Committing one . He told me, well, you do it like dexter. Youve seen that show dexter. This is all modeled off that. When you take a step back you realize this is a real man whos been murdered. The script was darker than anyone knew. I go, holy mackerel. Who are you really . Everyone was on the edge of their seat. An underground parking garage. Youre watching a violent attack caught on tape. Who is this . Whats happening . Or did it happen at all . Cut. Movies like that one are by design deceptive, make believe worlds, but have you noticed maybe its all the technical dodads, the digital cameras, the reality twisting editing. Some of the stories that claim to be true arent. Anybody can manipulate reality. Sometimes what they say is true isnt. Sometimes fiction turns out to be fact. And then there are stories, just a few, in which fact and fiction fuse. Thats where were going tonight. A Twilight Zone world of illusion and deception and deceit. Follow the howling wind across a vast prairie through brief, brilliant summers and winters as frigid as any on earth to the metropolis canadians call the gateway to the north. The city whose Police Department stays very busy. This is detective bill clark. The city is edmonton, canada. Today i got a call from a family. Their son was killed in december. But nothing in a long career so strange as the case of the man who went missing and bill clark found himself in the nether world between fantasy and illusion. Ever seen a case like this before . Never in my life. Reporter though when it started out, it seemed perfectly simple. A missing man. Some guy just dropped out of sight. The kind of thing that tends to sort itself out once the socalled victim sobers up. Im not thinking much is going to come of this. Reporter after clarks 31 years with the city in the highest murder rate in canada you could hardly blame him for getting a little picky. We dont usually go to missing persons. Were very picky on what we go to. Unfortunately for us to come out you got to be dead and it better be criminal. We dont even want to come out if youre just dead. If the patrolman doesnt know its criminal dont bother calling us. Reporter you got enough to do. Yes. Reporter which explains perhaps why some of the locals have taken to calling their city deadmonton. Our concern was, do we have a murder . If we dont, this isnt our file. We have enough to work on the. The missing person was a man named jonny altinger, 39, single, worked in the oil inland, liked to ride motorcycles. Unlucky with women. He had a wide circle of friends who are now telling Police Something kind of weird. Altinger seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth except for the strange emails he was sending. Ive left with a woman, going to costa rica. She was one of the recipients of the emails, his old friend, deborah tycro. Saying he had met a wonderful girl named jen and he was going to costa rica and i received several of them. I received six all together but in runs of three. Reporter six messages. How the same message . Exact same message. Same words. Hi there. Ive met a wonderful girl named yes. Reporter suddenly. Yes. Reporter like somebody you didnt really know was sending you an email. Absolutely. I was, like, thats really odd. That doesnt sound like john. Reporter well, it was odd. And even more so when another friend of altingers received exactly the same message, word for word. Altingers Facebook Status changed from single to in a relationship. Then i think it was the following day i was on msn messenger and johnny popped online. So i thought oh, he must not have left on his vacation yet. And it said, johnny, his name, and then in quotations beside his name it said, ive got a one way ticket to heaven and im never coming back. Reporter later that same day debra got a call from a friend who told her, Johnny Altinger appearedo be missing. Its surreal, you know . You dont expect your friends to go missing. Reporter pretty soon altingers friends got together, unsure what to do really, but before going to police they decided to try to get into his condo, see if they could find a clue to what happened to the guy. Had to break in, actually. And everything looked fine. Nothing out of place. No sign of any struggle. Only things missing were his wallet, his keys, and his red mazda coupe. Looked as if he had gone out for a drive and would be back in a minute. No answers to anything. Just like he vanished out of thin air. Reporter except for the strange emails altinger had supposedly sent about falling in love, and costa rica, which to the cops, said clark, seemed perfectly reasonable. Not hard to imagine a love struck man might want to leave the snow and ice of edmonton behind and skip off to the tropics. This guy sent these emails to his friends and were going, well thats strange, but who knows . Maybe he did go to costa rica. Stranger things have happened. You dont know. Reporter at least thats how clark felt before he stepped through the looking glass. And followed the missing mans trail, into a strange place of make believe. A makeshift movie studio. As soon as they called me on the phone, i got this weird chill. It not only softens and freshens, it helps protect clothes from the damage of the wash. So your favorite clothes stay your favorite clothes. Downy fabric conditioner. Wash in the wow. Its easy to love your laxative when that lax loves your body back. Only miralax hydrates, eases and softens to unblock naturally, so you have peace of mind from start to finish. Love your laxative. Miralax. Nothing will keep you from magnum double caramel. Silky vanilla bean ice cream rich caramel sauce all covered in thick chocolate. Discover magnum, double dipped for Double Chocolate pleasure. Because i trust their quality. Vitamins. They were the first to have a vitamin verified by usp. An independent organization that sets strict quality and purity standards. Nature made. The number one pharmacist recommended letter vitamin brand. At olive gardene is back choose one delicious entree at our place and another for yours starting at 12. 