The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 3: Catfishing

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dateline Originals - "The Man in the Black Mask: Catfishing" (Episode 3)

Release Date: December 23, 2024

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Introduction

In the gripping third episode of Dateline Originals titled "The Man in the Black Mask: Catfishing," host Keith Morrison delves deep into the mysterious disappearance of Johnny Altinger and the enigmatic filmmaker Mark Twitchell. This episode masterfully intertwines true crime with the blurred lines of fiction, exploring themes of obsession, creativity, and deception.

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Mark Twitchell: The Filmmaker and Storyteller

Mark Twitchell, a passionate filmmaker from Edmonton, believed in turning his vivid imagination into reality through his films. His intense dedication to storytelling is evident from his first interaction with Detective Mike Tabler when discussing the missing Johnny Altinger.

• Detective Bill Clark (00:30): "I love what I do."
• Mark Twitchell (00:34): "From the first day that I stepped on a set, that was when I knew."

Twitchell’s collaboration with Renee Waring, an aspiring writer from Ohio, becomes central to the narrative. Their online partnership focuses on crafting dark, intricate stories reminiscent of their mutual admiration for the TV show Dexter.

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Creation of SK Confessions

Twitchell's fervent writing culminated in a document titled SK Confessions, which initially appeared to be a mere collection of horror movie plot points. However, upon closer inspection by Detective Clark and his team, SK Confessions revealed unsettling similarities to the real-life case of Johnny Altinger.

• Voice Actor Reading SK Confessions (06:30):

  "Such emotions as empathy or sympathy towards others. I watched an episode of Dexter where the flashback showed his father showing Dexter CAT scans of a human brain. He identified the difference between a serial killer's brain and a normal person's brain..."

This document contained detailed profiles of catfishing victims and described methods eerily similar to those surrounding Johnny Altinger's disappearance.

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Detective Clark’s Investigation

Detective Bill Clark spearheaded the investigation, meticulously comparing the fictional accounts in SK Confessions with the factual elements of Johnny's case.

• Detective Bill Clark (05:31):

  "I remember reading this the first day when they brought it down."

The parallels were striking:

• Speeding Ticket: Mark mentioned receiving a speeding ticket around the time John disappeared, which matched official records.
• Manual Transmission Struggle: Both the diary and Twitchell reported difficulties with a stick shift car.

Despite these connections, glaring inconsistencies raised doubts about Twitchell's involvement, such as the absence of direct communication between Twitchell and Altinger.

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Publicity Stunt or Sinister Plot?

As rumors swirled, many in Edmonton speculated that Twitchell might have orchestrated the disappearance as a publicity stunt to promote his film, House of Cards. Friends and collaborators, including actor Shawn Storer, believed Twitchell sought to gain attention for his work through this elaborate ruse.

• Sean Storer (17:05):

  "As soon as all this happened, I thought, you know what this is—a publicity stunt gone bad."

This theory was supported by Twitchell's previous behavior and his network’s understanding of his creative mindset.

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The Hockey Mask Mystery

A pivotal moment in the investigation involved a couple, Marissa and Trevor, who encountered a man in a distinctive hockey mask matching the description in SK Confessions. This mask had gold streaks, aligning perfectly with Twitchell's fictional killer's appearance.

• Detective Bill Clark (25:45):

  "I still have nightmares about that mask."

The police released the mask's image publicly, leading to Gilles Tetro coming forward with a terrifying account that closely mirrored the events described in SK Confessions.

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Clashing Realities and Unanswered Questions

Despite the eerie coincidences, the investigation hit numerous dead ends:

• No Direct Link: No electronic communication or relationship was found between Twitchell and Altinger.
• Absence of Evidence: Critics noted the lack of tangible evidence, such as a murder video, which Twitchell would have needed to incriminate himself.

Detective Clark grappled with the duality of fiction and reality, questioning whether Twitchell was a master manipulator or if another darkforce was at play.

