6 - House of Cards

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Man in the Black Mask – Episode: House of Cards

The Man in the Black Mask, a gripping true crime podcast series by NBC News hosted by Keith Morrison, delves deep into the chilling case of Mark Twitchell—a young director whose foray into filmmaking intertwines disastrously with a real-life horror story. This detailed summary captures the essence of the House of Cards episode, outlining the key points, discussions, insights, and conclusions.

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1. Introduction to the Case

The episode begins by setting the stage in Edmonton, where Mark Twitchell is directing a film about a serial killer donning a hockey mask. The project takes a dark turn when Johnny Altinger, a man associated with the production, goes missing near the set.

Keith Morrison [00:43]:

"Winter was coming to Edmonton. They were running out of time. What had begun as a simple missing person's investigation seemed to have uncovered something unthinkable. Like a real-life version of that TV show Dexter."

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2. The Investigation Unfolds

Detective Bill Clark leads the investigation into Johnny Altinger's disappearance. Initial clues point towards Twitchell's computer, specifically the "SK Confessions," a diary that provides cryptic details about the crime.

Detective Bill Clark [01:23]:

"When you make a discovery like that... he tried to get rid of the file."

The detectives suspect that the deleted files on Twitchell's laptop hold crucial information about the murder. Despite intensive searches, the body remains elusive, buried beneath layers of digital deception and physical sewers.

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3. Discovery of the Body

As winter progresses, the search for Altinger grows increasingly bleak. However, persistence pays off when a critical piece of evidence surfaces, linking Twitchell directly to the crime.

Detective [11:14]:

"When we looked down it and just shone a flashlight down, we could see."

Twitchell eventually admits to disposing of Altinger's body in a sewer, providing a map that leads detectives to the exact location. This revelation marks a turning point in the investigation, solidifying Twitchell's involvement.

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4. The Arrest and Building the Case

With Twitchell's confession, prosecutors aim to build a robust case against him, despite the challenges posed by the absence of a body initially. The discovery of Altinger's remains and the forensic evidence gathered substantiate the charges.

Detective [15:42]:

"We found blood splatter all along the walls... every single tool in that kit had our victim's DNA on it."

The evidence includes bloodstained tools, a map linking to the crime scene, and forensic matches that tie Twitchell unmistakably to the murder.

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5. Courtroom Dynamics and Twitchell's Defense

The courtroom proceedings are intense, with Twitchell maintaining a stoic demeanor that bewilders those around him. As testimonies unfold, Twitchell's calmness in the face of emotional witnesses raises suspicions about his true nature.

Deborah Tecrob [17:35]:

"When I saw him in court, he seemed so calm. I was... disturbed by how normal he seemed."

During his testimony, Twitchell reveals his twisted vision of blending fiction with reality, aiming to create an "urban legend" that would obscure the truth of his actions.

Mark Twitchell [22:24]:

"What I had done is I had cooked up this idea that you could blend fiction and reality so closely together that everyone would be fooled into thinking that what's fiction is actually reality."

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6. The Climactic Trial and Verdict

Twitchell's defense hinges on his portrayal of the murder as a mere extension of his artistic endeavors. However, the mounting evidence and his own confession lead to an inevitable conclusion.

Detective Bill Clark [28:14]:

"We knew exactly what happened to John. Because he told you."

After deliberations, the jury convicts Twitchell of first-degree murder, putting an end to the harrowing case that captivated the community.

Deborah Tecrob [27:46]:

"I think it's just... surreal. You don't expect your friends to go missing and they're really just pulled right out of your life."

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7. Reflections on Motives and Implications

In the aftermath, Detective Clark and others reflect on Twitchell's motives, suggesting that his actions were driven by a desire to experience and depict violence firsthand for his creative projects.

Detective Bill Clark [28:56]:

"I think that ultimately he wanted to experience the feeling of killing and dismembering a body. And I think ultimately down the road, he was going to try and produce a film about it."

Twitchell's belief that he could intertwine his fictional narratives with reality ultimately led to his downfall, serving as a stark reminder of the blurred lines between art and morality.

