"Not That I'm Aware Of": Mark Twitchell's First Police Interview, Edmonton, 2008 (Part 2)

Name: "Not That I'm Aware Of": Mark Twitchell's First Police Interview, Edmonton, 2008 (Part 2)
Uploaded: 2018-02-23
Duration: 29 min 46 s
Description: Told the missing man's name, Mark Twitchell said he had never heard it, suggested that whoever the man met had changed the padlock, and said he knew of Plenty of Fish from research for a freelance article.

Told the missing man's name, Mark Twitchell said he had never heard it, suggested that whoever the man met had changed the padlock, and said he knew of Plenty of Fish from research for a freelance article.

Subject: Mark Twitchell
Recorded: October 19, 2008
Runtime: 29:46

Content warning: Concerns the disappearance and murder of a man lured to a garage through an online dating site.

The Interview

The second half of Mark Twitchell's first police interview picks up where part 1 ends. Detective Mike Tabler of the Edmonton Police Service remarks that it is odd that Twitchell films that kind of thing in a garage a missing man was supposed to have gone to. Twitchell says he felt "this weird chill" when the constable called him. Tabler then tells him the missing man's name, John Altinger, and spells it. Twitchell says he has never heard it. Told that the missing man had told friends he met a man in the garage, Twitchell answers: "Well, it explains the foreign padlock." Asked whether the story sounds like anything connected with his films, he says: "Not that I'm aware of. I mean, I'm the producer."

Historical Context

Johnny Altinger, 38, went to the garage at 5712 40th Avenue in south Edmonton on October 10, 2008, expecting to meet a woman he had met through an online dating site. Prosecutors said Twitchell had created her on Plenty of Fish. Altinger was killed in the garage and his body dismembered. Twitchell was arrested on October 31, 2008, and in April 2011 a jury convicted him of first-degree murder.

Circumstances of the Interview

The interview took place at the Edmonton Police Service's Southwest Division station in the early hours of October 19, 2008, after police had been to the garage. Twitchell was there as a witness, the garage's renter. The video ends as Tabler leaves the room to "talk to my people", at the point where the police transcript of the interview also stops.

What the Interview Covers

Twitchell names the two production assistants who had access to the garage key. Asked whether he was on the south side on the 15th, he says that would have been to drop off cleaning supplies, then or the week before, and that they were ordinary ones. Tabler tells him what the friends reported: that Altinger had gone to meet a woman from an internet site, met a man in the garage instead, and was going back to meet her. Asked whether the name Jen means anything, Twitchell says no; his wife's name is Jess. He talks about his parents, schools, his production associates, his daughter, a bankruptcy he says he filed years earlier, and his prepaid MasterCard. Asked whether he shoots pornography at the garage, he says no. Asked about online dating sites, he names Match.com and Plenty of Fish, and says he "did some research on them for a freelance article" about a month earlier, which he describes as contacting users for their views.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The prosecution alleged that Twitchell had lured Altinger by posing as a woman on Plenty of Fish. In this interview, when the police first asked him about dating sites, he offered an innocent reason for knowing them. Police later recovered from his laptop a deleted document, "SKConfessions", describing the luring and killing of a man. At trial he admitted killing Altinger but claimed self-defence, and called the document fiction. He was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 25 years.

Archival Importance

Together with part 1, this is the video of the interview as posted by the Edmonton Sun, in two parts, in 2018. It shows Twitchell's account at the moment the police first put the missing man's name to him. The police transcript of the interview is published separately as text; this page adds the video and its sound.

Important Caveats

Everything Twitchell says here is his own account, given before he was arrested or charged; the court rejected his version of events. His explanation of the dating-site research is his claim. He has one murder conviction; the label "serial killer" sometimes applied to him rests on his own writings and the prosecution's case, not on more than one conviction. YouTube provides no captions for this video, so the transcript rests on two machine passes and some lines are marked unclear until a human listening check.

