Crime: Murder, Attempted Murder
Johnny Brian Altinger was a 38-year-old pipeline inspector and lover of motorcycles. He was also lonely, poor guy.
The answer to his loneliness, Mr. Altinger thought, could be found on an Internet dating site. He began conversing with a woman who seemed compatible, and on October 10, 2008 he set out for her home in Edmonton, Alberta’s south side to meet up with her. It was to be their first date.
The date did not go well for the unfortunate Mr. Altinger. His date was not a lovely woman who shared his interests. His date was evil and death in human form. And that human was Mark Twitchell, an amateur filmmaker with dreams of becoming a serial killer just like the TV character Dexter Morgan.
Mark Twitchell had just filmed a horror/slasher movie “House of Cards” two weeks prior with actors and a film crew. The short film, written by him, was about a killer who hunted cheating husbands, cleared out their bank accounts and then murdered and dismembered them. The movie villain set up online dates with the victims, posing as a woman.
The movie set was inside a Mill Woods area garage Mark Twitchell had rented. The garage was kitted out to become the “kill room” in the movie. There were plastic sheets on the windowless walls. There was a metal chair where the movie victims were tied up. There was a metal table Mark Twitchell had specially built. The table was covered with plastic to catch the fake blood.
What the film crew and actors weren’t to know was that Mark Twitchell was planning to use the “kill room” set and the props for real killing, and that the filming was actually a dress rehearsal for real murder.
How could they suspect anything evil like that? Mark Twitchell was recently married with a baby girl. He’d just incorporated a production company and was making low-budget movies. He was a typical nerd: into comic books, Star Wars and the TV show Dexter.
Nobody had a clue that Mark the POS monster Twitchell was a sick, twisted sadist who fantasized about committing murder.
Luckily for Mr. Tetreault he fought back and escaped the evil bastard’s clutches.
Unluckily for Mr. Altinger, Mr. Tetreault did not report the attempt on his life to police. And unluckily for Mr. Altinger, Mark Twitchell had gotten the opportunity to rethink and refine his technique.
The whole murder was gruesome and horrifying and poor Mr. Altinger did not deserve any of it.
After the murder Mark the f*cking beast Twitchell, being the clever clogs he was, accessed Mr. Altinger’s email to tell his friends that he’d taken off for a vacation in the Caribbean.
But Mark the f*cking beast Twitchell wasn’t so clever after all. Why? Because Mr. Altinger had emailed the address of his date to a friend. Hah! I love it! A guy goes missing and his friend has the address of the murder scene!
Within a week of Mr. Altinger’s disappearance, police were honing in on Mark Twitchell. They began hauling in his film crew for questioning.
Panicking, the bastard sent out emails to his film crew beseeching them not to talk to the detectives.
“I’ve been screwed around with and don’t appreciate it,” he wrote, “so it’s time to stop this and make them do their own jobs.”
That’s totally not suspicious, right?
Mark the useless turdpile Twitchell was interviewed by detectives too. But first he encountered 2 police officers at the rented garage. That must’ve made him crap his shorts.
Twitchell told the officers the padlock on the door wasn’t his, I guess so he wouldn’t have to let them in. He’d also denied all knowledge about the scorched oil drum the officers spotted.
The f*ckwad killer was soon brought in for an interview. Bet he was pissing his pants.
It must’ve freaked him out a whole lot because 16 hours after that first interview he emailed Det. Mike Tabler, the detective who questioned him.
See, Mark the dimshit Twitchell finally twigged to the fact that he was in possession of the victim’s car! How to explain that?!?
I guess once he started writing Det. Tabler he just couldn’t stop. The email blathered on to say that his car was broken into and some stuff was stolen, and then he and his wife thought their home was maybe broken into because the front door was unlocked, and all those break-ins were “seriously stressing me out.”
Twitchell also told Det. Tabler that someone has “obviously been tampering with my crap” and it was giving him the creeps.
The detectives arrested the murderous bastard 2 weeks after the murder. Twitchell’s shoe and belt even had Mr. Altinger’s blood on them when they arrested him.
The garage yielded a shitload of evidence. There was the scorched oil drum, of course, with a foul smelling liquid in it.
In the garage alone Mr. Altinger’s blood was spattered on the wall and floor, on the metal table, on the copper pipe, on the knives, on a tooth fragment (Mr. Altinger’s of course) and on a duffel bag.
His blood was also in the trunk and on a knife found in Twitchell’s Pontiac Grand Am, on Twitchell’s jeans found in his home, and on a glove found at Twitchell’s parents’ home.
For all he’d plotted and planned and fantasized about murder, Mark Twitchell turned out to be really lousy at it.
The murderer went to trial in March 2011, Judge Terry Clackson presiding. Twitchell initially pled not guilty to 1st-degree murder — big surprise.
Twitchell actually offered to plead guilty to interfering with a dead body. Ha! That’s big of him!
The Crown wisely declined to accept that plea, and so the 1st-degree murder trial went ahead.
Unbelievably the f*ckwad killer Twitchell’s defense was self-defense. Yeah, really!
See, according to him, it was all a publicity stunt for his movie, and he just intended to scare those 2 guys, not kill anybody. His plan was to put people through the same experience as the victims in “House of Cards” and that would generate a “buzz” about the movie.
The trouble was that the plan went awry when Mr. Altinger actually arrived. The poor man apparently didn’t appreciate the hoax and attacked poor Twitchell who had to defend himself with the pipe and the knife.
So why didn’t he call for an ambulance? Because he knew Mr. Altinger was going to be dead too soon for help, and here he had a garage decked out like a “kill room”.
See, he had no choice! It was all Mr. Altinger’s fault.
Unhappily for the killer, his story didn’t quite fit with the pictures he took — the 1644 pictures he took of the murder!
In the end the jury agreed with Crown Prosecutor Lawrence Van Dyke’s contention that Twitchell’s plan was “to gain the experience of killing another human being.”
I gather Twitchell’s wife concurs as she has divorced his sad ass.
Mark Twitchell, found guilty, guilty, guilty, is currently serving a life sentence at the maximum security prison in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Long may he rot and fester there.
But the f*cking bastard just won’t go away — he’s now agitating for all the film footage that had been seized by police to be returned so it can be edited and released to the public.
The police, incredibly, aren’t bending over backwards to make this bastard happy.
“Why would we give anything back to a convicted murderer?” asked Staff Sergeant Bill Clark of Edmonton’s homicide unit. “He’s taken a life. He shouldn’t benefit from that in any way.”
Amen to that Staff Sergeant Clark. Twitchell deserves nothing more than a cold dark cell to die in, alone and forgotten.