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Conclusion

House of Cards masterfully unravels the complex layers of deception, forensic investigation, and courtroom strategy that culminated in the conviction of Mark Twitchell. Through meticulous storytelling and insightful analysis, Keith Morrison offers listeners a profound exploration into the psyche of a man who sought to merge his artistic vision with heinous reality, leaving a lasting impact on the true crime genre.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Keith Morrison [00:43]: "Winter was coming to Edmonton. They were running out of time..."
• Detective Bill Clark [01:23]: "When you make a discovery like that... he tried to get rid of the file."
• Detective [11:14]: "When we looked down it and just shone a flashlight down, we could see."
• Detective [15:42]: "We found blood splatter all along the walls..."
• Deborah Tecrob [17:35]: "When I saw him in court, he seemed so calm..."
• Mark Twitchell [22:24]: "What I had done is I had cooked up this idea..."
• Detective Bill Clark [28:14]: "We knew exactly what happened to John. Because he told you."
• Deborah Tecrob [27:46]: "I think it's just... surreal..."
• Detective Bill Clark [28:56]: "I think that ultimately he wanted to experience..."

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The Man in the Black Mask continues to offer compelling narratives that delve into the darkest aspects of human behavior, blending true crime with intricate storytelling. For those captivated by real-life mysteries and psychological explorations, this podcast is an essential listen.

Transcript

[Announcer]

For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline.

[Keith Morrison]

Have you ever seen such a thing before?

[Announcer]

For podcast fans, nothing is more chilling than listening what goes through your mind.

[Detective Bill Clark]

When you make a discovery like that.

[Announcer]

And when you subscribe to Dateline Premium, it gets even better.

[Keith Morrison]

Excuse me? Okay, I sound a little skeptical.

[Announcer]

Every episode is ad free.

[Keith Morrison]

Ooh, wow.

[Detective Bill Clark]

So this could be your ace in the hole.

[Announcer]

And not just ad free. You also get early access to new intriguing mysteries and exclusive bonus content.

[Keith Morrison]

So what were you afraid of?

[Announcer]

Dateline Premium. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Dateline premium.com.

[Keith Morrison]

You ready for what's coming? Winter was coming to Edmonton. They were running out of time. What had begun as a simple missing person's investigation seemed to have uncovered something unthinkable. Like a real life version of that TV show Dexter. And now a race against winter as the detectives search for a body. All because they believed the bizarre stories they'd unearthed from Mark Twitchell's computer. SK Confessions.

[Detective]

You gotta realize, the computer guys, when they went through the computer, it was a deleted file.

[Keith Morrison]

He tried to get rid of the file.

[Detective]

He tried to get rid of it.

[Keith Morrison]

Trouble was, Detective Bill Clark and the others knew they were missing something. And it might be the most important bit of the awful story. They still didn't know how it ended. That bit was gone. Cut off. Buried even deeper in Twichell's computer. Maybe irretrievable.

[Detective]

We're going to computer guys. Come on, you gotta pull up more. We're right to the point of where he dumped the body and we don't know the location.

[Keith Morrison]

So one more time. As each day grew a little colder. Frost in the morning, flurries in the afternoon. The computer people dug through the entrails of Mark Twichell's laptop. And then a week or two later, finally, there it was. There was more. It was the ghoulish end of a very strange story. Here is how it began. The beginning of the end.

[Mark Twitchell]

I grabbed a banana nut muffin, a double chocolate donut, and a cafe mocha on the way to my destination.

[Keith Morrison]

But then, banal the horrid, the tone changed.

[Mark Twitchell]

I drove back to the kill room to finish destroying evidence.

[Keith Morrison]

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is the man in the Black Mask. A podcast from Dateline. Episode 6 House of Cards. The sewer, of course. How obvious. Six simple words from the erased files on Mark Twitchell's laptop. Words that told Detective Bill Clark that he must surely have been right all along. Mark Twichell's scary story Wasn't fiction. He must have murdered the missing Johnny Altinger and must have dumped his body in an Edmonton sewer.

[Detective]

Everything's turned out to be true, so we got no reason to disbelieve this.

[Keith Morrison]

And here, as read by the voice actor, the recovered lines of SK Confessions.

[Mark Twitchell]

I chose the eastern suburb of the city to dump my waste. The housing in this part of my world was also older, done back in the 60s and 70s when there were back alleys to be had. Within moments, I found exactly what I was looking for. A manhole cover placed off to the side behind a power pole. I parked in an empty driveway and popped a trunk.

[Keith Morrison]

And just like that, Bill Clark knew. He could picture the neighborhood. He knew it well. He'd been there many times. It was where Mark Twichell's parents lived.

