we had talked about how would you kill somebody and get away with it? i have dark thoughts and i shared them with a serial killer. >> it was supposed to be a movie, a frightening film about a serial killer. >> you turn in the blade and grit your teeth and really show you're enjoying it. >> but was it really just pretend? >> he yelled, get down on the ground. and he took out duct tape. light flashed before my eyes.

>> i have never in my life felt fear like that. >> a rising young director filming a murder or actually committing one? >> he told me, well, you do it like dexter. >> this is all modelled after dexter. >> when you take a step back, you realize this is a real man who's been murdered. >> the script was darker than anyone knew. >> holy mackerel. >> who are you really? >> everyone was on the edge of their seat. >> an underground parking garage. you're watching a violent attack caught on tape. who is this? what's happening? or did it happen at all? movies like that one are by

design deceptive, make believe worlds, but have you noticed maybe it's all the technical do-dads, the digital cameras, the reality twisting editing. some of the stories that claim to be true aren't. anybody can manipulate reality. sometimes what they say is true isn't. sometimes fiction turns out to be fact. and nen there are stories, just a few, in which fact and fiction fuse. that's where we're 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 so-called victim sosobers up. >> i'm not thinking much is going to come of this. >> reporter: after clark's 31 years with the city in the highest murder rate in canada you could hardly blame him for getting a little picky. >> we don't usually go to missing persons. we're very picky on what we go to. unfortunately for us to come out you got to be dead and it better be criminal. we don't even want to come out if you're just dead. if the patrolman doesn't know it's criminal don't 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 dead-monton. >> our concern is do we have a murder? if we don't, this isn't our file. we have enough to work on 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 e-mails he was sending. >> i've left with a woman, going to costa rica. >> 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. i've met a wonderful girl named jen. i'm going to costa rica. i will keep in touch and call you when i get back after the holidays, johnny. >> reporter: almost formal in a way. >> yes. >> reporter: suddenly. >> yes. >> reporter: like somebody you didn't really know was sending you an e-mail. >> absolutely. i was, like, that's really odd. that doesn't sound like john. >> reporter: well, it was odd. and even more so when another friend of altinger's received exactly the same message, word for word. altinger's 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, i've got a one way ticket to heaven and i'm never coming back. >> reporter: later that same day

debra got a call from a friend who told her, johnny altinger appeared to be missing. >> it's surreal, you know? you don't expect your friends to go missing. >> reporter: pretty soon altinger's 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. nothinout 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 e-mails altinger had supposedly sent about falling in love anacostia ricca, 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 e-mails to his friends and we're going, well that's strange, but who knows? maybe he did go to costa rica. stranger things have happened. you don't know. >> reporter: at least that's how clark felt before he stepped through the looking glass. and followed the missing man's 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. when was the last time your wireless company made you feel like this? or, this? the new cricket wireless believes you should be doing a lot more of this. so we don't have any of those silly annual contracts. but we do have a whole lot of coverage... ...all for just $35 a month; after a $5 credit for using auto pay. so everyone can feel like this!

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johnny altinger's 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? johnny's 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. i said, well, we got to find out if we can find him first. let's find the car find the car. hopefully we find him or have an idea where he is. >> since johnny altinger's

e-mail said he had taken off for costa rica officers went to the airport to look for that red mazda, searched every parking lot. it wasn't here. they combed through airline passenger lists. he wasn't on any of them. johnny's friends meanwhile went back to the apartment for another look and found stashed away among his important papers his passport. >> we're going oh, you're 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 altinger's friends came up with another e-mail. this one johnny had received from a woman he met online. jen was her name. the same woman with whom he had supposedly scampered off to costa rica. jen and johnny had a date for going out on the town the night he disappeared. but because he had never been to her place she sent an e-mail 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 e-mail to a friend of his. just in case. >> i can't remember the last word of the e-mail but he says if anything happens to me you know where i'm at. you know, laugh out loud. >> reporter: it wasn't 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 mash twitchell. >> reporter: he happened to be a local celeb rhett. he was making a name for himself as a scrappy young independent film maker here in edmonton and had recently made a low budget sci-fi movie. >> i don't think anybody would be here working for us for free if they weren't. >> 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 couldn't get in. so with twitchell's 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 johnny's e-mail, 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 didn't look familiar to me. >> reporter: he explained he'd been using the rented garage for a sound stage, 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. >> it's 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 -- >> they'd let you know -- >> they'd ask or something like that. so, yeah. no, i don't think anything like that. >> reporter: anyway, he said he'd moved on for now to another project. >> i'm working on a comedy right now, which is a -- actually a full blown feature that's 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 didn't make sense. >> the one that i had was silver

on the outside with a black plastic dial in the cend nter a 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 she'd meet him there? the woman who signs her e-mails jen? >> does the name jen mean anything to you? >> no. so the name jen doesn't mean anything to you? you don't know a jen? you don't have an actress named jen? >> uh-huh. >> reporter: so who was this mystery woman? jen?

