Speaker 1: Welcome to OUCH. Was that a Ghost? This podcast may
Speaker 1: contain graphic material which some listeners may find disturbing. Listener
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Ouch of Zeta Ghost. This is a
Speaker 2: true crime case which I haven't done for a while
Speaker 2: and people have been complaining about and I listen, I
Speaker 2: read the comments. Most know the show Dexter, which was
Speaker 2: a show about a forensic blood spatter analyst working for
Speaker 2: the Miami Police Department helping solve murders and at night
Speaker 2: he was living a double life as a vigilante serial killer,
Speaker 2: which he justified because the people Dexter would kill were
Speaker 2: murderers who escaped justice. Which Dexter was a freaking amazing show.
Speaker 2: I liked how they ended the original Dexter, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't get down with I think I made it through
Speaker 2: the first episode and I'm like, yeah, I can't. It's
Speaker 2: like prison Break, like it was ended on perfection. Don't
Speaker 2: try to reboot it. So this case is an example
Speaker 2: of when a TV show may have been a blueprint.
Speaker 2: So the person in this case is known as the
Speaker 2: Dexter killer. This disturbing case. Unlike Dexter was not fueled
Speaker 2: by punishing those who had gotten away with murder. His
Speaker 2: ambition seemed to have been inspired by, or fueled more
Speaker 2: so by filmmaking. September of two thousand and eight, thirty
Speaker 2: three year old Giles Tetral was on a dating app
Speaker 2: Plenty of Fish. I didn't know that that was a
Speaker 2: Canadian dating app. By the way, I've heard of it.
Speaker 2: A lot of my friends have used it around here
Speaker 2: in the United States. That's why I just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I guess they can be everywhere. I just didn't connect
Speaker 2: it with Canada. So Giles matt to Shena, a five
Speaker 2: ot six pretty blonde woman. They messaged back and forth
Speaker 2: for a while, then they made plans to meet up
Speaker 2: in person to go for dinner in a movie. Shina
Speaker 2: gave detailed directions, not an address, for their in person meetup.
Speaker 2: He followed the directions and instructions, and Shina told him
Speaker 2: I'll just leave the garage door open for you and
Speaker 2: you can just go right in through the garage. Giles,
Speaker 2: excited he was running a little bit late. He followed
Speaker 2: the instructions and they ended at a garage so he
Speaker 2: entered this dark garage in Edmonton. He looked for the
Speaker 2: door that was part of the instructions to go into
Speaker 2: the house, and that was when Giles was ambush from behind.
Speaker 2: He looked at he saw it as a man in
Speaker 2: a black and gold hockey mask. Giles was told to
Speaker 2: get on the ground and the man had tape ready.
Speaker 2: He put it over giles eyes, and Giles heard a
Speaker 2: jingle in sound and that's when he like snapped into
Speaker 2: survival mode. He ripped the tape off, jumped up and
Speaker 2: he saw this man holding a gun. Giles lunched at him,
Speaker 2: grabbed for the weapon, only to find it was plastic.
Speaker 2: So he was like, all right, now I get a chance,
Speaker 2: you know, ready to rumble. So Giles tried to swing
Speaker 2: on the man, but he was weakened because the masked
Speaker 2: man had sapped Giles with a stun baton, so it
Speaker 2: took away some of his strength. It turned into a rumble.
Speaker 2: Even weakened, Giles managed to get out of the garage,
Speaker 2: only to get pulled back in. Then this bad ass
Speaker 2: got out again, and this time he managed to get
Speaker 2: to his car and drove out of there. He later
Speaker 2: said he thought it was a robbery or a mugging
Speaker 2: that went wrong. When he got home, he checked for
Speaker 2: Sheena's profile on that dating website again, but it was deleted,
Speaker 2: so he didn't report it, which could be an ego
Speaker 2: thing too, you know what I mean, if you have
Speaker 2: something which is nothing to be ashamed of, but some
Speaker 2: people might be embarrassed by that. So about a week later,
Speaker 2: Johnny Altinger, who was thirty eight. He seemed like a
Speaker 2: really nice guy. He loved riding motorcycles. He was on
Speaker 2: that dating app Plenty of Fish, and he matched with
Speaker 2: a woman named Jen. They messaged back and forth and
Speaker 2: then again they made plans to meet in person. He
Speaker 2: was given instructions to go to a location, not directions,
Speaker 2: just instructions, So Johnny hopped in his red Mazda to
Speaker 2: drive to the location. So before he got there, he
Speaker 2: told his friends about his plans to meet up with
Speaker 2: this woman he met online, and they were like, you know,
Speaker 2: what's the address and he was like, yeah, she didn't
Speaker 2: give you an address. She gave me instructions and they
Speaker 2: were like, yeah, that's kind of weird. So he just
Speaker 2: forwarded the instructions to his friends, the directions, so Johnny
Speaker 2: got there a little bit early, about six thirty pm,
Speaker 2: and he called his friends like, I got there and
Speaker 2: she wasn't there. There was a guy there who was
Speaker 2: filming a movie, and he said that Jen would be
Speaker 2: right back. About an hour later, the friends got an
Speaker 2: email from Johnny saying she's home. Now I'm heading over again.
