After you hear the ending to today's story, you'll most likely go back and listen to it all over again.
Because truly, the ending completely changes the entire storyline.
This episode is the remastered audio from The Real Life Kill Room, which is a very popular video on my YouTube channel.
There are several very graphic sequences in this story.
As such, listener discretion is advised.
But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast, because that's all we do.
We upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
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It begins here.
From the director of It comes It.
Welcome to Derry, the chilling new HBO original series exploring one of horror's biggest terrors, Pennywise the Clown.
Set in 1960s Derry, Maine, the new HBO original series is streaming Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO Max.
Also, you can listen to the official It Welcome to Dairy podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, let's get into today's story.
Ever since he was a child, Mark Twitchell had always dreamed of becoming a big-time Hollywood filmmaker, but he knew the odds were stacked against him because he lived in Edmonton, Canada, which was not exactly known for being a movie-making hub.
Nonetheless, after high school he enrolled in an Edmonton art college and in 2000 he graduated earning his degree in radio and television art.
But after college, despite utilizing his training to make several films, None of them generated any buzz beyond his friends and family, and so it seemed like his filmmaking career was turning into a bit of a dud.
However, in 2007, Mark had a bit of an unintentional breakthrough.
He had been a longtime Star Wars fanatic and that year he decided, purely as a passion project, he was going to write a script for a prequel to the Star Wars franchise.
When he finished it and shared the script with some of his colleagues, they were so impressed with his writing.
They said Mark, you need to produce this into a movie.
This is incredible.
And so Mark, who was totally amazed at this unbelievable feedback, he was getting decided.
You know what?
What the heck?
I will produce this movie.
And so he began sending his script out to different actors and actresses to see if they might be interested in playing a role.
And amazingly, one of the original Star Wars actors, Jeremy Bullock, who played Boba Fett.
He read the script and he was so impressed by it that he agreed to play a role in Mark's film.
And so this passion project had quickly turned into Mark's biggest success yet.
When the movie was finished, it did well, but it didn't propel Mark into Hollywood stardom.
However, it did put him on the map as a bona fide filmmaker and it showed him that if he just focused on making films about subjects he was already very passionate about, those films would be much more likely to succeed.
And so in 2008, so roughly a year after creating the Star Wars fan fiction film, Mark decided to embark on another film project around another passion of his.
Dexter Dexter was a very popular TV show about a fictional serial killer whose name was Dexter.
And the way Dexter would kill his victims is he would lure them into these small rooms, which he called kill rooms.
And inside of them basically every surface the ceiling, the walls, the floor were all covered in plastic sheeting to catch any of the blood.
And then he would kill his victims, usually with a knife, and then afterwards he would dismember them and bag up their body and he would roll up all this plastic, kind of collecting all the evidence, and then he would dump the plastic and the body into the ocean.
Mark was obsessed with the show, and so it inspired him to make his next movie be about a killer too.
Except, instead of it being fiction, like Dexter, he wanted his movie to be at least based on real events.
And it just so happened, at the time he was thinking about doing this movie, there was this uncaught murderer terrorizing Edmonton.
And so Mark decided the Edmonton killer would be his star.
Mark would spend the next several weeks obsessively researching the Edmonton killer and his victims and establishing a clear timeline of what had happened with this case.
And then, after he felt like he had compiled every piece of information he possibly could, He used that research to concoct a 42-page first draft of the script.
And as soon as he was done with that first draft, it somehow got leaked.
And when it got leaked, the contents of this script were so shocking and so controversial that the script wound up in the hands of the Edmonton police.
And when they read the script, they immediately recognized they had a big problem.
They reached out to Mark and they told him under no circumstances can you turn this script into a movie.
And then the police basically wiped this script off the face of the earth.
Today, if you go looking for Mark's script online, you'll basically only find heavily censored versions of it.
But recently, I got my hands on an uncensored version of this 42 page script.
Now, I'm not going to literally read you this script.
However, what I'm going to do is use the script's information to tell you Mark's highly controversial Edmonton Killer story.
As you listen, remember this story is based on actual events.
And so the victim's names and the information about them is real.
Okay, here we go.
In early October 2008, a soft-spoken 26-year-old casino security guard named Giles Tetreault was living alone in Edmonton.
Giles' life had recently been turned upside down because a few months earlier, his wife had told him that she just didn't love him anymore and that she was going to leave him.
Giles was still very much in love with his wife, and so this was a totally heartbreaking experience for him.
After she left, Giles tried to stay busy and keep his mind occupied, but it rarely worked.
