The Man in the Black Mask - House of Cards

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

At trial, Twitchell plays a surprising card. Will he walk, or will everything come tumbling down?  

Winter was coming to Edmonton. They were running out of time. What had begun as a simple missing persons investigation seemed to have uncovered something unthinkable. Like a real-life version of that TV show, Dexter. And now, a race against winter as the detectives search for a body. All because they believed the bizarre stories

they'd unearthed from Mark Twitchell's computer. SK Confessions. You gotta realize the computer guys, when they went through the computer, it was a deleted file. He tried to get rid of the file. He tried to get rid of it. Trouble was, Detective Bill Clark and the others knew they were missing something,

and it might be the most important bit of the awful story. They still didn't know how it ended. That bit was gone, cut off, buried even deeper in Twitchell's computer. Maybe irretrievable. We're going to computer guys. Come on, you got to pull up more. We're right to the point of where he dumped the body and we don't know the location. So one more time, as each day grew a little colder, frost in the morning, flurries in the afternoon, the computer people dug through the entrails

of Mark Twitchell's laptop. And then, a week or two later, finally, there it was. There was more. It was the ghoulish end of a very strange story. Here is how it began. The beginning of the end. I grabbed a banana nut muffin, a double chocolate donut, and a cafe mocha on the way to my destination.

But then, but now, the horrid, the tone changed. I drove back to the kill room to finish destroying evidence. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is The Man in the Black Mask, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 6. House of Cards. The sewer, of course. How obvious. Six simple words from the erased files on Mark Twitchell's laptop. Words that told Detective Bill Clark that he must surely have been right all along. Mark Twitchell's scary story wasn't fiction. He must have murdered the missing

Johnny Altinger and must have dumped his body in an Edmonton sewer. Everything's turned out to be true, so we got no reason to disbelieve this. And here, as read by the voice actor, the recovered lines of SK Confessions. I chose the eastern suburb of the city to dump my waste. The housing in this part of my world was also older, done back in the 60s and 70s when there were back alleys to be had. Within moments, I found exactly what I was looking for. A manhole cover placed off to the side behind a power pole. I parked in an empty driveway and popped the trunk. And just like that, Bill Clark knew. He could picture the neighborhood.

He knew it well. He'd been there many times. It was where Mark Twitchell's parents lived. This block area matches the diary, the SK Confessions with the telephone poles, the sewers. But the author of SK Confessions didn't say which sewer drain he used, and there were many, of course. So many that police had to bring in city maintenance workers

to help them search. City crews actually pulled all these sewers, all these... All the covers. All the covers, pulled them off. They had crews go down, search each one, and they sent cameras down the lines where they actually go down the lines and they snake them down,

and having a look, they found nothing. But on went Bill Clark, like a pit bull in search of a bone. I'd be out with a flashlight looking down, and now I can't see nothing. If it was really dicey, you couldn't see down, we'd call the city crews in. But the whole notion that Altinger's body

was dumped down a sewer drain in some back alley was, in the end, information that was just enough, yet not enough. Winter descended. Back alleys filled with snow. The search for Johnny Altinger petered out, and by spring was over for good.

After the snow melted, I thought, geez, if he's in the sewer, he's going to wash away. You know, the amount of snow we get here, and in the spring runoff, we thought there was little hope now. Had they been, those detectives, like Don Quixote, been tilting at windmills? So much fruitless work

for so long. And in secret, since a judge had slapped a gag order on the whole case, none of them could say anything to anybody. Around town,

anyone following the story of the movie maker and the missing man would probably have heard the theory that the whole thing was a joke, a prank that landed Mark Twitchell in jail temporarily. And then Johnny Altinger would make a dramatic appearance and Mark Twitchell would walk out of lockup with a big smile on his face. Certainly that's what reporter Steve Lillibuen was hearing. There was this whole mythology that had been built up and this idea that there was a hoax, right? That how do you know it's not a prank and Johnny Altinger isn't just going to walk

in the first day of the trial? It need hardly be said that any potential prosecution of Mark Twitchell might encounter an issue or two. What if it was fiction? What if the missing man did suddenly appear? Large is life. Among prosecutors everywhere is a natural reluctance to try a man for murder when no body has appeared. Still, prosecutors in Edmonton gradually and carefully built a case, one they hoped would convince all 12 members of a jury that Johnny Altinger really was dead and not about to walk into the courtroom as the trial was gaveled into session. Then, a year into their preparation, out of the blue, there was a call.

