It was a happy habit, the evening walk. A summer habit, of course, too soon now, that crisp bite in the air would turn bitter cold. But not yet that day, Friday, October 3, had been uncommonly warm for Edmonton. And twilight seemed to linger as they ambled along the path that wound its way through their neighborhood. It was a good neighborhood, safe, established, not quite grand, but not modest either. So they wandered, the two of them, and listened to parents calling in kids from the park. Almost dark now. There, out of nowhere, there it was. Sudden, shocking, terrifying.

I have never in my life felt fear like that.

That is Marissa Gerhiny remembering the young man who stumbled out of an alley and collapsed at their feet.

Came right across our path. Just kind of fell in front of us.

So, stumbling along. Yes, Marissa's partner, Trevor Hossinger, was alarmed, too. But something about it seemed off somehow.

And to me, that didn't look real. It looked like it was staged.

And what was he doing or saying? Or how is he behaving?

He looked at me and said, I'm being robbed. Can you help me?

And it was just an instant bad feeling. It was like everything in my body just tensed up. I felt bad. This is a bad situation. I knew right away something was wrong.

And then, as if on cue, another man appeared, seemingly in pursuit.

And then as I looked up, the attacker almost actually ran into me.

Attacker looked that way. At least whoever it was was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and a hockey mask. Just like the serial killer. Jason, in all those Friday the 13th movies.

It's like every nightmare you had as a child after watching a scary movie.

Sure.

Every nightmare you've ever had, all of a sudden, it's right here. Like this masked guy is standing there.

And then said, marissa, the masked man did something quite unexpected.

Well, he. The guy in the mask was pretending that they were friends, that those two were friends.

Pretending maybe they really were friends.

Because the way that he fell to me looks staged to get us to.

Stop so that they could rob us.

Yeah, we thought it was a setup for us.

Now, convinced this was some sort of choreographed mugging, Marissa took off running.

I was like, I'm getting out of here right now. I was so scared. I was so scared, and I just. I needed to get out of here.

But not Trevor. He stayed behind. Still not quite sure if the man lying at his feet begging for help was in need of saving or how to do him harm. So you didn't know whether he was gonna assault you exactly. Or whether he was running from that guy for real.

Exactly.

My response was to run and get the hell out of here. His response was, what's going on here? I need to figure out what's going on.

She was down the block.

I was freaking out on him. I was yelling at him. I was screaming at him, and I was so mad at him, and I was screaming, like, high pitched, Trevor.

Trevor.

Like. Cause he kept trying to figure out what was going on. Trevor, what were you trying to do? Why are you trying to be a hero? You're trying to be a hero. And I was like, I just wanted to go.

Trevor. Said the man in the hockey mask, then calmly walked away and disappeared back into the alley from which he came, but not the man lying on the path. He stayed right where he was. What in the world was going on? Trevor was done trying to solve this mystery and ran after Marissa, leaving the man on the path behind, still pleading for help, rather like a seasoned method actor, like it was an episode of the Twilight Zone. Trevor and Marissa got home quick as they could and called the police, telling them about the man in the mask and the guy begging for help.

We said, well, we think we were getting robbed. Like, that's how we had described it was. We thought we were gonna be robbed, and so where could they go from that? It was a weird situation.

A report was taken. Squad cars prowled the streets and alleys nearby, though by then, it was too dark to see much of anything.

They sniffed around, and that was it.

Didn't find any.

Didn't find anything.

And no victim ever came forward. No one ever reported to police that they had been assaulted in a quiet neighborhood by a man in a hawking mask.

I still have nightmares about that mask.

So was this some sort of staged robbery attempt or someone's idea of a sick prank?

I really thought that the end of this thing, he just laughs his way, all the way to the bank on it. At the end of the day, it's a big publicity thing for him.

Or was it something else altogether? Did you feel sometimes like you're in the middle of, you know, Alice in Wonderland or the Matrix or something?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline's newest podcast, the man in the Black Mask. Episode one. Where's Johnny? Edmonton, Alberta, doesn't always get quite the attention it probably deserves. That generally goes to its flashier sibling, Calgary, a three hour drive south. Edmonton, on the other hand, is the provincial capital, home to a million people, birthplace of all kinds of famous types like Michael J. Fox, KD Lang, Tommy Chong, and booming on and off courtesy of the massive oil sands a hundred or so miles to the north, Edmontonians are used to the roughnecks and roustabouts who blow through town on their way to and from the oil patch, which is perhaps why a particular sort of case often sucks up the time of the Edmonton Police Service missing persons, though typically such cases tend to solve themselves once the victim sobers up. So when veteran homicide Detective Bill Clark got a missing person case dumped on.

