Mark Twitchell was an aspiring filmmaker who wrote screenplays about murder and compared himself to TV's fictional serial killer, Dexter Morgan. In 2008, police were investigating the disappearance of 38-year-old John Altinger and discovered Twitchell's garage where he had just filmed his latest project about a serial killer. “48 Hours" Correspondent Troy Roberts reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 7/10/2012. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the story behind Mark Twitchell's garage?
In early October 2008, Jill's Tetro was online on the plentyoffish.com website, which is a dating site.
I saw this lady. She had blonde hair. She was about 5'6". She was very attractive looking. And what was her name? Her name was Sheena. Sheena. Yeah. I messaged her. She messaged me back, how about we go to dinner and a movie? I thought that was a great idea. She wouldn't give me the house number, but she just sent me really, really good directions on how to get there.
He thought, what's the worst that could happen? I was actually late, so I was driving quite fast to get there. She said, I'll just leave the garage door open for you. And then you just go in, go through the garage. I don't think he ever imagined in a million years what would happen to him in that garage. It was dark. Then I kind of looked around for the door she told me to go through.
And that's when somebody came out and attacked me from behind. Somebody puts me in this hole, and he's prodding me with this thing. And all I can see is it's kind of almost like a baton, and it's turning blue. I finally look back, and that's when I see this man with this painted-up hockey mask. This is just unbelievable. This is what movies are made of.
We're just both standing there looking at each other, and that's when he pulls out this gun. He finally yells at me, and he says, get down on the ground, put your head down, close your eyes, and put your hands in the back. I don't know if he's going to kill me or not. He's a cold-blooded, heartless killer.
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Chapter 2: How did Gilles Tetreault survive a real-life horror movie plot?
I started tearing up while I was down on the ground. And he's deciding that I've got to do something or die. I mean, it's a life and death decision.
All I could think about was that I never told anybody where I'd be. If I died right then and there, no one would know what happened to me.
Screenplay for Murder, tonight's 48 Hours Mystery.
When I first saw him, I look back and I see this man kind of hovering over me with a hockey mask. I just chill down my back. Wow, this is no date.
Lured to a garage on the pretense of a date with an attractive woman he thought he met online, 33-year-old Jill Tetra was now being held hostage by an apparent madman in a scene straight out of a horror film.
He's about like six foot and has this black and gold hockey mask.
The hockey mask-wearing man had ordered him to the ground at gunpoint.
And he tore a piece of tape, and he covered my eyes with it. I start hearing different things, like a jingling noise and stuff like that. In my head, it's just racing. It's like thinking, what's going on? What is he going to do? Is he taking another weapon out? Jill decided he wasn't waiting to find out. I can't do this, I gotta fight back. So I got up and ripped the tape off my eyes.
He was stunned that I got up and started yelling at me to get back down on the ground. Instead, he grabbed the attacker's gun. When I grabbed the gun, I felt the gun was plastic. This is the greatest feeling I ever felt in my life because then I knew I had a fighting chance to get away. I punched him and I felt really weak. I'm like, wow, why was my punch so weak?
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Chapter 3: What clues led to the investigation of Johnny Altinger's disappearance?
This time, the police were listening. Veteran homicide detective Bill Clark was part of the investigation.
So we talked about it and decided, obviously, our first priority was to try and find John. You know, his red Mazda was missing. He had taken his vehicle, it couldn't be found. So obviously that's what we're going to look for first. Easier to find a car than a person. Based on the emails and they talk about Costa Rica, the officers search all the parking lots at the airport. It's not found.
Everything's turning up negative.
But there was one clue that would give police their first big break in the case. On the day he disappeared, Johnny Altinger had forwarded the directions of where he was going to friends.
Well, John's friends were concerned. His friend even questioned him on the email. You know, be careful. And John said, yeah, well, here's the directions. And if anything happens to me, you'll know where to look.
Armed with the directions, police are led directly to this garage.
He learned the garage is rented out to an individual named Mark Twitchell.
Mark Twitchell, a 29-year-old married father and aspiring filmmaker, had used the garage as a set for a recent movie project.
I'm glad I got the chance to work with you all and I hope I see you all in the industry.
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Chapter 4: Who is Mark Twitchell and what was his connection to filmmaking?
He hears this guy saying, directing is in my blood, and I'm going to do this the rest of my life, and I'm going to make great movies. He was as delusional as any person I've ever met in my life. He wanted to be somebody at any cost.
As the police interview continued, detectives question Mark about his last production, a suspense thriller called House of Cards. The plot? A hockey-mass serial killer lures a man to a garage via the internet and kills him.
I mean, it's kind of odd that you're filming that kind of thing. And we end up drawn to that garage because of a missing person who supposedly That's really freaky, too, and as soon as they called me on the phone, I get this weird chill.
He looked pretty comfortable in the interview, and when it was done and I watched, I went, wow, that guy interviewed well.
Hours later, Mark Twitchell even agreed to let officers back into the garage where he had filmed House of Cards. Little did they know, the case was about to take an unusual turn.
Detective Murphy goes, you know, and meets him and talks to him and there's this huge revelation about, oh yeah, I bought a red car off a guy. It's like, I remember getting the phone call at the police station just thinking, holy crap.
