The Detectives (2018) s01e03 Episode Script
Trick or Treat
1 In today's age, with social media, people meet people online.
[TIRES ON GRAVEL.]
[ENGINE SHUTS OFF.]
[DOOR OPENS.]
[CRICKETS AND DOG BARKS.]
It's not necessarily a bad thing, but you definitely have to take more precautions.
Everybody can lie on the internet.
But when you start meeting someone in person after meeting them on social dating sites and that, you have to pay attention to what your senses are telling you.
[TENTATIVE KNOCKING.]
Almost every single day, we hear somebody's got lured in, been sexually assaulted, something's gone on.
[ZAP.]
Ah! [DRUMS BEATING.]
[RAGGED BREATHING.]
[DRUMS BEAT LOUDER.]
[SOMBRE MUSIC.]
[MALE RADIO ANNOUNCER.]
Police officer testified [FEMALE RADIO ANNOUNCER.]
Shows him to be a huge fan of the television show, Dexter.
CLARK: Edmonton is like any big city in this country.
There's a lot of violent crime, but this case was unique.
Reporters flew into Edmonton from all over the world to get a look at the Dexter Killer.
NEWSWOMAN: The lead role in a trial that's expected to generate international media attention.
The call came in on a Sunday afternoon.
Unless we've got some special plans, I'm just sitting on the couch watching football.
Anstey, why the hell are you calling me in? This is a missing person's case.
It wasn't my call.
Murph suspects the worst on this one.
He wanted somebody from homicide to take a look at it.
Besides, look, there's something funny stuff with the case.
You know, he may be right.
We may have a murder on our hands.
Come on.
Right away I'm thinking, missing what? Who, who's calling us out? Because if it's some young guy, I'm thinking, what does this guy know, you know? So, I'm a little hesitant at the start.
Because homicide doesn't go out to missing person cases.
His name is John Brian Altinger, 38 years old.
Oil field pipe inspector.
Born here, moved to BC as a teenager, then back to Edmonton a few years ago.
He had last been seen on October 10th which was, you know, nine days before we were called in from homicide.
The police had started the investigation two days before, on the Friday night.
His friend, Dale Smith, called it in after getting a suspicious e-mail from John.
A week ago, John goes out on a date with Jen, a girl he met on a dating website.
Three days later, Smith gets an e-mail saying John's decided to take off for Costa Rica with Jen.
"Hey there, I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who has offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation.
We'll be staying at her winter home in Costa Rica, phone number to follow soon.
I won't be back in town until December 10th, but I will be checking my e-mail periodically.
See you around the holidays.
Johnny.
" Well, this seems to me that we should be congratulating Johnny, not looking for him.
I don't know this guy, I don't know what his lifestyle's like.
I don't know any of that.
So I'm thinking maybe it is possible.
Maybe he did take off with this, this girl to, to Costa Rica.
I mean, that's a possibility.
So I'm asking 'em questions.
You know, have you checked the airports? Have you gone through all those parking lots and Park 'N Rides looking for his vehicle? That's his car.
And yes, we did a full grid search looking for it.
Nothing.
What about his computer? According to Dale Smith, it's missing.
How would Dale Smith know that? He broke into his apartment, he was checking up on him.
ANSTEY: Well.
Uh, what about this girl he dated, this Jen? Couldn't find her profile on the dating site.
- Ah.
- All we have are the directions she left for John for where to meet for their date.
Johnny Altinger on Friday, October 10th, was going to meet a girl he met online on one of the dating sites.
So, he went to meet this girl, but he had e-mailed one of his buddies, one of his close friends, the location of where he was going.
And what was odd was, it was directions to a garage.
MURPHY: The guy who rents the place let us in to have a quick look.
We did bring him in for an interview.
- Ok, well, let's uh, check out this interview.
So I thought, I'll go watch the interview of this guy and see what I think.
I'm looking for signs of deception.
Is he nervous? All that type of stuff.
I've been renting the garage for a couple of weeks now.
It's a great little movie studio, actually.
Movie studio? MURPHY: The guy's a local filmmaker.
Low budget sci-fi, horror, stuff like that.
GARAGE RENTER: So let me get this straight, the guy that's renting my garage was going on a date? And now he's missing? It's funny, because when I let you guys in, I did notice the lock was tampered with.
But I looked around and nothing was missing.
You guys looked in the garage? Yeah.
It's like he said, a little movie set.
He wasn't giving short answers, he was open, you know, he's sitting on his chair, he's relaxed.
This Mark guy interviewed really well.
It looks to me like he's not involved in this.
Well, I've seen all I need to see, this guy has nothing to do with this case.
Have you checked John's apartment? I'll get Ident on it and see what they can dig up.
I'm going to head to the garage and see if anything was missed.
The garage is the key.
We believe that he did go to that garage on October the 10th.
But, we don't know that for sure.
So I wanted to go in and take a look.
[OMINOUS MUSIC.]
It's in the southeast side of the city, in a residential community that's middle class, Mill Woods.
Just an average community you find in any city.
[KNOCKING.]
[DOOR OPENS.]
Hi there.
I'm uh, looking for Jen? Eh, no, no.
No Jen here.
There was a Mexican man living in the house.
The house and garage were rented separately.
Detective Clark, Edmonton Police.
Do you know a Jen? Any Jen? And how about this guy? Have you ever seen him? They never heard of this guy.
There was no girl named Jen living there, nothing.
It was weird.
It was weird.
Have you noticed any strange activity back there lately? Eh, si, uh, muchas luces um, many voices.
Filman peliculas aca, you know, movies? Well, thank you.
[MYSTERIOUS MUSIC.]
Basically, the garage was nothing out of the ordinary.
Police patrol members had already been in that garage the night before.
Mark had let them in, they had a quick look around.
Didn't see anything out of the ordinary.
But, they have a different mindset.
I always say as a homicide investigator, we're preparing this case for court.
You have to do everything right, there's no cutting corners.
Even though it belonged to this Mark guy, we thought, let's just get a search warrant, this is the last place we believe this guy has been seen.
Anstey.
Look, I'm going to need to get into this garage.
While we waited for the warrant to come through, my team and I visited Altinger's apartment to see if anything came up that looked unusual.
Hey, Nance! Hey! John's place was a mess.
It was, you know, it wasn't tidy, it was a bachelor pad and he wasn't too worried about, you know, impressing anybody.
Wow! I really love what you've done with the place.
[CHUCKLE.]
Very funny.
Could be ransacked.
Clearly, you've never lived with teenage boys.
I'm serious.
That patio door over there was used as a point of entry.
And the computer's missing.
Kind of hard to travel without luggage, don't you think? There's one thing for sure.
Hey, Nancy.
You're definitely not leaving the country in today's day and age without a valid passport.
That was a telltale sign.
So we knew he hadn't left the country without that.
All I know is that the minute I got that e-mail saying he was going to Costa Rica, I knew something was wrong.
Dale Smith was very suspicious.
Johnny was a good friend of his.
Dale really thought that something happened to Johnny.
He wanted to get to the bottom of it, he wanted to help find his friend.
Did John have any enemies? Anyone who'd want to hurt him? No way.
No, John's a good dude.
He really cares about people.