Det. Mike Tabler: Now, it's, me, I'm just thinking about this. I mean, it's kind of odd that you're filming that kind of thing, and we end up going to that garage because of a missing person that supposedly went there.

Mark Twitchell: That's really freaky, too. And as soon as they called me on the phone, as soon as Maxwell called me and said, you know, this is what's going on, this weird chill. It just doesn't sit right. So the [unclear: "first thing I start asking myself" / "first things they're asking myself"] is, who all knows about what we do there and what our schedule is like, and stuff like that. And if we have a shooting schedule, usually there's a bunch of people in and out of there to prep leading up to it, and then we shoot something there, and then that's it. Until we announce something else, there's no fixed activity. So...

Det. Mike Tabler: So who would have access to get things set up?

Mark Twitchell: [unclear: "Oh, do you mean" / "It'd be me and"] anybody else that had a key. So basically, for this instance, it was me, Mike and Jay.

Det. Mike Tabler: Who's Jay? You mentioned Mike before, [unclear: "no Jay" / "you know, Jay"].

Mark Twitchell: Jason Howatson.

Det. Mike Tabler: Jason Howatson. How do you spell his last name?

Mark Twitchell: H-O-W-A-T-S-O-N.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay, Jason Howatson. How old's Jason?

Mark Twitchell: About 28.

Det. Mike Tabler: Now, you know him and Mike from before?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: How long?

Mark Twitchell: A couple years.

Det. Mike Tabler: A couple years? How old's Mike?

Mark Twitchell: I think Mike's turning 30.

Det. Mike Tabler: 30 years.

Mark Twitchell: Yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: So they would have had access, but the only one that had a key was Mike?

Mark Twitchell: Well, it passes back and forth between them.

Det. Mike Tabler: [unclear: "And these two would" / "At least you would"] maybe pass it back and forth.

Mark Twitchell: Yeah. I've been trying to hook up with Mike, because I owe [unclear: "this guy" / "those guys"] a couple hundred bucks for materials for production design, and we were trying to figure out a time to meet to do that, and also to get the key back from them and stuff like that. And he said, you know, hey, if you're around the south side sometime, [unclear: "Saskatchewan Drive" / "schedule a drive"], drop by. But he always, like, lets me know basically an hour before the timing would be, and it's too short a notice, so we've missed each other up until now.

Det. Mike Tabler: Well, when was that?

Mark Twitchell: Well, I mean, today. But we have just [unclear] back and forth, and missing one another.

Det. Mike Tabler: Well, you and Mike connected today?

Mark Twitchell: No, but [we] tried to. Well, not today. The guy operates entirely on text message. There's no actual calling and talking to him. So he'll text me and say, I'm going to be in St. Albert around this time, if you're going to be there, I can drop by. And I'll be like, well, now's no good, we're going to be gone, something like that. So, yeah, but the last time that I actually talked to him, I think it was the 12th. I was checking before, because I've still got some of his incoming text messages. He was... [unclear: "He's got some" / "I had some"] [unclear word] tickets I was going to sell him. It was on the 15th.

Det. Mike Tabler: The 15th?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: On the 15th, you met with him?

Mark Twitchell: No, just texted back and forth.

Det. Mike Tabler: Just texted back...

Mark Twitchell: [unclear: "We never actually got" / "she got"] back together.

Det. Mike Tabler: Were you on the south side on the 15th?

Mark Twitchell: [unclear: "Well, I'll tell him there again" / "Tell her again"]. [inaudible] Uh, [unclear: "Mike"].

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah.

Mark Twitchell: [unclear: "They're being on" / "The 15th and"] the 14th and the 15th.

Det. Mike Tabler: And what would you have been on the south side for?

Mark Twitchell: That would have been for dropping off the cleaning materials at the garage. It was either then or the week before it, [unclear: "the 7th, 8th" / "8, 7, 8"].

Det. Mike Tabler: And where would you have got these cleaning materials? Like, you sound like something kind of special. Where would you get that?