His desk, I'm not thinking much is going to come of this.

That is Bill Clarke, shaved head, thick mustache, built like a cannonball. And in that moment, Bill Clark was not happy to call out a veteran homicide cop like him on a missing person case. Well, that just wasn't done.

We don't usually go to missing persons. Like we, we're very picky on what we go to. Like basically, unfortunately for us to come out, you gotta be dead and it better be criminal. Like, we don't even want to come out if you're just dead. We got enough to work on. And if the patrolman doesn't know it's criminal, don't bother calling us. Do we have a murder? Because if we don't, this isn't our file. I mean, we have no indication of foul play, nothing. Right.

The missing person in this case was a guy who, no surprise, worked in the oil fields. Johnny Altinger was his name. The friends who called it in said he was 39 years old, tall, lanky, with short brown hair, friendly open face and a lopsided grin. They said they hadn't seen him in a couple of weeks. Wasn't like him, they said. So, with a grumble from Clark, they opened a file on Johnny Altringer. No idea back at the beginning how important that name was going to be. Anyway, Clark and the other investigators put together a list of Altinger's known friends and family members and started making calls to see if the guy really was missing or just out on a bendere. One of those friends was a woman named Deborah Tycrobe.

Donna was a very good friend. He was very warm and loving and kind.

We talked to Deborah, too, and she told us she met Johnny Altinger on a dating website on plentyoffish.com dot. Plentyoffish.com dot. Yes, Deborah looked to be in her early thirties, petite, with bobbed brown hair. She said nurses training had kept her far too busy to even think about dating. But now she was done and maybe ready for a man in her life.

And I thought, okay, I'm going to get out there because they certainly were not falling through my roof. So I thought I better get out there. And I also was very like, oh, you know, you have to be careful. I think, when you put yourself out there, you have to have some sort of air of caution about yourself.

Deborah has, well, will it be fair to call it a nurse's personality? Smart, hard working, and quite obviously compassionate. And she was looking for those same characteristics, maybe unrealistically in a guy, but the ones she was meeting just weren't cutting it. And then she saw Johnny Altinger's upbeat dating profile and agreed to meet him for coffee.

I was there early, and then John came in after. And John's quite tall, and so he came in and he was his bubbly self. He was just.

Did he look like what you expected he'd look like?

Yeah, he did. Yeah. Because I'd seen pictures too of him. And we chatted about the same stuff we talked about on the phone. Of course, we were both nervous, and so it was a really nice visit.

There was a but however. Well, Johnny certainly saw sparks. Deborah said she did not.

I didn't feel that romantic chemistry with John.

But you liked him. Yeah, but he liked him more like you. Like one of brothers.

Like a buddy. Yeah, like a friend.

And as friends do, they began to pal around together.

I would say. We spoke almost daily, go for coffee or lunch. I enjoyed spending time with him.

And so their friendship grew in his emails.

He never just emailed me. Hi, Debra. It was always, hi, sunshine girl. Everything had a high.

Sunshine girl.

Yeah. Hi, sunshine. And I used to think, oh, my gosh, but I sound so bad. It made me feel special. So I was like, oh, that's really sweet. And I think, you know, that's part of what built our friendship, you know, lifted each other up as friends.

He was perfectly happy to keep it going as a friendship.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

A friendship so close that the two were comfortable talking about all the different women Johnny was meeting up with on that plenty of fish website, one he.

Dated for about a month, and then it didn't work out. And then there was one other girl he was somewhat interested in. And I thought, okay, then, that's great.

And when he told you about these women, he told you about them?

Yeah, he did.

Then around the middle of October, Debra got an email from Johnny saying, hi there.

I've met a wonderful girl named Jen. I'm going to Costa Rica, and I will keep in touch and call you when I get back after the holidays.

Johnny, what did you think about that?

My first thought was like, oh, he's truly trying to get me to see he's moved on. But I was concerned for him, and I felt like, be careful. You know, you don't just get on a plane and go meet a girl in Costa Rica. You have to be careful. And then I think it was the following day, I was on MSN messenger, and Johnny popped online. And in quotations beside his name, it said, I've got a one way ticket to heaven and I'm never coming back.

Mind you, Johnny sent a message to a male friend or two as well. Detective Clark got hold of that one. It didn't mention heaven.

He says, if anything happens to me, you know where I'm at and, you know, laugh out loud.

