Real-Life Dexter? | Mark Twitchell

What this episode is about

The content delves into the unsettling case of Mark Twitchell, exploring the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Johnny Alinger in 2008, a man with a diverse set of interests but a struggle to connect romantically. The narrative raises questions about Twitchell's involvement and the bizarre motivations that may have stemmed from his fascination with filmmaking and dark themes, suggesting a complex interplay between fiction and reality.

Key takeaways

• Johnny's leap from awkward to adventurous explores dating's modern gauntlet: garage entrances and suspenseful red flags.
• Navigating romance online? Ensure the only 'mystery' isn't your partner's address or a hidden agenda.
• Chasing love or danger? Johnny's night echoes the duality of digital dating's allure and peril.
• Love might be blind, but awareness can be the sight that saves—always trust your friends' instincts.
• From motorcycle rides to mystic theories, Johnny’s diverse passions scream: life’s too short for boring dates.

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 10:00: Costa Rica, Plenty of Fish, Argus Machine, Astral travel
2. 10:00 – 20:00: Armra Colostrum, Comic-Con, Mark Twitchell, Metabolism Ignite
3. 20:00 – 30:00: Facebook, Katrina, Red Deer
4. 30:00 – 40:00: Rocket Money
5. 40:00 – 50:00: Detective Tabler, Luminol, pyramid scheme, serial killer confessions
6. 50:00 – 1:00:00: Tovala, 40 Avenue, 50th Street, Calgary Trail
7. 1:00:00 – 1:10:00: SK Confessions, Facebook
8. 1:10:00 – 1:14:37: SK Confessions, Mark Twitchell

Notable quotes from "Real-Life Dexter? | Mark Twitchell"

• Johnny Alinger was born on April 28th, 1970 in Edmonton, Alberta. By 2008, Johnny was 38 years old. He was also single and he was living in a small apartment in Alberta. So, he had a job.

  about Johnny Alinger · at 0:56

• He had a hard time connecting with women. So, because of that, he decided to join the dating website called Plenty of Fish. And Johnny met a couple of women there. He even went…

  about Plenty of Fish · at 2:06

• Has offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation. We'll be staying in her winter home in Costa Rica. Phone number to follow soon. I won't be in town until December 10th…

  about Costa Rica · at 6:07

• They found the name of the man who was renting the garage. It was a 29-year-old man named Mark Twitchell. Mark had been born in Alberta, and he had married an American woman…

  about Mark Twitchell · at 9:57

• Using something that has been viral all over social media. You've probably seen it. And it's Armra Colostrum. and it's nature's original blueprint for health.

  about Armra Colostrum · at 13:26

• Getting older, I for sure struggle with it. And if weight loss is your goal, you need to know about Metabolism Ignite.

  about Metabolism Ignite · at 14:35

• Now, clearly Mark had deleted it, but the police experts, they were able to recover it. and it was titled SK Confessions, which the police later realized stood for serial killer confessions.

  about SK Confessions · at 48:43

• Sponsor makes weekn night meals so much easier. This episode is sponsored by Tovala, a smart meal delivery service with fresh meals and a smart oven that does the cooking for…

  about Tovala · at 56:09

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Johnny Altinger — Person · 20 mentions
• Killbilly Jim — Person · 10 mentions
• Renee — Person · 4 mentions
• Mark Twitchell — Person · 2 mentions · first at 10:01
• Johnny Alinger — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:56
• Elton John — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:43
  Travel, which I don't even know what astral travel is. And he also was always listening to Elton John. and that was like his favorite. So, when you really step back and think…
• Katrina — Person · 1 mention · first at 25:22
  That was she came to the condo set on the Friday came up from Red Deer named Katrina.
• Detective Tabler — Person · 1 mention · first at 41:41
  When you gave your version of events to Detective Tabler last night, your version of events was different than what you told me today.
• Tracy Higgins — Person · 1 mention · first at 47:46
  Was having an affair with a woman that he had dated back in the late 90s. Her name is Tracy Higgins. During the search, the police also used Luminol in Mark's garage. And…
• Gil Tero — Person · 1 mention · first at 55:48
  Enough, it worked because shortly after the press conference, police got a phone call from a 33-year-old man named Gil Tero.

Companies & orgs

• Facebook — Company · 4 mentions · first at 5:51
  Really excited. Then Johnny didn't show up to work, but he did update his Facebook status. And it said, I've got a one-way ticket to heaven and I'm not coming back. Then three…
• Plenty of Fish — Company · 3 mentions · first at 2:10
• Mazda — Company · 3 mentions
• Armra — Company · 2 mentions
• Argus Machine — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:09
  Single and he was living in a small apartment in Alberta. So, he had a job working the night shift at Argus Machine, which was a company that made equipment for oil fields. And…
• Comic-Con — Company · 1 mention · first at 10:26
  Wars and of comic books. He would create these just insanely elaborate costumes for Halloween, for Comic-Con, for all of the conventions. And in the year 2000, he graduated…

Products & tech

• Armra Colostrum — Product · 1 mention · first at 13:30
• Metabolism Ignite — Product · 1 mention · first at 14:39
• Luminol — Product · 1 mention · first at 47:49
  He had dated back in the late 90s. Her name is Tracy Higgins. During the search, the police also used Luminol in Mark's garage. And wouldn't you know it, the floor lit up…

Concepts & topics

• SK Confessions — Concept · 6 mentions · first at 48:47
• Telepathy — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:32
  Computer riding his motorcycles or studying very fringy topics like hypnotherapy, telepathy, philosophy, reincarnation, what was the other one? Astral travel, which I don't even know what astral travel is. And he also was always.
• Astral travel — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:38
  Hypnotherapy, telepathy, philosophy, reincarnation, what was the other one? Astral travel, which I don't even know what astral travel is. And he also was always listening to Elton John. and that was like his favorite. So, when you really.
• Star Wars — Concept · 1 mention · first at 10:19
  Of making movies. He loved scripts, costumes, props, sets, everything. In particular, he was a huge fan of Star Wars and of comic books. He would create these just insanely…
• pyramid scheme — Concept · 1 mention · first at 47:23
  And then he would use that money to pay the bills, to buy groceries, and kind of like almost like a pyramid scheme, just kind of keep on pretending that he did have a real…
• serial killer confessions — Concept · 1 mention · first at 48:52
  Recover it. and it was titled SK Confessions, which the police later realized stood for serial killer confessions.
• Taken — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

• Costa Rica — Place · 6 mentions · first at 6:11
• St. Albert — Place · 1 mention · first at 19:32
• Red Deer — Place · 1 mention · first at 25:22
  That was she came to the condo set on the Friday came up from Red Deer named Katrina.
• Calgary Trail — Place · 1 mention · first at 58:13
  Sent to him said, So, okay, Friday, if you're coming from the north on Groat, get on Calgary Trail and when you get to the south side and jump on Whiteund, then go south on…
• 50th Street — Place · 1 mention · first at 58:18
  Get on Calgary Trail and when you get to the south side and jump on Whiteund, then go south on 50th Street. Take a right on 40 Avenue and after a block or two, take the first right into an alley.
• 40 Avenue — Place · 1 mention · first at 58:21
  The south side and jump on Whiteund, then go south on 50th Street. Take a right on 40 Avenue and after a block or two, take the first right into an alley.

