1. The Garage
His name was Mark Twitchell
and the aspiring filmmaker was renting a two-door garage (above)
in
Edmonton, Canada as his make-shift film studio.
But the property also had a second purpose: a man was planning on
parking here and ducking
under the bay door as he headed toward the
house, where a beautiful woman supposedly
awaited him after meeting
through on an online dating website ...
2. The Ruse
The man was supposed to park, walk through the garage, and use
this back door (left) to enter the yard
and head toward the house
(right). But he would never make it inside. Something else would happen.
3. Inside the Garage
The man disappeared. His
friends called police and a forensics team was sent down to the
garage to
examine it. At first, officers found nothing. Until a chemical called luminol
was sprayed on the floor ...
4. Discovery
A giant pool of blue light
suddenly glowed in the dark in front of them.
Luminol reacts with the iron found in the hemoglobin of blood,
causing the striking blue glow.
5. The Floor
The rest of the garage was
examined and sprayed with the chemical ...
6. Blue
And officers saw an even
bigger glowing stain.
7. The Mask
Detectives began a search of
the home of Mark Twitchell, the filmmaker renting the garage,
and
found this modified hockey mask in his basement.
The mask was from a horror movie that the director had filmed at
that very same garage a few weeks
earlier -- a movie about a serial
killer who lures men off dating websites to his suburban "kill room."
8. The Suspect
Mark Twitchell, however, had
no criminal record. He was just an ordinary guy with a wife, a
child,
and big Hollywood dreams. And now he was the prime suspect in a police investigation.
9. The Vehicle
Mark Twitchell was a
cooperative suspect. He even drove his own car to police
headquarters to give
a statement about the missing man and the
rented garage, revealing how he was a big fan of
Star Wars with his
custom licence plate.
10. The Murder Weapon?
But inside that car, police
found this military blade, which was covered in suspected blood
stains.
11. The Laptop
And the police also found this
laptop. On the hard drive of that laptop, a forensic specialist
tracked down
a half-dozen temporary files -- those left behind on a
computer after a document is deleted.
The files were from a discarded, 42-page Microsoft Word document.
The document stated: "This is the story of my progression into
becoming a serial killer."
12. The Victim
And detectives would soon
discover that this man, Johnny Altinger, was not the first to visit
Mark Twitchell's
garage. What had started as a missing persons file had suddenly become ...
a serial killer investigation.
(Photographs credit: This
images, taken by the Edmonton Police Service, were made public at Mark
Twitchell's
criminal trial in March 2011 by ruling of Alberta Court of
Queen's Bench.)
Gallery by Steve Lillebuen
Mark Andrew Twitchell biography