Mark Twitchell: [unclear: "Oh, it's kind of like a depot or a change" / "I was kind of all deep over changes"], or something like that.

Det. Mike Tabler: Well, that's just regular cleaning?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah. [unclear: "We don't even get that crazy" / "You don't need to get that crazy"]. It's not like...

Det. Mike Tabler: Oh, okay, I don't know [unclear: "what you're driving" / "you're describing"] this stuff.

Mark Twitchell: Yeah, no, it's just, like, usual stuff. We don't have anything special. The garage is a dirty place anyway. We have no intention of putting anything cool in there or anything like that. So, you know, just whatever will get the sticky stuff off, or that kind of thing. That's basically it. Something that it's not going to sit there and smell up the place. Be better.

Det. Mike Tabler: So now you've been told that we're looking for a missing man.

Mark Twitchell: Okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah. Have you been told his name?

Mark Twitchell: No.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. The name is John...

Mark Twitchell: Okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: Altinger. A-L-T-I-N-G-E-R.

Mark Twitchell: Okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: Does that name ring a bell to you or mean anything to you?

Mark Twitchell: No.

Det. Mike Tabler: Never heard it before?

Mark Twitchell: No.

Det. Mike Tabler: He's nobody that you've been using as an actor, or that maybe Mike or Jason would have been in touch with?

Mark Twitchell: No, I don't think so. I don't know if Mike or Jason know him, but nothing in terms of casting or production crew or anything like that.

Det. Mike Tabler: No?

Mark Twitchell: No.

Det. Mike Tabler: Not a worker, not an employee, [unclear: "you've heard about" / "a group of old" / "or about"]?

Mark Twitchell: No.

Det. Mike Tabler: Now, do you have any girls that are employed by you, or that take part in anything, any of the setup or anything?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah. We had a really great actress on this one that we worked with, that was, she came to the condo set on the Friday, came up from Red Deer, named Katrina.

Det. Mike Tabler: Katrina.

Mark Twitchell: [And] that's the most recent, I guess. I got some, like, Facebook buddies, too. They're all kind of, like, in the industry, and back and forth, and, you know, submitting themselves for casting calls and things like that. But nobody that's crew.

Det. Mike Tabler: So these Facebook buddies, would they have connected with anybody like this, maybe that was just the [unclear: "same guy" / "single guy"], that maybe attracted him towards this sort of line of work, or anything like that?

Mark Twitchell: Maybe, I don't know. Not that I'm aware of, but possibly.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. The indication that we have, and we've got this through our investigations, and the address comes up, and the garage is described, and he actually says that he was there on that particular day. That particular day we're talking about is, I think, the 15th.

Mark Twitchell: 15th, okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: Now, and I may be mistaken, I may be mixing a couple of things, but I think the 15th. And that's the day you're indicating that you were probably down there putting supplies there.

Mark Twitchell: Okay, yeah. Like on Wednesday or something.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah. And it was in and around the same sort of time frame that you were there, you know, that he would have been there.

Mark Twitchell: Okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: Like in the afternoon.

Mark Twitchell: Really?

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah. And he was supposed to go there and meet a girl, who described the address and told [unclear: "him" / "her"] how to get there. Now, this is [unclear: "really his map" / "a girl he met"] through, you know, an internet site. Doesn't know her from before. So he, of course, lets friends know.

Mark Twitchell: Oh, yeah, right.

Det. Mike Tabler: [unclear: "Corrected in today"]. But, go meet a girl, [unclear: "swerve a woman" / "swearful"]. [unclear: "Sends it out" / "Depends it out"] to a few friends. All of a sudden, he disappears. Last known place was there. Said he went in there, met a guy, the girl wasn't there. Met a guy in the garage.

Mark Twitchell: In the garage?

Det. Mike Tabler: Apparently.

Mark Twitchell: Okay. [inaudible]

Det. Mike Tabler: Can you tell me? What does it explain to you? Tell me what you're [unclear: "thinking" / "favourite"].