Oftentimes he felt crushingly lonely and sad.
But on Friday, October 3rd, when Giles came home from work that afternoon, he suddenly felt like you know what?
I've got to get my life together, and I'm going to start by finding myself a new romantic partner.
And so he went on a dating site and he made himself a profile and he began scrolling through all of the women's profiles that lived roughly in his area and at first no one really appealed to him.
But then he stopped on this one woman's profile.
She was this young blonde, beautiful woman named Sheena and she lived right in Edmonton.
And so Giles thought, what the heck, I'll send her a message.
And so he did, just introducing himself and asking to talk further.
And she responded just a couple of minutes later.
And then, over the next couple of hours, the two exchanged dozens of messages, getting to know each other.
And then finally, Sheena just says to Giles, hey, you know, we live so close together.
Why don't we get together tonight and go grab dinner and watch a movie together?
And Giles is thrilled and he says, yeah, I'll come pick you up.
What's your address?
And Sheena would tell him.
You know what?
I don't feel comfortable sharing my address over this dating website.
And so instead she sent Giles this strange customized set of directions that didn't give the actual address of herself house.
Instead, it basically gave Giles a set of known landmarks in Edmonton that he could follow until he finally arrived at her residence, also told him that when he arrived, instead of just coming up to her house there would be a detached garage and the door would be open and he would go through the garage, out the door into her backyard and then he would go up the back steps to the back door of her house and she would meet him there.
Now Giles did think this was a little bit strange, but at the same time he's thinking, you know, I am basically a complete stranger to her.
We just met today on the internet, and so I really can't blame her for taking some extra safety precautions with me.
And so he told Sheena he had no issues using her special directions, and then he said he'd be over soon.
And so Giles hopped in the shower, he freshened up, he got dressed, he hopped in his truck and then he began driving to Sheena's house.
After about 15 minutes of following these directions, he reached the end of them and they placed him in this alleyway in a suburban neighborhood.
And where he stopped he looked off to his right and he saw there was this two car garage and he knew it was Sheena's garage because one of the doors was open, like she said it would be, although the door was not open all the way.
It was open enough to where he would have to duck to get into the garage, but either way he knew it was her garage.
And so he turns off his truck and he gets out and he tries to look up at Sheena's house behind the garage to see if maybe he can see her looking out the back door.
But the detached garage that was right up against the street was kind of blocking his view.
And so he thought, OK, whatever, I'll just go in and make my way up to the back steps.
And so he walks over to this two car garage and he goes to the open side.
He ducks down and he goes underneath and he stands up inside of the garage.
Now, it was dark inside of the garage.
There was no light on, but there was enough light spilling in from the opening of the garage door that he could see.
There was really nothing in the garage.
However, virtually every surface, the walls, the ceiling, the floor was covered in plastic sheeting.
Now, he had no idea what this plastic sheeting was for and he really didn't care.
He just kept walking across the garage towards the door that would lead into Sheena's backyard.
And when he reached that door, he reached down to the door handle and he was about to turn it when he felt a blinding pain in the back of his neck.
He whipped around and, even though it was dark inside of this garage, he could clearly see this huge man in a black and gold hockey mask standing right in front of him holding a stun baton.
Giles tries to run past him to try to get out of the garage, but the man grabs him and then takes his stun baton and drives it into Giles's stomach and he pulls the trigger.
Immediately, Giles feels this coursing pain in his torso and he falls to the ground.
And then this man in the mask releases the trigger And Giles tries to scramble up to his feet to try to run out of the garage.
But as soon as Giles turns around, he stops where he is because he sees this huge guy in the mask is standing between him and this open garage door.
And he's now holding a gun in his hand and he's aiming it right at Giles.
And so Giles freezes.
He has no idea what's going on.
And this man who's got this mask on barks at Giles to get on the ground and put your face on the ground.
And so Giles at this point is thinking, I'm going to get killed in here.
I have nothing I can do.
I'm completely defenseless here.
And so he just does what he's told.
And he lies down on the plastic sheeting and he's totally terrified.
And this man walks over and he puts a piece of duct tape over Giles' eyes.
And so as he's laying there blind and terrified, Giles becomes very emotional.
He suddenly longs for his ex-wife and for his family and his friends.
He wishes he could see them just one more time and he knows he's not going to.
Then, as he's laying there, he's coming to the stark realization that he didn't tell anyone where he was going.
And so if this masked maniac does kill him, who's going to find his body?
Will his family and friends ever know what happened to him?
So, as he's laying there thinking of these horrible thoughts, he hears his attacker, who's several feet behind him, start fiddling with what sounds like chains or handcuffs.
