EDMONTON, ALBERTA — A quiet garage in a suburban Edmonton neighborhood became the stage for a nightmare that blurred the lines between Hollywood fiction and cold-blooded murder, revealing the twisted mind of aspiring filmmaker Mark Twitchell, a man who prosecutors say attempted to live out a real-life version of the television series “Dexter.” The case, which has sent shockwaves through Canada and the true crime world, began to unravel on October 3, 2008, when 33-year-old Jill Tatro drove his car into what he believed was a routine date, following cryptic directions that led him to a garage door that was only partially raised. Tatro, recently separated and new to the city from Washington, D.
C. , had been using the popular dating site Plenty of Fish, where he connected with a woman named Sheena, who went by the profile name “spiderwebs.” The pair hit it off immediately, with Tatro recalling that Sheena was almost pushy about setting up a meeting, eager to get a plan together despite the odd and confusing directions she provided.
Tatro assumed Sheena did not want to give him her physical address for some reason, so he drove out to pick her up for dinner and a movie, following her instructions to enter the garage. He arrived just after 7 p. m.
, parked, and entered on foot, feeling uneasy but shaking off the feelings as he stepped into the dark room.
Suddenly, Tatro felt someone grab him from behind and prod him with a stun gun. He turned around to face a man towering over him, wearing a hockey mask. The masked man took out a gun, pointed it at Tatro, and ordered him to get on the ground.
Once Tatro was on the floor, the man forced duct tape over his eyes. Adrenaline raced through Tatro, and he made a decision: if he was going to die, it would not be on the masked man’s terms. He ripped the tape off his eyes and grabbed the gun out of the man’s hands, realizing in that moment that the gun was plastic and 𝒻𝒶𝓀𝑒.
The pair struggled for a few minutes before Tatro rolled into the garage door and made it outside. He crawled into the alley behind the garage as the masked man grabbed his legs and tried to pull him back in. The effects of the stun gun had left his legs like jelly, but with one last push and everything he had, Tatro fought his way out of the man’s grasp.
Outside the alley, he saw a couple out for a walk and begged them for help, but the couple was scared that this was part of a potential plan to mug them. The man chased him out and assured the couple there was nothing to worry about, claiming his friend was just messing around. The couple quickly left the scene, but they had clearly startled the man in the hockey mask, who retreated back toward the garage.
Tatro finally made it to his truck and managed to escape. He never spoke of this incident to the police, embarrassed that he was duped by the 𝒻𝒶𝓀𝑒 profile and terrified that the man would find him and 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 him. He convinced himself that it was not as serious as he thought and said no more about it.
Little did anyone know, the same thing was about to happen to someone else, and the outcome would be far worse. Thirty-eight-year-old John Brian Altinger, known to his friends as Johnny, worked as an oilfield equipment manufacturer and was described as honest and hard-working. He was quiet, but once someone got to know him, he had a great sense of humor.
Like Tatro, Altinger was also using dating sites to meet people. He had just started chatting with a lady named Jen on Plenty of Fish after building a good connection. Altinger told his friends he was going to meet up with her in person.
His brother said he was looking for love and thought he finally might have found it. He sent his friends an email telling them of his plans and also sent them the directions of the location that he and Jen would be meeting at. Two days passed, and friends did not hear a word from Altinger, who was never out of touch for this long.
Everyone knew something was off. They all became even more concerned after they received some strange emails. In these emails, Altinger claimed that Jen had taken him on a surprise trip to Costa Rica and would be there until mid-December.
His brother Gary said it was the weirdest message he had ever received. Shortly after this, Altinger’s employers received an email informing them of his resignation, which came as a total shock. They emailed back but got no response from him when they requested a forwarding address to send his final paycheck to.
Altinger’s friends eventually broke into his condo to start their own investigation. Despite his emails saying he was traveling, to their concern, they found his passport in an empty suitcase with no indication that he had packed for a holiday, nor had he left the apartment in a good place for someone that was leaving for two months. Following this, the Edmonton Police Service agreed there was reason to be concerned and subsequently launched a homicide investigation.
Fortunately for the police, they followed the directions that Altinger had sent to his friends and were unknowingly led to the same garage that Tatro had been lured into. The garage was being rented by a man named Mark Twitchell. But who was he, and why would Altinger and Tatro have ended up at his garage?