Sponsors

• Tovala — Sponsor · 4 mentions · first at 56:13
• Veracity — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at 14:16
  Rm a.com/102 life. Today's episode is sponsored by Veracity. And honestly, I love when I find something that tackles health at the root of it rather than just like slapping a band-aid on it. And Veracity is an all-natural, drug-free,.
• Rocket Money — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at 32:04
  Have these little secret charges come through. And that's why I love Rocket Money because Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:13 You need to tell me the truth about what's going on. What happened with this fella? I mean, it this happened because of the movie thing. Something that went too far.

0:33 I have no idea what the hell is going on. You do have an idea. You have a very good idea, Mark, about what's going on. You know exactly what happened there that night. I mean, you haven't told us the truth. You haven't told us anything

0:54 close to the truth. Johnny Alinger was born on April 28th, 1970 in Edmonton, Alberta. By 2008, Johnny was 38 years old. He was also single and he was living in a small apartment in Alberta. So, he had a job working the night shift at Argus Machine, which was a company that made equipment for oil fields. And Johnny's job was in quality control. So he was responsible for checking out all of the different parts that they made. You know, making sure they all met all of the standards, all of those things. So between shifts, Johnny was either on his computer riding his motorcycles or studying very fringy topics like hypnotherapy, telepathy, uh philosophy, reincarnation, uh what was the other one? Astral travel, which I don't even know what astral travel is. And he also was always listening to Elton John. and that was like his favorite. So, when you really step back and think about it, Johnny was

1:49 very well-rounded, right? He had a bunch of different interests and he also had a lot of friends, too. But his life was missing something. Johnny really wanted a girlfriend. He wanted to be in a relationship and wanted to eventually get married. The problem for him was he was a little awkward, a little shy, and he had a hard time connecting with women. So, because of that, he decided to join the dating website called Plenty of Fish. And Johnny met a couple of women there. He even went on a few dates, but most of the time there was just, you know, no real spark. They would end up deciding to be just friends. In some cases, those friendships would progress and they would end up getting really close because again, he just really knew how to connect with people, just not really on a romantic level. That was the struggle. And he wanted that. He wanted more. So around late September or early October of 2008, Johnny ended up meeting

2:39 a woman on Plenty of Fish named Jen. and they had a really easy time talking. I mean, the conversation, it was flowing. They got along well. It just felt natural. So, eventually, Jen was the one who asked him out on a date. And Johnny was like, "Uh, hello. Yeah, of course." Now, if you're thinking that maybe they were planning a traditional first date, like having dinner or seeing a movie, maybe even grabbing drinks, think again. Because even though it's dangerous, and even though I would never advise it, Jen invited Johnny over to her house even before they ever had met. And look, I'm not a prude, okay? I get that hookup culture is a thing, especially when you're online dating, so her inviting him over may not seem very weird. But the problem was with this is that Jen refused to tell Johnny her address.

3:24 Instead, she gave him a very detailed set of instructions for how to get into her garage. And then she told him that once he got there, he should go through the garage door into the garage, and then there would be a door leading to the house. So she told Johnny, "Knock on that door and I will come and meet you." So Johnny, like I'm sure many of us probably are thinking, you know, this is a little weird. And even when he told his friends, they were kind of like, "What? It is a little weird. Like what do you mean? Why won't she just tell you the address?" And one friend was really suspicious about the entire thing. He had such a bad feeling about the whole situation that he even asked Johnny to call him when he got there, give him the address before he went inside so that somebody would have it. sort of like, you know, if something happens to you while you're there, I want to be able to find you. I want to be able to know how

4:09 to help you. But even though the people around Johnny were seeing some of the red flags and thinking that all this was, you know, a little weird, even suspicious, Johnny still wanted to go on this date. So on October 10th, 2008, he got into his red Mazda and he drove over to this garage, carefully following Jen's directions. But when he got to the garage and knocked on the door leading to the house, Jen wasn't there. Now, admittedly, he was a little bit early because he was so excited. He was really looking forward to this. But Jen wasn't answering the door. And even though Jen wasn't there, somebody else was. It was a guy who looked to be a little younger than Johnny. And he told Johnny, "You know, Jen's not here right now, but she will be back soon." So then Johnny and this man talked for a little while. The man didn't ever tell Johnny his name, but he told Johnny that he rented that garage from Jen. He used it to make

5:01 movies. He had a bunch of props sitting around. He even showed some of the props to Johnny. But eventually Johnny ended up leaving. He also called his friend and told him what had happened and gave him the address because as weird as all of that had been, he still wasn't done with Jen yet. He still wanted to go on a date with her and meet her. So now he had the address. He wanted to pass it along to his friend. He was willing to go back and try for another date. Hopefully a date that she would actually, you know, show up for. So he started messaging Jen to reschedu. And Johnny even told Jen that he could come back later that night if she wanted. And she said, "Yeah, that's perfect. That'll work perfectly." So later that night, Johnny went back to the garage to meet Jen. And before he left, he sent a text to his friend and he said, "She's home now. I'm heading over again." He he just really excited. Then Johnny didn't show

5:49 up to work, but he did update his Facebook status. And it said, "I've got a one-way ticket to heaven and I'm not coming back." Then three days after his date with Jen, a bunch of Johnny's friends and family members received an email from him. This email said, "I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who has offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation. We'll be staying in her winter home in Costa Rica. Phone number to follow soon. I won't be in town until December 10th, but I will be checking my email periodically." He also sent an email to his work saying that he was quitting, which they replied back asking for Johnny's forwarding address so that they could send him his last paycheck. But Johnny never responded. So Johnny's friends and family were already concerned, right? Because nobody had been able to get into contact with him.

6:38 And that email and the fact that he quit his job kind of sealed the deal that something was wrong here, or at the very least, super shady. I mean, for one, Johnny was a reasonable person. There was no way that he would just run away off to Costa Rica with some woman that he had just met. Plus, apparently Johnny, which I don't understand this personally, but he didn't like the warm weather. So, there was no way that he would choose to go somewhere like Costa Rica. The email just didn't sound like Johnny either because when he wrote emails, the tone was usually very cheerful, very friendly, and he used a lot of smiley faces, wrote jokes, and this email had none of that. And think back to that text message he sent his friend when he finally went over to Jensen when he's like, "I'm here. She's home. I'm going over. He he." Like, that kind of shows his personality. And he did that in emails, too. Now, it wasn't

7:24 like that. It was more sterile. Plus, Johnny didn't ask any of his friends to come and take care of his motorcycles for him. He like treated these like they were basically his kids. So if he was really leaving for Costa Rica, especially remember this was late September, early October and then they met, like if he was leaving for an extended period of time, he definitely would have asked somebody to check on his motorcycles during the time that he was gone. So all to say, nobody bought this story about jettting off to Costa Rica, not for even a second. His friends decided they needed to investigate what was really going on. And so they went over to Johnny's apartment. But as soon as they got there, they noticed that Johnny's motorcycles were not covered up. And again, he would never go off on a long trip without taking care of them, or at least covering them. So now his friends were really freaked out. They

8:14 didn't have a key though to Johnny's apartment, but because they were so scared and freaked out, they broke in. And once they were inside, they found that the apartment was really messy. There were tons of dishes in the sink, dirty clothing on the floor. I mean, not totally trashed or anything, but again, if somebody was about to take off for a month, you'd think that maybe they would tidy up a little bit. Yeah, you might leave a few dishes in the sink if you were headed out for an hour, but not if you're like going on a vacation to Costa Rica, right? Unless that's just me, cuz I'm super anal about that, but whatever.

