EDMONTON -- An independent Edmonton filmmaker has been charged with killing a 38-year-old man who was allegedly lured to the filmmaker's studio last month on the promise of a date with a woman.
Police have seized a script from Mark Twitchell, 29, detailing scenes remarkably similar to the assault of one man and the murder of another.
Johnny Brian Altinger was reported missing Oct. 10, after police say he answered an online personal ad for a date with a woman.
Altinger showed up at a garage that police say Twitchell used to make movies.
Police haven't found Altinger's body. But Twitchell has been charged with first-degree murder in Altinger's death.
The script police recovered on a search warrant is in production, Edmonton homicide Det. Mark Anstey said. "It was about a killer luring a male off the Internet, off a dating site, on the pretence that he'd meet a lovely, sexy girl," Anstey said. "Once [he] was in the garage, he was knocked unconscious and duct-taped to a chair."
The attacker in the film then forced personal information out of his victim, including bank account information and passwords for social-networking sites, which he used to contact his victim's friends to make it seem like everything was fine.
In the script, the attacker then decapitated the victim.
"His body was chopped up in little pieces and disposed of."
Anstey said they believe they know how Altinger died but would not release details, only hinting at what he said is even more bizarre.
Altinger's friends were sent an e-mail three days after he disappeared.
"I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who has offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation," it read.
"We'll be staying in 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."
This e-mail was "definitely not" Altinger, Anstey said.
Friends said this sort of impulsive decision would be out of character for a quiet man who was timid with most women.
Three days after that, Altinger's page on the social-networking website Facebook was updated. "It definitely was not Mr. Altinger," Anstey said.
Twitchell and Altinger did not know each other, police said.
Twitchell, police said, was an avid fan of the television show Dexter, about a serial killer who kills bad people.
On Aug. 15, he updated the status on his Facebook site to read: "Mark has way too much in common with Dexter Morgan."
Anstey said: "We have a lot of information that suggests he definitely idolizes Dexter, and a lot of information that he tried to emulate him during this incident."
