Bill Clark
Appearances
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
The judge actually recognized that they took a break, and he couldn't get out of the room fast enough.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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, he would know that he's actually lived it. I think that was what he wanted to do.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
This block area matches the diary, the SK Confessions, with the telephone poles, the sewers.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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 the spring runoff, we thought there was little hope now.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
You got to 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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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 will 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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
When we looked down it and just shone a flashlight down, we could see... You could see it? You could see body pieces, a piece of the torso and a piece of the pelvis.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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?
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
That's right. No one would ever look.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
We were there. We had detectives searched 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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
In that search, we were five telephone poles away, half a block. We were that close.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
We find a knife in there, a knife with blood on it, that knife.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
And in that garage, that makeshift movie studio... We found blood splatter all along the walls, the garage doors, hundreds of spots of splatter where an obvious beating had taken place.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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 on the act.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
So we're thinking our next step logically is the garage. We've got to check inside and have a close look.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
The close friends were the ones that had come to the police, and they basically had nothing other than his emails.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
You know, when I watch an interview, I listen to what the guy says, but I'm looking at body language. I'm looking for signs of deceit. And I remember coming out of the interview going, oh, this Mark Twitchell guy interviewed really well. There were no signs of deception. He's free-flowing with the information. He's answering the questions logically. I don't see any, you know, looking away.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
I don't see any of the nervousness. Nothing, right?
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
I'm a pit bull. I consider myself a pit bull. You get a case and you get your teeth into it, it's, we're those A-type personalities. We want to get the guy, you know, we want to get this guy and put him away.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
So we're thinking our next step logically is the garage. We've got to check inside and have a close look.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
And it gets turned down because we're told we don't have a crime. We haven't proven there's a crime committed. And we're going, oh, man.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
Yeah. It's like, now what? I said, well, we might as well phone Twitchell. He was cooperative with Mike Tabler. Let's phone him up. Maybe he'll come down, or we'll just get the key from him. So I just phone him up. And he's all good. No problem. And then he says, well, I'm going to my mom's house. And I said, well, you know what?
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
Why don't we meet you there, and you give us the key, and then we'll go in? He goes, yeah. I says, I'll need you to sign a consent form for us to search the garage. Yeah, no problem. Mr. Cooperative. Just like he was in the interview the night before. Doesn't raise any red flags with me at all. So we send a detective out to meet up with Mark Twitchell.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
Detective says to me, he says, bought a red Mazda off a guy.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
Yeah, and by the patrolman who first met him the first night at the garage. Not a mention. Now all of a sudden he tells Murphy, yeah, I bought a red car off a guy for, slipped my mind. Forgot to tell you about it. Slipped my mind. Right away I thought, there's something fishy going on.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
Everything you do now, we're analyzing. We call it the up arrow, down arrow scenario. This is an up arrow. Mr. Cooperative will come down. We'll talk to us at 1030 on a Sunday night. That's an up arrow for Mark, right? Right. He's being cooperative. It's all good. Red car, Mazda hasn't mentioned it. Big down arrow. Big down arrow. Big down arrow.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
You know, we were flying by the seat of your pants. Don't know anything about Twitchell. We don't know anything about this guy. Our plan was, if he's going to tell us about the red car, he's going to have to tell us where it is. So our plan was, as soon as he tells us where it is, get someone in that room to go out and find a car. Maybe something comes up in the car. Let's get the trunk, like...
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
We're thinking there's a body in it, maybe, right? We don't know. So Twitchell comes in. I shake his hand, you know, hey, Mark, thanks for coming in. Appreciate it. He's going, yeah, sorry all about that red car. And I'm going, you know, Mark, anybody could forget that. You know, there's a lot going on. The police are involved. And the whole time I'm thinking, who would forget this red car?
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
Like, you're an idiot, buddy. Like, something's going on.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
It's me against him, I know it.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
It was probably the most spellbinding interview I've ever had with a witness.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
We don't usually go to missing persons. Like, we're very picky on what we go to. Like, basically, unfortunately for us to come out, you got to be dead and it better be criminal. Like, we don't even want to come out if you're just dead. We got enough to work on. If the patrolman doesn't know it's criminal, don't bother calling us. Do we have a murder? Because if we don't, this isn't our file.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
I mean, we have no indication of file play, nothing, right?
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
And, you know, laugh out loud.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
Our crime scenes guys, they've reported back from Johnny's house that there's nothing here. There's no blood, no signs of a struggle. Yeah, the place is a little bit dirty. It's a bachelor pad. You know, he didn't clean his dishes. So that's where we're at.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
Find the car, hopefully we find him, or have an idea where he is.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 1: Where's Johnny?
I can't remember the last word of the email, but he says, if anything happens to me, you know where I'm at.