He loves paintball and motorcycles, and computers.
He even convinced me to buy my first computer.
Ever use it for internet dating? Me? No, no-no.
That's John's thing.
He's got a bunch of friends around that stuff.
They swap stories of different dates they've been on.
But not me.
No, no.
Can't trust it.
Mm-hm.
Did he ever tell you any stories? Not usually.
Well, then why would he decide to call you right before his date with Jen? He thought there was something off about her.
Like, she was very forward, but wouldn't give her phone number.
He was very excited to meet her, though.
Excited enough to give you directions before he went.
Well, she gave him directions instead of an address.
He thought it was weird, so he wanted to make sure that I knew where he was going, just in case something bad happened.
You gotta believe me.
My suspicion is piqued that yeah, we are now moving into a homicide investigation here.
BILL CLARK: We believed that John had not left the country, but where was he? Was he vacationing with Jen somewhere else? Was he just at a lake? He could be anywhere.
But it just didn't make any sense.
What's he writing? It's a list of people who know Altinger.
He said the Costa Rica e-mail went out to all of his friends and family.
Well, not all of them.
We just talked to a guy who considers himself one of Altinger's best friends.
He never got an e-mail about Costa Rica or anything.
We need to learn everything we can about Altinger.
Let's contact everyone on that list.
All right, I'll get the guys on it.
Right, thanks.
I'll go chat with the family.
As a homicide investigator, talking to the family of a missing loved one, it's, it's tough.
You know, I want to give them all the information, I know they got a million questions that I can't answer.
I'm just trying to reassure them and take the first steps that, "Hey, we're looking into this.
Honestly, we, we don't know what we have.
" So when was the last time you saw John? Uh, last, last August.
He drove out here on his motorcycle after one of those failed on-line relationships.
So did he do a lot of on-line dating? Yeah, sure.
He almost got married a couple of years ago.
Nice girl.
Bought a ring and everything, but uh, it didn't work out.
So he was looking for love.
Yeah, you could say that, sure.
Do you think that he found it uh, love, with this uh, Jen girl? I don't believe he'd run off to Costa Rica on a whim like that, no matter who he met.
Why not? Not like him.
I mean, John's always been a very caring and connected guy.
You know, he, he's always there for people.
He just wouldn't take off like that.
You know um, after our dad died, John came and, and stayed with our mom just to look after her.
I mean, he stayed there for three years.
That's, that's the kind of man he is.
Johnny Altinger, he was just a decent guy.
Liked by everybody.
You know, just the, uh, he was just Joe Average.
Would you mind providing us with a sample of your DNA? It's a formality.
Just in case.
Sure.
Whatever you need.
Right.
And um, I'll tell you what, here's my card just in case there's anything that you'd like to add.
There's nothing worse than missing a loved one and not knowing if they're alive or dead.
But the whole issue becomes even larger when you're getting a call from a homicide detective and he's telling you that, "Hey, we're looking into this disappearance.
" It's just gotta be horrible on the family.
My mother's flying back from Mexico this weekend.
What do I tell her? That we're investigating this as a, a missing person's case.
Then why does your card say 'homicide'? We need to get into that garage where Altinger met his date.
I wrote up a warrant, but it was refused.
- What? - They said there was no proof that a crime had been committed there.
It's like a lightbulb went off, I go, yeah, we really can't prove there's been a crime committed, so you can't get a search warrant just to go search something.
You're not allowed to go on fishing expeditions, you've got to prove there's a crime been committed to get a warrant to go in.
So I'm going, oh yeah, well, that's a smart judge.
Ah, forget it.
What? We'll just go to the guy who rents the place and get the keys.
He gave them to an officer before, he'll do it again.
So, I phone him up.
I just say, hey, we need to get in the garage, we want to have a really good look around, do you mind? First time I've ever talked to the guy, and I've only talked to him on the phone.
He's Mister Cooperative.
I says, I just need you to sign a consent form that we can search the garage.
He goes, oh, not a problem.
I says, I'll send a guy up there to meet you.
You can give the key, he'll get you to sign this form and we'll have a look.
This'll get you in.
Thanks.
Sorry about all the trouble.
No.
No trouble at all.
Murphy gets him in his car and the case changes.
This is where everything turned.
But could you help me out? Could you see if your guys found out anything about my car? Your car? What about it? It was broken into a couple of weeks ago.
I filed a report.
Some stuff was missing.
A few receipts.
One was for the garage rental and the other had my address on it.
So I'm just kind of worried that, you know, someone's out there messing with me.
Maybe stealing my identity.
What makes you think that? Well, a few days after, I came home with my wife and our door was unlocked.
Was anything stolen from the house? No, no.
But I'm just, I'm getting this impression that I'm being, I don't know, watched.
- Watched? - Yeah.
How? A couple of days ago I'm out near my garage working on a set, and this guy taps on my window and he tells me this story about how he met this rich girl who's going to take him on vacation and she wants him to sell his car.
And she's going to buy him a new one when they get back.
So he's like, 'you wanna buy a car?' I'm like, 'I don't have enough money on me to buy a car.
' And he's like, 'how much you got in your wallet?' I say, 'forty bucks.
' He's like, 'Yeah, sold!' You don't buy a car for forty dollars.
Come on! I don't care who you are, this just doesn't make sense.
So it's like, right away, big red flag.
It's like, things aren't right here.
Where is the car that you bought? Is it here? No, it's at my friend Joss Hnatiuk's.
It's a stick and I can't even drive manual, so I'm keeping it there.
I can give you his address if you need it.
OK.
What kind of car is it? It's a red Mazda 3.
Exactly the same car as John Altinger.
I says, holy mackerel, we need to get this guy in.
We need to get him in here for an interview.
Now Detective Anstey and I are scrambling: how do we get this guy down? Let's ask the guy to just come down on his own.
He's got his car there anyway, he's with Murphy, he's got his own car, let's tell him to drive down.
[DOOR OPENS.]
He's still working on his statement? Two hours and counting.
Like he's writing his next movie.
Uh, I better pull up a chair.
So we're waiting and we're watching and he's writing, and he's writing, and he's writing.
And he goes page after page, after page.
He writes eight pages! Thanks, Mark.
So I read it over.
It indicated that he was producing a film or something, shooting some type of short film in this garage.
Well, he just rambles on and on about the movie-making.
And then the red car is basically two small paragraphs on one page.
And that's the big incident.
I'm thinking it's a sign of deception, he's not telling me the whole story about the red car.
This is great.
Very detailed.
You're a hell of a writer, Mark.
I try.
Yeah, I just have one question, though.
Why didn't you mention any of this when you first showed us the garage? I didn't think it was related.
But then I talked to my wife and, you know, she thought I should mention it, so.
You think the guy that sold you the car for forty dollars had anything to do with John Altinger's disappearance? I don't know.
Looking back on it, yeah, it sure feels that way.
Look, I feel like an idiot for having thought that this car situation was on the uh, up and up.
So, if it's all the same to you, I would prefer if I just gave you the keys to the Mazda and be done with it.
I brought them with me, they're in the car.
That sounds great.
Let me just check with my partner, see if he has any more questions and uh, we'll get you on your way.
[CELL PHONE RINGS.]
