviously shocked because they're still looking for Johnny's red missing Mazda. Mark Twitchell is now brought in again for questioning. He tells Clark that some random guy just came up to his house and said, hey, you want to buy a car? I've shacked up with this rich bird and she's buying me a new one,

so I need to unload this. And Mark says he agreed and bought it for $40 oh fuck off no you didn't who buys a car for $40 and a Mazda it's not like a fucking it's not gonna be a banger is it and who just goes up to some random person's house and says do you want to buy my Mazda it's not a door-to-door salesman is it it's just so bizarre and And he said, and they asked him where the car was, and he said that he had it parked at a friend's house. Why tell them this? Because they weren't onto him about this. Because they didn't, hadn't connected the car with him. Why tell them this? It has to be arrogance. It just has to be. So he can, like,

brag about, like, when he releases his feature film and be like, oh, and I even told, I even gave the police a clue, and they were oh and i even told i even gave the police a clue and they were so stupid they didn't even know that's all it is i agree i think it's so much of this is like how cooperative he is how much time he'll spend letting them like interview him showing them around the garage telling them about the car it's like fully inserting himself into this investigation and it's that getting off on that arrogance of them not knowing what he's done foolish mark because the police now place him at the center of their investigation clark tells him to his face in the interview there is no doubt in my mind

that you did this and you can see mark in the video he responds looking shocked and just being like why like i can understand like that's probably interview technique but clark knows but as we see time and again the police had no hard evidence so they take mark's car not the mazda his own maroon pontiac a maroon car strong choice it gets better this this cracks me up so much the The license plates say Dark Jedi. What an arsehole. I always forget the States and in Canada, that vanity plates are a thing.

They're not a thing here. Like, they're very expensive. There can only be one of each particular license plate. It doesn't work like that. So if you wanted a license plate saying Dark Jedi, I would have, like, two threes and a four. Like, it couldn't be all letters. yeah vanity plates not not a thing we do here in the land of hope and glory mark was you don't believe in ghosts i get it lots of people don't

i didn't either until i came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite.

Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come.

This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. For the first time, resistant. But they take it in for a forensic examination, and in the car they find a laptop and pull off the hard drive, a deleted file, called SK Confessions, believing that the SK stood for serial killer. Now this is an absolute mammoth document, and it starts with, I'm not sure when I decided to become a serial killer, but it's a feeling of pure euphoria. And it tells the story of a man lured to a garage and killed. Clark, reading this, knows now that Mark is absolutely the killer.

But was the document just a screenplay? Or was it a genuine confession? And how could they prove it? They didn't have any evidence that this was factual. They haven't found Johnny and they don't know anything about Jules yet. But now, two weeks after Johnny's disappearance, the net is truly closing around Mark. And as the forensics handle the garage and the car, the police now start to look into Mark Twitchell himself more closely. They speak to his wife, Jess Twitchell. They discover that the marriage was an absolute sham. And that just two years into their marriage they were leading very separate lives, sleeping

in separate rooms. It wasn't a happy or successful marriage and that was clear. Mark was being unfaithful and lying to his wife. Also important to note that Jess was his second wife. His first wife in an interview described Mark as a man who couldn't distinguish reality from fantasy, a compulsive liar and a serial cheater. To Jess, he was even lying about having a job. He didn't have one. He was conning his friends into investing into his next movie and living off these funds. What? That's unbelievable.

It's so classic though, isn't it? It's like that grandiose narcissistic nature. He wouldn't have been able to admit to Jess because of the like, how incompetent it would have made him look to tell his family that he didn't have a job. And he has no qualms about conning his friends, clearly. The SK Confessions document also talked at length about the protagonist's crumbling marriage. But still, was this fact or fiction? As the police start to explore Mark's online persona, they start to see just how little Mark was even able to tell the difference. He was obsessed with Dexter Morgan from the TV show.

So he was even posting from his own social media accounts, Mark has way too much in common with Dexter Morgan. He wants to live in that fantasy world. People who don't kind of feel that control and that they have the lives that they want in reality, the internet and this kind of thing is a perfect place for them to escape and to live out their fantasies. You know, the police are still unable to kind of say, is SK Confessions based on fact? And is it a big, long confessional document? Or is it just a screenplay because they've got

him now they're like interviewing him he says it's not real you write about what you know that's why so many things are so similar like the crumbling marriage etc and he's so confident even to this time he's so confident in saying all this but again further evidence they find of how much mark twichell just isn't living in reality is that apart from just posting about Dexter through his own social media accounts he even posed as Dexter from the TV show on Facebook and this is what leads police to a very odd woman. This woman Renee Waring from Cleveland Ohio had seen this profile the fake Dexter one and decided to befriend whoever it was that was pretending to be Dexter. She said that she was a huge fan so why not? I mean apart from like the many many many obvious reasons why not I guess there are absolutely no reasons why not. Because you I mean you do get it on Facebook just like

random people from like far-flung corners of the world being like hello do you want to be my wife and like you just ignore them like I don't I would never. But she sought him out because he was posting as Dexter. And in the interview, she's just like, I'm just a really big fan of Dexter. So I thought I'm gonna, I've got clearly got a lot in common with this guy. So I'm gonna be friends with him. It's very weird.

