True Crime Campfire - A Catfish, a Kill Room, and a House of Cards: "Dexter" Killer Mark Twitchell Pt 2

Episode Date: May 22, 2020

In part 1, we introduced you to Mark Twitchell. Aspiring filmmaker—though he’s stealing from his own production company and making up outrageous lies to lure investors…New husband and father—though he’s cheating on his wife and showing little interest in fatherhood…And Dexter wannabe. As Twitchell got more and more engrossed in “Dexter” and started researching psychopathy, an “epiphany” began to take shape in his mind. He believed in fate. He believed he was an instrument of it. And now, he felt he knew what fate had in store for him. He would become a serial killer. He was about to move from the realm of fantasy where he’d spent most of his life up til now, to the cold, dark reality of murder. He was making plans. And a whole lot of lives were about to change forever. Join us now for part 2 of this bizarre story.Sources:The Devil's Cinema by Steve Lillibuenhttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/twitchell-found-guilty-of-1st-degree-murder-1.998969CBS's, "48 Hours Mystery," Episode "Screenplay for Murder"NBC's "Dateline," Episode "Deadly House of Cards""SK Confessions" manuscript: https://www.scribd.com/doc/202712564/51755869-WARNING-GRAPHIC-Alleged-Diary-From-Twitchell-s-Computerhttp://www.stevelillebuen.com/crime-and-justice/the-question-of-mark-twitchell-dexter-killer/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free and at least a day early, an extra episode a month, a free sticker and more!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In part one, we introduced you to Mark Twitchell. Aspiring filmmaker, though he's stealing from his own production company and making up outrageous lies to lure. investors, new husband and father, though he's cheating on his wife and showing little interest in fatherhood, and Dexter want to be. As Twitchell got more and more engrossed in Dexter and started researching psychopathy, an epiphany began to take shape in his mind. He believed in fate. He believed he was an instrument of it, and now he felt he knew what fate had in store for him. He would become a serial killer. He was about to move from the realm of fantasy where he'd spent most of his life up till now to the cold, dark reality of murder.

He was making plans, and a whole lot of lives were about to change forever. Join us now for part two of a catfish, a killroom, and a deadly house of cards. So let's get back to Mark's new writing. Project, S.K. Confessions. Early on in the story, he outlined his plan for choosing victims. He wrote, At first, I considered married men looking to cheat on their wives.

In one way, I'd be taking out the trash, doling out justice to those who on some level deserve what they got. Which is just astonishing to me, given that he was cheating on Jess, his wife. But Schichel is so out of touch with the truth that he just couldn't see the irony on that, I guess.

I wonder how he would feel about it if Jess decided his own infidelity warranted a death sentence. I doubt he'd view that as taken out the trash, but whatever. Yeah, of course not. I love that he was like, hmm, I can't find any murderers because I don't have the same access to criminal databases as Dexter does. What's the next closest thing? I think it's cheaters. Cheaters, exactly. But he quickly ruled that out anyway, writing, people that are expected home at a certain hour tend to get reported as missing, and there's other factors that would lead to an investigation I didn't want.

No, I had to choose people whose entire lives I could infiltrate and eliminate evidence of my existence from all levels. Oh, boy. So we can already tell this is going to be a shit show, can't we, campers? Okay, rule one of a smart murder, don't try to get artsy. Okay, what's that acronym, kiss, keep it simple, stupid? Apparently, Twatchell never got the memo on that. And interestingly enough, within a day of writing all this,

Twitchell downloaded some software that blocked anyone from tracking his internet activity or IP address. Then he made up another fake profile on plenty of fish. He swiped pictures of a beautiful blonde woman from a profile on another dating site, a headshot for the profile pick, and some bikini shots. In SK Confessions, he describes her as, A blonde I'd like to bang myself. Charming. He named his creation Sheena.

In her About section, Sheena said she didn't really want a serious relationship. she was just looking for fun, for intimate encounters. So basically, Sheena was catnip. A hook baited with just about the juiciest worm you could possibly find, just a dangling in the water. And as he set this first part of his plan into motion and waited for the men to start flocking to Sheena's inbox, Twitchell's correspondence with his American friend Renee

started to get real dark. One night, Renee was talking again about how much she'd like to murder her ex-husband's new wife, the skinny skank, as she put it, She wrote, and this is direct quote from the book The Devil's Cinema by Steve Lillibuwen. I have many a dark thought about my ex-husband's current wife. That fucker couldn't wait four months for our divorce papers to dry, not even a full year since we split to get married to a nasty skeleton skank with a rod in her spine. All I wanted, well, still want to do, is cut her up and draw little circles with her blood.

