Inside ‘Dexter killer’ Mark Twitchell’s chilling notes to Steve Lillibuen after Plenty of Fish plot to lure victims

MURDERER Mark Twitchell who was obsessed with the TV show Dexter and used Plenty of Fish to lure his victims wrote investigative journalist Steve Lillibuen chilling letters that revealed his inner thoughts.

“It is what it is and I am what I am,” Twitchell told Lillibuen in one of his many letters.

Mark Twitchell murdered Johnny Altinger in a style eerily similar to the fictional character Dexter48 Hours

CBSTwitchell wrote ‘hundreds’ of pages of letters to investigative journalist Steve Lillibuen[/caption]

Lillibuen told CBS News that he found the murderer of Johnny Altinger to be very responsive to letter writing.

“He wrote me probably 30 or 35 different letters – up to about 350 pages… like an entire book worth,” the investigative journalist said.

Lillibuen said that every time he would ask Twitchell a question, he would receive “10 pages back as an answer.”

The journalist confirmed to CBS that Twitchell, who posed as a beautiful woman online in order to lure his victims into a deadly honey trap, is lucid, and his letters are not the ravings of a mad man.

“I killed Johnny Altinger in a horrific accident of self-defense. After cursorily shoving aside my human sensibilities, I dealt with his remains in a disrespectful manner that traumatized me forever,” said Lillibuen, reading one of Twitchell’s letters.

Apparently, Twitchell adamantly denies that this was a planned and deliberate murder.

However, police found a document in Twitchell’s “kill room” which the murderer claimed was a screenplay detailing his crimes, including the murder of Johnny Altinger.

“To be frank, he is wrong,” Lillibuen said regarding Twitchell’s denial that the murder wasn’t planned.

“There is no key. No root cause… there is no school bully or impressionably gory movies … or Showtime television series to point the finger at. It is what it is and I am what I am,” Twitchell wrote to Lillibuen.

Hand OutMurder victim Johnny Altinger (pictured) was lured by Twitchell’s fake female online persona[/caption]

DEXTER OBSESSION

This comes as Lillebuen and police say that Twitchell’s fascination with the TV killer carried over into his real-life crimes.

In October of 2008, Twitchell posed as a woman online in order to lure an unsuspecting 38-year-old man named Johnny Altinger to his death.

In his prepared kill room, police say 29-year-old Twitchell brutally beat and stabbed Altinger to death before methodically dismembering him on a table in the garage.

This process of murdering Altinger is eerily similar to something that Dexter might have done.

“He had a kill room set up with plastic sheeting. He had a table set up for his victims,” Lillebuen said.

“He had this kind of processing kit that was very similar to what Dexter uses.”

The day after Twitchell was arrested in connection to Altinger’s death, police found a suspiciously deleted file on Twitchell’s computer labeled “SK Confessions.”

In the document, the killer wrote about his kill room, explaining that it included “several rolls of painters plastic sheeting” and a 45-gallon steel drum “for the body parts” as well as a “game processing kit” containing multiple different knives and a serrated saw “for the bones.”

TwitterGilles Tetreault (pictured) was Twitchell’s first target, but he managed to escape the murderer[/caption]

FIRST TARGET

Twitchell had attempted to lure another victim to his kill room earlier that month.

When Gilles Tetreault went to go meet his online date named “Sheena” at the set location of Twitchell’s garage, he was attacked by Twitchell in a hockey mask.

Tetreault fought back in a violent struggle and escaped the horrific scene, but didn’t report the attack until seeing the hockey mask at a police press conference following Altinger’s death.

Twitchell’s confessions had mentioned a victim that got away, and police used Tetreault’s account of escaping to connect Twitchell to the crimes.

INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE

Police connected the details in the SK confessions with the evidence they found in the garage that filmmaker Twitchell had supposedly rented out to work on his short film.

For example, investigators found a barrel with burn marks in the garage, pointing to a passage in the confessions where the killer spoke of trying to burn human remains in a barrel.

When Twitchell told police that the blood splatters they found were from gruesome scenes in his short films, investigators asked an actor from the film how much fake blood splatter there was when filming.

“None,” the actor replied, leading Luminol tests to be ordered.

The tests revealed excessive amounts of human blood had pooled in the garage – something that wouldn’t have been visible to the naked eye.