But eventually she found out his true identity. And she said that she thought it was gonna be a working relationship because she was a writer and he was a filmmaker. But she openly admits that they spoke several times a day and that they were incredibly flirty but over the weeks their conversations got darker and darker they started talking about the psychology of killing and she said that at that time she was very upset and angry with her ex-husband's new

girlfriend and she told mark that she thought about killing her but that she actually wouldn't go through with it but the pair talked at length about how, if she decided to, how she should do it to ensure she got away with it. Mark told her, you kill her, you cut her up into little pieces, you put her in a bin bag, trash bag, and you take her out to the middle of a lake, I think they're near Lake Erie at this point, and you dump her in the middle, like Dexter would do. Renee said that it was always just fantasy talk. She never took any of it seriously. And she thought that he was doing the same. But then she said that in mid-October, she got a message from Mark saying, I did something. I crossed a line and I liked it. How fucking dark is that? That you're having like a Facebook conversation

multiple times a day with a complete stranger about how you're gonna kill your ex husband's new girlfriend what the fuck it gets weirder mark never admitted anything to her but she said that she knew that he had killed someone because he followed this up with a message telling her about the investigation being conducted and finishing off, saying that it's okay because the police won't find anything. But the police would find something, because that's their job. They find lots of things. Because Mark Twitchell is arrogant and not as smart as he fucking thinks he is, police found blood, Johnny's blood, in Mark's car.

They had him. This is it. And on Halloween, how fitting, Halloween morning 2008, whilst Twitchell is putting the finishing touches on his Halloween costume at his parents' house, is he a 12-year-old? I love Halloween costumes isn't like as much as the next person.

But why are you at your parents' house? And his Halloween costumes though, Hannah, they are so elaborate. They are like movie costumes. He spends so much time and so much money investing in these because it's like perfect for him and his mentality he wants to live in that world and it's a perfect day when no one will even question him for doing it right what did you guys to your last halloween party oh my god quite ironic i spent quite a lot of my time boycotting halloween because my birthday

is on the 29th of october and if i ever want to have like say my birthday is on the 29th of October and if I ever want to have like say my birthday is on the Friday it's always Halloween party that night and I'm like I don't maybe I don't want to spend my birthday dressed up as something and going somewhere maybe sometimes I do so sometimes I boycott but we should do something this year for Halloween send us your suggestions for our Halloween costumes I went as uma thurman in pulp fiction oh that is that is a strong one it's such a good backup because it's so easy to do but like so yeah so he's finishing off his uh his halloween costume at his uh his parents house the police were lying in wait outside and they didn't want to storm his house so they got an undercover cop

to message mark about his potentially lucrative film investment, amazing police work, they lured Mark out like he had done to his victims and three blocks from his house they grabbed him and he pissed himself. Literally. You could see Bill Clark chuckle at this in the documentary. So three weeks after Johnny's disappearance the police charged Twitchell with murder. Mark didn't need to confess. They had the SK confessions, and it was increasingly clear that it was no script, but in fact, a diary. One of the lines horrifyingly read, I thrust it into his gut, and his reaction was pure Hollywood. So he can handle that, but he can't handle being arrested. That makes him piss himself. The police are convinced that this is what he did to Johnny, but there was another account in the

confessions that told of a failed attempt, a victim who escaped. The police knew they needed to find this victim because it would provide further proof that SK Confessions was factual and provided a living witness to the crime. The police needed to find Gilles, but they had no idea who he was. After checking police records and finding no reports of such an attack, they found a clue at Mark's house. The hockey mask. In SK Confessions, the killer had worn the mask during the first attack too,

so surely the victim who escaped would remember it. And so they hold a press conference, asking the victim to come forward. Jules Tetchel was at home, totally oblivious to what he had escaped. He still thought it was just a mugging, but when he saw the police requesting that an escaped victim come forward, showing the hockey mask and the garage,

they disclosed that Johnny's body hadn't been found, but they thought him to be dead. A shock, Jills couldn't believe it, but he knew he had to come forward. So exactly one month after he was attacked, Jills walked into Edmonton Police Station and told them his incredible story. Clark said he could hardly believe it. It was like listening to a movie. But the more Jills told the police, the more it matched perfectly, word for word, with SK Confessions. Clark now knew Mark had lured Johnny into the garage in the same way he had lured Jills there with a fake profile. And learning from his mistakes with Jills, he didn't use the taser this time and instead hit Johnny over the head with a pipe. Following the death, the police believe that Mark dismembered Johnny's body on a makeshift autopsy table in the garage.