99 may all your tomorrows be as delicious as today olive garden Johnny Altingers condominium, as you can see, looked like anything but a crime scene. There were no signs of a struggle. No blood. It was like he just stepped out for a few minutes. Could be back any time. Where was he . Johnnys friends were convinced something awful happened to him. Day after day they prodded the police and finally seven days after johnny went missing the cops agreed to open an investigation. We started with the basics. It wasnt here. They combed through Airline Passenger lists. He wasnt on any of them. Johnnys friends meanwhile went back to the apartment for another look and found stashed away among his important papers his passport. Were going oh, youre not getting out of the country without your passport. Reporter so seemed like he had to be within driving distance, but what direction . Where . And just as the police were contemplating that puzzle, one of altingers friends came up with another email. With directions how to pick her up. Out of an abundant sense of caution, he had never met the woman after all, he sent a copy of that email to a friend of his. Just in case. I cant remember the last word of the email but he says if anything happens to me you know where im at. You know, laugh out loud. Reporter it wasnt a phone number. Not even an address. There were detailed directions to her place. So the cops drove the route. The directions led them to this neighborhood down this alley. To this garage rented by a guy named Mark Twitchell. Reporter he happened to be a local celebrity. He was making a name for himself as a scrappy young independent film maker here in edmonton and had recently made a low budget scifi movie. Everyone working on the project is a fan, of course. I dont think anybody would be here working for us for free if they werent. Reporter so they called him up of course and he readily agreed to come down and open the place up. When he got here, big surprise. Someone had changed the lock. He couldnt get in. So with twitchells permission officers broke in, had a quick look around, and found nothing. Just the same, what was the changed lock and the weird coincidence to johnnys email, there were things to figure out. Mark twitchell was only too happy to tag along to the Police Station to help out whatever way he could. The first thing i noticed the padlock didnt look familiar to me. Reporter he explained hed been using the rented garage for a sound stage, most recently for what they call a teaser, short film designed to drum up publicity, buzz, and with any luck attract enough investor money to allow him to produce a full length feature movie. Its a suspense thriller actually, a short film, eight or nine minutes. Suspense thriller . Right. Reporter of course he had a crew in and out of the place during the filming said mark. Several actors too. Maybe one of them was up to something. But it seemed unlikely. None had ever asked to borrow the set for anything. So if there was anything like that if somebody needed to borrow the place or whatever, then they would let me know. So theyd let you know theyd ask or Something Like that. So, yeah. Reporter anyway, he said hed moved on for now to another project. Im working on a comedy right now, which is a actually a full blown feature thats going to have a decent budget in the neighborhood of about 3. 5 million. Reporter in the meantime, the garage come studio was empty. Why would someone break in and change the lock . It didnt make sense. The one that i had was silver on the outside with a black plastic dial in the center and this was just all metal. So i so you noticed a different padlock. Yes. And that on the door. Right. Reporter mystifying, said mark. He had a bad feeling about this. Man disappears after telling police he was going to the very place his movie had been shooting. As soon as they called me on the phone, i get this weird chill. What about the woman Johnny Altinger had been flirting with online, the one who gave him directions to the garage, told him shed meet him there . The woman who signs her emails jen . Does the name jen mean anything to you . No, constable maxwell asked me about that, too. Yeah. We dont have jen or anything like that. So the name jen doesnt mean anything to you . You dont know a jen . You dont have an actress named jen . Uhhuh. Reporter so who was this mystery woman, jen . Why in the world would she arrange to meet Johnny Altinger here . In the very backyard garage an independent edmonton film crew was using as a studio. How odd . Especially since the movies producer direct yorMark Twitchell expressed exactly the same confusion as the police. He didnt get it either. The dots didnt connect. Mark twitchell didnt know johnny from adam and besides there was no indication johnny ever made it to the garage at all. The Close Friends were the ones who have come to the police, basically got nothing other than these emails. There was one thing, though, and it came from Mark Twitchell. He wondered, he said, if maybe somehow . But if someone was being fooled, who was it and why . Was all this just some big stunt, even a publicity stunt . Detective bill clark was thoroughly engaged by now. He had spent a career listening to criminals spin their stories. Maybe he could figure out if this twitchell guy was trying to play the cop somehow. He pulled the recording of the interview. I watch an interview, i listen to what the guy says but im looking at body language for signs of deceit. I remember coming out of that interview going this Mark Twitchell guy interviewed really well. It was good . There were no signs of deception. Hes free flowing with the information. Hes answering the questions logically. I dont see any, you know, looking away. I dont see any of the nervousness. Nothing. I see nothing. And then when police looked into twitchells Production Company express entertainment they encountered a perfectly legitimate company. More than that, actually. This was a promising effort to help edmonton way off here in northern alberta get some National Attention as a potential center of movie making. Mark twitchell was very good at drumming up attention and money from local investors like john pinson. He was a very sharp, bright young articulate entrepreneur. Exactly the kind of individual most of us are looking for. Reporter so he checked out. Hard working local boy in a city of hard working people. Good parents. Nice young wife. Sweet little daughter. On his way to becoming a celebrity here in edmonton. Detectives even got a look at the teaser film for twitchells next project, the 3. 