Mark Andrew Twitchell was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in 1979. He had dreams of making big Hollywood blockbusters and studied at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in the radio and television arts program. He had a passion for making costumes and props, which soon moved into writing and directing his own films.
In 2001, he met his first wife, Megan. She said he was charming and funny, and they got on straight away. She recalled that Mark had such a fascination with films that once he found something he liked, he would become fixated on it, trying to emulate it in every way.
She soon noticed that Mark was spending a lot of time online, often making bizarre and random profiles to talk to people on various sites and forums. He would have disturbing conversations with her about his desire to feel what it was like to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 someone and how he would choose the right person to murder. Already on a downward spiral, the relationship started to crumble even more when Megan found out that Mark was being unfaithful and lying to her constantly.
After just four years together, the pair would divorce. Mark then met his second wife, Jess, and the pair would go on to have a daughter. He bought his new family a lovely home, but little did Jess know it had been purchased using fraudulent documents that he had used to get the mortgage.
He would soon quit his job but regularly would drive into town pretending as if he was still working while living off investors’ money. He threw himself into his script writing and directing even more, and in 2007, he directed a full-length fan film prequel called “Star Wars: Secrets of the Rebellion,” which even included a cameo by Jeremy Bulloch, a British actor known for his role as Boba Fett in Star Wars. Mark spent a lot of time recreating costumes and making props for the film.
Although it garnered a decent amount of buzz and attention online, the film would never see a release.
Mark then went on to shoot an eight-minute-long horror film called “House of Cards.” The storyline was about a man who goes to meet a woman he met online only to realize he had been lured there by someone using a 𝒻𝒶𝓀𝑒 profile. Once inside, the man was attacked and bound to a table where he was murdered by a man in a hockey mask.
On September 1, 2008, he started renting a garage to film in. Mark had handed out leaflets to neighbors saying that he would be shooting a lot and if they heard any screams coming from the garage over the coming weeks, not to be alarmed. He also had a strong fixation with the TV show “Dexter,” a crime 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓂𝒶 about a forensic technician, Dexter Morgan, who doubled as a vigilante serial killer.
He became so obsessed with the show that he often referred to himself as Dexter. Mark was quickly found and brought in for questioning on October 19. He spent almost an hour talking to Detective Mike Tabler and was very keen to talk about his love of films and his latest scripts and projects.
When asked what he had been filming, Mark said, “Nope, the well most of my stuff is all pre-production. I knew that I was going to use it as a location for filming, so I started and basically I began looking for something that was suitable in like late August. Yeah, so I found that garage, found that it was an ideal location that we’re grateful for what our purposes were and rented it.
The only time that we actually spent shooting in that place was the last weekend of September. Before that, we were in and out throughout the month for production design purposes, which was building our set pieces, getting things set up in their power and that kind of thing.” When asked what type of film it was, he said, “It’s a suspense thriller, actually.
It’s a short film. The total run time only would be about eight or nine minutes. Okay, so suspense thriller, right.
Okay, and what would you do with the film once you’ve filmed eight or nine minutes? Go through the editing process. I tried to organize it so that it didn’t have a lot of effects work to do.”
Detective Tabler quickly got back to the questions at hand and wanted to know who had access to his makeshift studio garage. Mark said, “The only person that would have had access is Mike, Kim, or yourself to that place.” When asked about the police going down to the garage to look for a missing person, Mark told Tabler he remembered seeing the padlock to the garage look like it had been tampered with and this could have been how someone got in.
He said, “I went down the side of the garage, came back around, looked at the door itself, and the first thing that I noticed upon looking a little closer at it, the light wasn’t that great, but I could see what was going on. The padlock didn’t look familiar to me, and I was the one that actually put the latch on the door, and I had a padlock previously. It wasn’t the same one.”
When asked if he had been back there since the film, he said, “Yeah, a couple of times. I went back one time because we had like a table saw, a bunch of tools that were there, and my dad stores that stuff in his garage, so I told him, you know what, maybe we’ll load it up and get rid of it. The next time was when I was taking delivery of a steel drum using this garbage can basically.