Initially thought to be a prop from Mark Twitchell's film, House of Cards. But when the forensics came back, they realised just how much real blood had been spilled in that room. In the pictures of it, in the documentary, when they've sprayed the luminol everywhere, like the whole of the garage floor is lit up. It's horrifying. And they also find at the scene of the crime a small piece of tooth and it matched Johnny. Oh, can't do teeth, can't do eyes, can't do teeth. Oh yeah, oh yes. And the SK Confessions document also just explained so much. It was like a fucking manual for the police to solve the murder with. According to SK Confessions, after the murder,

the killer then broke into Johnny's houseessions, after the murder, the killer then broke into Johnny's house and sent those emails out, telling everyone that he was going off to Costa Rica. Like it was some fucking genius plan. He broke into Johnny's house and didn't even think to take his passport or some clothes. I mean, just imagine if he had. I really reckon the police may never have taken the missing person's report on Johnny seriously. But it's just, it's a testament to how fucking dumb he is though, isn't it? Mm-hmm. It's pretending to be this like fucking Billy Big Bollocks with all the ideas, but he can't even think to take someone's passport.

Because he's not smart. All of his stuff was just ripped off of other things. Yeah, it's all just hot air. SK Confessions had also explained the killer had tried to burn the remains in a barrel but failed. He then thought about dumping the body in the river, but was afraid of being seen. So he drove around with the body for hours. And in SK Confessions, he even said of stopping at a set of traffic lights, looking at other people and loving that none of them knew he had a dismembered body in his car.

So where was Johnny's body? SK Confessions stopped with one final entry, that the killer had found a sewer to dump Johnny's body in, but there was nothing more. Clark was determined to get Johnny's body to his family, and so he took Twitchell out in his car, driving her around for hours, all the time with a camera on him, asking him where Johnny was over and over again. Trying to break him. Clark is smart. He plays to Mark's longing for fame. Telling him, you can be out in 25 years.

Write your book. Make your movie. And it will be based on this amazing true story. Just imagine. But the film needs an ending. You need the body. So tell us where it is. But the whole time Mark just stares out of the window.

He chews on his lip the entire time. He's so angry because Clark was now provoking him, telling him that he doesn't need the body anyway. There was plenty of evidence, but Clark wants to find Johnny and he's relentless. He drives Mark back around to his old neighbourhood, back to his parents' house, back to the garage, telling him that he could do one last decent thing and just tell them where the body was, but Mark Twitchell never opens his mouth. The police then have to search for themselves, spending weeks searching manhole cover after manhole cover, but no luck.

They even visit Mark in jail many times, but he just won't tell them. Finally, two years after his arrest, Mark tells them from jail that he has something he wants to turn over to the police. They think it's the location of johnny's body but shit filmmaker mark twitchell strikes again and has one last plot twist to deliver so before he agrees to talk he makes three conditions the police aren't to ask him any questions no media can be present and no bill clark and you can tell that clark loved this he smirks in the interview and he says that

that's when he knew he got to Twitchell and he loved it. Yeah, I think that's like Twitchell being like, oh, well, fuck you, Bill. Like, I know, like, I'm not giving it to you, but I am going to give it up. But really, I'm scared of you because you made me piss myself. I have so much love for Bill Clark. All the stuff he was saying before about like them searching manhole cover after manhole cover. This was like during police time. But Clark also said that he carried a torchlight with him wherever he went and whenever he was just walking down the street and walked past a manhole cover he would shine his light inside just in case. That is some serious dedication, serious love for Bill Clark in this case, like serious super cop. So when the police did finally meet him he gave them a map with a location marked on it. And it was where Johnny's body was.

And you'll never guess, it was just one block from his parents' house. And just half a block from where the police had stopped their search. And when they got there and looked inside, there it was. The decomposing, dismembered body of Johnny Altinger. The case, when it went to court, was pretty much a slam dunk. How could it not be? The blood, Johnny's blood, it was on the walls of the garage, it was on Mark's clothes, it was in Mark's car. And for God's sake, like if he's a Dexter fan, I feel like there's a good 10 hours

in the entire series of Dexter talking about how you clean blood off stuff. He's clearly not like paying that much attention. Dexter's a blood spatter analyst for Christ's sake. This is the absolute insult to the TV show as well, which it was such a good TV show. Oh, it was amazing until Deb found out. And then I was like, I'm out. Like, I don't buy this. Oh, now I'm out.

