Serial Killer and Dexter Wannabe Mark Twitchell Full Police Interrogation

Serial Killer and Dexter Wannabe Mark Twitchell Full Police Interrogation

Mark Andrew Twitchell (born July 4, 1979) is a Canadian filmmaker convicted of first degree murder in 2011 for killing John Brian "Johnny" Altinger. His trial attracted particular media attention because Twitchell had allegedly been inspired by the fictional character Dexter Morgan. The character appears in a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay and the television drama Dexter. Twitchell's victim, John Brian "Johnny" Altinger was a 38-year-old man who worked as an oilfield equipment manufacturer. On October 10, 2008, Altinger informed his friends of his plans to meet a woman he had been chatting with on the online dating website PlentyOfFish.

Following his disappearance, Altinger's friends became concerned after they received emails in which "Altinger" claimed that his date had taken him off on an extended vacation to Costa Rica. At work, a resignation letter arrived by email, but without a response to a request for a forwarding address for sending a final paycheck.

Altinger's friends broke into his condominium only to find his passport, dirty dishes and no indication of his having packed for a trip. A homicide investigation was soon launched by the Edmonton Police Service. Twitchell, interviewed a second time by police, related an improbable account of having met Altinger before his trip to Costa Rica. According to Twitchell, Altinger then sold his car to Twitchell for $40 CAD, all the cash Twitchell had on hand. The police, not believing this story, arrested him on October 31, 2008, and, and on the same day, charged with the first degree murder of Altinger.

The key piece of evidence presented by the Crown at Twitchell's first degree murder trial was a document, entitled "SKConfessions", which stood for "Serial Killer Confessions". The document had been recovered from Twitchell's laptop, despite having been deleted. The document begins with the passage: "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." It presented an account of its narrator's planning, failed first attempt, and successful second attempt to lure a man to his garage and murder him, with fake online dating profiles used as bait. It went on to the describe the process of dismembering the victim's body and attempts to dispose of the remains. During his trial, Twitchell admitted to killing Altinger and authoring the document but said he had acted in self-defense.

He described the document as fiction based on fact, as if he had planned Altinger's death deliberately, in order to craft a compelling story. Another document found on Twitchell’s laptop did not make its way into the evidence file for the jury to read during his trial. Entitled “A Profile of a Psychopath”, and believed by investigators to have been written by Twitchell, it is a detailed self-analysis of personality and behaviour. It was released after the trial ended as it was deemed too inflammatory and would compromise the trial.


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