Little circles on her face, on the window, on the knife. just little blood circles like finger painting but with only one color slowly watching the blood drip a bit watching the lines dry on the window waiting for the knife to dip in again

and create more paint little tiny circles pretty much just like that Jesus bitch chill but of course if you're Mark Twitchell you're just fully erect at this point right

yeah he just heard a thunk on the bottom of his desk gross yeah this blew his mind this was the first person he'd ever met who was like him and he was all over it and he wrote back if you really want to do this and get away with it prepare a kill room the way dex does and i love by the way that he considers himself and dexter to be on like a first name like nickname basis dex my dude dexter would hate you so much oh my god i can't like if you've seen dexter you know this right like dexter would just be He would find this man an embarrassment. So anyway, he told Renee to use wall-to-wall plastic sheeting.

Kidnap said anorexic girl. Sounds very simple and easy considering her small carriage and get her to the room. Oh, just kidnapper. That's easy, right? We're not going to go through the steps on that or anything. Kidnapper. Take her to the room. Right.

And I've kept my mouth shut the first two times. But this is the third time they've mentioned her body. And can I just say, body shaming? is bad enough. But when it's someone you're clearly jealous of, it's an even worse look. It's like the level of bad look it is is drunk dialing your boss. Yeah. It's like, okay, so your ex-husband was with this person for a year and then got married? Like, he moved on with his life. Get home for yourself. Anyway, in the U.S., so now we're continuing Twitchell's little message to her. He says, in the U.S., stun guns are a cost-effective approach followed by a sleeper hold.

This tactic leaves no forensic evidence behind and renders your target unconscious quickly and silently. The method for securing the body on TV is theatrical, but impractical to say the least. Tethering is useless. Tie the body up and duct tape completely. Feet together, arms to body, hands wrapped, then tether to prevent twisting. Make sure your head to toe in a rain suit and you have plenty of hefties for the pieces and the plastic sheeting when finished. Pulverize the jawbones and remove the teeth to prevent dental ID. Also, remove the fingertips and incinerate them.

Ideally, you'd want to incinerate the entire body, but this requires exhaustive location planning and a suitable container as well as fuel. Otherwise, you can dump the bags filled with rocks, dexter style, into a large body of water. Isn't Ohio near the Great Lakes? Hmm. Oh, God.

We got an expert here. Wow, why are we even here? It's amazing this guy got himself caught. Yeah, I know. So, this was the vibe between Mark and Renee. around the same time that he's telling his wife he doesn't feel empathy for other people. Around the same time he's researching psychopaths, making a short film about a serial killer, writing SK Confessions, making a fake dating profile to lure in potential victims.

Storms are brewing, campers. Now, let's talk about a guy named Gilles Tetreau. Gilles was a 33-year-old casino worker, a new arrival to Edmonton, and Gilles, like just about everybody else, was looking to. find love. So, of course, when he met a beautiful blonde named Sheena on plenty of fish and started to hit it off with her, he was thrilled. Sheena was a catch. She was smart, gorgeous, and best of all, really into him. So after some flirting back and forth, Jeal and Sheena arranged a date for Friday, October 3rd. The only odd thing was, she gave him really weird directions to get to her.

She wanted him to meet her in this detached garage instead of at her actual house. she said oh i'll leave the garage door open a little bit walk through it and go out the back door and i'll make sure you are who you say you are through the window and i'll come down to meet you i like your sheena voice there thank you i tried i tried doing like a like a catfish blonde voice that's perfect which okay that was weird no getting around that and it gave gilles a funny feeling but he looked again at that picture of sheena and her bikini and he brushed that bad feeling aside. Women did worry about meeting strange men online.

Maybe this was just what she needed to feel safe. So, Gilles was all excited to meet his new date. Meanwhile, Twitchell was making some preparations of his own. He went to a hardware store and bought plastic sheeting, duct tape, a staple gun. He already had the real stun baton, samurai sword, and knife that he bought for house of cards. He spent all day preparing his kill room, just like Dexter. He stapled plastic to the walls and ceiling. He had that big steel table that his crew built for him.

He had handcuffs and his painted up hockey mask from House of Cards. In SK Confessions, he said he wanted the hockey mask for dramatic effect. I hate this cheesy prick. What a fucking loser, right? He also had a gun, a fake, airsoft one. So he tried to get a real gun a couple weeks earlier, but in Canada, you have to jump through some. some pretty sensible hoops to get a gun, and he was still waiting.

When his killroom was all prepped and ready, he posted on the Dexter Morgan Facebook profile. Dexter Morgan is patiently waiting for his new Vic, a playdate buddy. Because that's what you definitely want to do in planning a murder is advertise the fact on social media. Oh, yeah. That's just page one of the murder manual. Then he waited. Sheel was running about 15 minutes late, and he was upset with himself about it. He didn't want to make a bad first impression on Sheena.

