Steve Stock
Appearances
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 6: The Final Dominoes Fall
We did. It's the first time we saw them. And us three sat in the front row. We watched them both walk in, one at a time. I didn't think I could feel so much anger and sorrow and sadness. And I thought, you know.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 6: The Final Dominoes Fall
Yeah. It kind of shocked me.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 2: Keep Your Enemies Close
I mean, I had quite a bit of that. I was like, well, at least we're moving on to the next phase of this. We're not going to wonder for the rest of our lives. So I was relieved, I guess, to know that they had somebody.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 2: Keep Your Enemies Close
There was over 2,000 people at the funeral. Wow. Son Steve. They filled the whole gymnasium and the floor and the stands and everything.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 2: Keep Your Enemies Close
It was a little overwhelming. We were off in a separate area, kind of secluded. And then when it started, they walked us in and it was just like, holy cow. It was just packed with people. It was really overwhelming.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 2: Keep Your Enemies Close
Him and Dad kind of had a lot of falling outs about him staying with Grandma, and Dad didn't think he should be here, that he needed to find a job of his own and get out and put a little more effort into things maybe or something, so they kind of butted ahead just a little bit.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 2: Keep Your Enemies Close
One time I was at work and dad called me and said, wanted to know if he could stop by and see me. So he did, and he had Matt with him. And he'd spent the whole day driving Matt around Lincoln, applying for jobs. And I was like, you know, wow. And there's another guy there working with me when they left. He's like, I don't know anybody that would do that.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 2: Keep Your Enemies Close
I don't know anybody that would take their nephew out and drive all over town, helping him find a job. He goes, that's really cool that your dad would do that.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 2: Keep Your Enemies Close
I think in my head, I went to it a little bit, just knowing that they hadn't gotten along real well.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 1: In Cold Blood
They kind of butted ahead us a little bit.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 1: In Cold Blood
Everything clicked. You knew exactly what the case was at that point.
Dateline Originals
Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 1: In Cold Blood
At least we got that one day. My kids remember it. They talk about it all the time.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
And he starts to cry, and the tears are just streaming down his face. And he's getting hysterical. His chest is heaving.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
When he comes back after the break, Mark Twitchell is no better. He's still very upset. And he's crying, but he turns around and actually faces Detective Clark. And he starts talking to him and said, I'm sorry for lying to you.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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?
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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 the people, everyone would be fooled into thinking that what's fiction is actually reality.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
So that then when his movie comes out and when the novel comes out, people would go 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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
There was this whole mythology that had been built up and this idea that there was a hoax, right? That how do you know what's not a prank and Johnny Altinger isn't just going to walk in on the first day of the trial.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
Reporter Steve Lillebuen. 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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
So the police... The prosecution, his defense lawyer, everyone had kept the secret for ten 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.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 6: House of Cards
She's crying through all of this. Mark Twitchell's reaction was nearly blank.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 5: Trick or Treat
It really just... Exploded on Halloween.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 5: Trick or Treat
There was work to be done. One of the first things we did in the newsroom is we just went to Mark Twitchell's Facebook page. And we saw a person who was incredibly driven, a person who had a lot of charisma and was really into this, I guess you would call like a geek culture. You know, he was into Star Wars. He was into sci-fi stuff. He was into making costumes, but nothing sinister.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 5: Trick or Treat
He looked like a really clean cut guy. He, you know, had a schoolboy haircut and he could be anyone's son. So that was almost part of the extraordinary part about it was just how normal Mark Twitchell did look and how horrendous these allegations were coming from the police. And the two didn't look to add up. It seemed like, well, seemed like the plot of a movie.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 5: Trick or Treat
So this idea that you would have what the police was alleging, a filmmaker who would randomly pick total strangers and that they would become a victim of a horrendous crime. And in a way that was replicating actual Hollywood, you know, mythology, this idea of a horror film. It was just extraordinary. It didn't seem like it could be real.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 5: Trick or Treat
He was in that kind of clique of people that would go to, you know, Star Wars conventions or they would dress up for the premiere of a movie. You know, everyone's got someone like that in their family who's just, you know, a big sci-fi nut or whatever.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 5: Trick or Treat
Mark Twitchell was known as a prankster. He loved pulling pranks. He loved telling jokes. He loved pulling someone's leg. And with that, the police told us that they did not have a body. So the obvious question was, how are you going to prosecute someone for first-degree murder with no body? And here, this guy is a prankster. And, you know, he's a filmmaker.
Dateline Originals
The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 5: Trick or Treat
Maybe it was some kind of prank with the film. That's something his own friends were wondering and talked about quite often. Like the actor, Sean Storer.
Murder in the Moonlight
The Final Dominoes Fall
So then we just asked, well, what's the guaranteed way to get them the worst possible thing that they can get for punishment? Well, we think if we do it this way, that they're going to end up in prison for the rest of their life. We're like, well, if that's what you think is going to happen, let's go to that because that's what they need to get. It's the worst thing they could get to them.
Murder in the Moonlight
The Final Dominoes Fall
I didn't. So I remember just thinking, I didn't know I could be this mad.
Murder in the Moonlight
The Final Dominoes Fall
The whole thing itself was just kind of a blur. It was so nerve wracking, hard to sit through. But then when they got to the end and the judge went through the whole thing, when he was actually talking, there was a little part of me saying, he's going to let these guys off easy.