Filmmaker says killing unintentional

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This article was published 07/04/2011 (5486 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EDMONTON — An Edmonton filmmaker accused of killing a stranger using methods lifted from one of his own grisly movie plots admitted Wednesday he stabbed Johnny Altinger, but insists it happened in the midst of an armed struggle.

Mark Twitchell testified for the first time Wednesday at his first-degree murder trial. He said he lured Altinger to an Edmonton garage on the pretext of a date with a woman, Jen, as part of an elaborately staged publicity stunt intended to create buzz for his new horror movie project.

But Altinger became enraged when told the woman did not exist, Twitchell testified.

“He became what I perceived to be indignant. His manner projected angry and when he began speaking, it just enforced that,” Twitchell said.

“I said he should probably crawl back to whatever little hole he’d just crawled out of.”

Twitchell said the two men fought for possession of a length of pipe, exchanging blows. Twitchell said he opened the sheath of a knife in the hopes of scaring Altinger off and then Altinger advanced on him.

“It was just the sickest feeling ever,” Twitchell said. “I just started to feel this wet sensation around the hand still holding the handle and I let go, instinctively. And then I saw it sticking out of him.

“It’s one of those things when I’m just stuck there and can’t decide what to do. I’m just frozen by inaction. There’s a war going on between screaming out in my head: ‘Call 9-1-1!’ But at the same time: ‘How bad does this look? Take a look around. Look at what this place looks like,’ ” he said.

Twitchell testified he didn’t do anything to help Altinger.

“I kept saying to myself: ‘Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.’ “

Prosecutors claim the 31-year-old Twitchell lured Altinger, 38, to the garage on Oct. 10, 2008, and killed him by striking him with a copper pipe and then stabbing him.

The Crown alleges he then dismembered the oil-industry worker, dumping his partial remains down an Edmonton sewer. The trial has previously heard excerpts of what prosecutors say is a diary Twitchell kept of his transformation into a would-be serial killer.

It has also heard Twitchell was a fan of the TV show Dexter, which portrays a serial killer who tracks down and murders criminals.

Two weeks before Altinger was killed, Twitchell and a small crew made a short horror movie called House of Cards, based on the idea of a masked killer who goes online to lure married men who are looking for affairs to their deaths.

“We realized the concept could go farther, so I planned for sequels, other versions,” Twitchell told court Wednesday.

Twitchell said he wanted to embark on a new film, book and online entertainment project that would leave his audience questioning whether the events described were fact or fiction. As part of his project, Twitchell said, he went online and created a fake profile on the dating website plentyoffish.com. He ended up connecting with an Edmonton man named Gilles Tetreault.

Tetreault has already testified at the trial he was attacked by a masked man who wielded a stun baton when he went to meet someone he thought was a woman for a date. The attack occurred at the same garage in suburban Mill Woods where House of Cards was filmed.

Twitchell called his online activities on the dating website, “the first stage in starting the recruitment process.” He said once Tetreault arrived at the garage, he would explain the hoax and “try to get him on board” for the entertainment project.

Before Tetreault was due to arrive, Twitchell said, he decided to change the scenario.

“I’ll actually pretend to scare this guy to actually convince him he’s being attacked. This decision, I made about 10 or 15 minutes before he got there.”

Twitchell said he thought this could build online buzz for his project. He said he knew the stun baton wasn’t dangerous. “I’d known by that time already for a couple of weeks that it was not actually dangerous. I had no intention of using it to harm him or anything,” he testified.

The attack on Tetreault is described in detail in a 42-page document called SKconfessions, which was found on Twitchell’s laptop computer.

Prosecutors allege the document is a “diary” of Twitchell’s lived experiences and it describes a fatal attack on a second man prosecutors say is Altinger.

— Postmedia News