[Detective]

This block area matches the diary, the SK Confessions, with the telephone poles, the sewers.

[Keith Morrison]

But the author of SK Confessions didn't say which sewer drain he used. And there were many, of course, so many that police had to bring in city maintenance workers to help them search.

[Detective]

City crews actually pulled all these sewers, all these. All the covers, all the covers pulled them off. They had crews go down, search each one, and they sent cameras down the lines where they actually go down the lines and they snake them down. And having a look, they found nothing found.

[Keith Morrison]

But on went Bill Clark like a pit bull in search of a bone.

[Detective]

I'd be out with a flashlight looking down. Now I can't see nothing. If it was really dicey, he couldn't see down. We'd call the city crews in.

[Keith Morrison]

But the whole notion that Altinger's body was dumped down the sewer drain in some back alley was, in the end, information that was just enough. Yet not enough. Winter descended. Back alleys filled with snow. The search for Johnny Altinger petered out. And by spring was over for good.

[Detective]

After the snow melted, thought, geez, if he's in the sewer, he's going to wash away. You know, the amount of snow we get here and in the spring runoff, we thought there was little hope. Now.

[Keith Morrison]

Had they been those detectives like Don Quixote, been tilting at windmills. So much fruitless work for so long. And in secret, since a judge had slapped a gag order on the whole case, none of them could say anything to anybody around town. Anyone following the story of the movie maker and the missing man would probably have heard the theory that the whole thing was a joke, a prank that landed Mark Twichell in jail temporarily. And then Johnny Altinger would make a dramatic appearance and Mark Twitchell would walk out of Lock up with a big smile on his face. Certainly that's what reporter Steve Lillebuen was hearing.

[Steve Lillebuen]

There was this whole mythology that had been built up and this idea that there was a hoax, right, that how do you know what's not a prank? And Johnny Altinger isn't just going to walk in the first day of the trial.

[Keith Morrison]

It need hardly be said that any potential prosecution of Mark Twitchell might encounter an issue or two. What if it was fiction? What if the missing man did suddenly appear? Large as life among prosecutors everywhere is, A natural reluctance to try a man for murder when no body has appeared. Still, prosecutors in Edmonton gradually and carefully built a case, one they hoped would convince all 12 members of a jury that Johnny Altinger really was dead and not about to walk into the courtroom as the trial was gaveled into session. Then, a year into their preparation, out of the blue, there was a call.

[Detective]

We get a phone call from the Crown Prosecutor's office telling us that the defense lawyer has some information he wants to pass on. Mark wants to pass on to the detectives.

[Keith Morrison]

But three conditions would have to be met.

[Detective]

One, no media can be present. Two, he will pass a piece of paper to the detectives at the remand center and they will not be allowed to ask him any questions. And three, Detective Bill Clark can't be one of the detectives. And that to me was like the coup de grace for me. It was like I got to him.

[Keith Morrison]

Well. An offer they couldn't refuse. A team of detectives minus Bill Clark was dispatched to the jail where without a word of explanation, Mark Twichell handed them a sheet of paper. On it was a black and white printout of a six block by six block section of his parents neighborhood. In the bottom right hand corner of the map was a hand drawn manhole cover circled in red so you wouldn't miss it. And below that there was a handwritten note which read location of John Altinger's rem.

[Hoda Kotb]

Hey everybody, it's Hoda from the Today show reminding you to check out my podcast Making Space. So in this week's episode I sit down with spiritual teacher and best selling author Gabby Bernstein. We talk about the methods we can all use to turn fear into faith, connect to our power and manifest a life that's beyond our wildest dreams. You can listen to the full conversation now. Just search Making Space wherever you get your podcast.

[Keith Morrison]

Hello, I'm Keith Morrison from Dateline. If you're a fan of true crime, then you need to know dateline is back with an all new season and that means all new mysteries in our Dateline NBC podcast. Great storytelling with a twist and more. Much more. New episodes available every Tuesday on the Dateline NBC podcast. Follow now Thursday on NBC. Found returns with a pulse pounding new season. Gabby Moseley's childhood abductor is at large. He escaped and it's my fault. And with sir on the loose, everyone she loves is in danger.

[Announcer]

I warned you not to end us.

[Keith Morrison]

But Gabby never backs down, no matter what.