So when he arrived at the garage, he was already a little distracted and unaware of his surroundings. If that hadn't been the case, he might have noticed that a man's feet were pacing back and forth under the slightly cracked garage door. But he didn't. So the side door was ajar, just as Sheena had said it would be, and as she directed he walked inside. It was dark, so he didn't notice the plastic sheeting. at first. But then he felt a pair of arms grab him in a bear hug from behind. His first thought was, oh, it's Sheena, but then he saw the stun baton, crackling with that scary blue light. And he felt a horrible pain in his chest. Over and over. It hurt like hell, and it made it hard to move normally,

but it didn't bring him down. And he spun around to see, just imagine this, campers, this gold and black painted hockey mask and his attacker's clenched teeth. Oh. Here was this man, and a dark hoodie holding a stun gun and wearing this awful mask. Now, you can read about this entire fight in Steve Lillibuyn's book, or you can watch Geel tell the story on 48 hours mystery. We don't have time to describe it step by step here, but suffice it to say that for Geel, it was a fight for his life. Trujell pointed a gun at him,

ordered him to lie on the ground, put duct tape over his eyes. He told him it was a standard robbery, and if he cooperated, he'd let him go. But Geel wouldn't in the mood to cooperate, oddly enough. he thought if he was going to die he'd rather die fighting hell yes my dude so he fought back

and at one point he got hold of the gun and realized it wasn't real and he and Twitchell had a knock down dragout fight after that Twitchell tried to put handcuffs on him but Gilles got them away from him and used them as brass knuckles to give his punches

extra oomph good for him damn right and finally Gilles managed to slide under that crack in the garage door and bolt at which point as we probably remember from part one he ran into that couple out for a walk. And I guess Twitchell at that point decided he better abort the mission and he went back inside. So, Giel made it to his truck and he peeled out of there like a bad out of hell. When he got home, he was shaking. He felt nauseated. He threw up a couple of times. And a little

bit later, he checked plenty of fish to find that Sheena had disappeared. And he was exhausted. He fell asleep thinking, you know, he could go to the police the next day, but when the next day rolled around, he started to talk himself out of it. Maybe it wasn't as big a deal as it seemed. Plus, if he went to the cops, he'd have to admit he was fooled by this fake profile, a fake profile of a beautiful, sexy woman who pretended to want him. Understandably, that was a pretty humiliating prospect. So, she'll never went to the police. Now, it's easy to be a little frustrated by this and to judge him for it, but remember, victims of assault often don't come forward. Gilles had been through an intense trauma.

He was scared, he was embarrassed, he was dealing with the very real after-effects of trauma, and he just wanted to forget it ever happened, and he managed to convince himself that the whole thing wasn't as serious as it had seemed. And I don't think we can really judge him as upsetting a missed opportunity as this is. Now, an interesting little detail about this failed attack, by the way, is that Twitchell freaked, and he paced around in a panic for a while trying to figure out what to do and finally he went to his laptop and he wrote jiel a message as sheena it said if you go to the police i will hunt you down where you live when you least expect it and i will finish what i started but then after he typed

all that out in a very uncharacteristic moment of common sense twadge'll realize that it would be better if he just deleted the profile entirely so jill never saw that message and i think if he had he might have actually gone to the police. Yeah, I think so too. Twatchell had made his first foray into the wide world of serial killing, and he'd biffed it. Badly. He'd bifed it. He realized now that the prop gun wasn't going to work, and the stun gun wasn't powerful enough. So it was time to switch tactics. Two days after that botched attack, Mark's buddy Renee DM'd him. Where did you go? Why haven't I heard from you? She was eager to continue. their gross conversations about blood circles and hacksaws and whatnot.

She said she also wanted to make sure he knew that she would never actually do any of this stuff that they were talking about. Maybe she was afraid she'd scared him off with that blood circle stuff. She scared me off. Right. So, Twatchell apologized for going AWOL on her, and they launched back into their murder talk. And interestingly, Mark retracted the advice he'd given her before about using a stun baton. He'd been all for it before, but now he told her, with great confidence, it's ineffective and sloppy.

Instead, he told her to use a copper pipe. Two hard balks in the head and they're out. He told her to wrap one end in hockey tape or something for gripping. Of course, Renee had no way of knowing at this point that he'd learned all this from experience. And a few days later, he went to a hardware store and bought two pieces of pipe and some hockey tape. Plan B was in full effect. Then he went to a counseling session with Jess. In S.K. Confessions, which by the way, stands for serial killer confessions.

Yeah, S.K. is serial killer. He's such an internal creative genius, you guys. He wrote, The last thing I needed to do was air out all my darkest fantasies and have formed plans to someone who is legally obligated to contact the authorities if they think the patient is going to harm themselves or others. I'm not stupid. oh are you not really well we're about to see about that twatchell bless your heart honey so campers i want you to all remember that he said that he's not stupid

that night he went on plenty of fish and made a new dating profile this time it was a beautiful brunette named jen on his dexter profile on facebook he posted Dexter is reviewing potential candidates and contemplating selling the Vicks organs on the black market. Can you even begin to imagine the freaking Barnum and Bailey-like shit show that would have ensued if this pillock had actually tried to sell organs on the black market? Just, oh my God. I'm not sure exactly how it would have happened, okay? But I can almost guarantee you that it would have ended with Twatchell himself lying on an operating table in the back of like a shipping. container having a kidney removed. Okay, Whitney. I think you're giving him a little too much credit.

