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“The Dexter Killer:” Inside the mind of a murderer
A look at the evidence in “The Dexter Killer” case; plus, letters from the man police say wanted to be like fictional serial-killer Dexter Morgan.
An important piece of evidence was the hockey mask the killer wore when he attacked his two victims in October of 2008. Gilles Tetreault managed to escape the assault, but Johnny Altinger was murdered by the masked man.
Gilles Tetreault: The first targeted victim
On October 3, 2008, Canadian man Gilles Tetreault followed directions to a location in Edmonton where he was supposed to meet a woman named “Sheena” he met online.
Deadly directions
A copy of the directions that Gilles Tetreault was sent by “Sheena.” His supposed date had refused to give him the actual address of the house where they were to meet, but instead sent him detailed directions to the location, letting him know that “the garage door will be open for you.”
The garage
After Gilles Tetreault entered through the partially raised door into the darkened garage, he felt someone grab him from behind.
The attack
Gilles Tetreault quickly realized this wasn’t a date, as he came face to face with a man in a hockey mask who shocked him with this stun baton.
Fight for life
The masked man took out a gun and ordered Gilles Tetreault to the ground and placed duct tape on his eyes. While Tetreault was on the ground he decided “if I’m going to die, I’d rather go my way than his way.” He got up, ripped the tape from his eyes and grabbed the attacker’s gun. That’s when he discovered it was made of plastic.
The escape
After a violent struggle, Gilles Tetreault managed to escape from the garage, and quickly drove away.
He failed to report the scare to the police out of embarrassment. With each day that passed, Tetreault convinced himself the attack wasn’t as serious as he first thought.
Johnny Altinger
But only a week later, the masked man would find his next target, Johnny Altinger, who wouldn’t be as lucky as the first victim.
An unusual email
On October 10, 2008, Edmonton man Johnny Altinger vanished after answering a similar dating ad on the plentyoffish.com website. Concern turned into alarm for Altinger’s friends and family when, three days after he vanished, they received this unusual email from Altinger’s account. They knew this was highly out of character, so they reported him missing to the police.
Movie set turns into a crime scene
Johnny Altinger’s friends were also able to hand over the directions Johnny had forwarded them before his date. Those directions led police directly to that garage, which turned out to be rented to an aspiring filmmaker named Mark Twitchell.
Mark Twitchell
Mark Twitchell, 29, had rented the garage space to film his movie “House of Cards.” The short film featured a killer luring men to a garage and murdering them.
Pools of blood
An initial search of the garage uncovered what appeared to be blood spatter, which Twitchell told police came from the “House of Cards” execution scene he was filming. When investigators asked an actor from the film how much fake blood spatter there was from his scene, he responded “None.” Luminol tests later revealed excessive amounts of human blood that wasn’t visible to the naked eye.
Dexter fan
During their investigation, investigators learned that Mark Twitchell was a devoted fan of the Showtime series “Dexter” about an avenging serial killer. Twitchell even posed as Dexter Morgan on Facebook.
The kill room
Police believed Mark Twitchell’s garage resembled a scene right out of the Showtime series “Dexter.” The garage had plastic sheets covering all the windows, a table with blood spatter, and cleaning supplies laid out.
Altinger’s blood in Twitchell’s car
Johnny Altinger’s blood was found in the trunk of Mark Twitchell’s family car — a discovery which led to the filmmaker’s arrest on Halloween day in 2008.
Twitchell’s weapons
Police believe that Johnny Altinger was hit over the head with this pipe shortly upon entering the darkened garage. He was then stabbed to death.
Murder weapon
Investigators found a knife in Mark Twitchell’s car with blood on both the sheath and knife.
Twitchell’s laptop
The search of the car also led police to discover a deleted file on Mark Twitchell’s laptop called “SK Confessions.” Despite Twitchell telling the police that the document was a screenplay, investigators would come to find out it was a detailed account of Twitchell’s crimes.
Image from “SK Confessions”
Pictured here is the beginning of “SK Confessions,” which would become a key piece of evidence in the case against Mark Twitchell. The first lines read “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.”
Script or diary?
From the hockey mask to the lead pipe to the “Dexter-prepped'” garage, the police noticed that line by line the details in “SK Confessions” were aligning directly with the evidence they found at the crime scene. One passage spoke of the killer trying to burn remains in a barrel; police found this burned barrel inside Mark Twitchell’s garage.
A look at the evidence
One piece of the puzzle that had the police stumped was the fact that “SK Confessions” spoke of a victim who got away. Find that person, the police thought, and you’ve proved that “SK Confessions” is real and not the fictional screenplay Mark Twitchell claimed it was. Pictured here is a detective holding up a photo of the hockey mask that authorities believed anyone who had escaped from Twitchell would remember.
Seeing the hockey mask at this police press conference is what prompted Gilles Tetreault to finally come forward.
Letters from “The Dexter Killer”
While preparing to cover the trial for the Edmonton Journal, Canadian investigative journalist and MacEwan University professor Steve Lillebuen began corresponding with Mark Twitchell after receiving a surprise call from the soon-to-be-convicted killer himself.