8:44 It also looked like Johnny hadn't packed any clothes either, though. In fact, all of his suitcases were still there. They even found his passport. So, I mean, hello. Clearly, Johnny was not in Costa Rica because how could he get there if he didn't have his passport? So, if the information in that email was true, that would mean that he would have had to leave the country with nothing. No luggage, no clothes, no passport. But here's something interesting. There was one thing that was missing from his place. His red Mazda. His friends couldn't find his car anywhere. They drove around. They looked for it everywhere they could possibly think of.

9:21 They even went by parking lots at nearby airports, but they never saw his car there. And obviously, he didn't drive to Costa Rica, right? Something was wrong here. And finally, this was enough for his friends to call the police on October 17th. And the good news is the police took Johnny's disappearance very seriously right off the bat. And best of all, they knew exactly where to start looking. Now, remember how Johnny texted one of his friends the address for that garage where he was supposed to meet with Jen? Well, that friend gave this address to the police. And sure enough, when the police looked into this garage, they found the name of the man who was renting the garage. It was a 29-year-old man named Mark Twitchell. Mark had been born in Alberta, and he had married an American woman just the year before in 2007. Together, they had one child, a daughter. Now, Mark had always dreamed

10:14 of making movies. He loved scripts, costumes, props, sets, everything. In particular, he was a huge fan of Star Wars and of comic books. He would create these just insanely elaborate costumes for Halloween, for Comic-Con, for all of the conventions. And in the year 2000, he graduated with a degree in radio and television arts. In 2007, he directed a fan movie called Star Wars: Secrets of the Rebellion. So, that should give you kind of a sense of how much of a film guy Mark really was. And you probably also remember that when Johnny went to this garage the very first time, he met a man who showed him a bunch of props that he had been using in movies. But now when the police got to this same garage to investigate, they had a very different experience.

10:58 First, they noticed a very strong smell. It almost a smell that smelled like burning. They also found a very large metal barrel that had something in it and something that had clearly been burnt, but they couldn't tell what it was. But most alarming, there was blood spatter all over the garage. So naturally, they asked Mark like, "Uh, hello, what's going on here? What's up?" But he said, "No, no, no. Don't freak out. I use this garage for making movies." And to be fair, this garage wasn't connected to his personal house.

11:30 His house was actually on the totally opposite side of town. He just rented this garage to use it as a studio for his movies. So, this was basically the same story that this man had told Johnny back during that date when he went over there to meet with Jen. And he said his current project was a horror movie called House of Cards. He explained that that blood spatter that they were seeing everywhere, it was actually fake blood. It wasn't real. And that burned barrel, those were all from a scene that he had recently filmed for this movie, so it was a prop. Well, next, the police asked Mark if he remembered anybody coming to the garage on October 10th around 6:00 p.m., but Mark said no. He said he had been working in the garage during the day and he had left a little while before 6. So if anybody had come after that period of time, he wouldn't have been there to see them. He also said he had no idea who Johnny was. And he also

12:19 had never seen a red Mazda. So he told the officers, you know, go ahead, search the garage, look everywhere. Like I have nothing to hide. So while they were searching, he was telling them all about his House of Cards movie. And he was explaining the different props, the different things they were looking at, what they were seeing. and he had said that he had just filmed a very bloody scene of this character getting killed and that's why all that blood spatter was, you know, quite literally everywhere. He actually spent a few days trying to clean it up, but clearly he hadn't gotten everything yet. But he had an explanation for everything. However, even though he had those explanations, they weren't sitting right with the police. So eventually, they asked Mark if he would come in for an interview at the police station, and Mark agreed.

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15:22 That's veracityhealth.co code 10 to life. That interrogation was on October 19th, 2 days after Johnny had been reported as missing.

15:36 Now, tonight you were asked to go down there and meet our constipals at the garage, and that's because they were looking for a missing person.

15:42 Yeah. Okay. And uh you were contacted. you were apparently at home in St. Elmer, which is quite a distance from this and yet you readily responded down to health police and and we certainly appreciate that.

15:56 Now, uh you arrived at the garage and you noted something immediately uh on your arrival when you went out to to the door to to show the police the garage.

16:06 Yeah. And what was that? Well, the first thing that happened, I drove in, I parked in the back where I usually parked. I actually the hospital was calling me when I was about a minute out to get there. Yeah. and uh talked to him and said, "Yeah, so like where are you?" And he was in the back. So I went to meet him and one second from my wife. She's let me keep her roll. Yeah, that's her. I'll literally know she's going to be up anyway. So anyway, um yeah, so I get into the back and I'm like, "Okay, well, let's go check it So, I get to the actual gate, side gate there, and they mentioned that it had been blocked off somehow. I didn't know what that was about. I opened it. There was nothing there. So, they said, "Okay, well, yes, it's not." Um, which is a little odd, but went uh down the side of the garage, came back around, looked at the the door itself, and the first thing that I noticed upon looking a little

17:02 closer at it, cuz the light wasn't that great, but I could see what was going on. The padlock didn't look familiar to me. Okay? And uh I I was the one that actually put the latch on the door.

17:14 Mhm. And I had a padlock previously, but it wasn't the same one. The one that I had was like the silver on the outside, like a black plastic dial in the center.

17:23 And this one was just all metal. So I So you noticed a different pad lock? Yeah.

17:30 And that on the door, right? Now, what other locks are there on that door? Can you describe?

17:36 There's also a dead bolt. A deadbolt. Yep. Pretty standard lock. Yeah. And is there another type of uh lock or handle or

17:47 No, just the doorork knob. But I don't think the doorork knob locks. I've never tried it, but I don't think it does. Okay. Now, okay. You said that you were there the week last weekend of September and that was the only time you were shooting there.

18:01 Yeah, that was the only time we had a full crew and cast and Okay. filming. So that's the last weekend of September.

18:09 Yep. [clears throat] And and now we're up to the 19th of October here. Uh so that's just about 3 weeks.

18:20 Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you were filming through the weekend then we're in the weekend now. So um just about 3 weeks since you and that's the only filming that you've done. You've been back there since I filmed.

18:37 Yeah, a couple times. Yeah. When was that? See, one of my problems is always I have issues with this. I have also issues with uh remembering uh tasks to do so I live on lists. I try to formulate lists. As long as I have a list and I can check things off as I'm doing them, I'm okay. But I mean, so I need to stay organized. Don't procrastinate or stuff like that. So, um I did I think I did drop off And I I honestly I don't remember if it was this past week or the week before it, but I remember dropping off some cleaning materials just for the next time when we were going to go in there cuz my intention again was to to ditch this thing and get it into a TV series or a a movie. What's your next plan to shoot there?

19:24 Oh, it's not decided yet. Not decided yet. It's still up in the air. So there's no nothing planned for that garage?

19:32 No. You live in St. Albert. Yeah. You'd be concerned about dropping off a few cleaning supplies there at the garage when nobody else was there sometime between that weekend and it had to be done right away.

19:49 Well, not necessarily right away. The way that I do it again, it's on a list. So, I would have had like a line long list of line items of stuff that I'm getting done that day and it just happened to be one of them. So, it's like a stop off, drop it off, and then go.

20:03 Now, what sort of cleaning supplies would you have at that place? Uh, paper towels, um, like skin cleaner, gloves, the usual stuff. just because when we deal with this when you do anything that's involving uh like suspense thrillers or anything like that and you want to have something that looks like blood on screen, we use this mix that's like a corn syrup with food coloring in it

20:28 cuz it it looks really good on camera. It has the right consistency and everything, but it's sticky as hell. Gets everywhere and it's a nightmare. And last time it got all over the chair, got all over the floor. It's like ridiculous. So, and uh that was really my thing was just cuz then everybody's grabbing stuff and moving it over and every time they do they rub up against it and get all their clothes and sticky and annoying. So, just a matter of keeping that stuff off of there and clean and

20:56 not having to deal with that cuz we spent the problem with an untested effect. Uh this thing where we were the achieved shot was running a sword through a guy who was sitting in a chair.

