>> that's it for me. thanks for watching. tune in tomorrow where i am speaking with congressman jerry connelly. plus, senior adviser and spoke's person for president biden's campaign, adrienne elrod joins us to talk importance of border security to voters ahead of november's election tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. follow us on social media using the handle, at weekend capehart. listened every episode of our show as a podcast for free. scan the qr code on your screen to follow. but, keep it right here. a frightening film about a serial killer. robert barnsley: ...he'd say, when you're turning the blade, grit your teeth and really--really show that you're enjoying it. we had talked about how would you kill somebody and get away with it. i had dark thoughts and shared them with the serial killer. >> it was supposed to be a movie, a frightening film about a serial killer. >> you grit your teeth and really show that you on bare enjoying it. >> but, was it really just pretend? >> eels get down on the ground and took out duct tape. >> i have never in my life felt fear like that. >> a rising young film director filming a murder, or actually committing one? >> he told me well, you liked dexter. >> when you take a step back you realize this is a real man who has been murdered. >> the script was darker than anyone knew. >> like holy mackerel. >> who are you, really? >> everyone was on the edge of their seat. >> and underground parking garage, you are watching a violent attack caught on tape. who was this? what is happening? or, did it happen at all? movies, like that one, are by design, deceptive. make-believe worlds, but have you noticed maybe it is all the technical doodads and digital cameras. some stories that claim to be true or not. anybody can manipulate reality, sometimes what they say is true is it. sometimes, fiction turns out to be fact, and then there are stories, just a few, and which fact and fiction fuse and that is where we are going tonight, a twilight zone world of illusion and deception and deceit. follow the howling wind north across a vast prairie through brief, brilliant summers and winters as frigid as any on earth to a 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 whose son was killed in december. >> nothing in a career so strange as the case of a man who went missing and bill clark found himself in another world between fantasy and illusion. >> have you ever seen a case like this before? >> never in my life. >> 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 sobers up. >> i'm not thinking much is going to come of this. >> after clark's decades of service in the city with the highest murder rate in canada, you can hardly blame them for getting a little picky. >> we don't usually go to missing person. unfortunately, for us to come out you've got to be dead and it had better be criminal. if the patrolman doesn't know it's criminal, don't bother calling us. >> yeah, you got enough to do. which explains perhaps why some of the locals have taken to calling their city, deadmonton. >> our concern is, do we have a foul play. >> the missing person in this case is a man by the name of john altinger. 39, single, worked in the oil industry, liked to ride motorcycles. unlucky with women, yet, a wide circle of friends who are now telling the police altinger seem to have dropped off the face of the earth except the strange emails he was sending. >> i've left with a woman, i'm going to costa rica. >> one of the recipients of those old emails, his old friend, debra taichrob. >> i received several of them. i received six altogether, but in runs of three. >> the exact same message? >> 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. >> almost formal, and away, suddenly like somebody you didn't really know was sending you an email. >> absolutely, and i was like that's really odd, it doesn't sound like john. >> it was odd, and even more so when another friend of altinger's received exactly the same message word for word and altinger's facebook status change from single to in a relationship. >> i think it was the following day, i was on msn messenger and johnny popped on mine, 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, who says i've got a one- way ticket to heaven and i'm never coming back. >> later that same day, debra got a call from the same friend who told her john altinger seems to be missing. >> it's surreal, you know. you don't expect your friends to go missing. >> soon, altinger's friends got together, unsure of what to do, really but before going to police, they decided to try to get into his condo, to see if they could find a clue what happened to get the guy in the break-in, actually. everything looked fine. nothing out of place, no sign of any struggle. the only things missing were his wallet, his keys and his red mazda coop, so it was as if he had gone out for a drive and could be back any minute. >> there were no answers to anything, like he just vanished out of thin air. >> except for those strange emails he had supposedly sent about falling in love and coaster rica, which to the cops, said clark, seemed perfectly reasonable. not hard to imagine that a lovestruck man might want to leave the snow and ice of edmonton behind and skip off to the tropics. >> the sky send these emails to his friends and we are