[Steve Lillebuen]

You're playing right into his hands.

[Detective]

You're taking dangerous risks.

[Keith Morrison]

I will finish this. All new Found Thursday on NBC. If a detective is truly lucky, if he or she follows every lead, refuses to give up in the face of skeptics sales, past repeated failures. Then one fine day, the suspect he or she has long pursued might simply say, you got me. Mark Twichell had just admitted that Johnny Altinger was dead and that he, Twichell, disposed of his body down a sewer drain. Poor Johnny. And which one was it?

[Detective]

This one right here.

[Keith Morrison]

Just the one off the edge of the alley here?

[Detective]

Yeah, right down here in this sewer. And it matches perfectly.

[Keith Morrison]

We went there much later, Bill Clark and I. Whoa. How do you even tell what the hell's down there? And suddenly here, the horror was very real.

[Detective]

When we looked down it and just shone a flashlight down, we could see.

[Keith Morrison]

You could see it.

[Detective]

You could see body pieces, a little piece of the torso and a piece of the pelvis.

[Keith Morrison]

He probably thought it would all get washed away.

[Detective]

That's what I thought. He thought it would just deteriorate to a point that, you know, it'd be unidentifiable or no one would ever look. Right.

[Keith Morrison]

And no one would ever look because he wouldn't find that sk confession.

[Detective]

That's right. No one would ever look.

[Keith Morrison]

And where were we? Just one block from Mark Twichell's parents place. Yet somehow in all their searching, they had missed it.

[Detective]

We were there. We had detectives searched every sewer, pulled up every sewer in the alley of his parents house, a one square block area, and pulled him up and had city maintenance workers go down and they stopped at the avenue south because it just didn't quite match the diary about being an eastern suburb outside the city the way it was described.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah. How far away were you from the body in that search?

[Detective]

In that search we were five telephone poles away, half a block.

[Keith Morrison]

Wow.

[Detective]

We were that close.

[Keith Morrison]

But why? Why? After keeping his awful secret for 20 months, why did Mark Twichell suddenly decide to give up Johnny Altinger's body and thus implicate himself in the man's death. Well, there was a reason, of course there was. And therefore another secret to keep Mark Twichell's secret, which he would not reveal until he, the would be famous film director, went on trial for murder. It was March, two and a half years since Johnny Altinger was first reported missing, and ice was beginning to give up its grip on the North Saskatchewan river as it made its eternal way past the very human drama about to begin at the Edmonton courthouse. Inside, all had assembled in the courtroom. Defendant, lawyers, judge and jury. And a gallery made up almost entirely of people who had been kept entirely in the dark. Remember the judge's gag order? It had worked, which meant that now the public was in for a whole cascade of surprises beginning even as Mark Twichell stood at the defense table, his face an impassive mask, and his trial was gave into session. Reporter Steve Lillebuen, court clerk asks you.

[Steve Lillebuen]

How do you plead to the charge of first degree murder? Mark Twitchell says, not guilty. Then his lawyer stands up in surprises everyone, and he says, now, my lord, you'd like to plead guilty to the charge of interfering with human remains. And this catches everyone totally by surprise, including the prosecution. They were stunned. And one of the things that did is this, removed this myth that, well, if you're going to plead guilty to doing something with a dead body, clearly this is not a hoax. There's something very serious that happened here and you're admitting some level of involvement.

[Keith Morrison]

Surprise number two was courtesy of the prosecutor. The discovery of Johnny's body had never been made public, nor the fact that it was Twichell himself who told police where to look.

[Steve Lillebuen]

So the police, the prosecution, his defense lawyer, everyone had kept the secret for 10 months.

[Keith Morrison]

But it was the next revelation that made jaws hang open.

[Steve Lillebuen]

They had a diary documenting how Twichell did it. It doesn't get more explosive than that, but.

[Keith Morrison]

And on this question, the trial would turn. Was Johnny Altinger murdered? Well, Mark Twichell certainly admitted to dumping Johnny's remains down a sewer drain. He never admitted that he killed anybody. Never even admitted that he was the author of SK Confessions. The prosecutors knew they would need more than that document to get a conviction. So they had diligently built a case on CSI Basics, going back to all the evidence they'd uncovered when Twichell was first being investigated, but which was never made public. Their presentation began with the discovery in Twichell's car.