21:10 Yeah. And so the way we did it is we just had like the actor sitting in the chair and then the other actor pretending to hold the sword.

21:17 Yeah. In them. And then we go back, we lock the camera off, it hasn't moved, shoot this or we take the same color shirt that the guy in the chair was wearing. Uh put like a ziplockc bag full of this corn syrup there and then just, you know, boom, put the the blade through it so that it comes out with the corn syrup on there dripping. Yeah.

21:36 Then they have to digitally take that, put it onto our original shot, so it looks like it's coming through the guy realistically. And uh it's this complex setup and we spent like 2, three hours on that one thing cuz we hadn't actually tested it before or set it up prior.

21:50 So, I mean, it's kind of like learn trial by fire and figure it out as you're going along, but it turned out really good. I think it'll look good once it's all done. So,

21:58 sounds kind of easy. But it's a huge mess, too. Like again, you're dripping stuff everywhere. You try to kind of curve them as much as you can, but it happens. You're walking back and forth and things get moved around. So,

22:10 yeah. Now, so you were doing quite a bit of that sort of stuff in the garage, that kind of shooting where there was like blood effect and

22:23 so what what other supplies would you have there that would be needed for that kind of thing? What? Uh um well, it depends what you mean by supplies cuz there's supplies and props and a lot of other stuff. A lot of that stuff is in the garage. It's there when I rented it. Uh stuff that I got just for the shoot. Um there was like this, you know, kit full of uh knives that we were going to do. We're going to do like a reveal shot. Show the guy like opening this kit and it looks all menacing and everything. Kind of put that into a montage. Uh what else? like the the usual duct tape for the guy sitting in the chair duct taping him up.

23:00 Yeah. Uh there's that stuff. Uh the sword obviously there's two swords. One that like looks all glorious and cute on camera and then the other one that's just a stunt one that's more stain resistant that we used to like dump all the syrup on and everything.

23:16 Yeah. Um some clothes prop mask, you know, stuff like that. Okay. Now, it's me. I'm just thinking about this. I mean, it's kind of odd that you're filming that kind of thing.

23:31 And we end up going to that garage because of a missing person supposedly went there.

23:37 That's really freaky, too. And as soon as they called me on the phone, as soon as Maxwell called me and said that, you know, this is what's going on. I get this weird chill cuz

23:47 it just doesn't sit right. So the first thing I start asking myself is who all knows about what we do there and what our schedule is like and stuff like that. And if we we have a shooting schedule, usually there's a bunch of people in and out of there to prep leading up to it and then we shoot something there and then that's it until we announce something else. There's no fixed activity.

24:10 Mhm. So I don't know. Now you've been told that we're looking for a missing death. Mhm.

24:19 Okay. Have you been told his name? No. Okay. The name is John. Okay. Alinger. A L T I N G E R.

24:32 Okay. Does that name ring a bell to you or mean anything to you? No. Never heard it before.

24:39 No. He's nobody that you'd been using as an actor or that maybe uh Mike or Jason would have been in touch with, but

24:47 No, I don't think so. Um I don't know if Mike or Jay know him, but nothing that in terms of casting or production crew or anything like that?

24:55 No. No. Not not a worker, not an employee you've heard about? No. No. Now, do you have any girls that are employed by you or that take part in anything any of the setup or anything? Yeah, we uh had a really like great actress on this one that we worked with uh that was

25:18 she came to the condo set on the Friday uh came up from Red Deer named Katrina.

25:24 Katrina. Mhm. [clears throat] Okay. Yeah. And uh that's the most recent. Okay. I got some like Facebook buddies too. They're all kind of like in the industry and back and forth and you know submitting themselves for casting calls and things like that but nobody that's crew.

25:46 Yeah. So these Facebook buddies would they have connected with anybody uh like this maybe that was just a single guy that uh maybe attracted him to towards a sort of line of work or anything like that?

26:02 Maybe. I don't know. Not that I'm aware of, but possibly. Okay. Okay. The indications we have anyway, and we've got this through our investigations and the address comes up and the the garage is described and he actually says that he was there on that particular day. The particular day we're talking about is I think is the I think the 15th. the 15th. [clears throat] Okay.

26:36 Now, and I may be mistaken. I may be mixing a couple things up, but I think the 15th. And that's the day you're indicating that you were probably down there putting supplies there.

26:46 Okay. Yeah. Okay. But on Wednesday or something. Yeah. Yeah. And it was in and around the same sort of time frame that you were there, you know, that he would have been there.

26:57 Okay. Like in the afternoon. Really? Yeah. and he was supposed to go there and meet a girl who described the address and told him how to get there. Now, this girl he's met through, you know, an internet uh site. Okay. Doesn't know her from before. So, he of course lets friends know,

27:25 right? Okay. But go meet her. Swear sends it out to a few friends. All of a sudden he disappears. Last known place was there. Said he went there. Met a guy. The girl wasn't there. Met a guy in the garage. In the garage, apparently. Okay.

28:00 Can you tell what what does it explain to you? Tell me what you're thinking. Well, it explains the foreign padlock. If he switched it out or something like that, that makes sense.

28:15 Who switched it? Whoever this guy is. Well, he didn't switch anything. He went there and met met somebody there. Yeah.

28:24 Okay. But that's what I mean. Like whoever he met there. Yeah. Cuz I don't know of anybody else that has access unless they, you know, accessed it themselves pretty much. So your lock was totally gone off there.

28:42 Yeah. Okay. The latch was still there, but a different padlocks there. So anybody could have come along with a set of bolt cutters, cut yours off, put their own on. Right. That still doesn't give him access to the garage because there's still a dimple right?

28:58 Yeah. This guy indicates to his friends that he arrived, met a guy in there, the girl wasn't there, got a call from her later.

29:14 Okay. Was going back to the garage. And that's where the cool trail goes cool on us.

29:29 So, okay, let me get this straight. Yeah. The guy who's missing Yeah. shows up to my garage,

29:44 right? 57440 at that. claims to have been in it. Yeah. Then talk to a guy. Talk to another guy.

29:54 Yeah. So now there's two of them. And then he leaves because the girl's not there that he's supposedly,

30:03 right? Okay. And then he talks to her on the phone. I don't know that he talks to her on the phone or if he gets a message from her or which way that went.

30:15 Okay. Okay. He somehow ends up communicating with her and then comes back to the garage to meet her.

30:23 Okay. All right. Now, does that sound like anything that you know about? Not at all. Does it sound like anything that could be related in any way to any movie sort of stuff you're doing or

30:48 Not that I'm aware of. I mean, I'm a I'm the producer. I pretty much control all the elements.

30:53 So, if there was anything like that, if somebody needed to borrow the place or whatever then

31:01 they would let me know. So, they let you know. Um they or they ask or something like that. So, yeah. No, I don't know anything about that. No.

31:12 Does the name Jen mean anything to you? No. Cost Max will ask me about that, too. And

31:18 yes, Jen or anything like that. So, the name Jen doesn't mean anything to you. You don't know a Jen. You don't have an actress named Jen.