Hey, guys, it's Hoda Kotme from the Today show, reminding you to check out my podcast, making space. So in each episode, I get to have a real in depth conversation with some of the most inspiring individuals. And this week's episode is with best selling author and acclaimed public speaker Arthur C. Brooks. We talk about the science of getting happier and how to build the life you really want. You can listen to our full conversation right now by searching, making space wherever you get your podcasts. For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline. Have you ever seen such a thing before? For podcast fans, nothing is more chilling than listening what goes through your mind.

When you make a discovery like that.

And when you subscribe to Dateline premium, it gets even better. Excuse me, I sound a little skeptical. Every episode is ad free. Ooh, wow.

So this could be your ace in the hole.

And not just ad free. You also get early access to new intriguing mysteries and exclusive bonus content. So what were you afraid of? Dateline Premium? Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Dateline premium.com. you ready for what's coming? 39 year old oilfield worker Johnny Altinger was missing. Maybe friends hadn't seen him around since early October. And yet those same friends were getting email messages from him saying he was on vacation in Costa Rica with a new love in his life. One email seemed to explain everything. It said, I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who was offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation. 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 10, but I'll be checking my email periodically. See you around the holidays, Johnny. Which to homicide Detective Bill Clark, seemed perfectly reasonable. Not hard to imagine that a love struck man might want to leave the snow and ice of Edmonton behind and skip off to the tropics. Who knows?

Maybe he did go to Costa Rica. I mean, stranger things have happened, right? You don't know.

Still, just to be thorough, investigators did a little tour of Altinger's condominium, and it was messy, for sure. Dishes in the sink, clothes strewn about. But it certainly did not look like a crime scene.

Our crime scenes, guys, they've reported back from Johnny's house that there's nothing here. There's no blood, no signs of a struggle. Yeah, the place is a little bit dirty. It's a bachelor pad. You know, he didn't clean his dishes, so that's where we're at.

Oh, and his car was gone. His red Mazda coupe.

So let's find the car. Find the car. Hopefully we find him or have an idea where he is.

Since Johnny Altringer's emails said he'd taken off for Costa Rica, officers went to the airport, of course, to look for that red Mazda of his. They searched in every parking lot, but it wasn't there. They combed through airline passenger lists. He wasn't on any of them. And just as the police were contemplating that puzzle, one of Altinger's friends surfaced with yet another intriguing email. This email was sent to Johnny while he was still in Edmonton. And it was from Jen, that woman he'd apparently accompanied at Costa Rica. It was sent to him the evening of their first date, October 10. It was driving directions to her home, and Johnny hadn't met her yet, after all. So he forwarded the email to a friend just in case.

I can't remember the last word of the email, but he says, if anything happens to me, you know where I'm at.

There wasn't a phone number, not even an address, but there were detailed directions to her place. So two patrol officers drove the very route, and the directions led them to a quiet residential neighborhood and along a back alley to a detached two car garage. What an odd place to meet. The officers did some checking and found out the garage had been rented to a local celebrity of sorts, a guy named Mark Twitchell, who was making a name for himself as a scrappy, young independent filmmaker. So they called him. And this Twitchell character readily agreed to leave his wife and daughter at bedtime and drive all the way across town and open up the garage. But when he got there, he took one look at the padlock on the door and realized somebody had changed it. He couldn't get in. So with Twichell's permission, the cops broke in. Had a quick look around and found nothing. Except for an empty work table, few tools, and a trash drum, the place was empty just the same. Why would someone change the lock? And why did that woman Jen, direct Johnny Altinger to that backyard garage the very day he disappeared?

Don't know, said Mark Twitchell, but he'd be happy to tag along to the police station and help out any way he could.

The first thing that I noticed, the padlock didn't look familiar to me.

In fact, this is Mark Twitchell explaining to a detective named Mike Tabler that he'd been using the rented garage as a poor man's soundstage to shoot a short film. It was designed to drum up publicity, buzz, if you will, and with any luck, investor money to allow him to produce a full length feature movie.

It's a suspense thriller. Actually, it's a short film. The total runtime's only going to be about eight or nine minutes. So, yeah, suspense thriller, right.

Of course, he had a crew in and out of the place during filming, said Mark, and several actors. Maybe one of them was up to something, but it seemed unlikely, and none of them had ever asked to borrow the set for anything.

So if there was anything like that, if somebody needs to borrow the place or whatever, then. And they would let me know, I'll let you know, or they ask, or something like that. So, yeah, no, I don't know anything about that.

Anyway, he said he didn't need the garage anymore. He'd removed all his camera gear and props and this and that and moved on to a real film project he was shooting elsewhere.

I'm working on a comedy right now, which is a. It's actually a full blown feature that's actually going to have a decent budget in the neighborhood of about three and.

