What the cast and crew of “House of Cards” didn’t know was that the filming was a rehearsal. Mark Twitchell had decided to take his fantasy to the next level. The “kill room” he’d constructed was no movie prop. It was to be the stage for a murder, the first, so Twitchell expected, of many.
Twitchell’s first stab at homicide, however, was a dismal failure. For weeks he’d been communicating online with a man named Gilles Tetreault, a subscriber to the Internet dating site, plentyoffish.com. Posing as a woman, he’d played hard to get for a while, then eventually agreed to a date with Tetreault on October 3, 2008. The rendezvous was set for a lockup in the Mill Woods area of Edmonton, Alberta.
Whether or not Tetreault thought the meeting place strange or not, is unrecorded. What we do know is that he arrived at the appointed time, all spruced up and carrying a bunch of flowers. Imagine his surprise when he suddenly found himself face-to-face with a Jason Voorhees lookalike in a hockey mask. “Jason” was carrying a stun baton, which he now applied to Tetreault’s shoulder, dropping him to his knees with an excruciating jolt of electricity. Then the attacker was on him. It was only by sheer weight of will that Tetreault managed to break free and stagger away. Had Twitchell followed to finish the job, Tetreault would not have stood a chance. Twitchell, however, did not follow. Perhaps he was afraid of being seen.
Over the next few days, Twitchell lived in a state of perpetual anxiety. At any moment, he expected the clomp of law enforcement boots on his porch, the silhouette of an RCMP wide-brimmed hat and a thumping on his door. He’d already prepared a cover story. It had all been a prank, he’d tell them. He’d only wanted to frighten Tetreault, to warn him of the dangers of meeting strange women in remote locations. He’d probably done the man a favor.
But days passed with no inkling that the law had the least bit of interest in a sordid encounter between two consenting adults. Tetreault, apparently, had been too embarrassed to report the incident. That suited Mark Twitchell just fine. It wasn’t long before he’d cast a line into the plentyoffish.com pond again.
Everyone who knew Johnny Altinger said that he was a lovely guy. The 38-year-old pipeline inspector had a keen sense of humor and was a lover of motorcycles. But he was lonely, desperate for female company, and that was how he ended up delving into the world of online dating. During the first week of October, he excitedly told friends that he’d hooked up with a woman who was “just his type” and that she had agreed to a date.
On the evening of October 10, Altinger set out for the Mill Woods garage, where his date had asked him to meet her. Instead of the love and companionship he so craved, he found a man in a hockey mask, wielding a length of pipe.
Twitchell had learned from his earlier experience. The stun baton was unreliable. This time, he clubbed his victim into submission and then knifed him to death. Now he could indulge his ultimate fantasy. Now he was Dexter. After undressing Johnny Altinger and hoisting him onto the autopsy table, he reached for a handsaw. Then he started cutting.
Twitchell had thought his crime through from beginning to end. Truth be told, he felt rather smug about the brilliant cover-up he’d concocted. Altinger’s mutilated remains were unceremoniously dumped into an Edmonton sewer. Then Twitchell sent e-mails to several of Altinger's friends, posing as Altinger. He told them that he had fallen head over heels in love and was accompanying his new lady friend on a month-long vacation to Costa Rica. Another missive went to Altinger’s boss, tendering his resignation. All of this, everyone agreed, was entirely out of character.
In the days following Johnny Altinger's peculiar disappearance, the phone lines between his friends were abuzz with gossip. None of them believed that the ultra-reliable Johnny would suddenly drop out of sight with only a few curt e-mails by way of goodbye. Eventually, a group of them decided that the situation warranted further investigation.
The door to Johnny’s condo was locked when they arrived. Getting no response to the buzzer, they forced their way in. What they found inside served only to heighten their sense of unease. Johnny didn’t appear to have packed a suitcase for his vacation. And if he had indeed flown to Costa Rica, he’d done so without his passport. It was time to call in the police.