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Conclusion and Teasers

The episode concludes with the investigation still unresolved, leaving listeners in suspense about the true nature of Mark Twitchell's involvement and the fate of Johnny Altinger. Keith Morrison teases the next episode, promising firsthand accounts from victims, further unraveling this complex mystery.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Mark Twitchell (00:30): "I love what I do."
• Detective Bill Clark (05:31): "I remember reading this the first day when they brought it down."
• Detective Bill Clark (19:13): "I'm thinking this guy's involved in this guy's disappearance, wherever he may be. Somehow I know that."
• Shawn Storer (17:05): "As soon as all this happened, I thought, you know what this is—a publicity stunt gone bad."
• Detective Bill Clark (25:45): "I still have nightmares about that mask."

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Final Thoughts

The Man in the Black Mask: Catfishing skillfully blends investigative journalism with narrative storytelling, challenging listeners to discern between reality and fiction. It raises profound questions about the nature of truth, the influence of creativity, and the potential darkness within seemingly ordinary individuals.

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Listen to all episodes of Dateline Originals here or subscribe to Dateline Premium for an ad-free experience.

Transcript

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[Detective Bill Clark]

Foreign.

[Keith Morrison]

Curious species. We have become willing. No, no. Eager partners of devices that somehow control us as we scroll. Devices that spit out bits and bites of the world. Cute puppies, intimations of Armageddon. Swirling conspiracies. Some bits true, some not. Not Some fact, some fantasy. And the bright, easy separating line of truth, once merely blurred, slips away. Mark Twitchell made his living in that fuzzy space where fantasy seems very real and reality, well, who knows? But of course he did. He was a movie maker, the storyteller. Someone who imagined he could turn his make believe into film and do it for a living. Well, at least he hoped to make a living at it. As he rather excitedly told Detective Mike Tabler that first time the police came to call when they asked if he knew anything at all that might help them find the vanished Johnny Altinger. Not a thing, said Mark Twitchell. But if the detective wanted to talk movies, Mark was all in.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I love what I do.

[Voice Actor]

From the first day that I stepped.

[Keith Morrison]

On a set, that was when I knew. And that I just like, kind of.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Like there's no going back.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah, anything else is crap.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Nothing else would make me feel fulfilled in what I was doing and really love what I do.

[Keith Morrison]

So I just chased it with everything. I had a true definition of passion. And it was a passion he happily shared in online chats with Renee Waring. That would be filmmaker. Way off in Ohio.

[Renee Waring]

It was, wow, I could be a real writer this time. You know, I could really help somebody develop a character in stories and entertainment.

[Keith Morrison]

And by this time, you were embracing entertaining the idea that you might actually be able to work with this director.

[Renee Waring]

Yeah, he said something about setting up a dedicated server. I wouldn't have to go to Canada. We'd be able to pass ideas and script ideas back and forth like that. Never have to meet each other, you know.

[Keith Morrison]

But it could be a paid job.

[Renee Waring]

Yeah.

[Keith Morrison]

That had to be pretty darned exciting.

[Renee Waring]

You got it. Yeah.

[Keith Morrison]

Mark and Renee spent hours and hours together online dreaming up some crazy Dark stuff. It was a bit like a fan fiction writer's room in a way. Both loved the TV show Dexter. Both were fascinated by serial killers. Everything about them. Renee never did write any of it down. She just reveled in the online creativity. In the company of a like minded soul. It was Mark who went about trying to turn it into something, writing furiously, tap, tap, tapping on his computer. Then he turned out a collection of, well, what were they? Episodes. Plot points for a horror movie. But nothing worth hanging onto, apparently, because at some point Mark simply killed it all, consigned it to the discard file. But as we know, nothing on a computer has ever really gone forever. Fiction, fact, even those cute little puppy dogs live on as so many fragmented little ones and zeros, possibly to be found and reassembled someday by someone, whether you want them to or not. I'm Keith Morrison and this is the man in the Black Mask, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 3 Catfishing what a disruption it was. What a surprise. It was as if a giant vacuum cleaner suddenly and without any warning started sucking up Mark Twitchell's treasured stuff. Edmonton police, convinced Mark knew more than he was saying about the disappearance of one Johnny Altinger, burst through the front door and went rummaging around in Mark's house, in his car, garage. They took clothing, costumes, computers, and they sent the whole lot of it off to the lab, where who knew what might appear? DNA, suspicious fingerprints. But no, there was nothing like that to tie Mark Twitchell to Johnny Altinger. Instead, hidden among discarded bits of stuff on Mark's laptop, a diligent computer tech spotted and managed to resurrect that deleted document, the one with all those horror movie ideas. The whole thing was quite a surprise to Detective Bill Clark.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I mean, the big thing came. I don't even remember the day, but our computer guy called up late in the afternoon and two of the detectives went upstairs and they come out, I believe it was at that time, with a 32 page diary called the SK Confessions.

