In a quiet neighborhood, a frightening figure in a hockey mask appears. Then another man disappears. This episode originally published on October 15, 2024.
Chapter 1: What happened during the evening walk?
It was a happy habit, their evening walk. A summer habit, of course. Too soon now that crisp bite in the air would turn bitter cold. But not yet. That day, Friday, October 3rd, had been uncommonly warm for Edmonton, and twilight seemed to linger as they ambled along the path that wound its way through their neighborhood.
It was a good neighborhood, safe, established, not quite grand, but not modest either. So they wandered, the two of them, and listened to parents calling in kids from the park. Almost dark now. There, out of nowhere, there it was, sudden, shocking, terrifying.
I have never in my life felt fear like that.
That is Marissa Guarini, remembering the young man who stumbled out of an alley and collapsed at their feet.
Came right across our path, just kind of fell in front of us.
So stumbling along, yes. Marissa's partner, Trevor Hossinger, was alarmed too, but something about it seemed off somehow.
And to me, that didn't look real. It looked like it was staged. And what was he doing or saying or how was he behaving? He looked at me and said, I'm being robbed. Can you help me?
And it was just an instant bad feeling. It was like everything in my body just tensed up. I felt bad. This is a bad situation. I knew right away something was wrong.
And then, as if on cue, another man appeared, seemingly in pursuit.
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Chapter 2: Who was the man in the hockey mask?
And then, said Marissa, the masked man did something quite unexpected.
Well, he, the guy in the mask, was pretending that they were friends. That those two were friends.
Pretending? Maybe they really were friends.
Because the way that he fell... To me, looks staged.
To get us to stop so that they could rob us.
Yeah, we thought it was a setup for us.
Now convinced this was some sort of choreographed mugging, Marissa took off running.
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Chapter 3: What was the reaction to the staged robbery?
I was like, I'm getting out of here right now. I was so scared. I was so scared. And I just, I needed to get out of here.
but not Trevor. He stayed behind, still not quite sure if the man lying at his feet begging for help was in need of saving or out to do him harm.
So you didn't know whether he was going to assault you. Exactly. Or whether he was running from that guy for real. Exactly. Exactly.
My response was to run and get the hell out of here. His response was, what's going on here? I need to figure out what's going on.
She was down the block.
I was freaking out on him. I was yelling at him. I was screaming at him. And I was so mad at him. And I was screaming, like, high-pitched, Trevor! Trevor! Like, because he kept trying to figure out what was going on. Trevor, what were you trying to do? Why are you trying to be a hero? You're trying to be a hero. And I was like, I just wanted to go. Yeah.
Trevor said the man in the hockey mask then calmly walked away and disappeared back into the alley from which he came. But not the man lying on the path. He stayed right where he was. What in the world was going on? Trevor was done trying to solve this mystery and ran after Marissa, leaving the man on the path behind, still pleading for help.
Rather like a seasoned method actor, like it was an episode of The Twilight Zone. Trevor and Marissa got home quick as they could and called the police, telling them about the man in the mask and the guy begging for help.
We said, well, we think we're getting robbed. Like, that's how we had described it, was we thought we were going to be robbed. So where could they go from that? It was a weird situation.
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Chapter 4: Who was Johnny Altinger?
On plentyoffish.com.
Plentyoffish.com.
Yes.
Debra looked to be in her early 30s, petite with bobbed brown hair. She said nurses training had kept her far too busy to even think about dating. But now she was done and maybe ready for a man in her life.
And I thought, okay, I'm going to get out there because they certainly were not falling through my roof. I thought I better get out there. And I also was very like, oh, you know, you have to be careful. I think when you put yourself out there, you have to have some sort of air of caution about yourself.
Deborah has, well, would it be fair to call it a nurse's personality? Smart, hardworking, and quite obviously compassionate. And she was looking for those same characteristics, maybe unrealistically, in a guy. But the ones she was meeting just weren't cutting it. And then she saw Johnny Altinger's upbeat dating profile and agreed to meet him for coffee.