Mark Twitchell must by now have been wallowing in his own brilliance, fantasizing perhaps about the next ‘perfect murder’ he was going to commit. But Twitchell wasn’t quite the evil genius that he aspired to be. Not even close! How many of us have given a friend or loved one the address we are to visit, especially if it is somewhere we’re visiting for the first time? Johnny Altinger had. He’d e-mailed Twitchell’s Mill Woods address to a friend, noting wryly “just in case.” That address was now handed over to the police and it wasn’t long before they’d located the garage and tracked down the name of the leaseholder – Mark Twitchell.
Twitchell was brought in for questioning and denied knowing Altinger or ever meeting him. The garage, however, told a different story. Twitchell had obviously not paid close attention to those Dexter episodes he so loved to watch. All the CSI team had to do was to lay down some Luminol and turn out the lights and the entire garage lit up like a Christmas tree. Then there was the blood on Twitchell’s shoes and belt buckle, a tooth fragment (later matched to Altinger) and the aforementioned file on his computer, containing a sickening blow-by-blow account of the murder. In it, Twitchell describes bludgeoning and then stabbing Altinger to death, dissecting his corpse and even playing with the body parts. “I grabbed his jaw with my gloved hand and moved it while making a funny voice to make it look like it was talking, and chuckled to myself at the total silliness of it all,” he wrote. He claimed it was all fiction, written as a screenplay for his next movie. The cops didn’t believe him.
Mark Twitchell went to trial for first-degree murder in March 2011 before Judge Terry Clackson. He entered a not guilty plea, citing self-defense. Altinger, he said, had attacked him!
In a story twice as inventive as anything he’d ever filmed, Twitchell claimed that he’d lured Altinger to Mill Woods as a publicity stunt for his movie. His plan was to “prank” Altinger by putting him through the same experience as the victims in “House of Cards.” His intention was to film Altinger’s reaction and later post it online in order to create a “buzz” for his movie.
Altinger, however, was not amused. He’d attacked Twitchell, who’d had to defend himself. During the struggle, Altinger had been stabbed to death. Twitchell had then panicked and decided to dispose of the corpse rather than call the police.
Unfortunately for Twitchell, this story simply did not match the evidence. If the killing really had been an accident, why had he documented the entire dissection process – 1,644 sickening photographs had been found on his hard drive.
In the end, the jury wasted little time in finding Twitchell guilty and the judge then delivered the coup de grace by sentencing him to life in prison. He is currently incarcerated at the maximum security prison in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
Jealousy Makes You Deadly
The call from the guidance counselor at Conestoga Valley High School had left Hazel Show perplexed. In 16 years, she’d never had a problem with her daughter. Laurie was a diligent student, easy going and popular. Still, the counselor was adamant. The issue, she said, was behavioral. Would Mrs. Show be able to meet with her at the school at 7:00 a.m. the following morning? Hazel, of course, agreed. She wanted to get to the bottom of this.
The following morning, Friday, December 19, 1991, Mrs. Show set off for her appointment at the school in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She’d said nothing to Laurie, not wanting to prejudge whatever it was the counselor had to say. However, when she arrived for the meeting the counselor wasn't there, and there was no record of anyone having made an appointment, or of any problems with Laurie’s behavior. Relieved, and yet somewhat confused, Hazel Show headed for home, where her daughter should have been getting ready for her last day of school before the winter break.
Immediately on her arriva
l, Hazel knew that something was wrong. One of her neighbors was standing outside, shivering against the cold. The panicked woman said that she’d heard screams coming from the Shows’ apartment. Then Hazel was running, oblivious to any concerns for her own safety. She vaulted up the stairs and through her front door without even registering that she’d thrown it open. The scene that greeted her was one that every parent dreads.