And Giles thinks to himself, if I get chained up in here, I really am done.
And so he has this sudden surge of adrenaline where he thinks to himself I'm gonna get killed in here.
I know it, I'm gonna get killed.
But if I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die on my terms.
And so Giles takes a deep breath and then jumps to his feet rips the tape off of his eyes.
He turns around and he faces his attacker and he says, I'm not gonna do this.
I'm not gonna go out this way.
And the attacker is totally surprised, but he just begins to raise his gun at Giles to shoot him.
And Giles lunges forward and he grabs the barrel of the gun and he pushes it away from him.
And as soon as he does that, Giles realizes something.
The gun is made of plastic.
It's fake.
And so Giles is suddenly so confident, he grabs the arms of his attacker and he tries to kick the guy in the legs.
But the attacker is so much bigger and stronger than Giles that he just headbutts Giles.
Giles goes flying to the ground and his attacker jumps on top of him and begins punching him and slamming his skull into the ground.
But Giles is so high on adrenaline, he can't feel any of the blows.
All he's trying to do this whole time as he's getting pummeled, is just find a way to stand up and run out of this garage.
Just get out, escape.
And amazingly, against all odds, he does manage, in between blows, to wriggle his way out of the attacker's grasp.
But as he begins to run towards that opening in the garage door, the attacker grabs him by the jacket.
And so Giles twists himself and he actually comes out of the jacket.
And then he throws himself onto the ground and he rolls out of the garage.
And as soon as he is free, he suddenly can't stand up.
The stun baton.
He didn't feel it before, but it had sapped all of his strength.
But the adrenaline had kind of overridden that feeling.
But here he is outside and he suddenly can't stand up.
And so he's trying to stand up, and then the attacker, who's still inside, dives down, reaches out from underneath the garage and grabs Giles by the ankle and begins trying to pull him back into the garage.
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And so Giles is kicking and screaming and punching and he finally breaks free.
And then he has another surge of adrenaline and he stands up and just begins running down the alleyway.
Doesn't even go to his car.
He just starts running towards hopefully civilization.
And he makes it a couple of houses before he collapses to the ground in this very busy walking trail.
And so he's landed right in this intersection where he's hoping someone's going to be.
He turns back and looks down the alleyway and he sees his attacker who's now on the road.
He's got the mask still on his face and he's charging up the road.
Giles can't even get up.
He's so tired.
But Giles looks to his side and he sees there's this random couple walking down the walking path.
They see Giles on the ground who's calling out for help and they run over to him.
And they get right in front of Giles and Giles immediately points at the attacker coming down the alleyway and says he's trying to kill me.
And the attacker amazingly just jogs right up to Giles, right up to the couple.
He does not take his mask off and he acts like he's friends with Giles and says oh come on Frank, you're making a big deal out of it.
It's a game.
Come back to the garage.
I'll meet you there.
And then the attacker just turns around and walks back down the alleyway back towards his garage.
And so Giles turns and looks up at the couple who are totally freaked out by this whole situation.
They don't know if this is some weird setup that they're going to get robbed or something.
They don't know if this is a hoax.
And so they say, hey, you're on your own, pal.
And they turn and they leave.
And so Giles is left in the middle of this intersection.
The only people that could have helped him are now gone.
And so he rolls over and just looks down the alleyway in the direction of the garage.
And he can actually see his attacker pacing back and forth inside of the garage, because that door is partial open and so Giles doesn't know what to do.
He has to get to his truck to get out of here, and so he just sits there for a couple of seconds just watching the attacker making sure he's staying inside of the garage, and then finally he just took a deep breath, he pulled himself up and he stumbled down the alleyway, he got in his truck, fired it up and he peeled out of there.
When Giles got home, he was obviously traumatized from this horrible thing that had just happened to him, but he also felt embarrassed and kind of ashamed that he had clearly just gotten catfished by the psycho in the garage.
Obviously Sheena, the woman he supposedly was talking to, was not real.
It was that guy in the garage that had attacked him, but he didn't really understand why it had happened.
He had no idea why anyone would target him And so the whole situation was just such a mess.
He decided, you know what?
I'm not going to tell anyone.
He didn't report it to the police.
He didn't tell his friends.
He didn't tell his family.
He just decided he was going to move on and forget about it.
A week later, on October 8th, another Edmonton man, 38-year-old Johnny Altinger, was perusing the dating website that Giles had been using.
Johnny made a living doing quality control for an oil and gas company, but he hated that job.
He much preferred to spend his time tinkering with his computers or his prized motorcycle.