[Keith Morrison]

A big thing. Well, it certainly seemed like it once Clark had a chance to dive in.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I remember reading this the first day when they brought it down.

[Keith Morrison]

Clark called it a diary because SK Confessions seemed to lurch along from one scene to another without any particular structure or story arc or conclusion. In fact, it couldn't really be called a story at all. There was no beginning, no middle, no end. Some of the vignettes were extremely creepy and some less so, but all with a dark gothic take on the question of nature versus nurture. Here's that voice actor again. Reading from SK Confessions, I feel no.

[Voice Actor]

Such emotions as empathy or sympathy towards others. I watched an episode of Dexter where the flashback showed his father showing Dexter CAT scans of a human brain. He identified the difference between a serial killer's brain and a normal person's brain. Up until I saw that, I was convinced that what I was was my own decision, my own path. But now I truly wonder if I had little choice at all and if genetics play a bigger role than I thought.

[Keith Morrison]

This SK character dips into all the usual tropes of horror fiction. There's nothing really new in it, but two scenes leapt right out at Detective Bill Clark. The scenes portrayed an online dating service used to catfish victims who were met not by the woman they expected to see, but by the killer. Which was intriguing given Johnny Altinger was last heard from as he was heading off to see a woman he had met on a dating website. Here's that catfishing excerpt from SK Confessions.

[Voice Actor]

As soon as the profiles go up within 24 hours, the responses come in like a flood. I review the messages sent and choose my victims based on age, body type, profession, status and living situation. Obviously I'm not going to pursue a 6 4, athletic martial art instructor who's married with four kids that's just got trouble written all over it. I mean I'm ruthless, but I'm not an idiot. I have my own fight training background, but I don't have delusions of grandeur when I come across a single man in his late 30s too early 40s, who is self employed, lives alone and stands between 57 and 5'11 with an average body type weighing in between 150, 180 pounds. I know I found my ideal target.

[Keith Morrison]

Well that thought Bill Clark. That target just had to be the real life Johnny Altinger. Obviously the physical description was all over the place, but wasn't it possible Alting her was catfished too, just like the guys in SK Confessions?

[Detective Bill Clark]

And I go holy mackerel. This tells us everything.

[Keith Morrison]

Except the guy is a professional storyteller who tells, you know, movies they're not real. Weren't you a little bit afraid that you might be about to be drawn into a kind of a rabbit hole here? That you're dealing with something that might be true or might not be true. It might be a fantasy.

[Detective Bill Clark]

The little bit I knew at that time I thought it was true.

[Keith Morrison]

Except Mark Twitchell wrote and filmed a movie script, remember, called House of Cards and in that movie, a work of pure fiction. One scene after another read just like it came straight out of SK Confessions. Well, I'm off.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

Shouldn't be too long.

[Keith Morrison]

Just a couple of hours. That's the actor who's being catfished in a scene from House of Cards. So maybe SK Confessions wasn't a diary at all and wasn't abandoned either, but was cannibalized for story points in that scary movie. In House of Cards, the killer uses a stun gun. Okay, we're ready for the killer stuff. Okay, we are rolling. Killers, take a slight step to the right there. There you go. And action. Frame zap. Cut. So did Twitchell lift that directly from this? In SK Confessions, I prepared to strike.