Mark Twitchell: Well, it explains the foreign padlock. If he switched it out or something like that, that makes sense.

Det. Mike Tabler: Who switched it?

Mark Twitchell: Whoever this guy is.

Det. Mike Tabler: Well, he didn't switch it. He went there and met somebody there.

Mark Twitchell: Okay, but that's what I mean. Like, whoever he met there.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah.

Mark Twitchell: Because I don't know of anybody else that has access, unless they, you know, accessed it themselves, pretty much.

Det. Mike Tabler: So your lock was totally gone off there?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. The latch was still there, but a different padlock's there. So anybody could have come along with a set of bolt cutters, cut yours off, put their own on, right? That still doesn't give you access to the garage, because there's still a deadbolt, right?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: This guy indicates to his friends that he arrived, met a guy out there, the girl wasn't there, got a call from her later.

Mark Twitchell: Okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: Was going back to the garage. And that's where the cold trail goes...

Mark Twitchell: So, okay, let me get this straight. The guy who's missing shows up to my garage.

Det. Mike Tabler: Right. 5712 40th, [unclear: "Ave" / "did that"].

Mark Twitchell: Claims to have been in it?

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah, and talked to a guy.

Mark Twitchell: Talked to another guy?

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah.

Mark Twitchell: So, now there's two of them. And then he leaves...

Det. Mike Tabler: Because the girl's not there, that he's supposed...

Mark Twitchell: Right. Okay. And then he talks to her on the phone?

Det. Mike Tabler: I don't know that he talks to her on the phone, or if he gets a message from her, or which way that one went. Okay.

Mark Twitchell: Okay. [unclear: "You somehow end up" / "No, he's up"] [unclear: "getting with her" / "can't get in with her"], and then [unclear: "comes" / "I'm going"] back...

Det. Mike Tabler: Goes back to the garage [unclear: "to meet her" / "meter"].

Mark Twitchell: Okay. All right.

Det. Mike Tabler: Now, does that sound like anything that you know about?

Mark Twitchell: Not at all.

Det. Mike Tabler: Does it sound like anything that could be related in any way to any movie sort of stuff you're doing?

Mark Twitchell: Not that I'm aware of. I mean, I'm the producer. I pretty much control all the elements. So if there was anything like that, if somebody needs to borrow the place or whatever, then they would let me know.

Det. Mike Tabler: So, let you know.

Mark Twitchell: Or they'd ask, or something like that. So, yeah, no, I don't know anything about that.

Det. Mike Tabler: No. Does the name Jen mean anything to you?

Mark Twitchell: No, [unclear: "that's the last thing about that, too" / "Maxwell asked me about that, too"].

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah. So, the name Jen doesn't mean anything to you. You don't know a Jen. You don't have an actress named Jen. What's your wife's name?

Mark Twitchell: Jess.

Det. Mike Tabler: Jess? Not Jen?

Mark Twitchell: No.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. Is your wife involved in anything with the garage at all, or does she even know it exists?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah, she knows it exists. She tries to stay out of the film stuff as much as possible. She's, from her own explanation, too close to the material, because every time I talk about these things, it's like this step, this step, this step, this step, and it's just too much. So I try to, you know, it pretty much kind of curbed that whole thing. If she asks about it, I'll gladly tell her about it, but generally she's not interested, until something comes to fruition. This whole time, for the past year, I've been working on financing my other movie, she'll ask me, like, you know, do you, uh, [unclear: "do" / "have"] the money in the bank yet, or something? Until it's in the bank, don't be excited, that sort of stuff. So.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah. Okay.

Mark Twitchell: But, uh, yeah. So she's, uh, [unclear: "on mat leave" / "I'm not even" / "on that"], and looking after the kid, and that's, you know, pretty much the daily life. And then, uh, when I get home, I take over.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah.

Mark Twitchell: We share that whole thing. So, yeah, but no.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. And your parents, of course, are supportive of this?

Mark Twitchell: Oh, yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: They live here in Edmonton?