So yeah, and then last Friday, but just getting some stuff out of there.” When asked if last Friday meant the one just passed, he said, “No, a week ago. One of my problems is I have issues with this.
I have also issues with remembering 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, okay, but I mean so I need to stay organized.
I’m a procrastinator or stuff like that, so I did, I think it did drop off, and I honestly I don’t remember if it was this past week or the week before it.” Mark continued to steer the conversation back to his production work, saying, “I basically do sell equity in the film, so it’ll if I have a budget worked out, then I need so much money to make them. Moving on, because what they’re essentially doing is lending us 10% of our budget in the short term in order to get the full one, only a little bit less because instead of having one person do eight jobs on a no-budget indie, each person can focus on their one thing on the feature, and we’re good.”
Detective Tabler again turned the conversation back to the garage and the missing Altinger. Mark told him he had no idea who Altinger was and had never heard of anyone called Jen. He said, “I’m either thinking about this.
I mean, it’s kind of odd that you’re filming that kind of thing and we end up drawing to that garage because of a missing person. You supposedly went there. 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, this weird chill. So now you’ve been told that we’re looking for a missing man. Okay, the name is John.
Never heard it before. He’s nobody that you’ve been using as an actor or that maybe Mike or Jason would have been in touch with? And no, I don’t think so.
Um, I don’t know if Mike or Jane, but nothing that in terms of casting or production crew or anything like that, no. And the address comes up and the garage is described, and he actually says that he was there on that particular day. The particular day we’re talking about is that I think the 15th, and that’s the day you’re indicating that you were probably down there putting splicer.
Okay, yeah, okay. And it was in and around the same sort of time frame that you were there, you know that he would have been there. Okay, like in the afternoon, really?
Yeah, and he was supposed to go there and meet a girl. All of a sudden he disappeared. Last normal 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, so okay, let me get this straight. Yeah, the guy who’s missing, yeah, shows up to my garage, claims to have been in it, yeah, then talk to a guy, talk to another guy, so now there’s two of them, and then he leaves because the girls are that he’s supposedly 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 one. Okay, okay, he somehow ends up communicating with her, and then I’m going back to the ground now.
Does that sound like anything that you know about? I don’t know. Does it sound like anything that could be related in any way to any movie sort of stuff you’re doing?
Or nothing I’m aware of. Yeah, no, I don’t know anything about that, no. So the name Jen doesn’t mean anything to you?
You don’t know a Jen? You don’t have an actress named Jen?”
For the most part, detectives were satisfied that his answers seemed plausible. He appeared honest and forthcoming, and he was not deemed a suspect. The police needed to look elsewhere, and they took to the public to try and get more information about Altinger.
Two witnesses came forward, reporting to have seen who they now believe to be him. It was the couple that had actually seen Tatro running away from the garage that day, not Altinger. Because of the times and dates, they told police they saw this happen.
Authorities now knew this was no isolated incident and there was a potential second victim out there. They thought that if they could find this mystery man, they could find Altinger too. Police received word that Altinger had a red Mustang.
After his first interview with Detective Tabler, Mark sent an email over to him with some more info that might be useful. In this email, he said he had recently bought a car worth twenty thousand dollars from a complete stranger on the street for just forty dollars. It was all too coincidental, and his story now seemed totally improbable.
Mark then sent a second email to his production team requesting that they stop talking to the police. He was immediately called in for another interview. Detective Tabler said, “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 Altinger.
No doubt in my mind at all. Mark, why? I just want to get to the bottom of this because this is not going to go away.
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. 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. This is going to keep on eating at you and eat and you feel like I’m in the toilet right now.
You know very well that you don’t buy a car that’s worth over ten thousand dollars from someone for forty dollars. You know that that part of your story is just it’s just lie after lie after lie, and it’s time to end those lies, Mark. Yeah, you’re involved over your head.
Is there anything that you’re saying genuine, or is this some sort of tactic? You gotta 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. So get out of your film producer mode and the facade of thinking that everyone’s an actor because this is real life. You need some time.
I need to be able to sleep. This isn’t going to go away while you sleep. Was this an accident?
How did it happen? I want to get to the finish line, but at the same time, I think we should get to the finish line consulting with the warriors is really important. You can do that at any time.
You know exactly why you’re here because John has gone missing. The reason you’re sitting with the interview now at a standstill.” Mark was free to walk out.