A half million, which mattered not at all to Detective Tabler. Point was, where was Johnny Altinger? And who was that woman he'd been flirting with online? The one who gave him directions to the garage, told him she'd meet him there and spirit him off to Costa Rica. The woman who'd signed her emails, Jenkin.

Does the name Jen mean anything to you? No. The nice will ask me about that, too. And, yeah, something out of Jen or anything like that.

So the name Jen doesn't mean anything to you? You don't know a Jen. You don't have an actress named Jen? Mystifying, said Mark Twitchell. You had a bad feeling about this. A man disappears after telling his friends he was going to the very place Mark's movie had been shooting to meet some actress Mark had never heard of, and now police were involved.

As soon as they called me on the phone, I get this weird chill.

And on top of that, now he just discovered somebody changed the lock on his garage studio. That was all Mark Twitchell had to say. He didn't know a darn thing, had nothing else to add. But unless this actress Jen was some sort of phantom, and the garden variety backyard garage was like a magic portal, like in some Sci-Fi movie. Well, Detective Clark's thoughts were more practical at that moment and maybe urgent.

So we're thinking our next step logically is the garage. We gotta check inside and have a close look.

What a strange coincidence it was. The rented backyard garage an independent Edmonton film crew was using as a studio was the very place the missing man, Johnny Altinger, was supposed to meet his mysterious blind date, Jen. Odd, especially since the movie's producer director, Mark Twitchell, expressed exactly the same confusion as the police did. He didn't get it either. The dots didn't connect. Mark Twitchell said he didn't know Johnny from Adam, didn't know this gen woman either. And besides, there was no evidence Johnny ever made it to the garage at all.

The close friends were the ones that come to the police, and they basically had nothing other than these emails.

Detective Bill Clark wasn't in on the Mark Twitchell meeting, but he was curious. Was the guy truly on the up and up? Like it seemed he was. So Clark pulled up the video recording of Twitchell's chat with Officer tabler.

You know, when I watch an interview, I'm not really, I listen to what the guy says, but I'm looking at body language. I'm looking for signs of deceit. And I remember coming out of the interview going, well, 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. The nervousness, nothing.

Oh, but now this case was under his skin. Bill Clark is. He doesn't mind admitting an old school detective. The sort of that seems to exist mostly in the movies these days. Kind of like a fifties film noir.

I'm a pit bull. I consider myself a pit bull. You get a case and you get your teeth into it. It's, we're those a type personalities. We want to get the guy, you know, we want to get this guy and put him away.

But what guy or woman? Who was the bad guy? To get in the johnny altering her case. Was there a bad guy? Was there even a crime? Well, who knew, really? So Clark kept himself on a tight leash. He had yet to smell anything like blood. You must have come to some point where you thought, oh, this is definitely foul play.

No, not yet. Not at all.

All the cops had, after all, was a missing mandeh who might just have run off somewhere with or without some mysterious woman named Jen, which would certainly account for the fact that his red Mazda coupe was gone, too. But really, aside from a few curious emails that might or might not make any sense, there wasn't much for investigators to go on. So, being cops, Clark and his colleagues employed standardization procedure. They doubled back for a second look at things like that garage Johnny was apparently headed for when he vanished. The first time the cops went there, it was very once over.

So we're thinking our next step, logically, is the garage. We got to check inside and have a closed look.

And so they applied for a search warrant to look more thoroughly, give the place a real forensic going over, and.

It gets turned down because we're told we don't have a crime, we haven't proven there's a crime committed, and we're going home.

This is no good.

Yeah, it's like, now what? I said, well, we might as well phone Twitchell. He was cooperative with Mike Tabler. Let's phone him up. Maybe he'll come down, or we'll just get the key from him. So I just phoned him up, and he's all good, no problem. And then he says, well, I'm going to my mom's house. And I said, well, you know what? Why don't we meet you there, and you give us the key, and then we'll go in? He goes, yeah. I says, I'll need you to sign a consent form for us to search to garage. Yep, no problem. Mister cooperative, just like he was in the interview the night before, doesn't raise any red flags with me at all. So we sent a detective out to meet up with Mark Twitchell.

Clark expected the detective to return in an hour or so with the key in consent form. But no, the detective called Clark instead with news it just couldn't wait. About a story Mark Twitchell had just told him.

Detective says to me, says, bought a red Maslow for.

And he didn't mention it at all.

Never mentioned it before.

But had somebody asked him about such a car before?

He'd been asked several times about the.

Car during that first interview.