Hello? Yeah, still here.
What? Yeah, it turns out that the car doesn't belong to that missing guy.
It's just a big mess.
I'll be home soon, OK? I'll call you when I'm on my way.
All right.
Bye.
CLARK: He's lying.
Not what you said last time.
Well, last time there was no pressure on him.
It was a soft interview.
This time, I'm starting to lean on him a bit about the car he bought, and he's starting to show signs of deception.
I mean, look at him.
Biting his lip, he's got dry mouth We can't arrest a guy for having dry mouth.
Yeah, and you can't buy a car for forty dollars either.
I'm not arguing with you.
But everything he says checks out.
Them breaking into his car.
Look, he, he filed a report the very next day.
Yeah, right, someone breaks into his car to take receipts? Does that mean they're following him? They're trying to frame him? I just think we've got to be careful here, we've got nothing to charge him with.
So far, he's been cooperative.
Yeah, well, let's see if he cooperates enough to confess.
What? Where you going? [MYSTERIOUS MUSIC.]
[FOOTSTEPS.]
[DOOR OPENS.]
[EXHALE.]
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[CLEARS THROAT.]
Mark, did you have anything to do with the disappearance of John Altinger? No! Because I have no doubt in my mind that you were involved in his disappearance.
Why? Because you're not telling us the truth.
You haven't told us anything near the truth.
[SCOFF.]
Is this some sort of scare tactic? [SOFT CHUCKLE.]
Mark, you're not dumb.
You know you can't buy a car that's worth over ten grand for forty dollars.
So just tell me what happened to John.
Tell me where he is.
You can't live with this for the rest of your life.
[EERIE MUSIC.]
I want a lawyer.
I took the chance and pushed the envelope.
In the end, we've got no evidence, we've got nothing.
Maybe he's not involved.
Maybe I am wrong.
I never want a guy to walk out, and I'm always thinking that we're probably not getting this guy back in here.
You OK? We just can't let him walk.
We're just going to have to cool our jets until the warrants come through.
I'm getting nowhere with him and I can't throw anything at him because I got no evidence.
I was mad.
I was mad because I didn't get a confession.
[CLEARS THROAT.]
Probably my emotions got a little bit of me there, but I thought, ah, screw it.
I know you killed that guy, and I'm coming to get you.
It's just a matter of time.
[ELEVATOR DINGS.]
You want them to feel out of their element, because then they start saying things they probably shouldn't say.
You know, we'd been going hard all night, I'm tired, but it's like, you just get a second rush of adrenaline and you're pumped now.
Hey! That's your car? Keys to the Mazda in there? Yeah, they're in it.
Then I'm seizing your whole car.
Well, you can't do that.
Sure I can.
The Mazda keys are stolen property.
But I told you I'd give them to you! Yeah, but possession of stolen property, probable cause for me to take your car, and everything in it.
Nah, you need a warrant for that! Ah, to look through it, sure.
But not to seize it.
Give me your keys.
And he turns and looks at me and he goes, so, I just need to get something out of it.
I says, you're getting fuck all out of that car.
I was mad.
Detective Anstey heard this and he thought I had to check my ego at the door.
Detective Anstey was right.
But, you know what? Police work is not rocket science, it's common sense.
And it made sense to me that this Mark guy's involved somehow.
I just don't know yet what his involvement is.
[BABY CRYING INSIDE HOUSE.]
[KNOCKING.]
Edmonton Police.
WOMAN'S VOICE: Go away.
Mark isn't here.
He told me not to talk to you.
Well, don't you want to know why two homicide detectives are at your door and your husband's telling you not to talk? [BABY CRYING.]
Ah, Detective Clark, Edmonton PD.
Who's the little one? Chloe.
Chloe.
That's a, that's a pretty name.
And you are? Jess.
Now, Jess, I don't know what Mark has told you, but he's involved in something big, and we're going to have to seize your house, ma'am.
What? I don't, I don't understand what's going on.
We're bringing in a team to search your home.
This detective will stay until they arrive.
Now, you can stay if you want, but I would suggest that you and Chloe leave until the police have done their job.
Go inside, make sure nothing gets touched.
Let me know the minute Mark comes home.
Whatever you do, don't let him in the house.
We, we are getting a search warrant to search this house.
In the meantime, Mark won't be allowed to remove anything.
We get a phone call from Detective Anstey.
He tells us we are getting a warrant for the garage.
[DOOR OPENS AND CREAKS.]
[SOMBRE MUSIC.]
What do you think? Maybe corn syrup.
They mix it with red dye to make fake blood.
Yeah, well, we better make sure that none of it's real.
Mark had told me that these were the props from his movie set.
It looked like a kill room from the show Dexter.
I mean, he built a table just like Dexter had.
And I'm thinking, what the hell's going on here? BB gun.
He had knives, meat cleavers.
It was weird.
You could see what looked like blood and possibly skin, in the end of that knife.
That real? Could be.
This is going to take some time.
It looks like someone's already been doing some housekeeping.
Clark.
Things just aren't sitting right.
It's not a good feeling.
Something bad's happened to John.
Hey.
How you doing, Link? What's this? That is a tooth I found in the garage.
I'll run Altinger's dental records.
No, no, Link.
That fine, man.
I know you have a lot of cases, I can handle it.
Uh, Bill, actually, I brought Link in.
I thought we could use the help.
Paul Link was brought in.
Maybe there's something I'm simply not seeing.
I always tell guys, you've got to check your ego at the door, and I had to do a big check there.
Oh.
OK.
Did Anstey fill you in? Yeah.
He did.
And he told me his new theory.
Well, look, a lot of people had access to the garage, right? Yeah, the crew.
Well, maybe they're making a snuff film.
- A snuff film? - Yeah.
Basically, a snuff film is a film a person would make up of an actual murder.
They're actually killing someone and they film it.
It's not fake, it's not Hollywood, there's no acting, it's real life and they kill a person.
They film it, and then they sell the film for big dollars.
Even found a guy online offering a million dollars for the real thing.
- A million dollars? - Yeah.
Great way for Mark and his crew to raise a lot of money.
We needed to talk to Mark, but if we ask him to come down to the station, he's going to just laugh at us.
OK, well, what about the guy on the internet that's offering the million dollars, can we track him? Tech's trying.
But it's not easy.
ANSTEY: Our best bet's to talk to the crew.
Find out what they've been up to in this little garage of horrors of theirs.
We started with Joss Hnatiuk.
He's the one who had the red Mazda that Mark bought.
Joss was the helper guy on the set when they were filming their little movies.
Hey! What are you doing? Is this your car? I hear there's a lot of money to be made for snuff films.
Uh, I wouldn't know.
I've never seen one.
You ever wonder how Mark was paying for his movies? He's a talented guy.
Knows producers in Hollywood.
He impresses a lot of people.
He told me once he got thirty grand from some accountant.
Promised him he'd make a million dollars.
Wow, that's quite a promise.
Yeah.
People trust Mark.
So it would seem.
[FILE SLAPS ONTO TABLE.]
[BILL SIGHS.]
Ah! Did you work with Mark on the last movie he shot in his garage? What was it about? A killer.
What kind of killer? One who uses a dating service to lure some guy into his garage, and then he kills him.