Authorities got warrants to conduct a thorough search of the garage and Mark’s home and confiscated some bits and pieces, including his laptop. The garage was small, cold, and fairly empty. A table, some cabinets, and various random props and boxes were scattered around, and the windows were covered over.
Police used luminol in the hopes of detecting any blood. The garage was covered and showed an extremely grizzly scene had taken place. While looking through his laptop, they found some extremely disturbing documents.
They discovered a dark and violent 42-page document that Mark had deleted. It was called “SK Confessions,” later understood to be “Serial Killer Confessions.” It began, “This story is based on true events.
The names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty.” It spoke of his descent into becoming a serial killer and how he would lure victims using online profiles, detailing the horrific things he wanted to do to them. In the document, Mark wrote in detail about the murder of a man named “Jim.”
Police could only assume “Jim” was John Altinger. He talked of stabbing him and watching him bleed out on the floor as the victim gave him a “pure Hollywood reaction.” “I grabbed his jaw with my gloved hand and moved it while making a funny voice to make it look like it was talking and chuckled to myself for the total silliness of it all,” part of the story read.
He detailed how he dismembered the body “like a pumpkin for Halloween.” Throughout the writing, he talked about finding a garage to use as a location as well as sourcing his hockey mask, props, and knives. He referred to this garage as his “𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 room.”
Police impounded Mark’s car as well, and a search found Altinger’s blood inside, as well as a Post-it note reminding him to “clean up his 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 room” and then “cheat on his wife.” From all of this pieced together, police concluded that on the day Altinger had gone to meet with the person he thought was Jen, he had actually been met with Mark Twitchell. Mark bludgeoned him with a pipe before stabbing him to death and dismembering him.
He tried and failed to burn Altinger’s body and eventually put his remains in a sewer. In another document he wrote called “Profile of a Psychopath,” he admitted to being a pathological liar that cheated constantly and was unable to hold down jobs as he despised working for anyone but himself.
Mark Twitchell was arrested on October 31, 2008, and was charged with first-degree murder. The same day, he and his second wife, Jess, were divorced shortly after his arrest. Mark then spent the day driving around in the back of the police car with detectives pleading with him to tell them where Altinger’s body was.
Mark stayed silent the whole journey. He was also taken back to the garage, but still he said nothing. Police asked, “How did you lock this skate up to make him go in the overhead door?
What did you do to lock it up? See that? Take a look at those windows right there.
See how easy it is for the neighbor to see who’s doing it? See that? See that there?
Beautiful view coming from the neighbor’s house either side. See who’s doing this too? Easy way, too easy.
Mom, bring back any memories? You want to tell us where the body is now? Get this over with.
Get you back to the station.” Jill Tatro, who had now heard the details about Altinger’s case, walked into the police station and told them everything that had happened to him, making the detectives’ already strong case against Mark even stronger. Tatro said, “He must have grabbed me and we started struggling.
Oh, and I’m guessing during this that’s when I’m like okay, I gotta try to fight and that’s something I missed or actually I tried punching up too but I was so weak and I’m like trying to punch them and I know I can’t hit this mask because that’s gonna hurt my hands so I’m trying to punch him in his chest and I’m thinking man why am I so weak and my punches aren’t I feel like I’m not doing anything and it’s like my punches are so weak and then uh so I realized okay I’m punching I’m not gonna do anything’s way bigger than me and I I’m not can’t do anything so then I started out trying to kick him but I tried a few times doing that. Did you get him? No.
Did you hit him? No. Did he hit you?
No. What about kick you? Uh, he tried but he I I swerved as well so I like is this an always intense battle or is it like no that’s the thing is like this is the whole thing this is what I’m thinking while I’m doing this this guy he had if he was more professional he could have killed me right away like right when I walked in I didn’t see him he could have hit me over the head with a bat a baton or anything that could have knocked me unconscious right away and I I don’t know why he did that his whole plan was to use this taser thing on me first and I was stupid on his part but he had many chances to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 me he never did and for some reason again it would have been more effective for him to punch me in the nose the eyes you know something because if you punch me no other than down right but he’s punching the side of the head I grabbed the gun somehow we maneuvered we were um struggling again and I’m trying to break the gun right so we’re struggling and somehow I ended up this way again I know it’s plastic and I know if I what’s he doing he’s yelling at me because he doesn’t want me touching his gun and so then uh I wouldn’t let go obviously but and I had a hold of his arm his other arm just in case he tried to punch me in the left but he never did and so we’re just struggling I’m just you could tell it’s just weird that because he if he was a real gun he would have fired it or whatnot he never did he had nothing and he didn’t he he never just wasn’t professional it was just like it was maybe his first time that’s how I.”