going well, that strange, but maybe he did go to costa rica. stranger things have happened. you never know. >> that is how clark felt before he stepped through the looking glass. coming up, detective clark is about to follow john altinger's trail into a strange place of make-believe , and up-and- coming directors makeshift movie studio. >> it's a suspense thriller, actually. it's a short film. as soon as they called me on the phone, i got this weird chill. >> when dateline continues. >> ♪ ♪ with wegovy®, i lost 35 pounds. and some lost over 46 pounds. ♪ ♪ and i'm keeping the weight off. wegovy® helps you lose weight and keep it off. i'm reducing my risk. wegovy® is the only fda-approved weight-management medicine that's proven to reduce risk of major cardiovascular events in adults with known heart disease and with either obesity or overweight. wegovy® shouldn't be used with semaglutide or glp-1 medicines. don't take wegovy® if you or your family had medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if allergic to it. stop wegovy® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or an allergic reaction. serious side effects may happen, including pancreatitis and gallbladder problems. wegovy® may cause low blood sugar in people with diabetes, especially if you take medicines to treat diabetes. tell your provider about vision problems or changes, or if you feel your heart racing while at rest. depression or thoughts of suicide may occur. call your provider right away if you have any mental changes. common side effects like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. with wegovy®, i'm losing weight, i'm keeping it off. and i'm lowering my cv risk. that's the power of we. ♪ ♪ check your cost and coverage before talking to your health care professional about wegovy®. ♪ you're the one that i want ♪ nexgard® combo is the only monthly topical that protects against fleas, ticks, tapeworms, and more. use with caution in cats with a history of seizures or neurologic disorders. nexgard combo,... ♪ you're the one that i want ♪ ...the monthly one-and-done you want. introducing new advil targeted relief. the only topical pain reliever with 4 powerful pain-fighting ingredients that start working on contact to target tough pain at the source. for up to 8 hours of powerful relief. new advil targeted relief. [coughing] copd isn't pretty. i'm out of breath, and often out of the picture. but this is my story. ( ♪♪ ) and with once-daily trelegy, it can still be beautiful. because with 3 medicines in 1 inhaler, trelegy keeps my airways open for a full 24 hours and prevents future flare-ups. trelegy also improves lung function, so i can breathe more freely all day and night. trelegy won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. do not take trelegy more than prescribed. trelegy may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain occur. ♪ what a wonderful world ♪ [laughing] ask your doctor about once-daily trelegy for copd because breathing should be beautiful, all day and night. condominium, as you can see, looked like anything because breathing should be beautiful, 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 anytime. where was he? johnny's friends were convinced something awful had happened to him. so, day after day, they prodded the police; john altinger's condominium 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 and could be back anytime. where was he? and johnny's friends were convinced something awful had happened to him, so day after day, they prodded the police and finally, seven days after johnny went missing, the cops agreed to open an investigation. >> we just started with the basics. i said with got to start out by finding out if we can find him first so let's find the car. >> since john altinger's email said he had taken off for costa rica, officers went to the airport to look for that red mazda. they searched every parking lot. it wasn't here. they come through airline passenger lists. he was not 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. they're going oh, not getting out of the country without your passport. >> seemed like he had to be within driving distance but what direction where? just as the police were contemplating that puzzle, one of altinger's friends came up with another email. this one, johnny had received from a woman he met online. janet was her name, the same woman with whom he had supposedly scampered off to costa rica. they had a date and were going out on the town the night he disappeared and because he had never been to her place, she sent him an email with directions on how to pick her up and out of an abundance of caution, he sent a copy of that email to a friend of his, 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, and you know, laugh out loud. >> it wasn't a phone number or an address, but there were detailed directions to her place, so the cops drove the root, and the directions led them to this neighborhood down this alley, and to this garage rented by -- >> a guy named mark twitchell. >> he happened to be, in the local arts community, local celebrity. he was making a name for himself in edmonton. he had recently made a low- budget sci-fi movie 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 could not get in, so with permission, officers broken, had a quick look around, and found nothing. just the same, with the changed walk in the weird coincidence of the email, there were things to figure out and mark twitchell was only too happy to tag along to the police station to help out however he could. >> the first thing i noticed is the padlock did not look familiar to me. twitchell explained he'd been using the rented garage is a soundstage most recently for what they call a teaser, a short film designed to drum up publicity , buzz, 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. >> okay, so yeah, suspense thriller? >> of course, he had a crew in and out of the place during filming, said mark. 