That's because police were still looking for Johnny Altinger's red Mazda. So investigators called Mark again. And again, he voluntarily agreed to answer more questions. This time, Bill Clark conducted the interview.
So as you know, Mark, we're just here trying to find this John Altinger.
Clark listens while Mark tells him how he came into possession of a red car, a detail he failed to mention when he spoke with police earlier.
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Chapter 5: How did police uncover evidence against Mark Twitchell?
Two weeks after the disappearance of Johnny Altinger at a garage film set, police had sharpened their focus on filmmaker Mark Twitchell. Police cameras were rolling as a forensics team processed his car in the garage he rented. And seven miles away, detectives had been at the Twitchell home, where they found Jess Twitchell, Mark's unsuspecting wife of two years.
What I said was, we're investigating a missing person.
I believe your husband's got something to do with it, and it's quite possibly, you know, could be a homicide. I didn't really go into anything more, but I think that was enough. I mean, she was emotional.
Police soon discovered that the Twitchell marriage was already fractured.
They had been living in, basically sleeping in separate bedrooms. She was basically living on the main floor. He was living in the basement. So there was obviously troubles in paradise there. We knew that.
Twitchell had been having an affair with an old girlfriend and lying to his wife about having a job.
We found out that he was telling his wife he was going to work every day. He had no job. He was getting his friends to invest in his alleged movie-making business with his Hollywood connections. And basically, Mark Twitchell was living off their money.
Curiously, the document police had found in Twitchell's laptop, titled SK Confessions, also referenced a crumbling marriage and secrets. It read, I went through great lengths to bring my wife over to the comfortable belief I wasn't cheating on her.
It was basically almost like a movie script.
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Chapter 6: What role did SK Confessions play in the investigation?
Back at the station, Detective Clark and Twitchell came face to face in the interrogation room once again.
As I told you that night, I knew that you were involved in the disappearance at that time of Johnny Altinger. That's changed slightly. I now know that you killed John Altinger.
Three weeks after Altinger's disappearance, police charged Twitchell with first-degree murder. The once talkative movie director barely uttered a line. You didn't get much of a reaction, did you?
No. Well, he knows not to say anything. Talking to his lawyers, he's not going to admit to anything.
He didn't have to. SK Confessions, which police have been dissecting word by word, spoke volumes. They were now convinced it was no screenplay, but rather a diary of murder. One passage about a knife read, I thrust it into his gut. His reaction was pure Hollywood.
We do believe as investigators that the account written by Mark Twitchell in that SK Confessions is exactly what he did to John Altinger.
but there was a crucial part of the story they couldn't verify about a victim who had survived.
It was just a huge piece of evidence because not only would it verify what was written in SK Confessions, it would also have a living witness. So it was paramount that we find this person.
I'm Emma Greed and I've spent the last 20 years building, running and investing in some incredible businesses. I've co-founded a multi-billion dollar unicorn and had my hand in several other companies that have generated hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. The more success I've had, the more people started coming to me with questions. How do you start a business? How do you raise money?
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Chapter 7: How did Mark Twitchell's personal life influence the case?
Mark was willing to turn over something to the police. And right away, when I heard about it, I go, he's going to turn over Johnny.
But did the filmmaker have one last plot twist? Nearly two years after his arrest, Mark Twitchell was finally ready to break his silence about the whereabouts of Johnny Altinger's body.
They had three conditions, though. One was the police couldn't ask him any questions. The second one was no media could be present and no Bill Clark. So I kind of chuckled at that, so I thought I got to him.
So detectives met Twitchell in jail, where he gave them a Google map to the location where they would find the remains.
just up here on the left. It's about a block south of his parents' house.
Police followed the map to an alleyway, ironically, just a half block away from where they had stopped their search.
And he had marked an X. X marks the spot. It took us right to this sewer cover here. We could see what looked like pieces of human torso down there.
For Johnny's brother, Gary, the news was devastating.
When something like that happens to somebody you love, you don't want to believe it because the truth is really, really difficult.
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Chapter 8: What parallels are drawn between Mark Twitchell and Dexter Morgan?
Twitchell argued he had let Gilles go so that he would create a buzz when the film came out by telling people that this had actually happened to him in real life. But he claimed Altinger became enraged at being tricked and that he accidentally killed Johnny in self-defense.
He actually expected everyone to believe him in court. I had a tough time not getting out of my chair and just going, that's a bunch of crap, you know.
And the jury agreed. They took just five hours to find Mark Twitchell guilty. He was sentenced to 25 years to life.
To me, he's a psychopathic killer that we've taken off the streets of this city. There's no doubt in my mind, or I think any in the investigative team, that he would have kept on killing. We caught him on his first one.
The only question that remains is why? Detective Bill Clark is convinced that in Twitchell's mind, he thought he could make the ultimate serial killer film if he became one.
I think that ultimately his goal was to produce a movie on what he had done. He could sit back while he's producing it and just go, these guys are all acting this out, but in real life, I've actually done it.
For Johnny's family, the pain will never go away.
I miss his intelligence, his wit, his helpfulness. If I ever had a problem, you could always count on him, and he would come and visit. You know, he'd spend some time with my kids.
You said that your children suffer from nightmares.
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