Police recover a deleted document from Mark Twitchell’s computer that reads like a script for a horror film. But was it more than just fiction? This episode originally published on October 22, 2024.
Chapter 1: What curious species have we become in the digital age?
What a curious species we have become. Willing, though no eager, partners of devices that somehow control us as we scroll. Devices that spit out bits and bytes of the world, cute puppies, intimations of Armageddon, swirling conspiracies. Some bits true, some not, some fact, some fantasy. and the bright, easy separating line of truth once merely blurred slips away.
Mark Twitchell made his living in that fuzzy space where fantasy seems very real and reality? Well, who knows? But of course he did. He was a movie maker, a storyteller, someone who imagined he could turn his make-believe into film and do it for a living. Well, at least he hoped to make a living at it.
As he rather excitedly told Detective Mike Tabler, that first time the police came to call, when they asked if he knew anything at all that might help them find the vanished Johnny Altinger. Not a thing, said Mark Twitchell. But if the detective wanted to talk movies, well, Mark was all in.
I love what I do. From the first day that I stepped on the set, that was when I knew that I just slept down. There's no going back. Anything else is crap. Nothing else would make me feel fulfilled in what I was doing, and I love what I do, so I just chased it with everything I had.
Chapter 2: Who is Mark Twitchell and what is his story?
A true definition of passion. And it was a passion he happily shared in online chats with Renee Waring, that would-be filmmaker way off in Ohio.
It was, wow, I could be a real writer this time, you know? I could really help somebody develop a character in stories and entertainment.
And by this time, you were embracing, entertaining the idea that you might actually be able to work with this director.
Yeah. He said something about setting up a dedicated server. I wouldn't have to go to Canada. We'd be able to pass ideas and script ideas back and forth like that. Never have to meet each other, you know.
But it could be a paid job.
Yeah.
That had to be pretty darned exciting.
You got it. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark and Renee spent hours and hours together online dreaming up some crazy dark stuff. It was a bit like a fan fiction writer's room in a way. Both loved the TV show Dexter. Both were fascinated by serial killers, everything about them. Renee never did write any of it down. She just reveled in the online creativity in the company of a like-minded soul.
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Chapter 3: What was found on Mark Twitchell's computer?
which was intriguing given Johnny Altinger was last heard from as he was heading off to see a woman he had met on a dating website.
Here's that catfishing excerpt from SK Confessions. As soon as the profiles go up, within 24 hours, the responses come in like a flood. I review the messages sent and choose my victims based on age, body type, profession, status, and living situation. Obviously, I'm not going to pursue a 6'4 athletic martial art instructor who's married with four kids. That's just got trouble written all over it.
I mean, I'm ruthless, but I'm not an idiot. I have my own fight training background, but I don't have delusions of grandeur. When I come across a single man in his late 30s to early 40s who is self-employed, lives alone, and stands between 5'7 and 5'11 with an average body type, weighing in between 150, 180 pounds, I know I've found my ideal target.
Well, that, thought Bill Clark, that target just had to be the real-life Johnny Altinger. Obviously, the physical description was all over the place, but wasn't it possible Altinger was catfished too? Just like the guys in SK Confessions? And I go, holy mackerel, this tells us everything. Except the guy is a professional storyteller who tells, you know, movies. They're not real.
Chapter 4: What is SK Confessions and why is it significant?
Weren't you a little bit afraid that you might be about to be drawn into a kind of a rabbit hole here that you're dealing with something that might be true or might not be true?
It might be a fantasy. The little bit I knew at that time, I thought it was true.
Except, Mark Twitchell wrote and filmed a movie script, remember, called House of Cards. And in that movie, a work of pure fiction, one scene after another, read just like it came straight out of SK Confessions.
Well, I'm off. Shouldn't be too long, just a couple of hours.
That's the actor who's being catfished in a scene from House of Cards. So maybe S.K. Confessions wasn't a diary at all. And wasn't abandoned either, but was cannibalized for story points in that scary movie. In House of Cards, the killer uses a stun gun.
Okay, we're ready for the killer stuff. Okay, we are rolling. Killers, take a slight step to the right there. There you go. And... Action. Frame. Zap. Cut.
So did Twitchell lift that directly from this in SK Confessions?
I prepared to strike with my stun baton fully extended and the safety off.
In House of Cards, the killer uses a sword.
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Chapter 5: How did the police investigate the catfishing case?
Chapter 6: What are the chilling implications of catfishing in crime?
Give me an example of proving something in the diary was true. One of the big things that came out was he had mentioned in his diary about getting a speeding ticket.
The fictional serial killer, that is. But then, so did Mark Twitchell, just about the time Johnny Altinger disappeared.