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32:53 That's rocketmoney.com/10. Now, in my opinion, this guy was acting a little weird. But then after the interrogation, things got even weirder because the day after this interview, police received an email from Mark. This email read, "Listen, last night when we were talking, I was running on fumes and very tired, so I missed a couple of things that came to mind this afternoon, which may or may not be important to this case that I'd like to tell you about. I was so focused on trying to stay awake and discuss the topic at hand, I blanked out on a few odd occurrences that at first didn't seem like they had anything to do with this.

33:35 But now, I'm not so sure. Then he went on to explain that a few days earlier before his interrogation, he was at a gas station when a man tapped on his car window and asked him if he wanted to buy his red Mazda. Apparently, the guy said that he had met an older woman, that they were running away together, and he no longer needed the car. Mark told this guy like, "Yeah, sure, but I only have 40 bucks on me." But the man accepted that. He said it was okay. So, he took Mark's $40, gave him his car, and then left. And then somehow Mark brought the car back to the garage at his house, not his studio garage. And that's why the police didn't see the car when they did that first search of the studio garage. But Mark was only just now remembering the story after the interrogation, which got to say, it seems like something you wouldn't forget, right? I mean, if I bought a car from somebody for 40 bucks,

34:28 I'd probably remember it and I'd be bragging to everybody about what a great deal I had. I probably wouldn't, you know, let that slip my mind. But anyway, according to that email that Mark had sent the police, this same man who sold him the car began following Mark after he sold him the car. And Mark wrote, "I don't mind saying this. It's all seriously stressing me out. Someone's obviously been tampering with my crap, using it without my awareness, and it's both infuriating and frustrating. My wife can't sleep or eat from worrying about it, and I can only imagine what the family of this missing guy must be going through." Which, you know, to be fair, I understand being tired and forgetting things. But if you were truly scared that somebody had been following you or messing with your stuff, how could you forget to tell that to the police? Especially because during Mark's first interview with the police, the

35:20 officers had asked him multiple times if he remembered seeing a red car in the past few days. All to which Mark had said no. So obviously the investigators weren't buying this story. I mean, if anything, it just made them even more suspicious of Mark. So, they ended up going to look at this car that, you know, Mark had bought for $40, which was in the garage at his home and not at his studio. And sure enough, as I'm sure you can guess, it was Johnny's car. However, the license plates had been removed from it. Which, if you think that sounds bad, it gets worse because the detectives talked to the people who lived near the garage that Mark rented, and a bunch of them said that they saw Mark change the locks on his garage. as in he changed them himself, which again did not match the story that he told in the interrogation about somebody sneaking around, changing the padlock on him, all of these things. Police also talked to

36:14 some of the actors that Mark had hired for his House of Cards movie. And one of them said that he felt very uncomfortable while he was filming one particular scene for the movie. He said, quote, "My character was killed with a samurai sword." They said that they would have a mannequin or a dummy to run the sword through when I got there, but there wasn't one. Then when I looked at the weapons, that was my first sign because that's when I saw that they were real. And I thought to myself, you know, this is a little bit off. Why didn't I tell somebody where I am? Now, luckily, the actor didn't get hurt or anything like that, but he definitely left the garage and he was feeling a little weird. He also told the police they didn't use any fake blood during that scene. So, there was no good reason for the garage to be full of blood spatter.

37:01 It definitely was not from that movie. So, Mark went to the police station for a second interview. This one was on October 20th. And things just went further downhill for him when he got there because one big problem was that his story changed entirely. First, he said that the guy who sold him the car came up to him at the gas station. Then he said that the guy approached him before he went to the gas station. Then he said it happened after the gas station. He also changed from saying that he was getting gas for his car to then saying he was getting gas for a lawn mower. But then the police found out that Mark didn't even own a lawn mower. I mean like get a better alibi, right? Then he said that he bought the car on the 15th, but Mark's neighbors said that they saw the car outside of the garage a few days before the 15th.

37:48 So nothing was adding up here. Not one bit. And as the interrogation went on, he just kept getting quieter and quieter to the point where it was basically the detective going on this very long monologue all while Mark just sat there in silence.

38:04 If at any time we're talking you want to contact the lawyer, you can do so at any time. I'll take you to a phone. There's something else I want to tell you, Mark, and that's that there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that you're involved in the disappearance of John Alinger. No doubt in my mind at all, Mark. Why?

38:32 As I said, Mark, there's no doubt in my mind that you're involved in this disappearance. I just want to get to the bottom of this because this is not going to go away.

38:46 It's not going to leave you, Mark. I don't understand. I'm going to explain some of the reasons to you, but you do understand because you know what I'm talking about. You're involved in this. And unfortunately, something got carried away. Something got carried away with this guy. I mean, talking to you here tonight, you seem like a decent guy. And I think that something happened that night that maybe you just didn't have total control of. And I'm here to get to the bottom of it because it's not going to go away. This is going to stay with you. And we need to clear this up here and now. We need to clear this up tonight.

39:37 You need to tell me the truth about what's going on. What happened with this fella? I mean, this happened because of of the movie thing, something that went too far. I have no idea what the hell is going on.

40:04 You do have an idea. You have a very good idea, Mark, about what's going on. You know exactly what happened there that night. I mean, you haven't told us the truth. You haven't told us anything close to the truth.

40:22 This can't be. I don't What do you mean it can't be? I just don't understand. What don't you understand? We have a fellow who's missing. We know he's been to your garage. We've talked to all the neighbors now. You know, the neighbors saw you changing the law about a week, week and a half ago. Neighbors watch. They see all these things, little things that you don't realize. Okay, we know the lock was changed long before the 15. Yet when you get there on the 15th, you tell me, "Oh, that's your lock on there on the 15th."

41:27 It's not till you go back with the policeman last night that you notice or you say, "So that's a lie. That's a lie you told me." When you gave your version of events to Detective Tabler last night, your version of events was different than what you told me today. What you wrote down was different than what you told me in this room. What you told me in this room when I first came in was different from your final version of Vance. You've changed your whole story. All kinds of different lies. Now, I know this isn't the easy thing to live with. Something went wrong there.

42:15 Like I said, I don't think you're a bad guy. You seem like a decent guy. You got a wife. You got a small child. You're trying to do the best. I don't think, you know, I don't know, but I don't think you're doing that well financially. I think it's a tough life what you're in. You're trying to do your best, but something went wrong. Maybe you were just trying to make a better movie. I don't know. But something went wrong and you're involved and this is not going to go away, Mark. And you know that you're not a dumb guy.

42:56 You know it's not going to go away. This is going to keep on eating at you and eat and feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone right now. And why do you feel you're in the Twilight Zone? We need to get to the truth about what happened with John Alteringer. And I know you know that truth. You are definitely not a dumb man. You know very well that you don't buy a car that's worth over $10,000 from someone for $40. You know that. You know that you get a bill of sale. You deal with items on eBay. You sell items all the time.

43:56 Just like going to a store and buying anything. That part of your story is just it's just lie after lie after lie. And it's time to end those lies, Mark.

44:11 Yeah, you're involved over your head in this. Is anything that you're saying genuine? Or is this some sort of tactic?

44:20 You got to get away from the acting part, Mark, and listen to what I'm saying. You have told me nothing but lies. An innocent man does not come in here and tell lies. That's genuine, Mark. Everything I'm telling you in here is genuine. So get out of your film producer mode and the facade of thinking that everyone's an actor cuz this is real life. All right, real life. You know exactly why you're here. John's gone missing. The reason you're sitting there, you sure the guy made him go missing? I'm just trying to find out the why behind it.

