Mark Andrew Twitchell (born on July 4, 1979) is a Canadian movie producer indicted for first-degree murder in April 2011 for the homicide of John Brian Altinger.

His preliminary pulled specifically media consideration because Twitchell had purportedly been motivated by the imaginary person Dexter Morgan.

Murder of Johnny Altinger

In October 2008, John Brian Altinger, 38-year-old previous White Rock, B.C., oilfield gear maker who referred to his companions as Johnny, unwittingly collaborated with Twitchell on the dating site Plenty of Fish.

On October 10, 2008, Altinger educated his companions regarding his arrangements to meet a lady with whom he had been visiting.

Altinger found past the point of no return that Twitchell had acted as the lady online to bait him into a "kill room" set up in his carport turned film studio.

Twitchell beat and wounded Altinger, before cutting him separated, to some extent consuming him, and afterward unloading his remaining parts in trash containers into a tempest sewer.

Following his vanishing, Altinger's companions became worried after they got messages in which "Altinger" guaranteed that his date had taken him on a lengthy excursion to Costa Rica.

At work, an acquiescence letter showed up by email, however, there was no reaction to a solicitation for a sending address for sending the last check.

Altinger's companions poor into his townhouse, where they tracked down his identification, messy dishes, and no sign of his having stuffed for an outing. A crime examination was before long sent off by the Edmonton Police Service.

Twitchell, however at first not a suspect, related an impossible record to police of having met Altinger before his excursion to Costa Rica.

As indicated by Twitchell, Altinger offered his Mazda 6 to Twitchell for 40 CAD, all the money Twitchell had close by. The police, not trusting this story, seized Twitchell's PC and vehicle and tracked down Altinger's blood in the vehicle's trunk.

Police captured Twitchell on October 31, 2008, and, around the same time, accused him of the first-degree murder of Altinger.

Preliminary and condemning

The vital piece of proof introduced by the Crown at Twitchell's first-degree murder preliminary was a report, named "SKConfessions", which meant "Chronic Killer Confessions".

The archive had been recuperated from Twitchell's PC, notwithstanding having been erased. The record starts with the section:

    This story depends on obvious occasions. The names and occasions were adjusted somewhat to safeguard the liable. This is the account of my movement into turning into a chronic executioner.

It introduced a record of its storyteller's preparation, bombed the first endeavor, and effective second endeavor to draw a man to his carport and murder him, with counterfeit internet dating profiles utilized as a snare. It proceeded to portray the method involved with dissecting the body and endeavors to discard the remaining parts.

During his preliminary, Twitchell confessed to killing Altinger and composing the record, yet guaranteed he had acted justifiably.

He depicted the archive as fiction-given reality, as though he had arranged Altinger's passing purposely, to create a convincing story.

During the preliminary, Twitchell's advantage in the TV series Dexter was noted over and over, and his relationship with its lead character, Dexter Morgan, a vigilante chronic executioner, incited a few news sources to allude to him as the "Dexter Killer."

One more archive found on Twitchell's PC didn't advance into the proof document for the jury to peruse during his preliminary.

Named "A Profile of a Psychopath", and accepted by specialists to have been composed by Twitchell, it is an itemized self-investigation of character and conduct.

On April 12, 2011, Twitchell was indicted for first-degree murder for the demise of Altinger and condemned to life in jail without opportunities for parole for a long time.

Endeavored murder accusation

Twitchell confronted an endeavored murder accusation for his supposed assault on Gilles Tetreault, a PC organization worker for hire.

Tetreault affirmed that he was baited utilizing the site Plenty of Fish, expecting a date with a young lady named Sheena, just to be gone after by a man in a hockey veil with a shock twirly doo when he showed up at the carport in Edmonton leased by Twitchell.

After a savage battle, Tetreault got away, however, didn't report the assault to the police. Tetreault claims that he didn't report the assault since he was humiliated. Tetreault was nicknamed 'The One Who Got Away by a few news sources.

Crown investigators considered seeking a charge of endeavored murder in the wake of getting a conviction of first-degree murder.

Analysts were resolved that they had assembled a pile of proof - quite a bit of it uncovered during the homicide preliminary - while even Twitchell himself conceded on the testimony box to committing the assault.

In setting up the case for preliminary, the Crown had contended in court for both the endeavored murder and first-degree murder allegations to be heard all the while as they were essential for the equivalent "exchange" of his endeavor to turn into a chronic executioner.

Under Canadian regulation, charges must be heard together assuming that they are connected here and there.

Court of Queen's Bench Justice Terry Clackson was not persuaded by the arraignment's contention that the assault on Gilles Tetreault and the homicide of Johnny Altinger was essential for a similar exchange.

He requested the charges to be cut off and heard independently.

"The offenses are connected and associated, however, stay discrete," Justice Clackson wrote in his purposes behind the choice, "accordingly, the endeavored murder allegation can't remain on a similar arraignment as the charge of homicide since they are various exchanges."

On June 17, 2011, an endeavored murder accusation against Twitchell remained in the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta, implying that Crown investigators could revive the charge within one year.

Since his conviction of first-degree murder got a most extreme sentence — life in jail with no parole qualification for a very long time — there was compelling reason need to continue with additional charges, and the endeavored murder allegation against Twitchell was ultimately dropped.

Post-preliminary media inclusion

In December 2012, Michael C. Lobby, the entertainer who played Dexter Morgan on the Dexter TV series, was evaluated by Jian Ghomeshi on the Canadian public broadcast Q. Corridor expressed that he didn't think Dexter glamorized chronic executioners.

"I would trust that individuals' appreciation was more than a fetishization with the kill scenes of some kind or another," he said.

Ghomeshi raised Twitchell and Hall said, "I wouldn't quit making Dexter because somebody was intrigued by it just in like that. "

"I attempt to let myself know that their focused nature would have done it for sure, yet it appears to be that Dexter had something to do with it. It's frightening."

In May 2013, it was accounted for that Twitchell had bought a TV for his jail cell. Twitchell expressed that he had up to speed with each Dexter episode that he missed since he was captured and sentenced for first-degree murder.

Twitchell's case was highlighted in the American magazine Crime Watch Daily on May 1, 2017. Quite a bit of that day's program centered around Twitchell's strategies and included interviews with Gilles Tetrault, his initially planned casualty, and Steve Lillebuen, writer of the book The Devil's Cinema, which centered around the case.

Some portion of the report incorporated a return trip by Tetreault to the carport in which the occurrence had occurred.

Tetreault made a few media appearances connected with his experience, including Dateline NBC, 48 Hours Mystery, The Fifth Estate, I Survived... on Biography Channel, Dates from Hell on Investigation Discovery, and The Security Brief on REELZ.