Map to the body
In June 2010, as Mark Twitchell prepared to take the stand at his trial and argue that he had “accidentally” killed Johnny Altinger in self-defense, he decided to finally disclose the location of Altinger’s body. Seen here are Twitchell’s handwritten directions on a Google map. The directions led police to a manhole where Twitchell had dumped Johnny’s remains.
“No root cause”
During their correspondence, Steve Lillebuen pressed Mark Twitchell to explain himself but he wasn’t able to get a satisfactory answer from Twitchell.
“It is what it is”
In the excerpt shown here, Mark Twitchell states, “It is what it is and I am what I am.”
“The Devil’s Cinema”
Steve Lillebuen writes about these letters in his book “The Devil’s Cinema: The Untold Story Behind Mark Twitchell’s Kill Room.”
Floodwaters pushed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene left North Carolina’s largest mountain city largely cut off Saturday by damaged roads and a lack of power and cellphone service, part of a swath of destruction across southern Appalachia that left an unknown number dead and countless worried relatives unable to reach loved ones.
In North Carolina alone, more than 400 roads remained closed on Saturday as floodwaters began to recede and reveal the extent of damage. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said that supplies were being airlifted to that part of the state. Cooper said two people died in his state, Helene killed at least 52 people across multiple states.
Among those rescued from rising waters was nurse Janetta Barfield, whose car was swamped on Friday morning as she left an overnight shift at Asheville’s Mission Hospital. She said she watched a car in front of her drive through standing water and thought it was safe to proceed. But her car stalled, and within minutes water had filled her front seat up to her chest. A nearby police officer who saw her car stall helped her to safety.
“It was unbelievable how fast that creek got just in like five minutes,” Barfield said.
Erik Verduzco / AP
Early on Saturday morning, many gas stations were closed because they didn’t have electricity, and the few that were open had hourlong lines wrapped around the block. The hub of tourism and arts, home to about 94,000 people, was unusually still after floodwaters swamped neighborhoods known for drawing visitors including Biltmore Village and the River Arts District, which is home to numerous galleries, shops and breweries.
More than 700,000 power customers were without power across North Carolina, including 160,000 in Buncombe County. Interstate 40 and I-26 were impassible in multiple locations, and a state transportation department map showed that most routes into Asheville and across much of the mountains were snarled. North Carolina’s Department of Transportation posted on social media on Saturday afternoon that “all roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed.”
In Asheville, there was no cellular service and no timeline for when it would be restored.
“We have had some loss of life,” County Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones told reporters. However, he said they were not ready to report any specifics. Officials have been hindered in contacting next of kin by the communications outages. Asheville police instituted a curfew from 7:30 p.m. Friday to 7:30 a.m. Saturday.
“The curfew is to ensure the public’s safety and will be in effect until further notice,” police said.
Asheville transit services were also suspended, police said. The city advised residents to boil “all water used for human consumption,” as there was at least one significant water line break during the storm. Many residents might not be getting water or reduced or no pressure water.
Jones said the area experienced a cascade of emergencies that included heavy rain, high winds and mudslides. Officials said they tried to prepare for the storm but its magnitude was beyond what they could have imagined.
“It’s not that we (were) not prepared, but this is going to another level,” Sheriff Quentin Miller said. “To say this caught us off-guard would be an understatement.”
Erik Verduzco / AP
Atlanta resident Francine Cavanaugh said she has been unable to reach her sister, son, or friends in the Asheville area.
“My sister checked in with me yesterday morning to find out how I was in Atlanta,” she said on Saturday. “The storm was just hitting her in Asheville, and she said it sounded really scary outside.”
Cavanaugh said her sister had no idea how bad the storm would be there. She told Cavanaugh she was going to head out to check on guests at a vacation cabin “and that’s the last I heard of her. I’ve been texting everyone that I know with no response. All phone calls go directly to voicemail.”
The CEO of a hospital operator that filed for bankruptcy protection in May will step down after failing to testify before a U.S. Senate panel.
Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre has overseen a network of some 30 hospitals around the country. The Texas-based company’s troubled recent history has drawn scrutiny from elected officials in New England, where some of its hospitals are located.
A spokesperson for de la Torre told the Associated Press Saturday that he “has amicably separated from Steward on mutually agreeable terms” and “will continue to be a tireless advocate for the improvement of reimbursement rates for the underprivileged patient population.”
A CBS News investigation that spanned nearly two years documented how private equity investors and de la Torre extracted hundreds of millions of dollars while healthcare workers and patients struggled to get the life-saving supplies they needed.
In August, the company closed two Massachusetts hospitals, leaving about 1,200 workers jobless, according to the state.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said earlier this month that Congress “will hold Dr. de la Torre accountable for his greed and for the damage he has caused to hospitals and patients throughout America.”
De la Torre’s resignation is effective Oct. 1. The Senate approved a resolution on Wednesday that was intended to hold him in criminal contempt for failing to testify before a committee.
The Senate panel has been looking into Steward’s bankruptcy. De la Torre did not appear before it despite being issued a subpoena. The resolution refers the matter to a federal prosecutor.
Kayla Bartkowski/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
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