How would I see this movie? [GRUNTS COMING FROM VIDEO.]
[MUSIC CRESCENDOS AND STOPS.]
I really thought that we had a snuff film.
They do exist.
Guys like Luka Magnotta, right? He sold a film of him killing that guy.
Maybe this is the piece we're looking for where they've actually filmed the murder of John.
[GRUNTS.]
This is not a snuff film.
[VOICE ONSCREEN.]
And cut.
[LAUGH.]
Well, that was awesome, guys.
Um, you OK? [CELL PHONE RINGS.]
I've got to take this.
Excuse me.
When did Altinger disappear? October 10th.
This was filmed two weeks before John went missing.
This is just one memory card.
We need to see the rest of the footage.
It's at his house.
We have a detective securing the home, but I can't get in until ANSTEY: You can get in.
We just got clearance for warrants on the house and the car.
I'm going to go pick them up now.
Thanks, Paul.
When we searched Mark's house, I told them, make sure you take every hard drive, every CD, every disk, anything that can store data.
Make sure we seize it all.
Because I truly was of the belief that this was a snuff film.
[EERIE MUSIC.]
We went through there and we found all kinds of hard drives.
There were lots of DVDs.
There was a real affinity to the show Dexter.
He had a lot of books on Dexter.
He had the DVDs of each season.
I'm thinking to myself, we see all this violence on TV, it affects people in different ways.
There's no doubt it affects people.
Everything was adding up, but it still wasn't making any sense.
And then we pulled the laptop from his car.
And you wouldn't believe what we found.
It's a document that he tried to erase.
It's called "S.
K.
Confessions.
" Here.
BILL: "This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer" The document was detailed and disturbing.
It definitely seemed like a confession to Altinger's murder.
"A double detached garage for rent in the south of the city, with a house occupied by tenants who couldn't even read English.
" - This is his garage.
- Yeah, yeah.
"Everything I decided, would take place here.
" He talked about everything.
Why he lured the victim, how he lured him.
He talked about the site.
He talked about using the female profile, where he got it from.
Everything.
This is a diary.
I mean, all he did was change the names a little.
I mean, he calls his wife Jess, Tess and his daughter Chloe, Zoe.
Everything else is real.
It goes into explicit detail and I'm looking at this document, reading it, and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this thing is true!' "The room filled with the echo of the pipe crashing into the back of his skull.
He hit the floor but was still conscious.
I pulled my hunting knife from its sheath, and watching the shock on his face as he saw the blade I thrust it into his gut.
" Just a total lack of empathy.
I mean, he talks about eating a bag of chips, you know, whistling, singing songs while he's dismembering Johnny.
ANSTEY: This, this this is sick stuff, I mean.
Anstey, this is a full confession.
But in that document, it also states there was a first victim.
And we're like, whoa! We're shocked! Someone that he attacked and then got away.
Why hasn't anyone come forward? If the other victim was out there, we needed to find him.
We've got this document, S.
K.
Confessions, it details the whole murder.
It described luring a guy on the internet.
Hitting him over the head with the metal pipe.
Cutting him up.
Driving around with the body parts in his car.
This guy was a pathological liar.
He's going to say that's a work of fiction.
But we knew there was another victim out there who got away.
Finding that victim was huge to really proving that that S.
K.
Confessions document was true.
So we decided to go to the news media.
WOMAN REPORTER: Police say the victim, John Altinger, was lured on a dating website with the promise of meeting a beautiful woman.
Instead, police theorize he was met by his killer.
And police are looking for another would-be victim who escaped.
The unknown man went to the same garage to meet a woman, but was confronted by a man in a hockey mask.
Detective Anstey went in the media and showed the mask, and the very next morning, I got a phone call from Gilles Tetreault, and uh, he came down to the station.
She was a bit forward.
Always asking if I wanted to meet.
Then she gave me directions instead of an address.
Uh, I thought that was odd, but I still wanted to meet her.
It was, without a doubt, the most riveting witness interview I've had in my career.
[TIRES ON GRAVEL.]
The story was exactly the same as John Altinger.
He met a girl online.
[CAR DOOR OPENS.]
So when I got out of the car, I should have been scoping the place first, but I was rushing, thinking that I was late and she was going to be upset.
[KNOCKING.]
And out of nowhere, this guys just tasers me.
Agh! He grabs me and he pulls me through the side door.
[UNROLLING TAPE.]
I'm thinking he's going to kill me.
Don't move.
Just let me go, OK? You can take whatever you want, Shut up! you can take my wallet! And then I tell myself, no, not like this.
I was so weak I couldn't run.
Help! And I knew, if he gets me back inside, I'm as good as dead.
When I got home I went on the dating site, but the profile, the messages, they were gone.
Just vanished.
I had read that S.
K.
Confessions document multiple times by now.
I knew that document inside and out.
Everything Gilles told me was exactly the same.
So what took you so long to come forward? I was scared.
Ashamed.
To think that I was attacked in the same way, at the same place, just one week before the missing man.
And that'll haunt me to the day I die.
I could have done something.
I should have done something.
WOMAN REPORTER: Behind the police tape and garage doors, a chilling scene of what could be life imitating art.
A homicide police say was literally scripted, then carried out by an Edmonton filmmaker.
MALE REPORTER: Mark Twitchell's real life-diary, detailing his descent into the world of murder.
FEMALE REPORTER: Facebook page shows him to be a huge fan of the television show Dexter.
He bears an eerie physical resemblance to the main character MALE REPORETER: where the gruesome writings of how a man was lured to a garage to meet a date.
We've now arrested him for first degree murder.
So preplanned meditated murder.
And we've got a mountain of evidence.
Everything's tested positive for Johnny's blood.
A strong, strong case.
BILL: We found John's blood everywhere.
In your garage, both cars, your house, your clothes.
The evidence is overwhelming.
And we put away guys with five percent of what we have on you, so thanks for making it easy for us.
We realized from the S.
K.
Confessions document, he got rid of the body down a sewer in an eastern suburb of Edmonton.
So I thought, we'll put him in the car, we'll film him.
Let's take him for a drive to see if he'll point out the body to us.
We know what you did with Altinger.
We can't do anything about that, but you can do the right thing.
Tell us where you dumped the body.
We weren't going to play on his emotions, it wasn't going to work.
People like Mark don't care.
Which sewer was it, Mark? You can end this now.
He wouldn't give us anything.
He wouldn't give up the body.
[SLOW SAD CELLO.]
Eighteen months since the murder and out of the blue, we get a phone call to our office from Mark Twitchell's lawyer.
NEW ANNOUNCER: It was two blocks from Twitchell's parents' home, and half a block from a section of sewer searched exhaustively early in the investigation.
It's been the worst.
It's been the worst.
There's nothing else can be said.
There'll never be closure, but it goes on to the next step, I think, to start to heal if, if that's possible.
I truly think to this day that Mark Twitchell wanted to know what it was like to kill someone.
He had his mind made up long before he saw Dexter.
It kind of overshadowed the whole incident, and it shouldn't have.
John Altinger, he was a good guy.
I've tried my best not to let it affect me, but I've seen the other side.
And when you see that other side, you do feel sorry, you have more empathy for these victims' families and see what it can do to them.