You've ruined the premise of it now that she knows. But it's again, like exactly what he wants it to be, which is like Dexter is this like sympathetic protagonist who is killing people, but you can't hate him. And he's like fully in plain sight the whole time in the police department never getting caught this is what mark twitchell longs to be but is too fucking stupid lacks any kind of charisma intelligence or anything to be able to be and also dexter was not that i'm saying you should kill anybody but dexter was killing killers this guy was just murdering innocent people the reason you

like Dexter is because he is the way he is because of this enormous childhood trauma it's so well written to make you feel for him and also it's his what is it Harry's rules that he only kills people that quote-unquote deserve it and this this piece of shit Mark Twitchell is just an absolute yeah so they obviously had the SK Confessions document and finally they had Jules Tetra who came to court and testified. His ability to confirm the truth regarding the statements in the document was

vital. And finally, Jess Twitchell, Mark's wife, testified that Mark had confessed to her that he was incapable of feeling empathy towards others. He does have a lot of psychopathic traits, doesn't he? The grandiose, how narcissistic he is. Even the people that worked on his films,

even his friends were in this documentary saying, yeah, he's a weird guy. Like he has to be somebody. He's driven by that and he's ruthless in what it'll take to get there. And I don't know, I think he doesn't have any empathy towards others, but not in a like cool Dexter Morgan kind of way.

No, just in a fucking stupid way. In a hollow way. In the end, the only witness the defence called was Mark Twitchell himself. And he said that the document was just a script. And the SK, I can't say this with a straight face. And the SK didn't stand for serial killer, but Stephen King. Is he incapable of a single original idea?

Oh my God, he's so stupid. Stephen King confessions. What the fuck does that even mean? Oh my God. Is he like ghostwriting as Stephen King? Is the protagonist Stephen King? I, what the fuck? I would really love to know if Stephen King made a statement on this because this is exactly the type of shit he goes nuts for.

Mark claimed that Johnny's death was nothing more than a publicity stunt for his movie gone horribly wrong. And the bullshit just keeps coming because he called it Maple, multi-angle psychosis layering entertainment. He said that he had just wanted to create an urban legend, that he wanted to lure Jills and Johnny out there to that garage, scare them a bit, and then the legend would spread when they escaped and told everyone about their stories. And bam!

Ta-da! Urban legend of a hockey mask wearing man who lures you out to a garage and attacks you. He said that it was all just to create a buzz around the film he said that when he lured johnny in there that he had told him it was just a plot and that johnny had become enraged at being tricked and that mark had had to kill him out of self-defense oh i'd cut him up and put him in a bag fuck off this is ridiculous the jury took just five hours to find him guilty. He definitely would have carried on.

Absolutely. If they hadn't have caught him, he would have just kept going. He was learning, improving with his kills. There's no doubt that he would have become a full-fledged serial killer. So again, two in a row, we've had great police work. Shout out to the police for stopping him

on his first murder in a really like twisted way i don't even want to call him like say he was capable of being a serial killer because that's what he wants do you know what i mean oh absolutely he was fame hungry for this he wanted to be a killer and i think he also did want the urban legend to come about because it was so much narcissism then it's like i'll release this film and i think there was something in there about like i'll do these crimes and then i'll direct write and direct this film and i'll know exactly like you know the ultimate source material because i'll have done it and it's like so authentic and real and well he's just not smart enough he's just not smart enough no he wasn't very smart

but the police were smart they dealt with this case really well jules tetra is just like the nicest man in the world when you watch him in any of the interviews he gave he's just such a sweet sweet guy and i'm so glad that you know he survived we rarely get to talk about survivors and jules survived and now you know he's married he met somebody not in a garage and they got married and now they've got a beautiful little child and it's so sad for Johnny and his family. His brother was in the interviews talking about how they'll never forget Johnny and his children. So Johnny's nieces and nephews

still have nightmares about everything because they were so close to their uncle. This piece of shit, Mark Twitchell. Atta scumbag. Ugh. All right, episode 12. Thank you very much for listening and please do rate, review and subscribe.

It really, really makes such a huge difference to us. Also, you can now join the Facebook discussion group Red Handed. Follow us on all the social medias at Red Handed the pod. I will see you next time. Bye. See you later. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into

space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now

exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance,

but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.