[Detective]

We find a knife in there, a knife with blood on it that knife.

[Keith Morrison]

And visible blood.

[Detective]

Visible blood on that knife. And that blood matches up to Johnny Altinger in the car.

[Keith Morrison]

He just left it in the car.

[Detective]

In the car, yeah. The car turns out to be an absolute gold mine. It absolutely blows this case wide open. There are yellow sticky notes that are right on the console. One of them has a map drawn from the garage to Johnny Altinger's apartment.

[Keith Morrison]

And in that garage, that makeshift movie.

[Detective]

Studio, we found blood splatter all along the walls, the garage doors. Hundreds of spots of splatter where an obvious beating had taken place.

[Keith Morrison]

Also in the garage, CSI investigators found a big game processing kit, kits hunters.

[Detective]

Would take out in the bush to cut up a moose or whatever they've killed to bring him out. This is what he used. And every single tool in that kit had our victim's DNA on it.

[Keith Morrison]

And when investigators sprayed that iridescent chemical, luminol, on the garage floor, they found.

[Detective]

Big pools of blood that lit up under the dark lights. The garage is pretty neat. If you didn't take a good look, you wouldn't notice it. When the constables initially saw it the first night, they never were looking for blood spattering. And he explained that stuff away. Don't forget he was telling us he was filming a movie about a serial killer killing people and chopping up bodies.

[Keith Morrison]

Right after the presentation of the hard evidence, Mark Twitchell's friends and co workers were called to testify. One of the first was Twichell's Facebook friend, Renee Waring.

[Detective Bill Clark]

He was sitting there, calm and cocky and wanting all of this big circus show to be about him.

[Keith Morrison]

Johnny Altinger's friend Deborah Tecrob of the same impression.

[Deborah Tecrob]

When I saw him in court, he seemed so calm. He sat there and just made his notes. And I'm like, wow. Like he has children and a wife. And he just seemed so normal. He seemed like a normal person, average person off the street. And I was. That's what disturbed me.

[Keith Morrison]

Marissa Guarini and Trevor Hossinger, the couple who encountered Gilles Tetro and the masked man while out for their evening stroll, said Mark Twichell didn't seem the least bit interested in their testimony. Instead, it was Marissa who was all tied up in knots in the courtroom.

[Detective Bill Clark]

It was terrifying. When I got up there, I wanted him to look at me. I needed to look at him. I don't know, maybe it was just something inside me that said, I need to face this guy because.

[Keith Morrison]

Because you were still pretty scared inside. Yeah.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I mean, my. I'm scared of everything now, but I I don't know. I wanted to face him. And he just sat there and doodled on his paper, and that was it. Didn't look up nothing.

[Keith Morrison]

Reporter Steve Littlebuin said Twichell remained stone faced even when his own ex wife took the stand.

[Steve Lillebuen]

She's crying through all of this. Mark Twitchell's reaction was nearly blank.

[Keith Morrison]

There was perhaps one exception. One witness Mark Twichell seemed to pay attention to. It was when Jill's Tetro took the stand to tell his tale.

[Jill's Tetro]

It felt like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, and it was finally done. I was like, wow, it felt so good.

[Keith Morrison]

And you looked at him?

[Jill's Tetro]

Yeah. Well, he wouldn't look at me in the courtroom while the Crown was asking me the questions. But when his lawyer cross examined me, he looked at me the whole time, and I looked back at him, and I wasn't scared of him anymore.

[Keith Morrison]

And then something very strange happened. They played the video of Mark Twitchell's first encounter with Detective Bill Clark.

[Detective]

Did you not think that kind of strange? I mean, I have to ask this. You're paying $40 for a car. How much did you think the car was worth? I thought it was worth somewhere between 3 and 4000, which you're paying $40 for it. Yeah.

[Keith Morrison]

And the emotionless defendant came unraveled, and.

[Steve Lillebuen]

He starts to cry, and the tears are just streaming down his face, and he's getting hysterical. His chest is heaving.

[Detective]

The judge actually recognizes they took a break and he couldn't get out of the room fast enough.

[Steve Lillebuen]

When he comes back after the break, Mark Twitchell is no better. He's still very upset and he's crying, but he turns around and actually faces Detective Clark and he starts talking to.

[Detective]

Him and said, I'm sorry for lying to you.