into their preparation, out of the blue, there was a call. We get a phone call from the Crown Prosecutor's Office telling us that the defense lawyer has some information he wants to pass on. Mark wants to pass on to the detectives. But three conditions would have to be met. One, no media can be present. Two, he will pass a piece of paper to the detectives at the Remand Center, and they will not be allowed to ask him any questions.

And three, Detective Bill Clark can't be one of the detectives. And that to me was like the coup de grace for me. It was like I got to him. Well, an offer they couldn't refuse. A team of detectives, minus Bill Clark, was dispatched to the jail. Where, without a word of explanation, Mark Twitchell handed them a sheet of paper. Mark Twitchell handed them a sheet of paper. On it was a black-and-white printout of a six-block-by-six-block section of his parents' neighborhood.

In the bottom right-hand corner of the map was a hand-drawn manhole cover circled in red, so you wouldn't miss it. And below that, there was a handwritten note, which read, Location of John Altinger's remains. If a detective is truly lucky, if he or she follows every lead, refuses to give up in the face of skeptics, sails past repeated failures, then one fine day, the suspect he or she has long pursued, might simply say, you got me. Mark Twitchell had just admitted that Johnny Altinger was dead

and that he, Twitchell, disposed of his body down a sewer drain. Poor Johnny. And which one was it? This one right here. Just the one off the edge of the alley here. Yeah. Right down here in this sewer and it matches perfectly. And which one was it? This one right here. Just the one off the edge of the alley here. Yeah.

Right down here in this sewer, and it matches perfectly. We went there much later, Bill Clark and I. Whoa. How do you even tell what the hell's down there? And suddenly, here, the horror was very real. When we looked down it and just shone a flashlight down, we could see it. You could see body pieces, a piece of the torso and a piece of the pelvis. He probably thought it would all get washed away.

That's right. I think he thought it would just deteriorate to a point that, you know, it'd be unidentifiable or no one would ever look, right? No one would ever look, yeah. Because he wouldn't find that SK confession. That's right. No one would ever look. And where were we? Just one block from Mark Twitchell's parents' place. Yet somehow, in all their searching, they had missed it. We were there. We had detectives search every sewer, pulled up every sewer in the alley of his parents' house, a one-square-block area, and pulled them up and had city maintenance workers go down.

And they stopped at the Avenue South because it just didn't quite match the diary about being an eastern suburb outside the city, the way it was described. How far away were you from the body in that search? In that search, we were five telephone poles away, half a block. Wow. We were that close. But why? Why, after keeping his awful secret for 20 months, why did Mark Twitchell suddenly decide to give up Johnny Altinger's body

and thus implicate himself in the man's death? Well, there was a reason. Of course there was. And therefore, another secret to keep, Mark Twitchell's secret, which he would not reveal until he, the would-be famous film director, went on trial for murder.

It was March, two and a half years trial for murder. It was March, two and a half years since Johnny Altinger was first reported missing, and ice was beginning to give up its grip on the North Saskatchewan River, as it made its eternal way past the very human drama about to begin at the Edmonton Courthouse. Inside, all had assembled in the courtroom. Defendant, lawyers, judge, and jury. And a gallery made up almost entirely of people who had been kept, entirely, in the dark. Remember the judge's gag order? It had worked.

Which meant that now, the public was in for a whole cascade of surprises. Beginning even as Mark Twitchell stood at the defense table, his face an impassive mask, and his trial was gaveled into session. Reporter Steve Lillibuen. Court clerk asks you, how do you plead to the charge of first degree murder? Mark Twitchell says, not guilty. Then his lawyer stands up and surprises everyone. And he says, now, my lord, you'd like to plead guilty to the charge of interfering with human remains. And this catches everyone totally by surprise, including the prosecution.