45:26 Why this happened? What what turned it to make you do something like this? There's obviously going to be other factors involved.

45:39 Then at one point, the police officer just straight up started making up these weird lies about Johnny. I guess trying to like coax Mark into opening up. I don't really know.

45:49 There's two sides to every story. I know I know why John went to the garage. I know a little bit about his background and what he's into. Not very pretty.

46:04 Does that mean Well, I'm not going to go into all that cuz that's that's not the stuff that you need to know. But let's just say he's got some skeletons in his closet. And I know that he could have done something there to to provoke things to cause trouble. And if he did and something happened because of his provoking or provocation there, then what I'm telling you is this is your chance to get it out. Something happened there between the two of you. Then you need to let me know now. Unfortunately, the police weren't able to get anything useful out of Mark, but they did get a warrant to search his home, his car, his phone, his laptop, and both of his garages. Now, when they searched his house, they learned that Mark and his wife were clearly having some issues. I mean, she was basically living alone on one floor while Mark lived in the basement. They also discovered that Mark's wife was under

47:14 the impression that Mark had a full-time job. But Mark didn't. He would find people who would invest in his movies and then he would use that money to pay the bills, to buy groceries, and kind of like almost like a pyramid scheme, just kind of keep on pretending that he did have a real full-time job, but he didn't. So, he wasn't even necessarily making money as a filmmaker. The money that the investors gave him was supposed to be for his movies, but Mark wasn't using it for his movies. He was using it for personal spending. During their searches, they also discovered that Mark was having an affair with a woman that he had dated back in the late 90s. Her name is Tracy Higgins. During the search, the police also used Luminol in Mark's garage. And wouldn't you know it, the floor lit up bright blue. Then they found more alarming things. They found a piece of pipe that had human blood on it, a human tooth, a black and gold

48:05 hockey mask, and also a set of hunting knives, otherwise known as quote, "a processing kit." And in Mark's car, they found another knife that had blood on it. There was also blood spatter in his trunk and on his jeans and on his running shoes and even on a belt. They even found a to-do list that Mark had written out with three tasks neatly laid out on it. Kill room, clean sweep, destroy wallet contents, and return address of victim. However, some of the most interesting evidence that was found was a 42page file from his computer.

48:43 Now, clearly Mark had deleted it, but the police experts, they were able to recover it. and it was titled SK Confessions, which the police later realized stood for serial killer confessions. Now, Mark told the police that it was a movie script that he had been working on, but this supposed script was way too similar to Johnny's disappearance. I mean, I am talking way too many parallels because it was a story about a man who went on dating websites, pretended to be a woman, lured men to his garage, and then killed them. and it described the garage as a quote kill room that had several rolls of painters plastic sheeting, a 45gallon steel drum for body parts, and a hunting knife kit with many different knives and a serrated saw for the bones. And I'm putting all the air quotes because that's how it was all like written and labeled. Now, in the script, the main character thought about killing women,

49:40 but they decided not to because he thought that missing women would get way more attention than missing men. So he wanted to fly under the radar. So he chose men as his victims. And he particularly focused on unmarried men in their 30s and 40s who were of average height, average build. And I'm actually going to read you the opening of this script because it is wild. Here it goes. This is the story based on true events. The names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty. This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer. Like anyone just starting out in a new skill, I had a bit of trial and error in the beginning, and I think you'll see what I mean. I don't remember the exact place in time it was that I decided to become a serial killer, but I remember the sensation that hit me when I committed to the decision. It was a rush of pure euphoria. I felt lighter, less stressed,

50:35 if you will, at the freedom of the prospect. There was something about urgently exploring my dark side that greatly appealed to me. and I'm such a methodical planner and thinker, the very challenge itself was enticing to behold. This realization was just the last in a series of new discoveries I made about myself. I just knew I was different somehow from the rest of humanity. I feel no such emotions as empathy or sympathy toward other people. Then later on, the script talked about how the main character lured a man to his garage and killed him. It says, "This experience changed my sense of place in the world forever. I felt strong, somehow above other people. I felt like the proud owner of a very dark secret that no one would ever be in on. It's an exhilarating new hobby. I downloaded an IP blocker. I mean, it would be rather silly of me to run this whole operation from my home computer without it, just

51:31 so that if any of my playmates disappearances were actually investigated, there would be this electronic trail leading the police directly back to me and my little workshop of horrors. I mean, clearly kind of telling on himself, right? Like saying things in this script that align exactly with Johnny's disappearance. The script also went on to talk about how the narrator was cheating on his wife with a woman named Lacy. Lacy was a belly dancer. She also had a cross tattoo. He even said that he quote went through great lengths to bring my wife over to the comfortable belief that I wasn't cheating on her. And like I mentioned before, he was cheating on his wife with a woman named Tracy. Not exactly Lacy, but very close, right? And big coincidence, the real Tracy was a belly dancer and also had the same cross tattoo. They had dated in the late 90s and at that time Mark had said that she was the love of his life, but they broke

52:25 up in 2003 after she was diagnosed with an illness and from the sounds of things they got back together after Mark got married. Then the script talked about how the narrator met a man named Jim on a dating website. They scheduled a date and the narrator told Jim to go to a garage. Jim came to the garage, but the main character wasn't ready for him yet. So he told Jim that the woman was running late and he needed to come back later. So Jim left, but then he eventually came back just like the main character had asked him to. And as soon as Jim got there, the main character hit Jim over the head with a pipe. And Jim cried out, "Please stop hitting me. Oh my skull." Then he wrote, "The room filled with the echo of the pipe crashing into the back of his skull. I blasted him so hard blood splattered everywhere. I plunged the knife deep into his neck and let him bleed out right there on the floor. I thrust the

53:22 knife deep into his gut. His reaction was pure Hollywood. I got his dead carcass up on that table and I figured that since I went through all this trouble and made all of this mess, I would have to clean up. I got my game processing kit out. Then it goes into great detail about how he dismembered the body on this makeshift autopsy table. Once he was done, he tried to burn the body parts in a barrel, but unfortunately it didn't work. So he thought about dumping them in a river, but he was worried that somebody would see them. So then he needed to think what to do next. Later, when he was cleaning up the garage, his wife called him and asked him to go get baby formula. So, the man backed Jim's car into the garage, put his body in the backseat of his own car, and left.

54:10 Eventually, he dumped the body into a sewer, and then two days after the attack, he used Jim's keys to break into his apartment. He got into his Facebook account, his email, which were both already logged in, and he sent emails to Jim's friends and family about how he was going away to Costa Rica with a woman that he had met online. And then, as you would guess, right after that, the script stops. Except obviously, this didn't seem like a work of fiction, right? It didn't even feel like a script. It feels more like a diary entry or a confession or an essay. And the police realized that, too. It was more like a play-by-play of what Mark did to Johnny. There was just too much stuff that had matched the evidence that they had already found, too. I mean, the garage, the steel barrel, the pipe, the girlfriend. It was all too much to just be a coincidence. The script also talked about how this man wore a golden black

55:02 hockey mask during each attack. And coincidentally, the police had found a golden black hockey mask in Mark's garage. But there was one part of the script that they were confused about. The script mentioned another man, quote, "The one who got away." It sounded like maybe Mark had tried to hurt somebody like this before and he hadn't succeeded. But when the investigators searched police reports to see if maybe somebody had been lured and attacked in a garage, there weren't any reports. So then they went to the public and they held a press conference where they were asking for tips from anybody who had met a woman online, been lured to a garage, and then attacked by a man wearing a golden black hockey mask. And sure enough, it worked because shortly after the press conference, police got a phone call from a 33-year-old man named Gil Tero.