[Voice Actor]

With my stun baton fully extended in the safety off.

[Keith Morrison]

In House of Cards, the killer uses a sword. Are you rolling? We're rolling. In 5, 4, 3, 2, thrust. In SK Confessions, he uses a knife.

[Voice Actor]

I thrust it in his gut. His reaction was pure Hollywood. The lurch forward with the grunt was dead on TV Movie of the week.

[Keith Morrison]

So what was true, what was fake? Detectives went round and round on that. Some convinced Twitchell was a very bad guy. Others that he was playing some sort of prankish game. So now Bill Clark and the other detectives dug deeper into that nether world where fact and fiction and truth and fantasy are all mixed up together. Did the incidents and SK Confessions actually happen, or were they just scenes from a movie?

[Detective Bill Clark]

And as we started to tear apart and every day and we're working long hours, we're working 12 to 16 hours a day, going home for six, eight hours sleep, and we're back at work. I think our total investigation. We had 112 officers involved in this thing at one time.

[Keith Morrison]

The group looking at SK Confessions went at it like a clutch of textual scholars, word by word, line by line. And it seemed like they were actually.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Getting somewhere, and guys were coming in going, well, we proved this part of the diary's true.

[Keith Morrison]

Give me an example of proving something in the diary was true.

[Detective Bill Clark]

One of the big things that came out was he had mentioned in his diary about getting a speeding ticket.

[Keith Morrison]

The fictional serial killer, that is. But then, so did Mark Twitchell just about the time Johnny Altinger disappeared.

[Detective Bill Clark]

So we tracked that cop down, and that cop remembered it, and it came right back to me. He knew the conversation he had with him, and it was basically word for word. What that diary told us was exactly what the sheriff told us.

[Keith Morrison]

Also, the killer in SK Confessions complains that after a murder, he was unable to drive the victim's car because it had a stick shift.

[Voice Actor]

I took the keys and got in a manual transmission. I never learned how to drive them. I probably stalled the damn thing a good 10 times.

[Detective Bill Clark]

And it's like he doesn't know what to do. And he struggles driving the stick shift to this car to try, park it in the garage and realize after 10 tries, he's just no good at it.

[Keith Morrison]

And if you recall, Mark Twitchell told Detective Clark he was unable to drive the car he got from Johnny Altinger because it had a stick shift. Except that car was apparently a roadside purchase. No murder involved. But detectives picked out bits of SK confessions and saw them as proof.

[Detective Bill Clark]

So far, every day I say we're proving different things are true. You know, we're going on and on. Everything's turned out to be true. So we got no reason to disbelieve this.

[Keith Morrison]

Did you feel sometimes like you're in the middle of, you know, Alice in Wonderland or the Matrix or something?

[Detective Bill Clark]

My feeling was like, I can't believe the evidence we're gay. I always believed that story to be true. Right from the start. I was thinking he had filmed whatever he had done to Johnny.

[Keith Morrison]

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[Jenna Bush Hager]

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[Keith Morrison]

Mark Twitchell was enough of a somebody around Edmonton that when word got out that the cops had searched his home and makeshift studio in connection to this missing Altinger guy, it became a thing. And just about every one of those creative types who'd worked with Mark on his movies had an idea as to where this story was going. It was a MacGuffin. Do something crazy like get yourself arrested, and what happens? You get buzz, People talk about you. Any publicity is good publicity, right? And pretty soon the funding will follow the crazy stunt, yes, and irresponsible and without a doubt, decidedly risky. But it might work. Mark Twitchell might actually fool everybody, including those clever cops, get them all thinking he, Twitchell, was an actual serial killer, after which, in some big reveal of his own invention, he would, in effect, yell, surprise. That's what the actor thought. Actor Sean Storer, that is.

[Shawn Storer]

As soon as all this happened, I thought, you know what this is a publicity stunt gone bad.