Mark Twitchell: Mm-hmm.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. [unclear: "Whereabouts do they live?" / "where most do they live?" / "We're both still here."]

Mark Twitchell: They live, uh, in the Killarney area, so it's like [unclear: "131st" / "the 31st half of an"] and 87th Street.

Det. Mike Tabler: Oh, yeah. [unclear: "Know the area well" / "It was a very well" / "really very well"].

Mark Twitchell: Mm-hmm.

Det. Mike Tabler: Have they always lived in that area?

Mark Twitchell: Mm-hmm.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah. Where'd you go to school?

Mark Twitchell: Long time. I went to school in those little trio of schools, it's right around their house. It was, uh, St. Matthew's, for elementary, and St. C's for junior high, and then, uh, O'Leary for high school.

Det. Mike Tabler: O'Leary. Yeah. Okay. And you're, uh, [unclear: "what do you think" / "let me think"], 29?

Mark Twitchell: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: Right?

Mark Twitchell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sure. I'm trying to think if I... [inaudible]

Det. Mike Tabler: You play any sports when you were at O'Leary?

Mark Twitchell: Not team sports, no. I mean, I like basketball, so I played with my buddies after school and stuff like that, but I didn't want it to become a job, [unclear: "like join the team" / "from the team"] and stuff like that. So...

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. Yeah. All right. So, once again, John Altinger is not a name you've known. Nobody like that has tried to rent the place from you. Nobody by the name of Jen means anything to you.

Mark Twitchell: No.

Det. Mike Tabler: No relatives named Jen?

Mark Twitchell: Oh, maybe. I'm [unclear: "doing the list" / "don't have a list"].

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. All right.

Mark Twitchell: My mom's [unclear: "here as well" / "4'12"" / "one of twelve"]. So, you know, let me get back to you on that one. It's a [unclear: "checker"] for sure, but...

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah.

Mark Twitchell: No, that's, I'm trying to think, like, if, I don't really have, you know, like, you know, regular...

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. What about Mike and Jason? Now, if we were to call them up and get them to come down, I mean, what kind of guys are they? Are they decent?

Mark Twitchell: Oh, yeah. No, they're good guys. They're really open dudes. I met them when I was working at Corporate Express, which is, like, an office supplies company.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah, I've heard of them.

Mark Twitchell: Yeah. So, Mike was the IT guy over there, and Jay did some operations and stuff like that, and basically, like, putting out fires was his job. [unclear: "It's complex, I wasn't quite sure" / "Yeah, complex"]. So, yeah, they worked together there. Jay left shortly after I did. And then Mike hung on for a long time, because it was a really easy gig with a pretty decent paycheck, until he just got bored and had to leave. The two of them still work together, actually, to this day, at another place. And, yeah, so I kind of recruited them a little bit from Corporate Express to help me out on Star Wars, because [they] were both huge fans and wanted to do it, the whole gambit of everything on that project. And then stuck around and said, hey, you know, if you ever need any set building or anything like that for Day Players, let us know. So they'll be the ones that I'll go to to get, like, my apartment set and all the other stuff that I need for that film. Anything that's going to be in Edmonton, they'll pretty much be supervising.

Mark Twitchell: Those guys are miracle workers when it comes to building things on the cheap. They built me an entire TIE fighter cockpit for, like, 130 bucks. I can't believe it. I'm like, really? And, like, you look at this thing, it looks like garbage. It's like cardboard and gels and, like, you know, caulking, and it just looks like crap. But then when you look at it through a camera, because you can fool the camera pretty well, it looks really good. So we're sitting there lighting that thing and switching back and forth to get Star Wars paused at that exact moment, to see what our lighting looks like, flipping back and forth. And then they come back to ours, and they go, okay, now go back to ours, and think ours is the movie. Okay, I think we're done. It looks good.