why in the world would she arrange to meet johnny altinger here in the very back yard garage an independent film crew was renting for use as a studio? how odd. especially since the movie's producer/director mark twitchell expressed exactly the same confusion as the police? he didn't get it either. the dots didn't connect. mark twitchell didn't know johnny from adam and there was no indication johnny ever made it to the garage at all. >> the close friends were the ones that had come to the police and they basically had nothing other than these e-mails. >> reporter: there was one thing though. it came from mark twitchell. he wondered, he said, if maybe somebody was being set up. >> because it just doesn't set right. so the first thing i start asking myself is who all knows about what we do there and what our schedule looks like and stuff like that. >> reporter: was the disappearance staged 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 i'm looking at body language for signs of deceit. i remember coming out of that interview going this mark twitchell guy interviewed really well. there were no signs of deception. he's free flowing with the information. he's answering the questions logically. i don't see any, you know, looking away. i don't see any of the nervousness. nothing. i see nothing. >> and then when police looked into twitchell's 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 twitchell's next project, the $3.5 million buddy comedy. that's 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 twitchell's

crew members and they vouched for him completely. and revealed that they all shared a passion for star wars. that's 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 i've 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. that was enticement enough to get toronto based actor sean storer to sign on for a part. >> as soon as i found out i would be playing alongside him i was like great. why not? it's a named actor. >> reporter: sci-fi is not storer's thing though and once he got to edmonton he found the atmosphere on mark twitchell's 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 don't laugh at his joke, you know what i mean? >> reporter: yeah. >> there's the alpha in the room and everybody flocks to them and -- >> reporter: he was the alpha in the room. that's what everybody had him as. >> reporter: which certainly fit mark's reputation as a prankster and maybe you got to be if you're 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 tough cop would catch a big break. >> the detective says to me, this guy just told me about a red mazda. >> reporter: the missing man's car turns up. car insurance.ent or mn everybody knows that. well, did you know words really can hurt you? what...? jesse don't go! jesse...no! i'm sorry daisy, but i'm a loner. and a loner gotta be alone. heee yawww! geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. jesse? music: lively orchesyes! score kids never get this excited about cleaning teeth. you want a greenies? but dogs do. watch them go wild for an irresistible treat that

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bill clark is he doesn't mind admitting an old school detective of the sort that seems to exist more on the big screen than the mean streets. >> the guys here last night? >> reporter: in fact, clark is such a throw back the younger guys on the force kid him. they call him sipowitz after the hard nosed cop in the old detective show "nypd blues." >> i still like coming to work every day. i enjoy it. it's just a part of my life. i still have the drive. i'm still excited about it.

almost every file something's 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. >> you're the one the family depends on and i take that seriously. ultimately that is in the back of your mind that if you don't speak for the family then, and the dead guy, who is going to? >> reporter: for clark there is no greater satisfaction than bringing in a killer. i'm a pit bull. i consider myself a pit bull. you get your case and sink your teeth into it, we're 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 wasn't 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 uh-oh. definitely foul play. >> not at all. >> reporter: no? >> no. >> reporter: all they had after all was a missing man, johnny,

who might have just driven off somewhere with or without some mystery woman named jen. certainly that would account for the fact that his red mazda coup was gone, too. really, aside from the few curious e-mails that might or might not make any sense there wasn't much to go on. so being cops maclark and his colleagues employed standard procedure and doubled back for a second look at things. like that garage johnny was apparently headed for when he vanished. >> we're 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. >> it's turned down. it gets turned down because we're told we don't have a crime. we haven't proven there is a crime committed. >> reporter: the next step seemed simple enough. clark went to mark twitchell directly to see if he'd give permission to search the garage. >> he goes yeah. i said i'll need you to sign a consent form. no problem. >> reporter: they recommend wii sigsed the required form.

one of the detectives hopped in the car, drove it over to mark's place to get a signature. then the weirdest thing. >> get a phone call from the detective. the detective says, you won't believe it, but this guy just told me he bought a red mazda off a guy. >> reporter: a red mazda? and didn't johnny altinger drive a red mazda? wasn't it missing? mark twitchell hadn't 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 don't want tunnel vision. big thing for homicide investigation don't get tunnel vision. keep an open mind. i pulled myself back. there's something fishy going on. >> reporter: clark invited twitchell to come down to the station for a meeting. 10:30 on a sunday night. and twitchell agreed. >> everything do