Johnny had lots of very close friends, but romance was always something that had eluded him.
So that afternoon Johnny, like Giles, was on this dating website to potentially find a romantic partner.
And so, as he was scrolling through all of these different women's profiles that lived roughly in his area, he wasn't interested in any of them until he stopped on this one profile of this beautiful young blonde woman named Jen, who lived right in Edmonton.
And so Johnny was interested.
He sent her a message and very quickly she wrote back.
And before long, the two are chumming it up.
And then eventually they actually agree to get together that night for dinner and a movie.
But when Johnny asked Jen for her address, she would tell him that she's a paranoid person and she doesn't want to give him her actual address over this website.
And so instead, she gave him a set of very strange directions that relied on local landmarks in Edmonton to guide him into her residence.
And she would tell Johnny, when you get here, go through the garage.
The door will be open.
Go out the back door.
Go into the backyard.
Make your way up to the back of the house.
And I will meet you at the back door.
And so Johnny definitely thought these directions were very strange.
But he was really eager to meet up with Jen.
And so he really didn't care.
And so he told Jen it was no big deal.
He'd happily follow her directions.
And then he hopped in the shower and he got himself together.
And then, before he left to go to Jen's house, he forwarded Jen's email that included her very strange directions.
He sent those directions to one of his very close friends and he kind of jokingly included a message that was like hey, if I go missing tonight, this is where I'm going.
And then Johnny hopped in his car and he left.
The directions brought Johnny to the same garage in the same alleyway that Giles had been to a week earlier.
And when Johnny came to a stop in front of Jen's two-car garage with one of the doors partially open, he saw there were lights still on inside of the garage and he saw someone walking around inside.
And so Johnny looked at his watch and he realized he was maybe 15 or 20 minutes too early.
And so he parks his car and he's thinking okay, you know, Jen might be inside of this garage and I'm early, but maybe I'll just walk over and say hi to her.
I'm sure she wouldn't mind.
And so Johnny turns off his car, he gets out and he starts walking over to this half open garage door.
And as he gets closer and closer, the lights in the garage go off.
And so Johnny stops and he's thinking, why are the lights off?
Did she hear me?
Does she not want me to come in?
You know, what's going on?
But he's thinking, okay, well, I should definitely go over and say something.
And so he walks over to this open garage door and he bends down and he looks inside and it's totally dark.
And he just says, hello?
And there's a pause and then the lights come on and Johnny suddenly sees this garage that's basically devoid of anything, minus a table off to the side.
And every surface is covered in plastic sheeting.
The floors, the walls, the ceiling, everything.
And in the back of the garage is not Jen.
Instead, it's this man he doesn't recognize.
And so Johnny's looking at this man and this man is looking over at Johnny, and finally the man speaks and says Hi, I'm Harry.
I'm a designer.
I rent this garage out from Jen.
And actually, I just talked to Jen.
And you're meeting up with her tonight, right?
You're meeting up with Jen?
Yeah.
She's running late.
So I think she'll be back in about maybe 20 minutes.
So can you come back in 20 minutes?
Come right back here.
Come to the garage.
And I'll bring you up to the house. because I know you're meeting her up at the house.
So 20 minutes.
And so Johnny doesn't really know what to make of this.
He figures okay, I don't really know what Jen's arrangement is with this designer in this plastic covered garage, but you know whatever.
And so Johnny says, okay, no problem.
I'll come back in 20 minutes.
And so Johnny turns around and he walks back to his car and he leaves and drives around for about 20 minutes.
And then he comes back to the garage.
And as soon as he parks, he notices right away the light in the garage is now off.
So presumably Harry has actually left.
And so he will not be available to walk Johnny up to the house to meet Jen.
But Johnny was thinking, I don't really want to interact with Harry.
He seems like a strange guy anyways.
And so he counts this as a win.
And so Johnny parks his car.
He hops out.
He walks over to the garage.
He bends down and goes inside of the garage.
He stands up.
And he walks across the plastic lined floor to the door that's going to lead out into Jen's backyard.
But before he reaches that door, something smashes into the back of his head.
And immediately Johnny is horribly dazed and he instinctively throws his hands up to protect his head.
And he begins spinning around trying to figure out who or what had just hit him.
And as soon as he turns around he sees in the shadows is the figure of none other than the man he saw before harry.
And harry is holding a big metal pipe and immediately when johnny sees him he begins screaming police police, police.
And harry just winds up and wails on johnny with this metal pipe And Johnny's trying to turn around and get away from Harry, but Harry just keeps moving around him and beating him with this pipe until finally Johnny collapses on the ground.