Mark Twitchell: So, yeah, no, [they] did a fantastic job. They ended up giving me, like, eight, nine really good screen-accurate sets for less than three grand in total. And that includes, like, a [unclear: "shiny, free-in, Star Destroyer" / "chime starts for your"] bridge trench and everything. And, well, I don't know how they do it. The compositors are going to have total gold to work with when they finish that off. But, yeah, it's kind of already served its purpose. It's already proven [that] I know what I'm doing. It got me to the next level, but I'm just going to finish it off anyway, because I love it. Put so much work into it now, [unclear: "I can wait. This will keep going" / "might as well keep going"].

Mark Twitchell: So, it's kind of hard to go back to that, though, when you've got so much other stuff going on, and working on developing paying projects. I've got this incredibly beautiful daughter that I just love to death, and I want to get home to.

Det. Mike Tabler: [unclear: "How old is she?" / "and then I'm like, oh"]

Mark Twitchell: She's eight months.

Det. Mike Tabler: Oh, yeah?

Mark Twitchell: [She's] been sleeping straight through the night since the second week.

Det. Mike Tabler: Oh, [unclear: "what" / "wonderful"].

Mark Twitchell: So we got completely lucky with that, great disposition and everything. She's just amazing.

Det. Mike Tabler: Oh, lucky.

Mark Twitchell: I want her to, like, you know, join the family business. She's like, yeah, I got a script for you, it'll be awesome.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay, Mark, let me step out, because I've got some other people I just want to go over what we've talked about with them, and see if there's anything else I'm missing. I think I better talk to Mike and to Jason. Those are the only other two people that might have had any access to that garage at all.

Mark Twitchell: Yeah, yeah. Well, the only guys that have the key to the deadbolt. The big reason why I got the padlock is because I just didn't trust the deadbolt.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yes.

Mark Twitchell: Like, okay, when I first got the place, I knew that Kirkside was looking at replacing it, so they actually had, like, a lock guy come in and put a new deadbolt on it, which is fine, but I don't know what to compare it to. It's only half the equation. You have the deadbolt, and then the hole that it's in. I don't know if you've seen this thing, but it's like a carved out... there's a bunch of space in there. It's like, I don't know, it didn't look that reliable to me, in terms of, like, holding. So, I mean, I didn't, I don't know, I didn't put much stock in it. I thought, honestly, that the latch with the padlock would be, A, more of a visual deterrent if anybody wanted to get in there, and, B, just kind of be a little stronger in general, because of the way that it was actually, like, fastened on there.

Mark Twitchell: So, I mean, you know, like, I feel like an idiot now, but half the time I wouldn't even bother with the deadbolt, because it's like, I didn't really believe it, frankly, from looking at it and loosening it and stuff like that. So, I mean, it was off and on. Sometimes [unclear: "the lockages from hell is it" / "I like it just from how low it is"], but, I mean, generally, if I'm coming in and out, I just leave it.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. Now, you, you say general, if I'm coming in and out, and we talked about how many times you've been there.

Mark Twitchell: Yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: And there was one weekend where you were there shooting. And then you've been back about a week ago, and then this last week to drop off cleaning supplies.

Mark Twitchell: Right.

Det. Mike Tabler: And we know that was probably the 15th. Did you drop them off the same day you bought them?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah, I think so.

Det. Mike Tabler: And what did you use to pay for those?

Mark Twitchell: I think it was a MasterCard. [unclear: "I've seen a MasterCard of cash until my dad" / "It was either MasterCard or cash"]. [unclear: "I think it's all floating around" / "I had his old phone around"], so...

Det. Mike Tabler: MasterCard. What kind of MasterCard do you have?

Mark Twitchell: It's a prepaid MasterCard.

Det. Mike Tabler: Prepaid MasterCard from?

Mark Twitchell: From the Cash Store.

Det. Mike Tabler: The Cash Store?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah.

Det. Mike Tabler: Why do you use a prepaid MasterCard?