[Keith Morrison]

Shawn Storer, you'll recall, got to know Mark Twitchell when he took a role in Twitchell's Star wars knockoff. And when he heard Twitchell was suspected of doing something terrible to a total stranger and that total stranger was missing, well, he just knew. Did Sean Twitchell wanted to get arrested? And why would he want a thing like that? Well, that was simple. To get his name in the papers and his face on tv, to have everyone in Edmonton talking about his new film project, House of Cards.

[Shawn Storer]

I thought he was just trying to hype this new movie that he's gonna do. And he'll be found not guilty. Found not guilty. And at the end of the day, he walks away not guilty. But he has all this publicity around him, and what better way to start a movie off than to have your name on the tip of everybody's tongue?

[Keith Morrison]

John Pinsett, the businessman who put money into Mark Twitchell's comedy Day players, said a publicity stunt was the only explanation that made any sense to him.

[Voice Actor]

That was a sentiment that was tossed.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Around a lot here in this community, is that, you know, is this guy so bright that he's going to have himself arrested and do all of this.

[Voice Actor]

That it had to be a master.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Plan from a very bright guy to create this great amount of hype for his movie project.

[Keith Morrison]

Johnny Aldinger's friend Deborah Tykra was hearing the same stories that it was just.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

A big conspiracy, that Mark had paid.

[Keith Morrison]

John to go hide and come out. Just part of this loopy, nutty plan to make a splash that Edmonton would not forget. The other idea, Detective Bill Clark's suspicion that Mark Twitchell, mild mannered prankster, was secretly a killer. Well, maybe that was a stretch. Still, Clark seemed to have made up his mind.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I'm thinking this guy's involved in this guy's disappearance, wherever he may be. Somehow I know that.

[Keith Morrison]

But there was no love triangle, no financial gain to be had from killing Johnny Altinger. Churchill didn't even know the guy. When cyber detectives searched Twitchell's computers and phone, they found no mention of anybody named Johnny Altinger anywhere. No emails, no texts, no phone calls, nada. There was nothing whatever connecting Mark Twitchell to Johnny Altinger. So why in the world would Mark Twitchell kill. Well, anybody really. But why a total stranger?

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[Keith Morrison]

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[Detective Bill Clark]

But this is real life where passion.

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[Keith Morrison]

Rumors were swirling around Edmonton that Johnny Altinger's disappearance was a guerrilla style publicity stunt crafted by Mark Twitchell to promote his latest film. To take that, Bill Clark also thought Johnny Altinger's disappearance was connected to Twitchell's moviemaking business, but certainly not as a promotion.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I'm thinking he killed him and he had filmed the murder.

[Keith Morrison]

But if he did film the murder, where was the video? And if Twitchell did murder Johnny Altier on camera, to what end? You can never insert an actual murder into a feature film without incriminating himself and everybody else involved. Crew and actors and people who would doubtless talk. And as for SK Confessions, they couldn't even be sure who wrote all that. But it could have been Mark Twitchell. Probably was. But just as easily, it could have been some random dark soul on the Internet. But it did seem to be a match for the facts of the real life Johnny Altinger case. And that is what certainly got the detectives attention. But then they encountered stories that did not match any reality, like the one about the intended victim who got away. A tale full of wild details the police would surely have heard about if it had happened at all.

[Detective Bill Clark]

And, you know, that's a big part to prove. Is this true or not? It was a huge part of it.

[Keith Morrison]

And surely if somebody had been attacked that way, you would have heard about it.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Well, exactly. I mean, we would have expected someone to come forward, but we got nothing.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah.

[Detective Bill Clark]

No call, no nothing that even matches similarity.

[Keith Morrison]

So this seemed to be one part of that story that just didn't.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Didn't make sense.