Her only child lay on the ground, a rope knotted around her neck, blood oozing from multiple wounds. Hazel instantly fell to her knees beside Laurie, worked frantically at the rope and loosened it. Then she pulled Laurie to her, cradled her broken body and tried to staunch the flow of blood with her hands. The worst of the injuries was a long, deep cut to the neck, which was pulsing blood at an alarming rate, defying Hazel’s desperate efforts. “Hold on,” she beseeched her daughter, “Just hold on.”
But in her heart of hearts, Hazel must have known that Laurie was beyond saving. “Who did this?” she wailed, as much to the heavens as to Laurie. “Michelle,” Laurie rasped, her voice a horrible gurgle from her mutilated throat. Then the 16-year old fetched a final breath and died in her mother's arms.
Hazel Show knew of course, who Michelle was. She was 19-year-old Lisa Michelle Lambert and over the last few months she had been harassing and stalking Laurie. The two girls had once been friends but that friendship had soured over the affections of Michelle’s longtime boyfriend, Lawrence “Butch” Yunkin. Michelle and Butch had split up over the summer and thereafter Butch had begun pestering Laurie for a date. Eventually she’d agreed but the second time they’d gone out, Butch had pinned her down in the front seat of his truck and raped her. Thereafter, Laurie had refused to see him or take his calls and he’d gone back to Michelle, who was pregnant with his child.
Yet despite getting her boyfriend back, Michelle’s anger towards Laurie continued to simmer, and it boiled over after Butch admitted to her that he’d had sex with Laurie. According to his version of events, it had been consensual. Thereafter, Michelle began conducting a hate-fueled campaign against Laurie.
In July 1991, Michelle recruited several other teenagers to help her carry out an attack on Laurie. The plan was to lure the 16-year-old from her home, hack off her hair and then tie her to a telephone pole in downtown Lancaster. Fortunately, two of the girls involved in the plot got cold feet and warned Laurie.
The following month, Lambert encountered the Shows at a store and started screaming and yelling obscenities at Laurie. When Hazel countered Michelle’s claim that Laurie had slept with Butch by telling her about the rape, Michelle got even more angry. Hazel was forced to change her home phone number due to the number of abusive calls made by Michelle. She even applied for a restraining order.
Things continued to escalate into November when Michelle attacked Laurie in a mall parking lot and bashed her head against a parked truck. She also threatened to kill her if she reported the assault to the police. Despite the threats, Hazel Show did lay charges. The investigation into the incident had not yet begun on that dreadful December day when Laurie was stabbed and hacked to death.
It did not take the police long to track down their suspects. Michelle and Butch were arrested later that day at the Garden Spot Bowling Alley in nearby Strasburg. Under questioning, Butch quickly cracked and admitted to his part in the murder. He did not participate in the actual killing, he said, but he had driven Michelle and another teenager, 17-year-old Tabitha Buck, to Laurie’s house, where they knew she would be alone. Michelle had seen to that by setting up the bogus meeting with the guidance counselor.
By now, the evidence had already begun to stack up against the killers. They had been seen in the vicinity of the Shows’ condominium on the morning of the murder, and Lambert and Buck had been spotted running from the scene. The Medical Examiner’s report had also revealed the horrific injuries suffered by Laurie Show. Laurie had several bruises to her head due to blunt force trauma; there were three knife wounds to her back, one of which had penetrated the right lung; two wounds had been inflicted on her legs, including a cut that nicked the pelvic bone; her hands bore multiple defensive wounds, 21 in all. But it was the wound to the throat that had done the most damage, a gaping hole at least five inches long caused by at least three strokes. The ME estimated that it would have taken Laurie Show about 30 minutes to die.
The trials of the three killers got underway in 1992, with Tabitha Buck found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Lawrence Yunkin copped a plea to third-degree murder and accepted a sentence of 20 years in exchange for his testimony against Lisa Michelle Lambert. At her trial, she waived the right to a jury, which meant that her fate was in the hands of Judge Lawrence F. Stengel. He found her guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced her to life in prison. Lambert had since given birth to a baby girl and it was perhaps that which spared her from the death penalty that the prosecution had sought.