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57:15 I mean, whatever you're into. With Tovala, you can finally remove dinner from your to-do list and like do it right. And for a limited time, because you are a Tendalife listener, during Tvala's new year sale, you can get a free Tovala smart oven when you order meals six or more times by heading to tovala.com/life and using my code life. That's a free Tovala smart oven at tovala.com/life with promo code life. Remember, with Tovala, dinner is taken care of. Gil said that in late September or early October, he too met a woman on Plenty of Fish and her name was Sheena. After talking for a few days, he and Sheena decided to go on a date, but instead of meeting somewhere normal, Sheena gave him directions to a garage. Sound familiar? And the message that Sheena sent to him said, "So, okay, Friday, if you're coming from the north on Groat, get on Calgary Trail and when you get to the south side and jump on Whiteund,

58:18 then go south on 50th Street. Take a right on 40 Avenue and after a block or two, take the first right into an alley. It's marked by a yellow crosswalk sign, so pay attention. Then go left and pull into the only driveway on your left that isn't paved. Lol. Seriously, who ever heard of a driveway that looks like the Amazon? Whatever. It won't swallow your car. I promise. There's some garbage up against the fence, like an old couch and such, but it might be gone by Friday. Who knows? Like I said, the garage door will be open for you a touch. Don't worry about neighbors thinking you're a burglar.

58:56 Everyone knows there's nothing valuable in there, except my car, of course. First visible back door coming out of the garage. Knock away. There's certainly no other driveways along our alley like this one. And the halfopen car door is a dead giveaway. Lol. See you at 7 on Friday. Gio said that he went to this garage on October 3rd, 2008. He parked his car and he was looking for a way to get inside. But then, while he was still looking around, he was attacked from behind by a man wearing a gold and black hockey mask.

59:29 The man was holding a gun and told him to get on the ground inside the garage. Jill was scared and did what he was told. And then the man put a piece of tape over his eyes. Then Jill heard this man rumaging through something and he thought that the man was looking for a weapon. So he knew he had to do something. So he jumped up off the ground, tore the tape off his eyes, and he started to run. But the man started yelling at him, "Get back on the ground." Started pointing the gun at him like, "Get down. Get down." But Gil knew he couldn't just sit there and wait for this man to hurt him. So he lunged for the gun. And when he grabbed it, he realized that the gun was a prop. It was plastic. So then he started like punching this guy, like attacking him, right? And they started fighting. But while all this was going on, the man stunned Gil with a stun baton. The stun didn't weaken him too much, but the man

1:00:20 started punching him in the head, grabbing Gil by his jacket, pulling him forward. But Jill used that as an opportunity to slip out of the jacket to roll under the open garage door. And then once he was through, he just started running. Except before he could get very far, he tripped and he fell. And he might have been stunned again. He wasn't quite sure, but he did know that somebody grabbed him by the legs and dragged him back into the garage. However, he was able to roll over again, get out from under the garage door again, and run once more. which this kind of feels like it's literally out of a serial killer movie, right? Tripping, falling, almost getting away, but then being dragged back. It reminds me of um the movie Taken where the girl's under the bed, she thinks she's clear, and he grabs her by the legs. Like, it feels like it literally is out of a horror movie. So, this time he saw a couple in the

1:01:10 distance and he made his way straight toward them. When the man in the hockey mask saw that there were other witnesses on the street, he just went back into the garage. Then, eventually, Gil got in his car and drove away. He told the officers that he was in shock for a few days after the attack and he then admitted he felt embarrassed and ashamed. He actually managed to convince himself that the whole thing wasn't even that serious, like it was just some random mugging, which is something that you do see sometimes when somebody survives something like that, something so insane, they actually can gaslight themselves into thinking that it was not as bad as they remember, that it couldn't have been as bad as they remember. So that's why he didn't call the police. But then when he saw this press conference, he realized the truth.

1:01:53 He hadn't just been mugged. He had almost been murdered. So that's when he came forward to tell the police about what happened to him. And what's crazy is everything that Jill said matched up exactly with the story about the one who got away in this SK Confessions script. Because when he was describing the attack, he said, you know, I was off balance. I couldn't run. I fell down the gravel driveway and basically started crawling. He then dragged me back into the garage. and the SK confessions script. It said, quote, "He fell in the driveway. I grabbed him by the legs as if I had to drag him back to the garage caveman style."

1:02:31 So, I think it's safe to say that the SK Confessions document was a huge smoking gun when it came to tying Mark to Johnny's disappearance, which the investigators, of course, by now were pretty sure was a murder. But that wasn't the only weird thing that they found on Mark's computer. Not at all. See, Mark was also obsessed with the TV show Dexter, which you probably know better than I do because I haven't watched it, but it's about a serial killer. He always kills the bad people, though, usually other serial killers.

1:03:00 But when he kills someone, Dexter fills the room with plastic sheeting, and when he's done, he dismembers the bodies and then puts the parts into plastic bags and throws the bags into the ocean. So anyway, Mark was insanely obsessed with Dexter. He even had a Facebook page where he pretended to be the main character, Dexter. I mean, something's not right, right? And every time a new episode came out, he would like hop onto this Facebook account and he would post about the episode from Dexter's point of view. And once he even updated his personal Facebook status to say, "Mark has too much in common with Dexter Morgan."

1:03:35 So using this account where he pretended to be Dexter, Mark Facebookfriended a woman named Renee and the two of them started talking in September of 2008. The conversations were mostly about the show, but very quickly the conversation became very flirty and their conversations also got pretty dark as time went on. She even wrote about how she wanted to kill her ex-husband's new wife, but that she couldn't bring herself to do it. So then she and this Dexter person started talking about how she could get away with the murder. He told her to use the stun gun because quote, "This tactic leaves no forensic evidence behind and it renders your target unconscious quickly and silently.

1:04:17 Then pulverize the jawbones and remove the teeth to avoid dental ID." He then went on to say that she should use a quote sturdy pipe to beat her, then use hunting knives to cut up the body. Now, like a truly psychopath, Renee also said that she wanted to cut her ex-husband's wife into little pieces and then draw circles with her blood. But Mark replied, saying, "Although I appreciate your dark fantasy about Skeletor, it is impractical. It leaves behind way too much forensic evidence, and you're too close to the situation with motive creeping out of your pores. If you really want to make this happen and get away with it, prepare a kill room the same way that Dex does. Ideally, you would want to incinerate the entire body, but this requires exhaustive planning and a suitable container as well as fuel. Otherwise, you can just dump the loaded bags with rocks, Dexter style, into a large body of water. Renee

1:05:16 and Mark then stopped talking for a few days around October 10th and eventually he wrote back to her and said, "I had something else keeping me busy, but I am really concerned about telling anyone because of the implications. Suffice it to say, I crossed the line on Friday, and I liked it." Now, Renee knew exactly what he meant. I mean, they had been sharing these murder fantasies with each other for a while now. So she replied and said, "You wouldn't have brought it up unless you needed someone to confide in, so spill it." So Mark then said that he would call her later, which he did, but the call went to voicemail. And he left a very brief, very generic message, but she never called him back and never found out officially what he had done.