Mark Twitchell: I had a bankruptcy about six years ago, so it's almost going off the record and everything like that. It's kind of a pesky thing that's following me around, and I didn't really find a lot of need for credit cards, because it wasn't something that was ever really that big of a pressing deal, ever since. I learned my lesson. And the reason that I actually had to file that in the first place, and this is, like, back to stupid young man crap...

Mark Twitchell: [unclear: "Well, I'm" / "Hey, I got"] 21, I got married the first time, [unclear: "young and stupid" / "I've still been"], to someone that I thought I was going to be with forever, and for the wrong reasons. Long story short, I moved to the US because she was a US citizen, got residency down there. But the problem was, I didn't understand how long it would take to get that process done. And I lived down there for a little over 10 months before I actually had a legal work permit to be able to bring in an income. So while I'm down there, following my heart, racking up, like, my bills are still there, all of this stuff is mounting up, it was over 20 grand worth, and then I was just like, damn. So between having that on my plate and, at that point in my life, believing I was going to be in the US for a while, I figured that filing a Canadian bankruptcy was the best way to go. And my trustee felt the same way. So I filed with them, got it taken care of, got discharged from it within, like, the same year.

Mark Twitchell: But it's just one of those things that sticks on your credit rating. So when that relationship didn't work out, then I moved back to Canada, it still followed me around. It wasn't that big of a deal, because, again, I'm not racking up debt or anything like that. I'm just living my life, getting my job and my place and paying my bills and stuff like that. I didn't need to have credit. But the thing is, if you ever want to book a hotel room or a flight or anything, shop online, use eBay, it's just easier to have a credit card. So when MuchMusic had their MasterCard out, I got that thing, ended up losing it. It was a huge pain in the butt anyway, because you can only [unclear: "load" / "move"] it online, and you pay these little fees for every little thing. Even just to call in to check your balance, it charges a fee. So I went to the Cash Store and said, okay, I need something that's going to be a little more handy, a little more useful, something I can load just by going into the store instead of having to get online and do it every time. So I got that.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yep, that's how you start to rebuild credit. You start off...

Mark Twitchell: I don't even know if prepaid reports your credit payment history or not, but...

Det. Mike Tabler: I think it does help, yeah.

Mark Twitchell: Could help. The mortgage, I thought, was a big one. The two big ones that are helping me build my credit back right now are a business loan that I have through TD, which is almost paid off, that I took out to give me the boost for getting [unclear: "rid of" / "all"] my equipment for shooting Star Wars, and the mortgage.

Det. Mike Tabler: [unclear: "The mortgage on your..." / "The mortgage owner of"]

Mark Twitchell: [unclear: "My house." / "in my house"]

Det. Mike Tabler: [unclear: "How much?" / "House?"]

Mark Twitchell: It was just, it was crazy, the way that it happened, because I was convinced, for the amount of income that my wife made, and her track record with credit, she [unclear: "even wanted to get" / "would be the one to get"] the mortgage. But they looked at the overall situation and said I was [unclear: "like that" / "the guy"], so, okay. Went in there, did [unclear: "a big work" / "all the paperwork"], filed it up, and got it done, and so that worked out really well. Through the broker, a bit of a hassle here and there, because there's, like, little straggler bills from five, six years ago that were kind of there. And one of these lenders said, here's all the conditions, we want to lend you the money, so, like, give us proof that you paid this Rogers bill back in the day, or that it still counts on your bankruptcy, [unclear: "you've taken care of it" / "bank or entity taking care of it"]. And the last I checked, that was gone. So, little hassle stuff like that, but it was pretty much just a relatively smooth ride. I was able to secure that up and get it done, and it worked out great.

Det. Mike Tabler: Now, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about the business. Now, you told me about some projects you're shooting on, and I want to ask you if you're doing any other kind of shooting there. Like, is there any, and I mean, I'm just wondering, because it brings into play different sort of characters. Are you shooting any porn there, or anything like that?

Mark Twitchell: No. I've actually been teased about that a lot, and I tease back by saying that, oh, I should have gotten into porn, because it's guaranteed money. And it's really not the environment for that. For one thing, it's not even heated. Like, no...