But Lisa Michelle Lambert was not about to take her sentence lying down. During her time in prison, she’d come up with several versions of the tragic events of December 19, 1991. Each subsequent telling made her less and less culpable. First, she claimed that the police had framed her in order to silence her about a rape she’d witnessed. Then she sought to deflect the blame. It was Tabitha Buck who’d killed Laurie she said, while she had waited outside and played no part in the murder.
Initially, Lambert’s calls for a new trial fell on deaf ears but, in 1996, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell ordered a review of the case. Not only that, but he freed Lambert, declaring her to be “actually innocent.” In a highly controversial move, he also ruled that the state of Pennsylvania could not retry the case. For a time, it appeared that Lisa Michelle Lambert might have gotten away with murder.
But Lambert’s freedom would be short-lived. In 1997, a Federal Appeals court overturned Dalzell’s ruling, on the grounds that the appeals process had not yet run its course. Lambert was sent back to prison and her incarceration must have felt all the more bitter after her ten months at liberty.
In 1998, Lambert was back in court for her latest appeal. Now she claimed to be an abused woman, who lived in terror of Butch Yunkin. And there was considerable evidence to suggest that Butch had indeed been violent towards her. But did that absolve her of responsibility in the murder?
Lambert’s latest version of events had Tabitha Buck beating and stabbing Laurie to death on the floor while she tried to intervene on Laurie’s behalf. Given Lambert’s aggressive behavior towards Laurie in the months leading up to the event, this simply does not ring true. A much more likely scenario could be found in the evidence given to the court by Tabitha Buck. Already serving a life term and with no offer of a reduced sentence in exchange for her testimony, Buck simply had no incentive for lying.
According to Buck, the plans for the killing were laid out in detail by Michelle on the night before the murder. On that Friday morning, Butch drove them to The Oaks Condominiums, where Laurie lived, and dropped them off at an adjacent field. There, they waited until they saw Hazel leave. Then they went and knocked on the door. When Laurie opened it, they forced their way inside. Michelle immediately pulled a large kitchen knife out of her coat and lunged for Laurie. Laurie tried to run for the bedroom but was dragged to the ground by Michelle. Michelle then started beating her with the handle of the knife. When Laurie tried to grab for a pair of scissors that had fallen on the ground, Tabitha kicked them out of her reach.
With Laurie subdued, Michelle tried to hand the knife to Tabitha, demanding that she cut Laurie's throat. Tabitha refused and in that moment, Laurie tried to break free. Michelle then started stabbing Laurie, while Tabitha pinned her down by sitting on her legs. As Laurie’s struggles got weaker, Michelle took the knife and drew it across her throat several times. Laurie began making a horrible gurgling sound and as Michelle stood up from her and began backing away, Tabitha could see blood pumping from the wound to her throat. She and Michelle then turned and ran from the apar
tment.
The evidence was compelling and along with Hazel Show’s testimony of how her daughter had named her killer with her final breath, it destroyed the defense case.
Judge Stengel, who had presided over Lambert’s original trial, saw no reason to overturn his initial ruling. He sent Lisa Michelle Lambert back to prison to see out her sentence. Her last hope rested with the US Supreme Court, and when that body refused to hear her case in 2005, Lambert knew that she would spend the rest of her life behind bars.
Currently, Lambert is incarcerated in Clinton, New Jersey. During her years of incarceration, she has completed a college degree. She has also won a settlement of $35,000 from the state, over an alleged rape by a prison guard. Tabitha Buck too, remains behind bars, while Butch Yunkin was released in 2004, having served 12 years.
Hazel Show still lives in the condominium where her daughter was so brutally slain. “I’ll never leave,” she says, “This is where I feel closest to Laurie.”
Dead in the Water
Murder Most Vile Volume 12: 18 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Murder Books) Page 2