5 million buddy comedy. Thats mark in the background playing the role of director even as he was the director. Sort of a hall of mirrors type story. A movie about a movie about making a movie or something. Fantasy and reality all mixed up somehow. Just to cover the bases police interviewed Mark Twitchells crew members and they vouched for him completely. And revealed that they all shared a passion for star wars. Thats mark there on the right wearing the white shirt. They loved the whole tale about the force, the dark side, so much that their first project together was a star wars fan film called secrets of the rebellion. Mark was wildly successful that time at drumming up local media coverage. Became kind of a big deal here in edmonton. We keep pretty good pace with lucas film when it comes to producing the films. It takes them three years from the time they start shooting to the time they finish post production to get one of their films wrapped up. Technically ive got until the summer of 2009 to get done. Reporter this was, no bones about it, a low budget production. But even so, twitchell was able to land one of the original star wars actors, jeremy bullic, who played the Bounty Hunter bobafet. That was enticement enough to get toronto based actor sean stohrer to sign on for a part. As soon as i found out i would be playing alongside him i was like great. Why not . Its a named actor. Reporter scifi is not stohrers thing though and once he got to edmonton he found the atmosphere on Mark Twitchells set a little too playful maybe. Unserious. At least for him. I remember one time he shoved the pillow up under his shirt and he said he looked like alfred hitchcock. Then he wore that for the rest of the day. Ridiculous. But everybody else thought it was great. Laughed because this was him and if you dont laugh at his joke, you know what i mean . Reporter yeah. Theres the alpha in the room and everybody flocks to them and reporter he was the alpha in the room. Thats what everybody had him as. Reporter which certainly fit marks reputation as a prankster and maybe you got to be if youre trying to start a movie business. Anyway, Mark Twitchell came off squeaky clean. His film company was respected as was he. And bill clark and the Edmonton Police back at square one by the look of things. What have we got . We got nothing. But soon this top cop would catch a big break. Detective says to me, this guy just told me he bought a red mazda off a guy. The missing mans car turns up. That are out there, and especially designed for sensitivity sufferers. Its different, theres nobody else out there that im aware of that has developed whitening for people with sensitivity in this way. Glad forceflex. Now Even Stronger to avoid rips and tears. Be happy, its glad. So come try the largest variety of lobster dishes of the year, like lobster lovers dream or new dueling lobster tails. Its a party on every plate, and youre invited. So come in while it lasts. S. Okay, well get out here. Bill clark is, he doesnt mind admitting it, an old school detective of the sort that seems to exist more on the big screen than the mean streets. You guys here last night . Reporter in fact, clark is such a throwback the younger guys on the force kid him. Its just a part of my life. I still have the drive. Im still excited about it. Almost every file somethings different. Reporter in 31 years on the Edmonton Police force, clark has seen murder take many forms. Has seen the shattering effect it has on family. Youre the one the family depends on, and i take that seriously. Ultimately thats in the back of your mind that if you dont speak for the family then, or the dead guy, who is going to . Reporter for clark, there is no greater satisfaction than bringing in a killer. Im a pit bull. I consider myself a pit bull. You get your case and get your teeth into it, were those a type personalities. We want to get the guy. We want to get this guy and put him away. Reporter but as for the Johnny Altinger case, this wasnt even a murder, at least not as far as anybody knew yet. So clark kept himself on a tight leash. He had yet to smell blood. You must have come to some point where you thought uhoh. Were thinking our next step is logically the garage. We got to step inside and have a close look. Reporter they applied for a search warrant and it was rejected. Its turned down. It gets turned down because were told we dont have a crime. We havent proven there is a crime committed. Reporter the next step seemed simple enough. Clark went to Mark Twitchell directly to see if hed give permission to search the garage. He goes yeah. I said ill need you to sign a consent form. No problem. Reporter they requisitioned the required form. One of the detectives hopped in the car, drove it over to marks place to get a signature. And then, the weirdest thing get a phone call from the detective. The detective says, you wont believe it, but this guy just told me he bought a red mazda off a guy. Reporter a red mazda . And didnt Johnny Altinger drive a red mazda . Wasnt it missing . Mark twitchell hadnt said anything about any red mazda when he came down to the Police Station and talked to that detective the night before. Said he forgot. Really . Why would he forget a thing like that . Of course you dont want tunnel vision. Big thing for homicide keep an open mind. I pulled myself back. Theres something fishy going on. Report