They were stunned. And one of the things that did is this removed this myth that, well, if you're going to plead guilty to doing something with a dead body, clearly this is not a hoax. There's something very serious that happened here and you're admitting some level of involvement. Surprise number two was courtesy of the prosecutor. The discovery of Johnny's body had never been made public, nor the fact that it was Twitchell himself who told police where to look. So the police, the prosecution, his defense lawyer, everyone had kept the secret for 10 months. But it was the next revelation that made jaws hang open. They had a diary documenting how Twitchell did it. It doesn't get more explosive than that. But, and on this question, the trial would turn.

Was Johnny Altinger murdered? Well, Mark Twitchell certainly admitted to dumping Johnny's remains down a sewer drain. He never admitted that he killed anybody. Never even admitted that he was the author of SK Confessions. The prosecutors knew they would need more than that document to get a conviction. So they had diligently built a case on CSI basics. Going back to all the evidence they'd uncovered when Twitchell was first being investigated, but which was never made public. Their presentation began with the discovery in Twitchell's car. We find a knife in there, a knife with blood on it, that knife.

Visible blood? Visible blood on that knife. And that blood matches up to Johnny Altinger. In the car? He just left it in the car? In the car. Yeah, the car turns out to be an absolute goldmine. It absolutely blows this case wide open. There are yellow sticky notes that are right on the console.

One of them has a map drawn from the garage to Johnny Altinger's apartment. And in that garage, that makeshift movie studio. Also in the garage, CSI investigators found a big game processing kit. Kits hunters would take out in the bush to cut up a moose or whatever they've killed to bring them out. This is what he used and every single tool in that

kit had our victim's DNA on it. And when investigators sprayed that iridescent chemical luminol on the garage floor? They found big pools of blood that lit up under the dark lights. The garage is pretty neat.

If you didn't take a good look, you wouldn't notice it. When the constables initially saw it the first night, they never were looking for blood spatter. And he explained that stuff away, don't forget. He was telling us he was filming a movie about a serial killer killing people. Chopping up bodies, yeah. Right. After the presentation of the hard evidence, Mark Twitchell's friends and co-workers were called to testify. One of the first was Twitchell's Facebook friend, Renee Waring. He was sitting there, calm and cocky, and wanting all of this big circus show to be about him.

Johnny Altinger's friend, Deborah Peckrod, got the same impression. When I saw him in court, he seemed so calm. He sat there and just made his notes. And I'm like, wow, like he has children and a wife. And he just seemed so normal. He seemed like a normal person, average person off the street. And I was, that's what disturbed me. Marissa Guarini and Trevor Hossinger, the couple who encountered Gilles Tetreault and the masked man while out for their evening stroll, said Mark Twitchell didn't seem the least bit interested in their testimony. Instead, it was Marissa who was all tied up in knots in the courtroom. It was terrifying.

When I got up there, I wanted him to look at me. I needed to look at him. I don't know. Maybe it was just something inside me that said I need to face this guy because. Because you were still pretty scared inside. Yeah. I mean, I'm scared of everything now. But I don't know.

I wanted to face him. And he just sat there and doodled on his paper. And that was it. Didn't look out. Nothing. Reporter Steve Littlebuin said Twitchell remained stone-faced even when his own ex-wife took the stand. She's crying through all of this. Mark Twitchell's reaction was nearly blank. There was perhaps one exception.

One witness Mark Twitchell seemed to pay attention to. It was when Jill's tetro took the stand to tell his tale. It felt like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, and it was finally done. It was like, wow, it felt so good. And you looked at him. Yeah, well, he wouldn't look at me in the courtroom while the Crown was asking me the questions.