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah, it would be [unclear: "no" / "a little"] cool.

Mark Twitchell: And then again, if a filmmaker gets into that side of the industry, [unclear: "the other side will" / "we've got a side, we'll"] never take [you] seriously. So unless I want to go make, like, 100 aliases, call myself Dick Hard or some stupid porn name or whatever, you know, like, that just wouldn't make any sense. And I've never been really anywhere near interested in that kind of material. I want to be taken seriously. I don't necessarily have to go after Academy Awards or anything like that. I just want to make movies that will entertain people and get out there into actual movie theaters and have tickets and stuff like that. That's always been the ultimate goal for me. But, yeah, no porn or anything like that.

Det. Mike Tabler: So have you ever heard of these online dating sites? What are some of the ones you've heard of?

Mark Twitchell: Oh, man, I don't know. Match.com. I've heard of the Plenty of Fish one.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. Plenty of Fish.

Mark Twitchell: Yeah, there's, oh, what else? There's a bunch of them. There's hundreds of them.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah. Okay. You don't [unclear: "read with" / "frequent"] them?

Mark Twitchell: No.

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay.

Mark Twitchell: I did some research on them for a freelance article that I wrote, that was about a month ago.

Det. Mike Tabler: About a month ago?

Mark Twitchell: Maybe more. It was a little over a month ago. This is a freelance project that I got. I'm on this website called iFreelance.com. You get, like, you know, basically writing gigs and stuff like that. And this guy said, you know what, we [unclear: "can get" / "need"] an article for online dating and stuff like that, and the rules and the etiquette and whatnot. I said, okay, I'll jump on that. So [unclear: "picked up" / "take that"] some of that stuff in order to write the article, and put it together, and did it, and got paid for it and everything like that. So, yeah.

Mark Twitchell: Yeah, but...

Det. Mike Tabler: So what'd you end up doing with that? So you pretend you're somebody, and do the online dating sort of thing, [unclear: "that would let you know" / omitted]?

Mark Twitchell: Yeah, but you tell everybody what's going on, right? Like, I would say it's a social experiment, for the purpose of figuring out what your view and opinion of it is, and that kind of thing. And it's a lot easier just to touch base with the people who use the site and get their overall opinion from it. So they would say, well, you know, I get different opinions, too, of the guys, and say things like, well, you know, it's really tough because there's lots of competition. The girls come back with the feedback of, well, everybody [unclear: "out here" / "down here"] is a pig, you know, and that kind of thing. And so I kind of, you know, break that down, try to get a little more creative with it, and make it something that someone would actually feel like reading. And the way I understood it was that they were trying to get something that they [unclear: "couldn't have" / "could have"] published in, like, Maxim Online or something like that, and then post it. For me, I wouldn't worry about the publishing part, because they can do whatever they want with it. I just thought, you know what, if I'm going to write this for you, give me a paycheck and we're good.

Det. Mike Tabler: Yeah, yeah. [unclear: "Here, then go ahead" / "Then, go ahead"]. So in that, you weren't really posing as a person that was trying to date people. What you were doing was just contacting them, saying, hey, looking for views on...

Mark Twitchell: Okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: And that's why you know what some of those sites are. Okay. All right. Now, like I said, I'm going to talk to my people and see if I'm missing anything.

Mark Twitchell: Okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: [unclear: "I'll run over stuff" / "And run over stuff"]. Bear with us a few minutes, and thank you very much.

Mark Twitchell: Sure.

Mark Twitchell: If you come back and I'm sleeping, just nudge me [unclear: "out"].

Det. Mike Tabler: All right. Yeah. Okay.

Det. Mike Tabler: [unclear: "You almost start swinging with it" / "Don't start swinging, will you"].

Mark Twitchell: You know what I mean?

Det. Mike Tabler: Okay. I was wondering, [unclear: "did I" / "should I"]...

Speaker Uncertain: [unclear: "Oh, okay." / "Big legs."] [The recording ends.] ---