Speaker 2: He Johnny's brother then received an email saying, quote, Hey, there,
Speaker 2: I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who has offered
Speaker 2: to take me on a nice long tropical vacation. We'll
Speaker 2: be staying in her winter home and ka phone number
Speaker 2: to follow soon. I won't be back in town until
Speaker 2: December tenth, but I will be checking my email periodically.
Speaker 2: See you around the holidays, Johnny. This email didn't really
Speaker 2: sound like Johnny. You know, if you get a text
Speaker 2: or an email from someone, you're like, eh, is that?
Speaker 2: And his brother was like super weirded out about this
Speaker 2: whole email. His friends got like the same emails, which
Speaker 2: was strange for everyone. Johnny was responsible. He wouldn't just
Speaker 2: like up and take off like this. His friends went
Speaker 2: to Johnny's apartment, they broke in, and what they found
Speaker 2: only heightened their concern. They found food left out like
Speaker 2: someone was going to be right back. His passport still there,
Speaker 2: which if you go in too Costa Rica you might
Speaker 2: need that. His luggage was still there, and his motorcycle
Speaker 2: was uncovered, and if you're a motorcycle guy, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: just leave your bike uncovered and just take off. They
Speaker 2: ended up going to the police and they reported the concern.
Speaker 2: They also let officers know that Johnny had given them
Speaker 2: the directions that Jen had sent him on plenty of
Speaker 2: fish on how to get to her house. Police followed
Speaker 2: the directions and there they found a garage, not a
Speaker 2: garage attached to a house, more of like a separate
Speaker 2: structure that the owner rented out apart from the residential
Speaker 2: building like almost shed like, so it's not connected to
Speaker 2: the house. So one person lived in the residential well
Speaker 2: rented there, and one person rented the garage. Police learned
Speaker 2: that twenty nine year old Mark Twitchell was renting the
Speaker 2: garage space as a film studio. A little about Mark Twitchell.
Speaker 2: He was born on July fourth, nineteen seventy nine, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Speaker 2: From a young age, Twitchell knew he wanted to be
Speaker 2: a filmmaker. He went on to study radio and television
Speaker 2: arts at the North Alberta Institute of Technology. He graduated
Speaker 2: and then got married to his first wife. They divorced
Speaker 2: after four years. In two thousand and five, Mark was
Speaker 2: poking around on a dating website and there he met
Speaker 2: his future wife. Within a few years, they were married
Speaker 2: and had a daughter. By two thousand and seven, Mark,
Speaker 2: now with the wife and daughter, was on his way
Speaker 2: to make his dreams come true filmmaking. He directed a
Speaker 2: Star Wars fan fiction film titled Star Wars Secret of
Speaker 2: the Rebellion. I've never seen star I've seen the family
Speaker 2: Guy Star Wars, so that must count. But it was
Speaker 2: a prequel to Star Wars episode four. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, Mark Twitchell, who was a Dexter superfan, shot
Speaker 2: a horror film called a House of Cards. He was
Speaker 2: shooting it in that rented garage at Edmonton. It was
Speaker 2: about a man who uses online dating to lure me
Speaker 2: into a kill room. So the police went and they
Speaker 2: found Mark. They got his phone number and they called
Speaker 2: him and they were like, have you seen this guy
Speaker 2: Johnny that's been around here? Have you seen his car?
Speaker 2: The red Mazda and he was like no, and the
Speaker 2: police were like, can we search the garage you're renting
Speaker 2: and Mark was like sure. He was super helpful, you know,
Speaker 2: I'll meet you at the garage. And when Mark got there,
Speaker 2: he was like, this padlock is wrong, this isn't mine.