Oh, God forbid. Because that scenario would require him to actually have any underworld contacts at all instead of being a milk toast cosplayer. Don't get me wrong. I love cosplayers. But if anything, he'd post something sketchy as hell on Craigslist and an undercover cop would have showed up. Yeah, that's true. He just would have gotten arrested. And he had this baffling, self-destructive compulsion to talk about what he was doing. It'd be one thing if he just kept it to his own journal, but he wasn't doing that. He was corresponding with Renee about it, and being very specific. He was posting about it on social media.

You're not stupid, huh? Really? Okay, but before we get more into that, we need to talk about Johnny Altinger. As interesting as they are, and as much fun as they are to roast over the campfire, these stories are not just about the killers. They're also about the victims, and Johnny was a special person. and I think he deserves to be remembered as such. So, first of all, Johnny was really smart. He was a mechanical engineer who had dreams of becoming a pilot,

and he was a thoughtful person, into philosophy and all different kinds of religion, somebody he might call a seeker. He read a lot, he liked meditating. He was interested in stuff like lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences. He loved his motorcycle, he loved Elton John, and he loved people. He liked to draw his friends into his interests.

When all this happened, he was in the process of teaching a friend how to ride motorcycles. So Johnny was a gentle guy, kind-hearted. He was really close with his family. When his father died, he moved back in with his mom for a while just to take care of her, make sure she was okay. He had a wide circle of friends from all over the world. Some people he knew in person, some he met online. Everybody who knew him said Johnny cared deeply about other people. Couldn't stand to see people suffer.

So basically, he was pretty much everything Mark Twitchell wasn't. and sadly he'd had a recent heartbreak he and his fiance had broken up because they realized they wanted different things out of life johnny didn't want to be a parent and that was a deal breaker for his fiancee but it was really sad for both of them because they really loved each other wasn't about that so after the breakup johnny was scrolling around on plenty of fish and he met jen she immediately piqued his interest and she told him that she was looking for an intimate encounter that night if they hit it off but who knows maybe it could develop into something intriguing. He was a little nervous about the weird directions and her safety protocol of meeting at this detached garage instead of at her house as we told you about in part one. So before he headed off to meet her on October 10th, he took the precaution of telling his friend where he was going. By the way, I know this was 2008, but the counselor Katie's standard protocol for meeting someone online, regardless of your gender is, one, meet in a public place. Two, get their full name. Mm-hmm. Three, tell someone where you'll be and create an alarm passphrase beforehand. Yeah, smart. It also helps to have a tracking app on your phone, but I know that freaks a lot of people out. And the passphrase should be something you'd never say.

When I was younger, I made up a phrase that included a family dog who had passed away because people in my life would know I wouldn't be referring to him. Something like, did you feed Jack before you left? Mm-hmm. Smart. And I know this might sound paranoid, but I would much rather have an overabundance of caution than none at all. Every single person I've dated has understood this. So if your caution freaks someone out, that might be a red flag. Absolutely. So according to SK Confessions,

the attack on Johnny went down pretty much the same way as the attack on Gilles-Totro, except that unfortunately this time it worked. Johnny walked into that garage and he never walked back out again. Twigel did change up his MO a bit. He scrapped the stun baton and hit him with a copper pipe instead. There's a passage in S.K. Confessions in which he describes the murder, including the little part we told you about in part one, where Johnny actually saw him and interacted with him. Remember, Twitchell said, Jen wanted me to tell you she's running late, and Johnny went home and almost called it off. And then Jen messaged him and told him to come back, which just kills me dead because he almost decided to scrap it. And then Twitchell messaged him again as Jen, and he said, okay, I'll come back. It's just, oh, it's so sad. A lot of what Twitchell wrote about the actual murder and aftermath isn't.

available. It's been redacted out of the manuscript because it was so graphic. And there's no Freedom of Information Act in Canada like we have in the States. And the judge in Twitchell's case felt that some of what he'd written was too rough even for the jury to see, which that's intense. And we know he dismembered him after he killed him, and that's bad enough. I mean, that was one of the things they left in. So we can only imagine what this poor dear man went through in his last moments. But we're going to put a pin in that for right now. Just suffice it to say that Johnny showed up to meet Jen and met Twitchell instead, but we will get into more detail later about how all this went down as the police investigation starts to heat up and the

detectives start to kind of unravel it all. Within days of murdering Johnny, Schichel wrote to Renee, I'm sorry I haven't written. I've had Thanksgiving keeping me busy as well as something else, but I'm really concerned about telling anyone because of the implications. Suffice it to say, I crossed the line on Friday, and I liked it. Oh, my God. And, of course, like anyone would, she was like, well, was it? What did you do? Yeah.