Mark’s once-deleted document “SK Confessions” describes something so similar happening to Tatro that Mark could no longer justify the writing as being just a gruesome piece of fiction.
Authorities searched for Altinger’s remains for nearly two years, with Mark refusing to tell them what he had done to him. Eventually, Mark had to talk to the police from his cell. He silently slid a piece of paper across the table, which was a map and a series of directions.
This led to a sewer. Altinger’s remains were finally found just half a block away from where the search for his body had stopped. Investigators say it is a grizzly case of life imitating art.
In March 2011, Mark Twitchell’s trial began. He first offered to plead guilty to interfering with human remains, but the crown rejected this and pushed on for a first-degree murder conviction. The case sparked a lot of media attention, and Mark was frequently referred to as the “Dexter Killer” given his fascination with the 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓂𝒶.
He took to the stand in his own defense and would make some baffling claims. In a shock line of defense, he confessed to killing Altinger but claimed he had done so as an act of self-defense. He claimed he had hatched a plan after he made his short film “House of Cards.”
The mini movie gave him an idea to try and create a buzz around what he hoped might turn into a franchise. He said he lured Altinger and Tatro to the garage but alleged he was going to tell them it was all a big hoax in the hope they would write about it online and get people talking. He said he bought everything he needed to stage the garage as a 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 room, and although bizarre, he said it was something that had got out of control in a way he didn’t plan for.
Mark said that Altinger had become angry and a physical fight broke out before Mark could assure Altinger it was all a joke. Mark grabbed a pipe and hit Altinger over the head before reaching for a knife and stabbing him to protect himself. He told the jurors that in a blind panic, he cut up Altinger’s body and tried to burn it.
When this failed, he cut it up some more and dumped it down a sewer. He then said he later broke into Altinger’s home and wrote emails in his name to his friends and workplace before stealing his printer and laptop. The document entitled “SK Confessions” was all just fiction and random pieces of research on serial killers, he said.
After a three-week trial and just four hours of deliberations, Mark Twitchell was found guilty and handed a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years. He then faced an attempted murder charge for luring and attacking Tatro, but this charge would later be dropped as he had already secured the maximum sentence possible. Mark appealed his conviction on the basis that he felt the media was so focused on the case and the reporting was so sensationalized that it affected the jury and created bias.
He soon dropped his appeal. The TV show “Dexter” had also been a huge focus before, during, and after the trial, but the writer of “Dexter” weighed in and said, “Reading ‘Dexter’ will not make you a serial killer. If you are not already capable of killing another human being in a cold, cruel, deliberate way, no book ever written will make you capable of doing so.
There is no magic words that will turn you into a psychopath.”
In May 2013, it was reported that Mark purchased a TV for his prison cell so he could catch up on every “Dexter” episode that he had missed since he was arrested. He also set up a dating page on a site for inmates. He said he had made “some terrible regrettable choices” and is looking for an “interesting, intelligent, open-minded, delightfully imperfect woman to relate to and share amusing observations with.”
After his traumatizing ordeal, Jill Tatro met with John Altinger’s mother. He said that she had held his hand and said she was so happy he was still here. He went on to write a book about his experience.
It is unknown how far Mark Twitchell would have taken his crimes had he not been caught. He was obsessed with blurring fantasy and reality and confused fame with infamy in the most disturbing way imaginable. Jill continues to rebuild his life and move past the traumatic events of that day in October 2008, and John’s family and friends continue to remember his fun-loving and kind personality.
They determined that his life will not be defined by the appalling crime committed against him. He will instead be remembered for the joy and laughter that he brought to so many people. The case remains a chilling reminder of how the darkest corners of the human mind can twist art into a weapon, and how a simple date can become a nightmare from which some never wake.