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 needed to borrow the place or whatever, then they would let me know. >> they'd let you know. >> they would ask, or something like that, so no, i don't know anything about that. >> anyway, he said, he had moved on for now to another project. >> i'm working on a comedy right now which is actually a full feature, with a decent budget in the neighborhood of about 3 1/2 million. >> in the meantime, the garage comes studio was empty, so why would someone break into the place and then change the lock, he wondered. didn't make sense. >> i had a padlock previously but it wasn't the same one. it was silver on the outside with a black plastic dial in the center and this one was just all metal, so. >> so, you notice the different padlock on the door. >> mystifying, said mark. he had a bad feeling about this. a 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 that woman john altinger had been flirting with online, the one who gave him directions to the garage, told him she would meet him there. the woman who signed her emails jen . >> does the name, jen, mean anything to you? >> no. we don't have a jen or anything like that. >> so, the name jen doesn't mean anything to you? you don't know an actress named jen? >> so, who was this mystery woman, jen? why in the world which she arranged to meet john altinger here in the very back yard garage and independent edmonton film crew was renting for use as a studio. how odd. especially since the movies producer director, mark twitchell, expressed exactly the same confusion as the police. he didn't get it, either. the dots did not connect. mark twitchell did not know johnny from adam and besides, there was no indication johnny ever made it to the garage at all. >> the close friends are the ones who have come to the police and they have nothing other than his emails. >> there was one thing, though, and it came from mark twitchell. he wondered if maybe somebody was being set up. >> it just doesn't sit right, so the first thing i started asking myself is, who all knows about what we do there and what our schedule looks like and stuff like that. >> is the disappearance staged somehow? 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 criminal spender stories. maybe you could figure out if this twitchell guy was trying to play the cops somehow. he pulled the recording of the interview. >> and i watch an interview, i listen to what the guy says but i'm looking at body language, i'm looking for signs of deceit. i remember coming out of their going you know, this mark twitchell guy interviewed really well. there were no signs of deception. he is free-flowing with the information. he has answered the questions logically. i don't see any looking away, nervousness, nothing. i see nothing. >> and then, when police looked into twitchell's production company, they encountered a perfectly legitimate company. more than that, actually. this was a promising effort to help edmonton get some national attention as a potential center of moviemaking. mark twitchell was very good at coming up attention and money from local investors. >> he was a very sharp, bright, young, articulate entrepreneur. exactly the kind of individual most of us are looking for. >> so, he checked out. hard-working local boy in the 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 projects, three and half million dollar buddy comedy. that is 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. 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. coming up, soon, this tough cop would catch a big break. >> we got a phone call from a detective. the detective says you won't believe it but this guy just told me he found a red mazda out there. >> the missing man's car turns up when dateline continues. urns up when dateline continues. -cologuard®? 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keith morrison: (voiceover) in fact, bill clark is an old-school detective, the sort that seems to exist more on the big screen than the mean streets. in fact, clark is such a throwback, the younger guys on the fourth kid him. they call him simple it's after the old hard-nosed detective on the top show, nypd blue. >> i still like coming to work every day. it's just part of my life. i still have the drive. i'm still excited about it. >> in his decades on the edmonton police force, clark and scene murder take many forms, had seen the shattering effect it has on the family. >> you are 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 or the dead guy, who is going to? >> for clark, there is no greater satisfaction than bringing in a killer. >> i consider myself a pitbull. you get a case and you get your teeth into