It tears them apart.
[TIRES ON GRAVEL.]
[ENGINE SHUTS OFF.]
[DOOR OPENS.]
[CRICKETS AND DOG BARKS.]
It's not necessarily a bad thing, but you definitely have to take more precautions.
Everybody can lie on the internet.
But when you start meeting someone in person after meeting them on social dating sites and that, you have to pay attention to what your senses are telling you.
[TENTATIVE KNOCKING.]
Almost every single day, we hear somebody's got lured in, been sexually assaulted, something's gone on.
[ZAP.]
Ah! [DRUMS BEATING.]
[RAGGED BREATHING.]
[DRUMS BEAT LOUDER.]
[SOMBRE MUSIC.]
[MALE RADIO ANNOUNCER.]
Police officer testified [FEMALE RADIO ANNOUNCER.]
Shows him to be a huge fan of the television show, Dexter.
CLARK: Edmonton is like any big city in this country.
There's a lot of violent crime, but this case was unique.
Reporters flew into Edmonton from all over the world to get a look at the Dexter Killer.
NEWSWOMAN: The lead role in a trial that's expected to generate international media attention.
The call came in on a Sunday afternoon.
Unless we've got some special plans, I'm just sitting on the couch watching football.
Anstey, why the hell are you calling me in? This is a missing person's case.
It wasn't my call.
Murph suspects the worst on this one.
He wanted somebody from homicide to take a look at it.
Besides, look, there's something funny stuff with the case.
You know, he may be right.
We may have a murder on our hands.
Come on.
Right away I'm thinking, missing what? Who, who's calling us out? Because if it's some young guy, I'm thinking, what does this guy know, you know? So, I'm a little hesitant at the start.
Because homicide doesn't go out to missing person cases.
His name is John Brian Altinger, 38 years old.
Oil field pipe inspector.
Born here, moved to BC as a teenager, then back to Edmonton a few years ago.
He had last been seen on October 10th which was, you know, nine days before we were called in from homicide.
The police had started the investigation two days before, on the Friday night.
His friend, Dale Smith, called it in after getting a suspicious e-mail from John.
A week ago, John goes out on a date with Jen, a girl he met on a dating website.
Three days later, Smith gets an e-mail saying John's decided to take off for Costa Rica with Jen.
"Hey there, I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who has offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation.
We'll be staying at her winter home in Costa Rica, phone number to follow soon.
I won't be back in town until December 10th, but I will be checking my e-mail periodically.
See you around the holidays.
Johnny.
" Well, this seems to me that we should be congratulating Johnny, not looking for him.
I don't know this guy, I don't know what his lifestyle's like.
I don't know any of that.
So I'm thinking maybe it is possible.
Maybe he did take off with this, this girl to, to Costa Rica.
I mean, that's a possibility.
So I'm asking 'em questions.
You know, have you checked the airports? Have you gone through all those parking lots and Park 'N Rides looking for his vehicle? That's his car.
And yes, we did a full grid search looking for it.
Nothing.
What about his computer? According to Dale Smith, it's missing.
How would Dale Smith know that? He broke into his apartment, he was checking up on him.
ANSTEY: Well.
Uh, what about this girl he dated, this Jen? Couldn't find her profile on the dating site.
- Ah.
- All we have are the directions she left for John for where to meet for their date.
Johnny Altinger on Friday, October 10th, was going to meet a girl he met online on one of the dating sites.
So, he went to meet this girl, but he had e-mailed one of his buddies, one of his close friends, the location of where he was going.
And what was odd was, it was directions to a garage.
MURPHY: The guy who rents the place let us in to have a quick look.
We did bring him in for an interview.
- Ok, well, let's uh, check out this interview.
So I thought, I'll go watch the interview of this guy and see what I think.
I'm looking for signs of deception.
Is he nervous? All that type of stuff.
I've been renting the garage for a couple of weeks now.
It's a great little movie studio, actually.
Movie studio? MURPHY: The guy's a local filmmaker.
Low budget sci-fi, horror, stuff like that.
GARAGE RENTER: So let me get this straight, the guy that's renting my garage was going on a date? And now he's missing? It's funny, because when I let you guys in, I did notice the lock was tampered with.
But I looked around and nothing was missing.
You guys looked in the garage? Yeah.
It's like he said, a little movie set.
He wasn't giving short answers, he was open, you know, he's sitting on his chair, he's relaxed.
This Mark guy interviewed really well.
It looks to me like he's not involved in this.
Well, I've seen all I need to see, this guy has nothing to do with this case.
Have you checked John's apartment? I'll get Ident on it and see what they can dig up.
I'm going to head to the garage and see if anything was missed.
The garage is the key.
We believe that he did go to that garage on October the 10th.
But, we don't know that for sure.
So I wanted to go in and take a look.
[OMINOUS MUSIC.]
It's in the southeast side of the city, in a residential community that's middle class, Mill Woods.
Just an average community you find in any city.
[KNOCKING.]
[DOOR OPENS.]
Hi there.
I'm uh, looking for Jen? Eh, no, no.
No Jen here.
There was a Mexican man living in the house.
The house and garage were rented separately.
Detective Clark, Edmonton Police.
Do you know a Jen? Any Jen? And how about this guy? Have you ever seen him? They never heard of this guy.
There was no girl named Jen living there, nothing.
It was weird.
It was weird.
Have you noticed any strange activity back there lately? Eh, si, uh, muchas luces um, many voices.
Filman peliculas aca, you know, movies? Well, thank you.
[MYSTERIOUS MUSIC.]
Basically, the garage was nothing out of the ordinary.
Police patrol members had already been in that garage the night before.
Mark had let them in, they had a quick look around.
Didn't see anything out of the ordinary.
But, they have a different mindset.
I always say as a homicide investigator, we're preparing this case for court.
You have to do everything right, there's no cutting corners.
Even though it belonged to this Mark guy, we thought, let's just get a search warrant, this is the last place we believe this guy has been seen.
Anstey.
Look, I'm going to need to get into this garage.
While we waited for the warrant to come through, my team and I visited Altinger's apartment to see if anything came up that looked unusual.
Hey, Nance! Hey! John's place was a mess.
It was, you know, it wasn't tidy, it was a bachelor pad and he wasn't too worried about, you know, impressing anybody.
Wow! I really love what you've done with the place.
[CHUCKLE.]
Very funny.
Could be ransacked.
Clearly, you've never lived with teenage boys.
I'm serious.
That patio door over there was used as a point of entry.
And the computer's missing.
Kind of hard to travel without luggage, don't you think? There's one thing for sure.
Hey, Nancy.
You're definitely not leaving the country in today's day and age without a valid passport.
That was a telltale sign.
So we knew he hadn't left the country without that.
All I know is that the minute I got that e-mail saying he was going to Costa Rica, I knew something was wrong.
Dale Smith was very suspicious.
Johnny was a good friend of his.
Dale really thought that something happened to Johnny.
He wanted to get to the bottom of it, he wanted to help find his friend.
Did John have any enemies? Anyone who'd want to hurt him? No way.
No, John's a good dude.
He really cares about people.
He loves paintball and motorcycles, and computers.