What was it? By the way, one time after I'd already gone to sleep, Whitney messaged me that she had, no, she told me, oh, I want to talk to you about something. And so my point was like, you did not do that. I would never be that vague. I think I at least said I had some big ideas for the show or something. I don't remember what you said. vague enough that I was like immediate panic and he didn't elaborate at all and I had to wait so long for her to wake up because like I like you know campers we keep opposite hours she's the she's the

night warden at her camp and I'm the day day counselor but I had to wait so long for her to wake up until you're just in a full-blown panic by the time yeah we it was probably some stupid shit like so we should like call him 10 pounds of shit in a five-pound bag in the episode that's a good burn right I think it was about stickers, maybe. Yeah, maybe it was the stickers. Maybe it was about the stickers. But regardless, that was a moment of panic early on in our partnership. It's okay.

So, of course, Renee tried to get it out of him and he said, I'd rather not write it out, but can I call? Oh, Jesus, Murphy. They'd never talked on the phone before, but she gave him her number and they made plans to talk on the phone later. Okay. What did he say earlier? I'm not stupid I'm not stupid Twatchel, buddy, pal

friend What were you thinking She's American She can't report me to the Canadian police And this is what I love about this num nuts Like he's so up his own ass in SK confessions Like just completely convinced

Of his total superiority to other lesser humans At one point he says that once he decided to become a killer He felt changed like he was quote somehow above other people. Oh, God. So he was awful fond of himself, which is just hilarious, because then he goes and does the butt stupidest shit you could possibly do, like as if he were trying to put on a master class in how not to commit a murder.

And he still has the nerve to feel superior. Just twitchal. Honey, no, you've got to stop embarrassing yourself, baby. It's getting hard to watch. Well, fortunately for him and unfortunately for us, He never got a chance to make that phone call. After the murder, he came home, washed his clothes and shoes, and went to bed. He went out to a comedy club with friends the next night, and he was the life of the party.

He celebrated Thanksgiving with his family and didn't seem to lose a bit of sleep. So the first thing he did to try to get rid of the body was to take a big oil drum that he'd used on the set of House of Cards. his family was out of town so he set up this oil drum in their backyard he'd put Johnny's remains in garbage bags and he put those in the drum and started a fire so perhaps this wouldn't have surprised you or me

but apparently it hadn't occurred to our boy twaschle that when you set garbage bags full of human remains on fire black smoke is going to come roiling out of there selling like six kinds of hell in a suburban neighborhood. Oh, my God. Anybody see the problem here?

Hmm? Now, fun fact. Twitchell does not have a sense of smell due to some accident he had as a child, so he didn't realize that his parents' whole neighborhood now reeked of gasoline and human decomposition. But remember, campers, he's not stupid. So he was in the middle of all this, and he couldn't get the fire hot enough. So he just kept adding more and more gas. The combustion temperature of gasoline does not change.

No. It's the same. No, apparently he didn't research that. I'm getting mad, Whitney. I'm going to need to tap out in a second. So he's adding all this gas, black smokes flying everywhere, and then he heard sirens. So he frantically put the fire out and shoved all the body parts in the car and drove away in a panic. He'd figure out what to do with Johnny's body later.

Side note, the fire department wasn't about him. Amazing, I know. Somebody called the fire department for some other reason. That's astonishing. Like nobody noticed. Maybe they just thought it was the same issue or something. Yeah, maybe. Crazy.

So, shortly after the murder, Twitchell put the second phase of his plan into action. He started sending emails as Johnny. He had led himself into Johnny's apartment shortly after he killed him and taken his laptop. These bogus emails were, of course, not at all convincing to the people who knew Johnny, especially the one to his boss where he quit his job. This was just so far out of character, not only that he'd run off with a woman he just met, but especially that he'd quit his job so curtly and, like, by email instead of by phone. And as I said earlier, obviously don't kill anybody, but if you're going to, don't get too artsy with it.

Don't try to be fancy. Trying to take on the voice of your victim is just plain stupid. Unless you know this person really, really well, you are not going to pull that off. Twatchell had intended for these emails to convince Johnny's friends that he was alive and well and there was nothing amiss, but they did exactly the opposite. But hey, y'all, he wasn't stupid, right? And even if you know someone really well, emulating their voice to their closest loved ones is very nearly impossible. Oh, absolutely. And this is such a narcissist move, because a narcissist does not view a person as an individual.

Instead, they view them as copy and paste versions of objects in their lives. So why wouldn't he be able to emulate their speech? He knows how his wife talks, how his coworkers talk, how the clerk at the grocery store talks, and they're all the same to him. Mm-hmm, exactly, because, you know, Twitchell's the star of the show, but he else was just a bit player. So it makes sense, actually. Oh, and by the way, I wasn't sure where to shoehorn in this charming little factoid,

so I'll just drop it in here. Right before he murdered Johnny Altinger, Twatchell met up with his mistress Tracy for a movie date. In S.K. Confessions, he said they made out like teenagers in the theater. Ew. And as soon as he could get a free evening afterward, he went over to her place and, quote, Fucked her senseless.