[Keith Morrison]

Well, one team of detectives pored over every line of SK Confessions. Another walked the sidewalks and pounded on the doors in that quiet suburban neighborhood where House of Guards was filmed. The same neighborhood where Johnny Altinger may have gone to see a woman he'd met online. Everybody who answered the door was shown a picture. Had anyone seen Johnny Altinger or his red Mazda or anything suspicious? And at one house, the answer to that last question was yes. The police had stumbled on Marissa and Trevor, the couple who went out for a stroll and encountered that man who collapsed right in front of them. A man either terribly frightened or just acting. Anyway, the couple repeated the weird story to these investigators.

[Detective Bill Clark]

He was on the ground, and it.

[Renee Waring]

Was just an instant bad feeling.

[Keith Morrison]

He looked at me and said, I'm being robbed. Can you help me? And then as I looked up, the attacker almost actually ran into me. And that certainly rang a bell. The investigators found the passage in SK Confessions. Marissa and Trevor's story fit exactly.

[Voice Actor]

A couple on an evening stroll saw me coming after him sporting a deer in the headlight look that can only be described as a total lack of comprehension. I stared back at them through my mask for half a moment and then headed back for the COVID of my lair.

[Keith Morrison]

Marisa and Trevor told the investigators now at their door that this was the second time they had talked to police about this incident. The first time being when it originally happened. Was it possible, the cops wondered, if the man who was being chased was in fact Johnny Altinger? A detective pulled up their report to police and, well, it turned out their incident, or whatever it was, it happened exactly one week before Johnny Alting had disappeared. Then Marissa and Trevor told the police about the mask the alleged assailant was wearing.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I still have nightmares about that mask.

[Keith Morrison]

A hockey mask. Black, with gold claw like slashes across the right side, which is exactly how it was described in SK Confessions.

[Voice Actor]

A hockey mask that I would cut the mouth out of and paint gold streaks into for dramatic effects.

[Keith Morrison]

But who was that man? That is the apparent victim of the man in the hockey goalie mask. Was it an actor? A real person? No idea. And no way to find out, really, except by going public.

[Detective Bill Clark]

So we thought, we'll put the goalie mask out to the media and that'll tweak somebody's memory about, yeah, that was me. And hopefully they'll come forward.

[Keith Morrison]

It was a long shot, really. Maybe that person, if he was a victim, didn't even exist. But they put it out there and waited. And the very next morning, in comes.

[Detective Bill Clark]

A guy off the street. He says, I think it's one of my employees.

[Keith Morrison]

The guy said his employee showed up for work with a bruised and battered face one Monday morning and told him a truly crazy story about being assaulted by a man in a goalie mask.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I go, really? And I'm going like, I gotta speak to this guy.

[Keith Morrison]

Gotta find this guy.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Gotta find this young fella. So he gives me his name and all that. I says, I'll tell you what. You're going back to work. Ask him to call me. Let's keep it low key. I won't approach him. I'll give you time to talk to him first. While it worked.

[Keith Morrison]

By that afternoon, Clark got a call from a man who said he was the one Trevor and Marissa saw that evening. He said his name was Gilles Tetro. And yes, he was a little nervous, but he'd tell a story. And so he went down to the station and settled himself into one of those cramped interview rooms. And with Detective Clark hanging on every word. He began.

[Detective Bill Clark]

Hey, beginning I'm on the Plenty of Fish website. Plenty of fish.com in my career was probably the most spellbinding interview I've ever had with a witness. I was sitting there listening to Gilles Tetro tell me his story, and I had chills going up my spine as he's telling it to me.

[Keith Morrison]

In the next episode of the man in the Black Mask, you will hear the story firsthand, straight from the victim himself.

[Detective Bill Clark]

And so I try to make a run for it. And that's when he actually pulled out a gun. Foreign.

[Keith Morrison]

Mask is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Vince Sterling is the producer, Brian Drew, Deb Brown and Marshall Housefeld are audio editors. Justin Ratchford is field producer, Leslie Grossman is program coordinator, Adam Gorfin is co executive producer, Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer from NBC News. Audio sound mixing by Katie Lau Bryson Barnes is head of Audio production.

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