He even convinced me to buy my first computer.
Ever use it for internet dating? Me? No, no-no.
That's John's thing.
He's got a bunch of friends around that stuff.
They swap stories of different dates they've been on.
But not me.
No, no.
Can't trust it.
Mm-hm.
Did he ever tell you any stories? Not usually.
Well, then why would he decide to call you right before his date with Jen? He thought there was something off about her.
Like, she was very forward, but wouldn't give her phone number.
He was very excited to meet her, though.
Excited enough to give you directions before he went.
Well, she gave him directions instead of an address.
He thought it was weird, so he wanted to make sure that I knew where he was going, just in case something bad happened.
You gotta believe me.
My suspicion is piqued that yeah, we are now moving into a homicide investigation here.
BILL CLARK: We believed that John had not left the country, but where was he? Was he vacationing with Jen somewhere else? Was he just at a lake? He could be anywhere.
But it just didn't make any sense.
What's he writing? It's a list of people who know Altinger.
He said the Costa Rica e-mail went out to all of his friends and family.
Well, not all of them.
We just talked to a guy who considers himself one of Altinger's best friends.
He never got an e-mail about Costa Rica or anything.
We need to learn everything we can about Altinger.
Let's contact everyone on that list.
All right, I'll get the guys on it.
Right, thanks.
I'll go chat with the family.
As a homicide investigator, talking to the family of a missing loved one, it's, it's tough.
You know, I want to give them all the information, I know they got a million questions that I can't answer.
I'm just trying to reassure them and take the first steps that, "Hey, we're looking into this.
Honestly, we, we don't know what we have.
" So when was the last time you saw John? Uh, last, last August.
He drove out here on his motorcycle after one of those failed on-line relationships.
So did he do a lot of on-line dating? Yeah, sure.
He almost got married a couple of years ago.
Nice girl.
Bought a ring and everything, but uh, it didn't work out.
So he was looking for love.
Yeah, you could say that, sure.
Do you think that he found it uh, love, with this uh, Jen girl? I don't believe he'd run off to Costa Rica on a whim like that, no matter who he met.
Why not? Not like him.
I mean, John's always been a very caring and connected guy.
You know, he, he's always there for people.
He just wouldn't take off like that.
You know um, after our dad died, John came and, and stayed with our mom just to look after her.
I mean, he stayed there for three years.
That's, that's the kind of man he is.
Johnny Altinger, he was just a decent guy.
Liked by everybody.
You know, just the, uh, he was just Joe Average.
Would you mind providing us with a sample of your DNA? It's a formality.
Just in case.
Sure.
Whatever you need.
Right.
And um, I'll tell you what, here's my card just in case there's anything that you'd like to add.
There's nothing worse than missing a loved one and not knowing if they're alive or dead.
But the whole issue becomes even larger when you're getting a call from a homicide detective and he's telling you that, "Hey, we're looking into this disappearance.
" It's just gotta be horrible on the family.
My mother's flying back from Mexico this weekend.
What do I tell her? That we're investigating this as a, a missing person's case.
Then why does your card say 'homicide'? We need to get into that garage where Altinger met his date.
I wrote up a warrant, but it was refused.
- What? - They said there was no proof that a crime had been committed there.
It's like a lightbulb went off, I go, yeah, we really can't prove there's been a crime committed, so you can't get a search warrant just to go search something.
You're not allowed to go on fishing expeditions, you've got to prove there's a crime been committed to get a warrant to go in.
So I'm going, oh yeah, well, that's a smart judge.
Ah, forget it.
What? We'll just go to the guy who rents the place and get the keys.
He gave them to an officer before, he'll do it again.
So, I phone him up.
I just say, hey, we need to get in the garage, we want to have a really good look around, do you mind? First time I've ever talked to the guy, and I've only talked to him on the phone.
He's Mister Cooperative.
I says, I just need you to sign a consent form that we can search the garage.
He goes, oh, not a problem.
I says, I'll send a guy up there to meet you.
You can give the key, he'll get you to sign this form and we'll have a look.
This'll get you in.
Thanks.
Sorry about all the trouble.
No.
No trouble at all.
Murphy gets him in his car and the case changes.
This is where everything turned.
But could you help me out? Could you see if your guys found out anything about my car? Your car? What about it? It was broken into a couple of weeks ago.
I filed a report.
Some stuff was missing.
A few receipts.
One was for the garage rental and the other had my address on it.
So I'm just kind of worried that, you know, someone's out there messing with me.
Maybe stealing my identity.
What makes you think that? Well, a few days after, I came home with my wife and our door was unlocked.
Was anything stolen from the house? No, no.
But I'm just, I'm getting this impression that I'm being, I don't know, watched.
- Watched? - Yeah.
How? A couple of days ago I'm out near my garage working on a set, and this guy taps on my window and he tells me this story about how he met this rich girl who's going to take him on vacation and she wants him to sell his car.
And she's going to buy him a new one when they get back.
So he's like, 'you wanna buy a car?' I'm like, 'I don't have enough money on me to buy a car.
' And he's like, 'how much you got in your wallet?' I say, 'forty bucks.
' He's like, 'Yeah, sold!' You don't buy a car for forty dollars.
Come on! I don't care who you are, this just doesn't make sense.
So it's like, right away, big red flag.
It's like, things aren't right here.
Where is the car that you bought? Is it here? No, it's at my friend Joss Hnatiuk's.
It's a stick and I can't even drive manual, so I'm keeping it there.
I can give you his address if you need it.
OK.
What kind of car is it? It's a red Mazda 3.
Exactly the same car as John Altinger.
I says, holy mackerel, we need to get this guy in.
We need to get him in here for an interview.
Now Detective Anstey and I are scrambling: how do we get this guy down? Let's ask the guy to just come down on his own.
He's got his car there anyway, he's with Murphy, he's got his own car, let's tell him to drive down.
[DOOR OPENS.]
He's still working on his statement? Two hours and counting.
Like he's writing his next movie.
Uh, I better pull up a chair.
So we're waiting and we're watching and he's writing, and he's writing, and he's writing.
And he goes page after page, after page.
He writes eight pages! Thanks, Mark.
So I read it over.
It indicated that he was producing a film or something, shooting some type of short film in this garage.
Well, he just rambles on and on about the movie-making.
And then the red car is basically two small paragraphs on one page.
And that's the big incident.
I'm thinking it's a sign of deception, he's not telling me the whole story about the red car.
This is great.
Very detailed.
You're a hell of a writer, Mark.
I try.
Yeah, I just have one question, though.
Why didn't you mention any of this when you first showed us the garage? I didn't think it was related.
But then I talked to my wife and, you know, she thought I should mention it, so.
You think the guy that sold you the car for forty dollars had anything to do with John Altinger's disappearance? I don't know.
Looking back on it, yeah, it sure feels that way.
Look, I feel like an idiot for having thought that this car situation was on the uh, up and up.
So, if it's all the same to you, I would prefer if I just gave you the keys to the Mazda and be done with it.
I brought them with me, they're in the car.
That sounds great.
Let me just check with my partner, see if he has any more questions and uh, we'll get you on your way.
[CELL PHONE RINGS.]
Hello? Yeah, still here.