Oh, no. Blech. So obviously he was real revved up by what he had done. It was disgusting. So as we know, Johnny went missing. His friends finally managed to get the cops interested in the case. And as we know, Twatchell initially got on the police radar because Johnny had taken that very pragmatic step

of giving his friend the address of the garage where he was going to meet Jen. And so the cops gave Twitchell a call. And I'm sure he freaked right out, but in front of the cops that first time he was smooth as silk. He came in for an interview voluntarily, raised no red flags whatsoever for the detectives. In fact, lead detective Bill Clark put into his notes, does not seem to indicate deception. He said he'd been using the garage as a film set, and when he took the cops there to see it,

he acted all confused. He said the padlock on the door wasn't his. And he was quick to point out that other people had access to that garage too, people who worked with him on House of Cards. and he gave them permission to look inside and right away cops found a receipt from a hardware store a receipt for stuff like industrial strength cleaning products and plastic sheeting basically a kill and clean kit the receipt of course had Twitchell's name and credit card number on it

because of course it did and it also noted the date and this zeroed them in even more because Twitchell had told them that the last day he was in that garage was October 10th but the date on the receipt October 15th. Huh. Why would he lie? And by the way, it was bizarre for him to tell him he was there on the 10th

because that's the day Johnny went missing. But, of course, as we have amply established, this man is dumb as a bag of hammers. So it should surprise no one. So this kind of got the detectives concerned. And then there was this. Buckle up for this. Johnny drove a red Mazda 3,

and instead of doing what any sane human being would do and dumping that car in the middle of nowhere after the murder, Twatchell, bless his heart, kept the thing, because apparently he wanted to sell it. Yeah, it gets worse. So the day after the murder, he called up one of his friends and asked him if he could do him a little solid

and let him store a car in his garage for a while. So his friend was like, oh, okay, well, what car? And Tichel said, oh, man, it's a wild story. He said he'd met a guy at a gas station the night before, just a random stranger, and this dude had told him that he'd just met a rich sugar mama who wanted to take him to the Caribbean for an indefinite period of time. So he was selling everything he owned and would Twitchell like to buy his car by any chance?

And Twitchell was like, nah, I don't have enough money for a car. So the guy said, well, how much money do you have on you? And Twitchell was like, not much, just like 40 bucks. And according to him, the guy said, that's fine, just give me that. So he told his friend, Oh, my Lord. That he bought a nice car off a stranger for $40. Perfectly reasonable. Remember, campers. He's not stupid.

Not stupid. So, of course, his friend was like, dude, that's shady as hell. The car's got to be stolen. But Twitchell said, no, no, it's fine. I've got all the paperwork. It's all above board, I promise. As we've said,

Twashel apparently has charisma. So his friend finally said, okay, fine, I'll store it for you. But after this friend became aware that someone was missing and Twitchell's rented garage was the last place this guy was seen, he freaked. He said, look, there's a missing person and you just randomly bought a car for 40 bucks. You need to call the cops and tell them about this. And if you don't, I will. So now, poor Schichel was backed into a corner.

So he very reluctantly called the police and told the police and told him. told them the same bullshit story about the car. The main detective, Detective Clark, hadn't been that worried about Twitchell before this, but as soon as he heard this story, it went through him like an electric shock. I bet, man. He thought, oh, my God, he killed this guy. And it's like, do you think? This is the most unrealistic story I've ever heard someone try to make up.

That's incredible. I'm sure he thought he was being clever by working in the Sugar Mama story. like tying in the threads of his initial lie, but it is, in fact, ham-fisted as hell. This dude was like, what's a good reason for having a dead man's car? And the internal creative genius came up with that? That's what he's going to tell the cops? Are you fucking kidding me? That's what he comes up with when he actually tries to muster an original idea

instead of just plagiarizing somebody else's. That's what the ICG came up with. then it was not good you're so right oh my god you're such a failure twatchel i can't even stand it and by the way the correct answer for a good reason for having a dead or missing man's car is there's not one or he left it to you in his will because you're his kid or something yeah but but if if that hasn't been established there's no good reason absolutely not so they asked old mark come in for a second interview and he showed up all smiles again talking a blue streak about his film projects in Star Wars, anything but Johnny Altinger.

You can watch this interrogation video, which I 100% recommend. And it really is amazing how smooth he was and how unconcerned he seemed, until Detective Clark confronted him about the car story and a few other little inconsistencies, like the dates that didn't match up, the padlock thing. And finally, Detective Clark told him, there is no doubt in my mind, Mark, that you did something to this man. And you can see, in that moment, Twitchell's face going from smooth to terrified.