But when his lawyer cross-examined me, he looked at me the whole time. And I looked back at him. And I wasn't scared of him anymore. And then something very strange happened. They played the video of Mark Twitchell's first encounter with Detective Bill Clark. Did you not think that kind of strange? I mean, I have to ask this. You're paying $40 for a car. How much did you think the car was worth? I thought it was worth somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000. Which you're paying $40 for?

Yeah. And the emotionless defendant came unraveled. And he starts to cry, and the tears are just streaming down his face. And he's getting hysterical. His chest is heaving. The judge actually recognized that they took a break, and he couldn't get out of the room fast enough.

When he comes back after the break, Mark Twitchell is no better. He's still very upset, and he's crying. He turns around and actually faces Detective Clark, and he starts talking to him and said, I'm sorry for lying to you. Turned around and apologized for lying. For lying to me. I thought it was an act. But looking back on it, I think there's some validity to the fact

that he'd probably never been confronted by anyone before in his life. Once Twitchell took his seat, prosecutors resumed playing the tape. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that you're involved in the disappearance of John Altinger. No doubt in my mind at all. Why? I have no idea what the hell is going on. Though few in court were actually watching the screen, instead, their eyes were on Twitchell. Mark Twitchell does no better. He's crying throughout it, and actually by the end of the day, he's actually collapsed, and he's fallen over top of the table in front of him, and is just

sobbing into his notes. And in that moment, he's looking at himself, and he's looking at his own destruction. He's looking at Detective Clark, likely the first man who's ever stood up to him and called him out and said, you've been lying to me for hours and I'm not putting it up with anymore. And yet, stranger things were to come. When the defense called their one and only witness, Mark Twitchell. The room was packed. There wasn't a single seat. I think everyone was on the edge of their seat wondering what is this guy going to say?

Mark Twitchell had waited a long time for this. Nothing but time to think during his long months in an Edmonton remand center awaiting trial, and now that it was finally his turn? Right from the start of his testimony, he admitted that yes, he did kill Johnny Altinger. But then he told the jury a story. Again, this is reporter Steve Lillebuen. And he said that what he had done is he had cooked up this idea that you could blend fiction and reality so closely together

that everyone would be fooled into thinking that what's fiction is actually reality. His House of Cards and S.K. Confessions, said Mark Twitchell, were to be the building blocks of a brand new kind of entertainment, a kind of twisting urban myth, pure fiction, reality, all rolled into one kind of movie. To generate publicity, said Mr. Twitchell, he decided to create an online urban legend by pulling off a series of harmless staged attacks identical to those depicted in his movie. So that then when his movie comes out and when the novel comes out, people would go and google this and they would find out that there's this whole urban legend about maybe the movie is real. Maybe this fiction is actually reality. He called this multi-angle psychosis layering entertainment. Maple for short. It's almost like you're sitting on the beach and

there's a palm tree and there's a beach in front of you. But when you pull back, it's not a beach at all. It's actually a picture of a beach. So, attacking Jill's tetro? Well, of course that happens, said defendant Twitchell. But it was only a stunt, part of his publicity strategy. He allowed his prey to escape. But Johnny Altinger? Poor Johnny, just didn't get the joke. Didn't want to be part of anybody's PR. He was there to meet a woman. And when no woman was there to greet him, Altinger

got all worked up, furious by the look of him, said Twitchell, and attacked him with a pipe. Or so Mark Twitchell told the jury. And he's got this little knife on his belt and he tells the jury in his testimony that he puts his hand on the handle of the knife and just as Johnny is about to come at him, he's lifting the pipe over his head and Mark Twitchell sticks both his hands out in front of him

and the next thing he sees is the knife is in Johnny's stomach and the blood's on his hands. And he collapses and dies on the floor in front of him. So the only inaccuracy in SK Confessions, said Mark Twitchell, was the matter of who attacked whom. Johnny Altinger was the aggressor, said Twitchell. And he, well, he killed Johnny in self-defense. And so now, police had their answer to one mystery. Why did Mark Twitchell suddenly relent and tell them where to find Johnny Altinger's body? Because that was his prologue, a clever way to foreshadow his elaborate tale. And now the story's twist.