1:06:00 But in one of the last messages that Mark sent to her, he said, quote, "There's an enormous missing person, horrible homicide investigation going on, centralized around a location I've rented for film work." So, of course, the police have tossed my house and impounded my car. Not fun considering they won't find anything. But honestly, I don't think that Mark actually was feeling that confident that the police weren't going to find anything. I mean, that should be clear from the way that he was panicking and making up the stories about Johnny selling him this car at the gas station for $40. But also, after Mark's first interrogation, he texted his friends in a group chat and warned them not to talk to the police. He said, quote, "If they ask you questions, just tell them that you don't know anything." A few days later, he sent another message, and this one said, "I have to recommend everybody stop

1:06:48 talking to the police or not to start if you haven't already. You all have a right to silence and you should exercise that right. Then he told his friends that the police were making things up and that they were lying about Johnny's disappearance all to make him look guilty, saying, quote, "I'm sure no one in this group carries guilt, so you have nothing to fear, but I've been screwed around with and I don't appreciate it. So, it's time to stop this and make them do their jobs. Sometimes what we see on TV is in fact a true representation of how they work. Sometimes they lie and make things up in order to make you say things they otherwise would not just so that they can have an answer for the media. I'm serious. The time for dry, sarcastic humor and flaky jokes is over.

1:07:31 This is no prank. Now, everything that I've covered so far, guys, is just what the police found during their initial search. When the forensic test results came back for the knife in Mark's car, it was positive for Johnny's blood. Plus, the blood found in the trunk of Mark's car also matched Johnny's. And they also discovered that that stuff in that burnt barrel, it was from Mark trying to burn Johnny's body. So on October 31st, 2008, fitting that it was Halloween, a police officer pretending to be an online journalist, asked Mark to come meet him at a coffee shop under the pretense that this journalist was on Mark's side, that he wanted to advocate for him. So Mark agreed to meet him and he went. Then when Mark was on his way, a team of police officers pulled him over and arrested him. And get this, I got to say this is rich. But Mark actually peed his pants. He was so scared. Which normally I wouldn't shame

1:08:28 somebody for that, but for somebody who thinks he's like this tough, brooding serial killer and then he just like pissed his pants when the police arrested him, love to see it. Pretty rich. So he was charged with first-degree murder. Now, the one piece that was still missing in all of this was that the police still hadn't found Johnny's body. They had searched sewer after sewer, but they hadn't found anything. And at one point, they even drove around with Mark in the back seat, yelling at him to tell them where the body was. But Mark stayed quiet the entire time. He also stayed silent when the detectives came to visit him in jail in June of 2009. He actually specifically asked his lawyers to ask the detectives to come visit him. But when they went and went to talk to Mark, he didn't actually say anything. He just handed them a folded piece of paper and left without a single word. The piece of

1:09:18 paper was a print out from Google Maps and it had very detailed instructions to a sewer grate where Johnny's body had been dumped. And that sewer ended up being a block away from where the police had originally ended their search when they were looking for Johnny's body. And sure enough, when they searched that sewer, they found pieces of a human torso. It had been cut in two with a saw and a knife, and the cut was clean. It was not accidental. The torso was the only body part that was ever found. DNA testing showed that it did belong to Johnny, but his legs, arms, and his skull were never found.

1:09:58 Mark's trial started in March of 2011, and the prosecution argued that Mark wanted to be a serial killer like Dexter. And they said that this SK Confessions document was an accurate account of how he tried to kill Jill and then successfully killed Johnny. Mark's wife even testified that when Jill and Johnny were attacked, Mark had written on their family calendar that he was quote going to see psychiatrists. So, he was out of the house. Now, Mark was the only witness for the defense, and he actually ended up confessing to killing Johnny. He still tried to say that the SK Confessions was a work of fiction, though, that he had killed Johnny in self-defense, that it wasn't some murder plot. And he said that he was making a movie about a serial killer and that he was luring these men to the garage so that he could, you know, just pretend to attack them to get a genuine scared reaction from them, but that it wasn't

1:10:51 ever intentional or real. He also apparently hoped his fake victims would tell people about what had happened and that it would all be, you know, free publicity for the movie. But he said that it went completely sideways with Johnny. According to Mark, he tried that with Johnny. But when Johnny discovered that the whole thing was a hoax, he freaked out. He started attacking Mark. And because of that, Mark had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. Then in a panic, he tried to cover his tracks, which come on. I mean, this was the best argument that he and his lawyers could think of, right?

1:11:22 So, at the end of the trial, the jury only took 5 hours to deliberate, and they found Mark guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life with no possibility of parole. Now, Mark was never charged with the attack against Gil. At one time, the prosecutors were thinking of bringing attempted murder charges against him, but since he was already going away to prison for Johnny's murder, possibly even for the rest of his life, a judge ended up blocking the charges from moving forward to trial. Mark's wife ended up divorcing him, but that of course didn't stop him from joining a dating website for inmates. And in his dating profile, he wrote, quote, "I'm looking for an interesting, intelligent, open-minded, delightfully imperfect woman to relate to, to share amusing observations with, as well as potentially a long weekend every few months if it gets there naturally."

1:12:12 Which, I'll be honest, I don't know if anyone ever contacted him from this dating website, but honestly, maybe somebody did. There are a lot of freaks out there. I mean, look at how people fawn over Wade Wilson. There truly are some nut jobs out there, but I don't know. Nobody's saying would ever slide into that man's DMs, that's for sure. So, please don't. Now, from the time that he got thrown in prison, he definitely did what he could to keep his name in the headlines and to get his story out there because a lot of the conversation about him after his conviction was all about his motive.

1:12:41 Some psychologists think that he got something sexual out of killing people. In SK Confessions, he talked a lot about what he was wearing, about what weapons he chose, all in, you know, fairly sensual language, too. Things like, "I wanted the weapon used for the deed to be simple, elegant, beautiful." Weird stuff like that. Mark ended up sending one journalist 350 pages of letters, too, and he wrote, quote, "It appears that I'm unique in the world. There is no key, no root cause. If I were really capable of premeditated murder, I wouldn't target normal, healthy, welladjusted 30-year-old men. I once heard the legend of another worthy victim. I killed Johnny in a horrific accident of self-defense. After curiosity shoving aside my human sensibilities, I dealt with his remains in a disrespectful manner that traumatized me forever. It is what it is, and I am what I am. Mark also wrote about his obsession with Dexter. And he

1:13:38 even told this journalist that he was able to watch the show while he was in prison, which might be why Mark came to be known forever as the Dexter Killer. And it just freaks me out that there are people like that out there. It truly is like unnerving. And once again, share your location with your friends. Always give an address. Meet in a public place. be careful of who you meet online because this is a perfect example of the kind of freakos that are out there. So, I'll end there. Thank you guys so much for hearing Johnny's story today and hearing all about evil Mark Twitchell. I know it's a scary one. It literally is still giving me goosebumps, but please, please, please, please, guys, stay safe, okay? And if you haven't already, we you know, we do these deep dives regularly.

1:14:25 Subscribe to the channel and I will be back with another terrifying deep dive soon. All right, guys. Stay safe. Bye.

Questions about this episode

What is "Real-Life Dexter? | Mark Twitchell" about?

The content delves into the unsettling case of Mark Twitchell, exploring the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Johnny Alinger in 2008, a man with a diverse set of interests but a struggle to connect romantically. The narrative raises questions about Twitchell's involvement and the bizarre motivations that may have stemmed from his fascination with filmmaking and dark themes,…

What is mentioned in this Annie Elise episode?

35 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Johnny Altinger, Killbilly Jim, Costa Rica, SK Confessions, Facebook, Renee. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Real-Life Dexter? | Mark Twitchell"?

The episode runs 1 h 15 min; the transcript is about 13,274 words in 146 timestamped sections.

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