[Keith Morrison]

Turned around and apologized for lying.

[Detective]

For lying to me. I thought it was an act. But looking back on it, I think there's some validity to the fact that he'd probably never been confronted by anyone before in his life.

[Keith Morrison]

Once Twichell took his seat, prosecutors resumed playing the tape.

[Detective]

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.

[Keith Morrison]

Why?

[Detective]

I have no idea what the hell's going on.

[Keith Morrison]

Though few in court were actually watching the screen, instead, their eyes were on Twitchell.

[Steve Lillebuen]

Mark Twichell does no better. He's crying throughout it, and actually by the end of the day, he's actually collapsed and he's fallen over top of the table in front of him and is Just sobbing into his notes. And in that moment, he's looking at himself and he's looking at his own destruction. He's looking at Detective Clark, likely the first man who's ever stood up to him and called him out and said, you've been lying to me for hours and I'm not putting it up with anymore.

[Keith Morrison]

And yet, stranger things were to come when the defense called their one and only witness, Mark Twitchell.

[Steve Lillebuen]

The room was packed. There wasn't a single seat. I think everyone was on the edge of their seat wondering, what is this guy going to say?

[Keith Morrison]

Mark Twitchell had waited a long time for this. Nothing but time to think during his long months in an Edmonton remand center awaiting trial. And now that it was finally his turn, right from the start of his testimony, he admitted that, yes, he did kill Johnny Altinger. But then he told the jury a story again. This is reporter Steve Lillebuen.

[Steve Lillebuen]

And he said that what he had done is he had cooked up this idea that you could blend fiction and reality so closely together that the people, everyone would be fooled into thinking that what's fiction is actually reality.

[Keith Morrison]

His house of cards and SK confessions, said Mark Twitchell, were to be the building blocks of a brand new kind of entertainment. A kind of twisting urban myth. Pure fiction, reality, all rolled into one kind of movie. To generate publicity, said Mr. Twichell, he decided to create an online urban legend by pulling off a series of harmless staged attacks identical to those depicted in his movie.

[Steve Lillebuen]

So that then when his movie comes out and when the novel comes out, people would go google this and they would find out that there's this whole urban legend about maybe the movie is real. Maybe this fiction is actually reality.

[Keith Morrison]

He called this multi angle psychosis layering entertainment. Maple for short.

[Steve Lillebuen]

It's almost like you're sitting on the beach and there's a. You know, there's a palm tree and there's a beach in front of you, but when you pull back, it's not a beach at all. It's actually a picture of a beach.

[Keith Morrison]

So, attacking Jill's tetro. Well, of course that happens, said defendant Twitchell. But it was only a stunt. Part of his publicity strategy. He allowed his prey to escape, but Johnny Altinger, poor Johnny, just didn't get the joke. Didn't want to be part of anybody's pr. He was there to meet a woman. And when no woman was there to greet him, Altinger got all worked up, furious by the look of him, said Twichell, and attacked him with a pipe or so Mark Twichell told the jury.

[Steve Lillebuen]

And he's got this little knife on his belt. And he tells the jury in his testimony that he puts his hand on the handle of the knife. And just as Johnny is about to come at him, he's lifting the pipe over his head, and Mark Twichell sticks both his hands out in front of him. And the next thing he sees is the knife is in Johnny's stomach and the blood's on his hands, and he collapses and dies on the floor in front of him.

[Keith Morrison]

So the only inaccuracy in SK Confessions, said Mark Twichell, was the matter of who attacked whom. Johnny Altinger was the aggressor, said Twichell. And he. Well, he killed Johnny in self defense. And so now police had their answer to one mystery. Why did Mark Twichell suddenly relent and tell them where to find Johnny Altinger's body? Because that was his prologue, a clever way to foreshadow his elaborate tale. And now the story's twist, its big reveal, was right there in the courtroom, just like in a movie.

[Steve Lillebuen]

His defense is a brilliant idea on the surface. I mean, he actually found a way to describe an entire police investigation that incriminated him to get him off scot free.

[Keith Morrison]

Renee Waring was following the trial online.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I watched the live blog that they had, and I was screaming my head off at home. You liar. You liar.

[Keith Morrison]

Were you afraid the jury would believe him?