Its big reveal was right there in the courtroom, just like in a movie. His defense is a brilliant idea on the surface. I mean, he actually found a way to describe an entire police investigation that incriminated him to get him off scot-free. Renee Waring was following the trial online. I watched the live blog that they had, and I was screaming my head off at home. You liar. You liar. Were you afraid the jury would believe him? Oh, yeah.

Twitchell never disputed any of the forensic evidence or the timeline or that he'd been out catfishing men, meaning there was really no point in calling any other witnesses, experts or otherwise. So once Mark Twitchell finished with his testimony,

the defense rested, leaving it now to the jurors to decide which was the truthful telling of the story of John Altinger's violent death. You're looking for that one person you convince on a panel of 12 people to just have that doubt and, you know, take that doubt back to the deliberation room. Twitchell's tactic, if tactic is what it was, seemed to be working. That is, if the worried murmurs around the courthouse were any guide.

For hours and hours, the jury talked, argued perhaps, discussed certainly, behind their locked door. What were they doing? No one knew. The time rolled on and we still didn't have a verdict yet. So people were thinking, oh, maybe there's a holdout. Maybe there's someone out there who actually does believe Mark Twitchell. And then, finally, the signal was given.

And Mark Twitchell's most important audience filed back into the courtroom. Their faces as blank as the defendants had been during much of the testimony against him. as blank as the defendants had been during much of the testimony against him. Finally, the foreperson stood and gave Mark Pitchell his last review. Guilty of the premeditated first-degree murder of Johnny Altinger. Deborah Tykrob, that friend girl, the one Johnny liked so much, was relieved, of course. But was the verdict an occasion to celebrate? No, said Deborah. It was not.

I think it's just, it's surreal, you know. Surreal? Yeah, I mean, it's just surreal. You don't expect your friends to go missing, and they're really just pulled right out of your life, and you don't get to have the funeral and, you know, say the goodbyes. Later, Detective Bill Clark was in a reflective mood. I've never been involved in an investigation like this in my whole career. As homicide detectives, you theorize about how someone's died.

And there's no doubt we don't always get it right. We got a good idea, but we're never right. Here, we knew exactly what happened to John. Because he told you. He told us, you know. Ultimately, Johnny led us to it. And Mark Twitchell closed it on himself by writing all about it. No doubt in my mind he would have kept on killing.

We caught a serial killer on his first kill. But why? Why did Mark Twitchell murder Johnny Altinger, a guy he'd never met, a total stranger? Food for thought, said Bill Clark. stranger. Food for thought, said Bill Clark. I think that ultimately he wanted to experience the feeling of killing and dismembering a body. And I think ultimately down the road, he was going to try and produce a film about it. And he would be a producer who would tell his casting crew and actors how to do it. And only to himself himself he would know that he's actually lived it.

I think that was what he wanted to do. And far away in Ohio, Rene Waring, Twitchell's old Facebook friend, arrived at the same disturbing theory. I think he did it for artistic reasons. Artistic reasons? Sure. I think he wanted to see how someone died so maybe he could make a better story, film it better, write about it better. Was that why he kept so much incriminating evidence? The knives, the notes, the receipts that would later help prove his guilt. Research material. And S.K. confessions?

Well, that was a diary after all, just as the Edmonton Police Service had believed from the very beginning. And perhaps it was in those entries that he could not in the end erase that Mark Twitchell himself offered an answer to all those people who wondered why. He was different, he wrote. He simply could not feel for anyone. And so, intentionally or not,

he offered a dismal reason for murdering a perfect stranger. It was a single line at the end of that horror movie of his, the one he called House of Cards, when the killer tells his wife, The best way to succeed is to write what you know. The Man in the Black Mask is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Vince Sterla is the producer. Brian Drew, Deb Brown, Marshall Hausfeld, and Kelly Laudine are audio editors. Justin Ratchford is field producer. Leslie Grossman is program coordinator.

Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.