Yeah, and by the patrolman. Who first met him the first night at the garage. Not a mention. Now all of a sudden, he tells Murphy, yeah, I bought a red car off a guy for. Slipped my mind. Forgot to tell you about it. Slipped my mind right away. I thought, there's something fishy going on.

So Clark invited Twichell to come back down to the station for a meeting at 1030 on a Sunday night. And Twitchell agreed.

Everything you do now, we're analyzing. We call it the up arrow. Down Arrow scenario. This is an up arrow. Mister cooperative will come down, will talk to us. At 1030 on a Sunday night. That's an up arrow from Mark, right?

Right.

He's being cooperative. It's all good. Red car. Mazda hasn't mentioned it. Big down arrow.

Big down arrow.

Big down arrow.

But two arrows. If that's all you had, it wouldn't buy you a cup of coffee. In a weird investigation like this one.

You know, you're flying by the seat of your pants. Don't know anything about Twichell. We don't know anything about this guy. Our plan was, if he's going to tell us about the red car, he's going to have to tell us where it is. So our plan was, as soon as he tells us where it is, get someone in that room to go out and find a car. Maybe something comes up in the car. Let's get the trunk. Like we're thinking there's a body in it, maybe, right? We don't know. So twitchell comes in, I shake his hand, you know, hey, Mark, thanks for coming in. Appreciate it. He's going, yeah, sorry, all about that red car. And I'm going, you know, Mark, anybody could forget that. You know, there's a lot going on. The police are involved. And the whole time I'm thinking, who would forget this red car? Like, you're an idiot, buddy. Like something's going on.

But as the interview proceeded, the young filmmaker was the very picture of cooperation.

I get this call from my co producer on the phone, this guy from Ellie that's helping, and he put together my big feature, the day players comedy.

He volunteered information. He answered questions without hesitation or any apparent guile. Clark watched his body language, and it was open, comfortable. So they got to the story about the red Mazda. And what a story that was, said Mark. He was sitting in his own car. He'd stopped for some reason, just a few blocks from his rented garage.

Then this guy taps on my window.

And his knee jerk reaction was.

And at first I'm thinking, okay, he's gonna ask me for like, loose change or, you know, something like that, as.

Can happen anywhere, Edmonton included.

But he didn't look like a transient. He seemed to be, you know, just like a normal person.

Except what he wanted to do was not even close to said Mark. The man was desperate to get rid of his car, offered to sell it right then and there to mark for practically nothing. And the reason is crazy.

He goes, well, I have jacked up with this really rich lady, you know, like a sugar mama kind of situation. And she's gonna take care of me and she's gonna buy me a new car when we get back from a vacation that we're gonna take. So Im just looking to unload volume and dont really care that much how much I get for it. How much do you have on you? So I say, well, $40. And with that tone and everything, Im not expecting anything here. Hes like, yeah, sure, fair enough. Im thinking, okay, what is there, like two tons of cocaine in the trunk? Like, im trying to figure out what the catch is here.

Apparently, said Mark, there was no catch and nothing wrong with the car except it had a standard transmission, which he didn't know how to drive. So he left it parked in a friend's driveway.

Does he live close by or what?

Yeah, it was just a couple of blocks away.

A detective listening in from another room sent someone out to look for the red cardinal. And meanwhile, Bill Clark left the interview room partly to regroup, but also to see how Mark would act when they left him alone. And if he was rattled, he certainly didn't show it. Instead, he calmly placed a call to his wife.

Hey, so what? Well, I try to answer some more of their questions and fill them in and everything like that, and it turns out that the car is, in fact, belonging to this missing guy. And it's a huge deal. So that's what this whole thing's about.

What in heaven's name was going on? Bill Clark didn't have a clue beyond his suspicions. That is something about this guy. He was just too to something. So Bill Clark, good cop, decided to become Bill Clark, bad cop. Right or wrong, he was about to lean in on Mark Twitchell.

The game's on. It's me against him. I know it.

Coming up in future episodes of the man in the black mask.

He told me that he just finished his house of cards, which was about a serial killer, but he wanted to pursue more of that. And I said, well, why not a female serial killer? Why does it got to be a guy? You know. And I said, let's explore that in the story. Sure, in a story.

And then I turn around finally, and I see this guy, and he's wearing this mask. He's hitting me all over with this sun gun.

It was probably the most spellbinding interview I've ever had with a witness.

The man in the black mask is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Vince Serle is the producer. Brian Drew, Deb Brown and Marshall Hausfeld are audio editors. Justin Ratchford is fuel producer, Leslie Grossman is programmed coordinator, Adam Gorefane is co executive producer, Paul Ryan is executive producer, and Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News. Audio sound mixing by Katie Lau Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.