Amateur Filmmaker Admits to Killing Man in Attempt to Create Movie Buzz

Mark Twitchell told an Edmonton court he only wanted to scare Johnny Altinger.

On trial for first-degree murder, Twitchell told a story Wednesday as gruesome as a horror movie, and about as believable. He admitted that he posed as a woman online in order to entice Altinger, 38, to his garage in a recreation of a slasher film he had made. Although in the movie a masked man kills the lured victim, Twitchell said when Altinger showed up, he only asked him to write about the hoax online in order to generate buzz about the film. Twitchell said Altinger refused and a fight ensued in which he accidentally stabbed him to death with a hunting knife he insisted he bought as a prop. Twitchell then dismembered the body and burned it.