Oh, yeah. He went wider than the front row at a Brian Adams concert. He said, in a whiny voice, befitting the real Twitchell, why do you think that? And very soon after this, he asked for a lawyer and shut the interview down, which chapped Detective Clark's ass. something fierce. Oh, yeah. He really wanted to get that confession. But as he was walking twauchel out to the parking lot, Clark had a brainstorm. He realized he had probable cause to impound

Twitchell's car. So he said, oh, and by the way, I'm seizing your car. And even more color drained out of Bichel's face. And Clark knew he was on to something. And I love this. Twitchell said, okay, that's fine. Just let me grab a couple things out of there first. Sure. And Detective Clark said, yeah, no. You're getting fuck all. And that's literally what he said.

Like, he said, you're getting fuck all, which he's my kind of guy. This Detective Clark, apparently. And there was a damn good reason why this shook our boy up so badly, campers. Do y'all want to know what this moron was keeping in his car that he then drove right to the police station, like a domino's pizza delivery guy bringing him a delicious pizza with all the trimmings. He left in his car the following. A to-do list, which included the phrase, get rid of Vic's phone. Oh my God. Directions to Johnny Altinger's apartment. Good. His laptop, with the entirety of SK confessions on it, which details the entire murder as well as the

planning and the attack on Gilles de Trot. A hunter's game processing kit that still had blood and flesh and bone all over it. Oh, good. A knife that still had blood on it and his hockey mask, which also still had blood on it. Oh, and the trunk of the car was also soaked in blood. The trunk of the car that he drove to the police station. Not to mention that I am positive that it smelled like burned flesh and plastic and gasoline still from his initial dumbassery. Very probably. I'm not stupid. Oh, honey, bless your heart. He should have just put one of those big novelty bows on top of the car like rich people do when they buy their kids beemers for Christmas and just driven it right up to the front door here you go everything

you could possibly need to prosecute me how else can I help what else can I do for you and you have this boneheaded nonsense right alongside all his pretentious writings and his high-minded stuff about being an instrument of fate this dude is 10 tons of shit in a five-pound bag hands down one of the dumbest killers we've ever heard of, and we have heard of a lot. He just literally could not have done a worse job of covering his tracks. So, of course, as soon as they found SK Confessions and the to-do list, they knew they had him. Twitchell didn't name Johnny. He called him Mr. Thursday.

But there was enough detail that it was very obviously him. And he described the murder in vivid detail. He said that when he drove the knife into Mr. Thursday's chest, his reaction was pure Hollywood. Oh, fuck this guy. So, I know. So they needed to do some more work before they could get an arrest warrant. But they were worried Twitchell might kill someone else in the meantime. So they put him under surveillance, and they were not subtle.

They wanted him to know he was being watched. When they found the passage in SK Confessions about Mark's first attempt at murder, they realized there must be one that got away out there somewhere, and they put out a media appeal for that man to come forward. Poor Gilles saw it, and he came in for what must have been one of the most extraordinary interviews of Detective Clark's life. They were starting to realize what a scary dude they had on their hands. And as for Gilles, he now had to deal with the fact that this man went on to murder someone. He had a lot of guilt about not calling the police, poor guy.

Meanwhile, CSIs sprayed Twitchell's rented garage with Luminal, and they found a ton of blood. In one of the crime scene pictures, you can actually see the outline of a human body in blood, like the legs and the torso. Yeah, and at one point in SK Confessions, he was like, my kill room was perfectly prepped. Oh, was it? Was it, Jackass? Well, then why is there blood everywhere? Mark. You know, Dexter would laugh in his face. He would laugh at him and then he would kill him.

Yeah. But he wouldn't even enjoy it. It would just be a grim task he felt he needed to do to wipe this pitiful streak of piss off the planet. I mean, let's talk about Johnny Altinger. This guy showed up at the garage and he saw Twitchell. He interacted with him. Yep. Twitchell told him, oh, I'm a local filmmaker. I'm the one that made that Star Wars movie that was on the He sure as hell did. This is all information that could have 100% identified him. And then, and then he let him leave. Why wouldn't he just call it a wash? How did he know that Johnny hadn't called someone and told them what just happened?

And of course he had. He did call his friend. And it's too bad he didn't mention the part about the Star Wars fan film because if he had, this case would have been even easier to solve than it already was. So once they processed the garage and the evidence from the car, They had enough to put the habeas grabus on Mark. Yep, and you know, guys like Twitchell always seemed to think of themselves as really tough guys. I'm sure Twitchell thinks of himself as some kind of dark anti-hero, and I just want everybody to know that the man pissed himself when they took him down.