Speaker 2: And the police were like, okay, well you're renting it,
Speaker 2: Like can you just break it to get in then,
Speaker 2: and he was like sure, so he did. The police
Speaker 2: inside found a table in the middle of the floor
Speaker 2: and on the side of it what appeared to be blood,
Speaker 2: and Mark told the police how he makes films and
Speaker 2: fake blood is used in it a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: it's made with corn syrup and this mixture takes a
Speaker 2: long time to clean up after and he's still in
Speaker 2: the process of cleaning it all up, which I mean
Speaker 2: seems plausible if he's a film guy and you know
Speaker 2: he's just a young guy, married, new kid. He was
Speaker 2: brought in to be questioned at the station and he
Speaker 2: claimed never have heard of Johnny. He was helpful, and
Speaker 2: I guess through the whole interview he kept trying to
Speaker 2: talk about his Star Wars fan fiction movie and the
Speaker 2: police were like, yeah, but we're talking about this missing man,
Speaker 2: it's like, that's kind of weird. But they found Twitchell
Speaker 2: pretty believable when they rewatched the tapes. At some point,
Speaker 2: like they brought him in multiple times to speak to him.
Speaker 2: It was voluntary that he came in and Twitcher was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I bought this red car off a guy. And they're
Speaker 2: like hmm. So they asked him to come back in
Speaker 2: for more questions and Mark told them how he was
Speaker 2: in his car and a man walked up to him
Speaker 2: and was like, hey, buddy, you want to buy a car.
Speaker 2: And the guy told Mark, this is Mark's story that
Speaker 2: he met this rich lady that's buying him a new car,
Speaker 2: and Mark bought the car for forty dollars. This red
Speaker 2: car was at his friend's house, which the car was
Speaker 2: the same car as Johnny Altinger's. But basically they said
Speaker 2: oh yeah, he said yeah, that cars now parked at
Speaker 2: my friend's house. And then the police went and spoke
Speaker 2: to the other people that worked on the film with
Speaker 2: Mark Twitchell and they were like, how much fake blood
Speaker 2: did you guys use and they were like, h we
Speaker 2: didn't use any, so they were like hm. The alreadies
Speaker 2: confiscated Mark Twitchell's laptop in his car, and they went
Speaker 2: to Mark Twitchell's house and spoke to his wife about
Speaker 2: their suspicions, and thankfully she divorced him soon after after
Speaker 2: like she learned that they were looking at Mark for
Speaker 2: a man's disappearance, which they were already like sleeping in
Speaker 2: separate rooms, like you know, because Mark who lost his job,
Speaker 2: he never told his wife. He would just leave every
Speaker 2: day like he was going to work and basically living
Speaker 2: off the investors' money for the movies. And this ship
Speaker 2: bag was like having an affair with an old girlfriend,
Speaker 2: and he would just spend like all day on social
Speaker 2: media talking about how he's like Dexter, and he'd be
Speaker 2: making all these you know, costumes, which whatever if you're
Speaker 2: into making fan fiction costumes. But he's a next level creep.
Speaker 2: So when his car was done being processed, the car
Speaker 2: that had Vanity plates DRK GEDI, so like Dark Jedi Loser,
Speaker 2: they found blood that matched Johnny Altinger's. Mark Twitchell was
Speaker 2: arrested three weeks after Johnny's murder, and on the forty
Speaker 2: eight Hours episode about him, they said that he peede
Speaker 2: his pants while being arrested hah. He was charged with
Speaker 2: first degree murder. The police found in his laptop how
Speaker 2: Mark Twitchell described that somebody got away and while they
Speaker 2: were searching Mark's house, also described in his laptop was
Speaker 2: this mask, this black and white mask that he used
Speaker 2: in his writings on both attacks. So the police went
Speaker 2: on the news it said like, if you were the
Speaker 2: man that was attacked, could you please come forward because
Speaker 2: a man was killed after being lured, which sounded like
Speaker 2: the same thing that happened to the first person. And
Speaker 2: that's when Giles saw on TV that that mask was
Speaker 2: the one that he saw in the garage that night,
Speaker 2: and he realized that he survived a murderer, no robber.
Speaker 2: There was extensive media coverage of this case. Everyone had
Speaker 2: an opinion, and during the trial, Mark Twitchell did admit
Speaker 2: to killing Johnny Altender. They believe that Mark Twitchell ambushed
Speaker 2: Johnny Altger, bludgeoned him, and stabbed him to death because
Speaker 2: after he attacked Giles, Twitchell realized that the taser takes
Speaker 2: too long to take effect, so he needed to pivot
Speaker 2: and when Johnny came, he used a lead pipe when
Speaker 2: he attacked him and then stabbed him and ended up
Speaker 2: cutting up his body, and then he unsuccessfully tried to
Speaker 2: burn his body, and then he just put him into
Speaker 2: trash bags the pieces of him and dumped him down
Speaker 2: a sewer. And then Mark Twitchell broke into Johnny's house
Speaker 2: and sent those emails out. Twitchell tried to make it
Speaker 2: seem like the whole thing, luring the people to the
Speaker 2: garage was a publicity cent for that movie he was making,
Speaker 2: and he ended up killing Johnny Altinger in self defense.
