Serial Killer Confessions
By: Lisa Marie Fuqua
Tags: Justice, Online, True Crime, Dating, Culture

Most people have dreams of things they want to do that they want to become. Mark Twitchell dreamt of being a Serial Killer.

Mark Twitchell interrogation by Edmonton Police | via Murderpedia

Mark Andrew Twitchell is known as the Dexter Copycat Killer.

The fictional character Dexter Morgan is a forensic bloodstain analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department by day and a serial killer by night.

Mark Twitchell was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on July 4, 1979. In September 2008, Twitchell, an aspiring filmmaker, shot his first film, a short horror story in a garage he rented in Edmonton.

The film was titled “House of Cards.” The film shows a man who thought he was planning to meet a woman he met on a dating website. Instead, he is ambushed by a killer who had lured him to his death. The killer binds the victim to a table and starts chopping his body apart with a butcher knife.

John Brian Altinger | via Edmonton Journal

Plenty of Killers Online

John Brian Altinger, 38, had been using the dating website Plenty of Fish, where he met a woman named Jen. The two had planned to meet in person. The only problem was, the woman was actually Twitchell trolling for a victim to murder.

Shortly after Johnny went on his date, his friends started receiving odd messages from him. Johnny claimed that he and Jen were going to Costa Rica. At the same time, Johnny’s boss at Argus Machine, where he worked, received a resignation letter via email. His boss wrote back, asking where to send his final check, and got no reply. The same went for his friends when they asked what was really going on.

Believing something was amiss, some of his friends got together and broke into Johnny’s condo. Inside they found their friend’s passport, and it didn’t appear that anything had been packed. They immediately called the police.

Gilles Tetreault | via Edmonton Journal

A Trail of Sickness

The week before Johnny planned to meet Jen, another man was lured by Twitchell to the garage. When Gilles Tetreault entered the building, he saw Twitchell coming at him with a stun baton.

Laying on the ground, stunned and scared, Tetreault said his life started to flash before his eyes. He thought about how his family would never see him again.

As Twitchell started to put duct tape across his eyes, he knew he had to fight back, or the man in the hockey mask was going to rape and kill him.

“I decided I’d better fight back. I’d rather die my way to his way.” Tetreault would later say in court.

Tetreault fought for his life and somehow got out of the garage but fell in the gravel. That’s when Twitchell came outside and started dragging him back in by the legs. Again, Tetreault broke free and ran. This time he was able to find a couple walking their dog on the street and begged for help.

Twitchell calmly walked up to the group and said he was friends with Tetreault and that it was just a joke. It appeared Twitchell was going to take off the hockey mask, but instead, he turned around and walked back to the garage.

When Tetreault got home, he went online and checked the profile for the woman he was supposed to be meeting. It had already been deleted.

On November 2, 2008, a friend told him about what had happened to Johnny Altinger. Gilles Tetreault knew he needed to call the police.

He told the police all about his horrible ordeal and said he didn’t come forward because Twitchell had threatened to hunt him down and kill him if he did.

The Kill Garage that Twitchell rented | via CBS News

Come On In

On October 10, 2008, Johnny arrived at the address Jen had given him and texted her when he got there just like she had asked. She quickly responded, telling him to come on in; she was waiting inside.

Johnny walked into the garage and found it set up as a “Kill Room,” just as it had been for Twitchell’s movie a few weeks before.

There was a large metal table in the center of the room, covered in plastic sheets. The whole area was covered in layers of plastic sheets. Twitchell had taken his cue from Dexter in this regard as a way to cover up the evidence.

Kill Room inside Garage | via Murderpedia

While Johnny was probably trying to figure out what was going on, Twitchell blindsided him with a butcher knife in one hand and a heavy pipe in the other.

Twitchell wasted no time slamming the pipe into Johnny’s forehead, knocking him first off-balance, then into unconsciousness. Twitchell used the knife to finish his victim off.

With Johnny now on the table, Twitchell dismembered his body and attempted to burn the remains. But TV doesn’t tell you just how hot it needs to be to burn a human body completely, and of course, TV never shows you how long something actually takes.

Twitchell growing impatient decided to dump the body parts in a sewer instead.

After all the physical work was done, the filmmaker started his next project. He opened his laptop and started to write a new story.

“This story is based on true events. The names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty. This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer.”

Blood Traces found on floor of Garage | via Murderpedia

Edmonton Police Investigate

Before going on his date, Johnny had told his friends the address Jen had given him. The police quickly descended on the garage, and the owner gave the name Mark Twitchell as the renter.

Twitchell was brought in for questioning, and he denied knowing any Jen’s or a man named Johnny Altinger.

A search of Twitchell’s laptop, though, told the police everything they needed to know. They found the disturbing story Twitchell had written describing what he had done to his latest victim and how he planned to continue killing each Friday.