But he's not unconscious.
And so Johnny is kind of shielding his head and he's looking up at Harry who's now just standing over him.
He's ceased his initial barrage.
And Johnny begins pleading with Harry.
I'll give you money.
I'll give you anything.
Just please let me go.
And so Harry smiles and he says, you promise you won't tell anyone if I let you go?
But before Johnny could answer this, Harry winds up with his pipe and he brings it crashing down on Johnny's face.
But amazingly, this does not knock Johnny unconscious.
Instead, Johnny grabs the pipe after it hits him in the head and he holds onto it to prevent Harry from hitting him again.
And so at this point, Harry is frustrated that Johnny is still putting up this huge fight.
And so, with one hand, holding onto this pipe that Johnny has the other end of, Harry reaches down with his other hand and he unsheathes a hunting knife and he holds the blade right in front of Johnny's face.
And as soon as Johnny sees this knife, his eyes go wide and he lets go of the pipe and he begins to plead for his life.
But Harry just smiles and continues to show him the blade, and then at some point he grabs Johnny's shoulder, he pulls the knife back and he plunges it into Johnny's stomach.
Johnny howls out in pain and he curls over and he begins screaming for the police, screaming for someone to help him.
And then finally, Harry pulls the knife out of his stomach and then plunges it into the side of Johnny's neck, and then Harry lets go of the knife and he stands up and he just watches Johnny as he bleeds out onto the plastic lining.
As Harry watched Johnny die, he had this pang of regret.
He thought to himself, why didn't I play more mind games with him before I killed him?
I'll do that with the next one.
After Johnny died, Harry would dismember and bag up Johnny's body and then he would roll up all of the plastic from the walls and the ceiling.
He'd gather that all up and then a couple of days later he would dump both Johnny's body parts and all of the plastic containing all of the evidence down a nearby sewer drain.
At this point in the story, Mark's script just kind of comes to an abrupt end.
We don't know what Harry did after getting rid of Joanie's body and the evidence, because Mark just didn't write it.
It was like he didn't finish the script.
And there's a reason for that, and it's the same reason the police stepped in and stopped Mark from making this script into a movie.
At the time they read his script, the police had already figured out who owned the garage where Giles and Johnny were attacked.
Johnny's friend, the one who Johnny had forwarded Jen's email that had those strange directions.
Well, that friend gave those directions to the police once Johnny had been reported missing.
And so the police followed these strange directions to this garage, and they discovered it was not owned by some young, beautiful blonde named Jen or Sheena.
It was not owned by some designer named Harry.
It was owned by a young up-and-coming filmmaker named Mark Twitchell.
But to this point Mark had been extremely cooperative with police and allowed them to search it and they found nothing and he explained to them he was not remotely the only person with access to this garage, not by a long shot.
But when police searched Mark's laptop, they found a hidden document, and this document was his 42-page script.
And when they read it, they saw there was a huge issue.
Giles, the first victim of the Edmonton killer, had eventually gotten over his embarrassment and shame and he went to the Edmonton police and he told them in detail what happened to him inside of that garage.
But Giles was so scared, he had not told anybody else what had happened.
The only people who knew were himself and the Edmonton police.
Yet somehow in Mark's script, the account of what happened to Giles was exactly correct.
Every little detail of what happened to Giles was encompassed inside of the script.
And the reason Mark had this information is because Mark was in the garage when Giles got attacked, because Mark was the Edmonton Killer.
Mark had been so desperate to make his killer in his new movie as good as Dexter in the TV show that Mark decided he needed to literally become Dexter in real life.
He needed to know exactly what it felt like to lure an unsuspecting victim into a kill room and murder them, so that he'd be able to more accurately write about it in his script.
He believed this would put his movie over the top.
It would be the most authentic killer movie ever, and it would be his ticket to Hollywood.
And so after Mark used a fake dating profile to trap and then attack Giles, after that experience He wrote about it and that became his script.
And then, when he did the same thing to Johnny and then actually successfully killed and disposed of him, he sat down and wrote about that experience too and tacked it on to the end of the Giles attack.
He was literally living his movie and writing the script in real time.
The title that Mark gave his script was SK Confessions, which stood for Serial Killer Confessions.
And that's exactly what the script was.
It was a real confession.
And based on the way his script just kind of abruptly ends without any sort of conclusion, it seems fairly obvious that Mark was planning to kill more people and then incorporate those experiences into this script.
Ultimately though, the script that was found by police was used to convict Mark of murder, and he is currently serving life in prison.
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