What? Yeah, it turns out that the car doesn't belong to that missing guy.
It's just a big mess.
I'll be home soon, OK? I'll call you when I'm on my way.
All right.
Bye.
CLARK: He's lying.
Not what you said last time.
Well, last time there was no pressure on him.
It was a soft interview.
This time, I'm starting to lean on him a bit about the car he bought, and he's starting to show signs of deception.
I mean, look at him.
Biting his lip, he's got dry mouth We can't arrest a guy for having dry mouth.
Yeah, and you can't buy a car for forty dollars either.
I'm not arguing with you.
But everything he says checks out.
Them breaking into his car.
Look, he, he filed a report the very next day.
Yeah, right, someone breaks into his car to take receipts? Does that mean they're following him? They're trying to frame him? I just think we've got to be careful here, we've got nothing to charge him with.
So far, he's been cooperative.
Yeah, well, let's see if he cooperates enough to confess.
What? Where you going? [MYSTERIOUS MUSIC.]
[FOOTSTEPS.]
[DOOR OPENS.]
[EXHALE.]
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[CLEARS THROAT.]
Mark, did you have anything to do with the disappearance of John Altinger? No! Because I have no doubt in my mind that you were involved in his disappearance.
Why? Because you're not telling us the truth.
You haven't told us anything near the truth.
[SCOFF.]
Is this some sort of scare tactic? [SOFT CHUCKLE.]
Mark, you're not dumb.
You know you can't buy a car that's worth over ten grand for forty dollars.
So just tell me what happened to John.
Tell me where he is.
You can't live with this for the rest of your life.
[EERIE MUSIC.]
I want a lawyer.
I took the chance and pushed the envelope.
In the end, we've got no evidence, we've got nothing.
Maybe he's not involved.
Maybe I am wrong.
I never want a guy to walk out, and I'm always thinking that we're probably not getting this guy back in here.
You OK? We just can't let him walk.
We're just going to have to cool our jets until the warrants come through.
I'm getting nowhere with him and I can't throw anything at him because I got no evidence.
I was mad.
I was mad because I didn't get a confession.
[CLEARS THROAT.]
Probably my emotions got a little bit of me there, but I thought, ah, screw it.
I know you killed that guy, and I'm coming to get you.
It's just a matter of time.
[ELEVATOR DINGS.]
You want them to feel out of their element, because then they start saying things they probably shouldn't say.
You know, we'd been going hard all night, I'm tired, but it's like, you just get a second rush of adrenaline and you're pumped now.
Hey! That's your car? Keys to the Mazda in there? Yeah, they're in it.
Then I'm seizing your whole car.
Well, you can't do that.
Sure I can.
The Mazda keys are stolen property.
But I told you I'd give them to you! Yeah, but possession of stolen property, probable cause for me to take your car, and everything in it.
Nah, you need a warrant for that! Ah, to look through it, sure.
But not to seize it.
Give me your keys.
And he turns and looks at me and he goes, so, I just need to get something out of it.
I says, you're getting fuck all out of that car.
I was mad.
Detective Anstey heard this and he thought I had to check my ego at the door.
Detective Anstey was right.
But, you know what? Police work is not rocket science, it's common sense.
And it made sense to me that this Mark guy's involved somehow.
I just don't know yet what his involvement is.
[BABY CRYING INSIDE HOUSE.]
[KNOCKING.]
Edmonton Police.
WOMAN'S VOICE: Go away.
Mark isn't here.
He told me not to talk to you.
Well, don't you want to know why two homicide detectives are at your door and your husband's telling you not to talk? [BABY CRYING.]
Ah, Detective Clark, Edmonton PD.
Who's the little one? Chloe.
Chloe.
That's a, that's a pretty name.
And you are? Jess.
Now, Jess, I don't know what Mark has told you, but he's involved in something big, and we're going to have to seize your house, ma'am.
What? I don't, I don't understand what's going on.
We're bringing in a team to search your home.
This detective will stay until they arrive.
Now, you can stay if you want, but I would suggest that you and Chloe leave until the police have done their job.
Go inside, make sure nothing gets touched.
Let me know the minute Mark comes home.
Whatever you do, don't let him in the house.
We, we are getting a search warrant to search this house.
In the meantime, Mark won't be allowed to remove anything.
We get a phone call from Detective Anstey.
He tells us we are getting a warrant for the garage.
[DOOR OPENS AND CREAKS.]
[SOMBRE MUSIC.]
What do you think? Maybe corn syrup.
They mix it with red dye to make fake blood.
Yeah, well, we better make sure that none of it's real.
Mark had told me that these were the props from his movie set.
It looked like a kill room from the show Dexter.
I mean, he built a table just like Dexter had.
And I'm thinking, what the hell's going on here? BB gun.
He had knives, meat cleavers.
It was weird.
You could see what looked like blood and possibly skin, in the end of that knife.
That real? Could be.
This is going to take some time.
It looks like someone's already been doing some housekeeping.
Clark.
Things just aren't sitting right.
It's not a good feeling.
Something bad's happened to John.
Hey.
How you doing, Link? What's this? That is a tooth I found in the garage.
I'll run Altinger's dental records.
No, no, Link.
That fine, man.
I know you have a lot of cases, I can handle it.
Uh, Bill, actually, I brought Link in.
I thought we could use the help.
Paul Link was brought in.
Maybe there's something I'm simply not seeing.
I always tell guys, you've got to check your ego at the door, and I had to do a big check there.
Oh.
OK.
Did Anstey fill you in? Yeah.
He did.
And he told me his new theory.
Well, look, a lot of people had access to the garage, right? Yeah, the crew.
Well, maybe they're making a snuff film.
- A snuff film? - Yeah.
Basically, a snuff film is a film a person would make up of an actual murder.
They're actually killing someone and they film it.
It's not fake, it's not Hollywood, there's no acting, it's real life and they kill a person.
They film it, and then they sell the film for big dollars.
Even found a guy online offering a million dollars for the real thing.
- A million dollars? - Yeah.
Great way for Mark and his crew to raise a lot of money.
We needed to talk to Mark, but if we ask him to come down to the station, he's going to just laugh at us.
OK, well, what about the guy on the internet that's offering the million dollars, can we track him? Tech's trying.
But it's not easy.
ANSTEY: Our best bet's to talk to the crew.
Find out what they've been up to in this little garage of horrors of theirs.
We started with Joss Hnatiuk.
He's the one who had the red Mazda that Mark bought.
Joss was the helper guy on the set when they were filming their little movies.
Hey! What are you doing? Is this your car? I hear there's a lot of money to be made for snuff films.
Uh, I wouldn't know.
I've never seen one.
You ever wonder how Mark was paying for his movies? He's a talented guy.
Knows producers in Hollywood.
He impresses a lot of people.
He told me once he got thirty grand from some accountant.
Promised him he'd make a million dollars.
Wow, that's quite a promise.
Yeah.
People trust Mark.
So it would seem.
[FILE SLAPS ONTO TABLE.]
[BILL SIGHS.]
Ah! Did you work with Mark on the last movie he shot in his garage? What was it about? A killer.
What kind of killer? One who uses a dating service to lure some guy into his garage, and then he kills him.