Speaker 2: Throughout the trial, it was brought up many times how
Speaker 2: Twitchell was interested in Dexter and how he appeared to
Speaker 2: identify with Dexter Morgan, the vigilante serial killer on the show.
Speaker 2: On his laptop, police recovered a del file, a forty
Speaker 2: two page document titled SK Confessions in SK Confessions which
Speaker 2: the SK many believed to stand for serial killer serial
Speaker 2: killer Confessions. It's written in first person and the author
Speaker 2: describes his evolution into becoming a serial killer, which he
Speaker 2: didn't but he tried to. Mark Twitchell was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that that was just a creative writing exercise, a script,
Speaker 2: and a famous line from this document being quote, listen,
Speaker 2: how Cony is This story is based on true events.
Speaker 2: The names and events have been altered slightly to protect
Speaker 2: the guilty. This is the story of my progression into
Speaker 2: becoming a serial killer. Lother In this document it told
Speaker 2: of a man that got away and how another man
Speaker 2: was murdered. That sounded a lot like what actually happened
Speaker 2: in real life, including the timelines, evidence, victims accounts like
Speaker 2: they all matched up. And when Giles came forward to
Speaker 2: tell the police what happened, they pretty much already heard
Speaker 2: the story, but four because it was exactly like what
Speaker 2: the Scake confessions described, which is how they assume how
Speaker 2: Johnny's death and aftermath occurred according to the SQ confessions.
Speaker 2: And He's still like, oh no, no, that was just
Speaker 2: like a creative writing exercise, and Gile's like, no, that's
Speaker 2: like what happened. The jury also learned about a deleted
Speaker 2: writing on his laptop titled quote a Profile of a Psychopath,
Speaker 2: in which the author described being a compulsive liar in
Speaker 2: living a dark inner world a self analysis Peace on Behavior.
Speaker 2: They didn't get to read this one, but they did
Speaker 2: hear about it. On April twelve, twenty eleven, Mark Twitchell
Speaker 2: was convicted of the first degree murder of Johnny Altinger.
Speaker 2: It only took the jury five hours to find him guilty,
Speaker 2: and he received a life sentence without the possibility of
Speaker 2: parole for twenty five years after his conviction. After his conviction,
Speaker 2: Twitchell tried appealing, citing the extensive media coverage. He said,
Speaker 2: quote the media attention surrounding mccas was so extensive, so blatant,
Speaker 2: and so overtly sensationalized that it's unreasonable to expect any
Speaker 2: unsequestered jury to have remained uninfluenced by it, regardless of
Speaker 2: the judge's instructions in the charge. But this never went anywhere, thankfully.
Speaker 2: By twenty thirteen, Twitchell bought a TV for his cell
Speaker 2: and he was able to catch up with Dexter episodes,
Speaker 2: and in twenty seventeen he signed up for an inmate
Speaker 2: dating site uugh Giles Tetralt made several media appearances related
Speaker 2: to his experience, including Dateline, NBC forty eight hours, just
Speaker 2: to name a few, and if you are interested in
Speaker 2: more of this case. He also wrote a book titled
Speaker 2: The One That Got Away, The One Who Got Away.
Speaker 2: I'm Sorry. Mark Twitchell was eligible for parole in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, but thankfully he's still incarcerated at Bowen Institution,
Speaker 2: a medium security facility in Alberta, and even as recent
Speaker 2: as twenty twenty six he applied to leave to go
Speaker 2: see his parents, but the parole board was like no,
Speaker 2: So thankfully he's sitting there and hopefully rotting for a
Speaker 2: very very very long time. He's such a shitbag and
Speaker 2: if you look at all his pictures, like, I don't
Speaker 2: know something about how he poses you. He just has
Speaker 2: a very kickable face. But yeah, he's a complete piece
Speaker 2: of shit. And I hope that his ex wives and
Speaker 2: his child could you know, manage to get through heal
Speaker 2: the best they could after dealing with this fuck face,
Speaker 2: this kickable fuck face, This guy Johnny lost his life
Speaker 2: for what freaking nothing, But yeah, that's the case of
Speaker 2: Mark Twitchell. I appreciate you guys all for listening till
Speaker 2: next kind.
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