So we tracked that cop down, and that cop remembered it. And it came right back to me. He knew the conversation he had with him. And it was basically word for word what that diary told us was exactly what the sheriff told us.
Also, the killer in SK Confessions complains that after a murder, he was unable to drive the victim's car because it had a stick shift.
I took the keys and got in. A f***ing manual transmission. I never learned how to drive them. I probably stalled the damn thing a good ten times.
it's like he doesn't know what to do and he struggles driving the stick shift to this car to try park it in the garage and realize after 10 tries he's just no good at it and if you recall mark twichell told detective clark he was unable to drive the car he got from johnny altinger because it had a stick shift except that car was apparently a roadside purchase no murder involved
But detectives picked out bits of SK confessions and saw them as proof.
So far, every day I say we're proving different things are true. You know, we're going on and on. Everything's turned out to be true. So we got no reason to disbelieve this. Did you feel sometimes like you're in the middle of, you know, Alice in Wonderland or The Matrix or something? My feeling was like, I can't believe the evidence we're getting.
I always believed that story to be true right from the start. I was thinking he had filmed whatever he had done to Johnny.
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Chapter 7: How does fiction blur with reality in this case?
But there was no love triangle, no financial gain to be had from killing Johnny Altinger. Tritchell didn't even know the guy. When cyberdetectives searched Twitchell's computers and phone, they found no mention of anybody named Johnny Altinger anywhere. No emails, no texts, no phone calls, nada. There was nothing whatever connecting Mark Twitchell to Johnny Altinger.
So why in the world would Mark Twitchell kill, well, anybody really, but why a total stranger? Rumors were swirling around Edmonton that Johnny Altinger's disappearance was a guerrilla-style publicity stunt crafted by Mark Twitchell to promote his latest film.
Detective Bill Clark also thought Johnny Altinger's disappearance was connected to Twitchell's movie-making business, but certainly not as a promotion. I'm thinking he killed him and he had filmed the murder. But if he did film the murder, where was the video? And if Twitchell did murder Johnny Altier on camera, to what end?
He could never insert an actual murder into a feature film without incriminating himself and everybody else involved, crew and actors and people who would doubtless talk. And as for SK Confessions, they couldn't even be sure who wrote all that. But it could have been Mark Twitchell. Probably was. but just as easily it could have been some random dark soul on the internet.
But it did seem to be a match for the facts of the real-life Johnny Altinger case, and that is what certainly got the detective's attention. But then they encountered stories that did not match any reality. Like the one about the intended victim who got away. A tale full of wild details the police would surely have heard about, if it had happened at all.
And, you know, that's a big part to prove, is this true or not? It was a huge part of it. And surely, if somebody had been attacked that way, you would have heard about it. Well, exactly. I mean, we would have expected someone to come forward, but we got nothing. Yeah. No call, no nothing that even matches similarity.
So this seemed to be one part of that story that just didn't... Didn't make sense.
Well, one team of detectives poured over every line of SK Confessions. Another walked the sidewalks and bounded on the doors in that quiet suburban neighborhood where House of Guards was filmed. The same neighborhood where Johnny Altinger may have gone to see a woman he'd met online. Everybody who answered the door was shown a picture. Had anyone seen Johnny Altinger? Or his red Mazda?
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Chapter 8: What evidence linked Mark Twitchell to the crime?
Or anything suspicious? And at one house, the answer to that last question was yes. The police had stumbled on Marissa and Trevor, the couple who went out for a stroll and encountered that man who collapsed right in front of them. A man either terribly frightened or just acting. Anyway, the couple repeated the weird story to these investigators.
He was on the ground and it was just an instant bad feeling.
He looked at me and said, I'm being robbed, can you help me? And then as I looked up, the attacker almost actually ran into me.
And that certainly rang a bell. The investigators found the passage in SK Confessions. Marissa and Trevor's story fit.
exactly a couple on an evening stroll saw me coming after him sporting a deer in the headlight look that can only be described as a total lack of comprehension i stared back at them through my mask for half a moment and then headed back for the cover of my lair marissa and trevor told the investigators now at their door that this was the second time they had talked to police about this incident the first time being when it originally happened
Was it possible, the cops wondered, if the man who was being chased was, in fact, Johnny Altinger? A detective pulled up their report to police. And, well, it turned out their incident, or whatever it was, had happened exactly one week before Johnny Altinger disappeared. Then, Marissa and Trevor told the police about the mask the alleged assailant was wearing.
I still have nightmares about that mask.
A hockey mask, black with gold claw-like slashes across the right side, which is exactly how it was described in SK Confessions.
A hockey mask that I would cut the mouth out of and paint gold streaks into for dramatic effects.
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