How would I see this movie? [GRUNTS COMING FROM VIDEO.]
[MUSIC CRESCENDOS AND STOPS.]
I really thought that we had a snuff film.
They do exist.
Guys like Luka Magnotta, right? He sold a film of him killing that guy.
Maybe this is the piece we're looking for where they've actually filmed the murder of John.
[GRUNTS.]
This is not a snuff film.
[VOICE ONSCREEN.]
And cut.
[LAUGH.]
Well, that was awesome, guys.
Um, you OK? [CELL PHONE RINGS.]
I've got to take this.
Excuse me.
When did Altinger disappear? October 10th.
This was filmed two weeks before John went missing.
This is just one memory card.
We need to see the rest of the footage.
It's at his house.
We have a detective securing the home, but I can't get in until ANSTEY: You can get in.
We just got clearance for warrants on the house and the car.
I'm going to go pick them up now.
Thanks, Paul.
When we searched Mark's house, I told them, make sure you take every hard drive, every CD, every disk, anything that can store data.
Make sure we seize it all.
Because I truly was of the belief that this was a snuff film.
[EERIE MUSIC.]
We went through there and we found all kinds of hard drives.
There were lots of DVDs.
There was a real affinity to the show Dexter.
He had a lot of books on Dexter.
He had the DVDs of each season.
I'm thinking to myself, we see all this violence on TV, it affects people in different ways.
There's no doubt it affects people.
Everything was adding up, but it still wasn't making any sense.
And then we pulled the laptop from his car.
And you wouldn't believe what we found.
It's a document that he tried to erase.
It's called "S.
K.
Confessions.
" Here.
BILL: "This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer" The document was detailed and disturbing.
It definitely seemed like a confession to Altinger's murder.
"A double detached garage for rent in the south of the city, with a house occupied by tenants who couldn't even read English.
" - This is his garage.
- Yeah, yeah.
"Everything I decided, would take place here.
" He talked about everything.
Why he lured the victim, how he lured him.
He talked about the site.
He talked about using the female profile, where he got it from.
Everything.
This is a diary.
I mean, all he did was change the names a little.
I mean, he calls his wife Jess, Tess and his daughter Chloe, Zoe.
Everything else is real.
It goes into explicit detail and I'm looking at this document, reading it, and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this thing is true!' "The room filled with the echo of the pipe crashing into the back of his skull.
He hit the floor but was still conscious.
I pulled my hunting knife from its sheath, and watching the shock on his face as he saw the blade I thrust it into his gut.
" Just a total lack of empathy.
I mean, he talks about eating a bag of chips, you know, whistling, singing songs while he's dismembering Johnny.
ANSTEY: This, this this is sick stuff, I mean.
Anstey, this is a full confession.
But in that document, it also states there was a first victim.
And we're like, whoa! We're shocked! Someone that he attacked and then got away.
Why hasn't anyone come forward? If the other victim was out there, we needed to find him.
We've got this document, S.
K.
Confessions, it details the whole murder.
It described luring a guy on the internet.
Hitting him over the head with the metal pipe.
Cutting him up.
Driving around with the body parts in his car.
This guy was a pathological liar.
He's going to say that's a work of fiction.
But we knew there was another victim out there who got away.
Finding that victim was huge to really proving that that S.
K.
Confessions document was true.
So we decided to go to the news media.
WOMAN REPORTER: Police say the victim, John Altinger, was lured on a dating website with the promise of meeting a beautiful woman.
Instead, police theorize he was met by his killer.
And police are looking for another would-be victim who escaped.
The unknown man went to the same garage to meet a woman, but was confronted by a man in a hockey mask.
Detective Anstey went in the media and showed the mask, and the very next morning, I got a phone call from Gilles Tetreault, and uh, he came down to the station.
She was a bit forward.
Always asking if I wanted to meet.
Then she gave me directions instead of an address.
Uh, I thought that was odd, but I still wanted to meet her.
It was, without a doubt, the most riveting witness interview I've had in my career.
[TIRES ON GRAVEL.]
The story was exactly the same as John Altinger.
He met a girl online.
[CAR DOOR OPENS.]
So when I got out of the car, I should have been scoping the place first, but I was rushing, thinking that I was late and she was going to be upset.
[KNOCKING.]
And out of nowhere, this guys just tasers me.
Agh! He grabs me and he pulls me through the side door.
[UNROLLING TAPE.]
I'm thinking he's going to kill me.
Don't move.
Just let me go, OK? You can take whatever you want, Shut up! you can take my wallet! And then I tell myself, no, not like this.
I was so weak I couldn't run.
Help! And I knew, if he gets me back inside, I'm as good as dead.
When I got home I went on the dating site, but the profile, the messages, they were gone.
Just vanished.
I had read that S.
K.
Confessions document multiple times by now.
I knew that document inside and out.
Everything Gilles told me was exactly the same.
So what took you so long to come forward? I was scared.
Ashamed.
To think that I was attacked in the same way, at the same place, just one week before the missing man.
And that'll haunt me to the day I die.
I could have done something.
I should have done something.
WOMAN REPORTER: Behind the police tape and garage doors, a chilling scene of what could be life imitating art.
A homicide police say was literally scripted, then carried out by an Edmonton filmmaker.
MALE REPORTER: Mark Twitchell's real life-diary, detailing his descent into the world of murder.
FEMALE REPORTER: Facebook page shows him to be a huge fan of the television show Dexter.
He bears an eerie physical resemblance to the main character MALE REPORETER: where the gruesome writings of how a man was lured to a garage to meet a date.
We've now arrested him for first degree murder.
So preplanned meditated murder.
And we've got a mountain of evidence.
Everything's tested positive for Johnny's blood.
A strong, strong case.
BILL: We found John's blood everywhere.
In your garage, both cars, your house, your clothes.
The evidence is overwhelming.
And we put away guys with five percent of what we have on you, so thanks for making it easy for us.
We realized from the S.
K.
Confessions document, he got rid of the body down a sewer in an eastern suburb of Edmonton.
So I thought, we'll put him in the car, we'll film him.
Let's take him for a drive to see if he'll point out the body to us.
We know what you did with Altinger.
We can't do anything about that, but you can do the right thing.
Tell us where you dumped the body.
We weren't going to play on his emotions, it wasn't going to work.
People like Mark don't care.
Which sewer was it, Mark? You can end this now.
He wouldn't give us anything.
He wouldn't give up the body.
[SLOW SAD CELLO.]
Eighteen months since the murder and out of the blue, we get a phone call to our office from Mark Twitchell's lawyer.
NEW ANNOUNCER: It was two blocks from Twitchell's parents' home, and half a block from a section of sewer searched exhaustively early in the investigation.
It's been the worst.
It's been the worst.
There's nothing else can be said.
There'll never be closure, but it goes on to the next step, I think, to start to heal if, if that's possible.
I truly think to this day that Mark Twitchell wanted to know what it was like to kill someone.
He had his mind made up long before he saw Dexter.
It kind of overshadowed the whole incident, and it shouldn't have.
John Altinger, he was a good guy.
I've tried my best not to let it affect me, but I've seen the other side.
And when you see that other side, you do feel sorry, you have more empathy for these victims' families and see what it can do to them.
It tears them apart.