Peed his pants, campers, he was so scared that he did a piddle. Big wet stain on his jeans while they were perp walking him into the station. Tough guy, huh? Yeah, I'll think about that for a long time, I think. My apologies. So anyway, the police tried to do a bunch of different things to get Twitchell to confess because, A, you can never have too much evidence, and B, they really wanted to find Johnny's body and bring him home to his mother. In S.K. Confessions, Twitchell said he put his victim's body down a manhole into the sewer, but he didn't specify which manhole. so they tried taking him out in a squad car and driving her around asking him where's the body where's the body mark it didn't work marky dark just stared at the window looking glum probably embarrassed that how stupid and undexter like he was getting caught on the very first murder yeah and anyway finally he broke and decided to tell him where he put johnny and he drew them a detailed map to the manhole where he'd put the dismembered remains of this kind thoughtful man who was so

deeply loved and would now be so terribly missed. And there was something else they'd learn from SK Confessions, and y'all know we don't usually share gory details, and this is pretty awful. So if you're sensitive, you might want to fast forward 60 seconds or so, just to be safe. There's a detail that hasn't been widely publicized about this case, which we found by digging around in author Steve Lilibuyn's blog. Now, Lilibuyn has read all of S.K. Confessions, including the redacted parts, because Twitchell actually gave him a copy. And the only reason we're sharing this is because we feel it really illustrates what a terrifying human

being, Twitchell is, for all his pretentiousness and stupidity and how damn lucky we all are that he got caught when he did. So while Twitchell was dismembering Johnny, he apparently picked up his severed head at one point and moved a jaw up and down like a puppet while talking in a silly voice. Wow. Yeah, it's awful. And he thought this was just hilarious. Camper's, this was his first murder. Now, Twitchell was an aspiring serial killer, and I absolutely believe that he would have been one if he hadn't gotten caught. And we know serial killers tend to escalate the violence and depravity as they go along.

So to go this dark right out of the gate, what do you escalate to from that? Where do you go? Where would he have been by the fifth murder, the 10th, the 15th? That, to me, is a scary thought. It sure is. So, we won't go into too much detail about how Johnny Altinger died, but suffice it to say, it was a combination of blunt force trauma and stabbing.

He was put through a lot, torture and taunting. Bless his horror. Despite leading the police to Johnny's remains, Twitchell tried to fight the first-degree murder charge. At his trial, he claimed that he'd lured Johnny to the garage as a publicity stunt for House of Cards. He claimed he'd never intended to hurt him, but Johnny freaked out and attacked him, as anyone would, while being attacked by a strange man. Now, Mark said he'd killed him in self-defense. Fortunately, the jury saw that horseshit for exactly what it was and found him guilty after six hours of deliberation. And thank fuck. Mark Twitchell is exactly where he belongs.

prison. His earliest possible release date is 2027. I hope he never gets to see daylight again. Amen. This is a man who had charisma, a loving family, friends, artistic talent. He may be a shitty writer, but he can draw like you could not believe. And this is what he decided to do with all that. Yeah, it's pathetic, especially since he was so bad at it on top of all that. Now, Twatchell claims he deeply regrets what he did. kind of lost his mind there for a minute and he's changed now honest. But the one thing adorning the wall of his cell is an exquisitely detailed portrait he drew of Dexter. So I have my doubts about that. Especially given this. On his laptop, Twitchell wrote, I habitually lied my entire life. Despite my incredibly well-adjusted and healthy family life and upbringing, it never stopped.

I always apologize but never meant it and never corrected the behavior. Hope the Canadian Parole Board is listening, don't you? Mm-hmm. And campers, we'll leave you with this, and thanks for staying with us, because we know this was a long one. Mark Twitchell has a prison dating profile up. May I read it to you? Oh, please. It says,

I was tentative about reaching out because I thought I couldn't offer much and doubted anyone could look past my reputation to see the human being. But trying is definitely worthwhile if. it means finding just one meaningful, mutually fulfilling friendship. My crime doesn't define who I am or represent me at all. I've made some terrible, regrettable choices in the past, and I've come to terms with the consequences. Now I seek to infuse purpose into my life. Connection is a huge part of that.

My creative engine never slows, so I produce artwork constantly in craft novels or screenplays to manifest my relentless imagination. I'm insightful, passionate, and philosophical, with a great sense of humor. I enjoy tennis, chess, and clever storytelling. I love the rain in the music of artists like Sia, Jackie Avancho, and Arcade Fire.

I'm looking for an interesting, intelligent, open-minded, delightfully imperfect woman to relate to and share amusing observations with, as well as potentially a long weekend every few months if it gets there naturally. Oh, my God. Isn't it so nice, Whitney, that he's come to terms with the consequences of what he did. Isn't that nice for him that he's come to terms with that? Yeah, that's lovely, Twitchell. Don't you know, he is getting lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree by little hebristophiliac groupies. Don't you freaking know. So gross. My crime doesn't define me at all. No, not at all. Fuck off.

You know who your crime did define? Johnny Altinger's life. Fuck off. Donie Liftinger and his family and also Gilles Tatro and his and everybody who trusted you, your wife, your daughter, his poor daughter god oh oh so we'll leave it at that campers that was a wild one wasn't it you know we'll have another one for you next week but for now lock your doors light your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire and we want to send some shouts out to some of our newest patrons thank you so much to Heidi Aaron shanna and Julie we appreciate you to the moon and back and if you haven't yet become a patron you're missing out patrons get every episode ad-free at least a day early, plus an extra Patreon exclusive episode every month, a free sticker,

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