[Detective Bill Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Keith Morrison]

Twitchell never disputed any of the forensic evidence or the timeline or that he'd been out catfishing men. Meaning there was really no point in calling any other witnesses, expert or otherwise. So once Mark Twichell finished with his testimony, the defense rested, leaving it now to the jurors to decide which was the truthful telling of the story of John Altinger's violent death.

[Steve Lillebuen]

You're looking for that one person you can convince on a panel of 12 people to just have that doubt and, you know, take that doubt back to the deliberation room.

[Keith Morrison]

Twichell's tactic, if tactic is what it was, seemed to be working. That is, if the worried murmurs around the courthouse were any guide. For hours and hours, the jury talked, argued, perhaps discussed, certainly behind their locked door. What were they doing? No one knew.

[Steve Lillebuen]

The time rolled on, and we still didn't have a verdict yet. So people were thinking, oh, maybe there's a holdout. Maybe there's someone out there who actually does believe Mark Twitchell.

[Keith Morrison]

And then finally, the signal was given, and Mark Twichell's most important audience filed Back into the courtroom, their faces as blank as the defendants had been during much of the testimony against him. Finally, the four persons stood and gave Mark Twichell his last review. Guilty of the premeditated first degree murder of Johnny Altinger. Deborah Tyrob, that friend girl, the one Johnny liked so much, was relieved, of course. But was the verdict an occasion to celebrate? No, said Deborah. It was not.

[Deborah Tecrob]

I think it's just. It's surreal, you know?

[Keith Morrison]

Surreal?

[Deborah Tecrob]

Yeah. I mean, it's just surreal. You don't. You don't expect your friends to go missing and they're really just pulled right out of your life, and you don't get to have the funeral and, you know, say the goodbyes later.

[Keith Morrison]

Detective Bill Clark was in a reflective mood.

[Detective]

I've never been involved in investigation like this in my whole career. As homicide detectives, you theorize about how someone's died and there's no doubt. We don't always get it right. We got a good idea, but we're never right here. We knew exactly what happened to John.

[Keith Morrison]

Because he told you.

[Detective]

He told us. You know, ultimately, Johnny led us to it, and Mark Twitchell closed it on himself by writing all about it. No doubt in my mind he would have kept on killing. We caught a serial killer on his first kill.

[Keith Morrison]

But why? Why did Mark Twichell murder Johnny Altinger, the guy he'd never met, a total stranger. Food for thought, said Bill Clark.

[Detective]

I think that ultimately he wanted to experience the feeling of killing and dismembering a body. And I think ultimately down the road, he was going to try and produce a film about it. And he would be a producer who would tell his casting crew and actors how to do it. And only to himself, he would know that he's actually lived it. I think that was what he wanted to do.

[Keith Morrison]

And far away in Ohio, Renee waring, Twichell's old Facebook friend, arrived at the same disturbing theory.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I think he did it for artistic reasons.

[Keith Morrison]

Artistic reasons, sure.

[Detective Bill Clark]

I think he wanted to see how someone died so maybe he could make a better story, film it better, write about it better.

[Keith Morrison]

Was that why he kept so much incriminating evidence? The knives, the notes, the receipts that would later help prove his guilt? Research material and SK confessions. Well, that was a diary, after all. Just as the Edmonton police service had believed from the very beginning. And perhaps it was in those entries that he could not, in the end, erase that. Mark Twichell himself offered an answer to all those people who wondered why he was different. He wrote he simply could not feel for anyone. And so, intentionally or not, he offered a dismal reason for murdering a perfect stranger. It was a single line at the end of that horror movie of his, the one he called House of Cards, when the killer tells his wife, the.

[Mark Twitchell]

Best way to succeed is to write what you know.

[Keith Morrison]

The man in the Black Mask is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Vince Sterling is the producer, Brian Drew, Deb Brown, Marshall Hausfeld and Kelly Loudin are audio editors, Justin Ratchford is field producer, Leslie Grossman is program coordinator, Adam Gorefain 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.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

Hi everyone, it's Jenna Bush Hager from Today with Hoda and Jenna reminding you to check out my podcast Open Book with Jenna. Each episode I get to have inspiring conversations with celebrities, authors, fellow book lovers and more. In this week's episode, I sit down with bestselling author Leon Moriarty to talk about how her dad encouraged her love of writing, the impact of her books, and what it's like to have several of her books adapted for television. You can listen to the full conversation now by searching Open Book with Jenna Wherever you get your podcasts.