I was there early, and then John came in after. And John's quite tall. And so he came in, and he was his bubbly self.
Did he look like what you expected he'd look like?
Yeah, he did. Yeah, because I'd seen pictures, too, of him. And we chatted about the same stuff we talked about on the phone. Of course, we were both nervous. And so it was a really nice visit.
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Chapter 5: What were Johnny's last communications before disappearing?
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
A friendship so close that the two were comfortable talking about all the different women Johnny was meeting up with on that Plenty of Fish website.
One he dated for about a month and then it didn't work out. And then there was one other girl he was somewhat interested in. And I thought, okay, then that's great.
When he told you about these women, he told you about them?
Yeah, he did.
Then, around the middle of October, Deborah got an email from Johnny saying...
Hi there, I've met a wonderful girl named Jen. I'm going to Costa Rica and I will keep in touch and call you when I get back after the holidays. Johnny. What did you think about that? My first thought was like, oh, he's really trying to get me to see he's moved on. But I was concerned for him, and I felt like, be careful. You know, you don't just get on a plane and go meet a girl in Costa Rica.
You have to be careful. And then I think it was the following day, I was on MSN Messenger, and Johnny popped on line. And in quotations beside his name, it said, I've got a one-way ticket to heaven, and I'm never coming back.
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Chapter 6: How did the police respond to Johnny's disappearance?
And, you know, laugh out loud.
39-year-old oilfield worker Johnny Altinger was missing. Maybe. Friends hadn't seen him around since early October, and yet those same friends were getting email messages from him saying he was on vacation in Costa Rica with a new love in his life. One email seemed to explain everything.
It said, I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who was offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation. We'll be staying in her winter home in Costa Rica. A phone number to follow soon. I won't be back in town until December 10th, but I'll be checking my email periodically. See you around the holidays. Johnny. Johnny. Which, to homicide detective Bill Clark, seemed perfectly reasonable.
Not hard to imagine that a love-struck man might want to leave the snow and ice of Edmonton behind and skip off to the tropics. Who knows? Maybe he did go to Costa Rica. I mean, stranger things have happened, right? You don't know. Still, just to be thorough, investigators did a little tour of Altinger's condominium. And it was messy, for sure. Dishes in the sink, clothes strewn about.
But it certainly did not look like a crime scene.
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.
Oh, and his car was gone. His red Mazda coupe. So, let's find the car.
Find the car, hopefully we find him, or have an idea where he is.
Since Johnny Altinger's email said he'd taken off for Costa Rica, officers went to the airport, of course, and looked for that red Mazda of his. They searched in every parking lot. But it wasn't there. They combed through airline passenger lists. He wasn't on any of them. And just as the police were contemplating that puzzle, one of Altinger's friends surfaced with yet another intriguing email.
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Chapter 7: What were the details surrounding Johnny's dating life?
So we're thinking our next step logically is the garage. We've got to check inside and have a close look.
And so they applied for a search warrant to look more thoroughly, give the place a real forensic going over.
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.
This is no good.
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?
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.
Clark expected the detective to return in an hour or so with the key and consent form. But no, the detective called Clark instead with news that just couldn't wait about a story Mark Twitchell had just told him.
Detective says to me, he says, bought a red Mazda off a guy.
And he didn't mention it at all? Never mentioned it before. But had somebody asked him about such a car before? He'd been asked several times about the car.
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Chapter 8: What mysterious messages were sent by Johnny?
Coming up in future episodes of The Man in the Black Mask.
He told me that he just finished his House of Cards, which was about a serial killer, but he wanted to pursue more of that. And I said, well, why not a female serial killer? Why has it got to be a guy, you know? And I said, let's explore that.
In a story?
Sure, in a story.
And then I turn around finally, and I see this guy, and he's wearing this mask. And he's hitting me all over with this sun gun.
It was probably the most spellbinding interview I've ever had with a witness.
And Liz Cole is Senior Executive Producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.
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