The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 4: The One Who Got Away

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Speaker 4 Jill's Tetrow was

Speaker 4 lonely.

Speaker 4 He'd been miserable, too, and sad, but now mostly just lonely in the big city he did not know. How he got that way is a story that's been told before and will be again.

Speaker 3 My wife and I moved up here to

Speaker 3 get a better living.

Speaker 4 Growing up, they'd known just about everybody in their little prairie town. Now in Edmonton, they were surrounded by strangers.

Speaker 3 How many people did you know? Anybody? I didn't know anybody. Nothing.
Nobody. No family at all? No family at all.

Speaker 4 But at least Jills figured they had each other.

Speaker 4 Except, life is not always kind.

Speaker 3 She just fell out of love with me, I guess. That's not easy.
That's not easy at all. Was it a difficult breakup? It was.
For me, it was, yeah. You would have made the choice to have her stay.

Speaker 3 Oh, definitely. I tried to make the marriage work, but she didn't want to.
She just wanted to move on. Boom, it's like a kick in the gut when that happens.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 That kind of what led to me feeling lonely and wanting to meet people.

Speaker 3 So that's how I decided to join this online dating website. What was it called? Plenty of Fish.

Speaker 4 The same dating site Johnny Altner had been using.

Speaker 3 That's when I met this girl.

Speaker 3 She seemed,

Speaker 3 I saw her profile, she seemed very attractive.

Speaker 3 She had blonde hair.

Speaker 3 She was shorter than I was,

Speaker 3 5'6.

Speaker 4 Sheena was her name.

Speaker 3 We started talking back and forth for a bit. Online.
Online, yeah. And all of a sudden, she became really forward and asked me what I was doing the following Friday.

Speaker 3 I said, well, what do you have in mind? And she messaged back. She said, how about dinner in a movie? So she asked me if I could pick her up.
I just can't remember everything we talked about.

Speaker 3 But yeah, but I kept asking her. She was flirtatious in her way.
Oh, definitely, yeah. Like that.
Very flirty. She said something like, oh, if the date goes well, you never know what can happen.

Speaker 4 Oh, Jill's had no idea.

Speaker 4 I'm Keith Morrison, and this is The Man in the Black Mask, a podcast from Dateline.

Speaker 4 Episode 4, The One Who Got Away.

Speaker 4 Newly single and... alone in a big city, Jill's Tetrow couldn't believe it when he connected online with a woman with with a name so alluring,

Speaker 4 Sheena.

Speaker 3 She looked beautiful in her profile.

Speaker 4 And she wanted Jill's. Wanted to see him as soon as possible.
Sheena sent him directions to her place.

Speaker 4 It was a bit complicated, she said, because she lived in a basement apartment that faced the backyard, so best to come in that way.

Speaker 3 Go through the back alley, and she'd leave the garage door open for me. I'd go through the garage to the other side, get into the yard and go knock on

Speaker 3 the back door to pick her up.

Speaker 4 But what if he couldn't find her place? He wondered. What if he was delayed? He asked for her cell phone number.

Speaker 4 No way, said Sheena.

Speaker 3 And she would not give me her phone number. She basically said that for security reasons, she had people that she met before that stalked her.

Speaker 3 And so for security reasons, she didn't want to give me her phone number.

Speaker 4 And Sheena had made it clear she wanted Jill's to pick her up right at seven.

Speaker 4 Except now he was late, 15 or 20 minutes late. His one chance with this beautiful woman, and was he blowing it already?

Speaker 3 I thought, oh my God, I hope she can forgive me because I'm going to be a little late. Because she said be on time.
First date. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 Be on time.

Speaker 3 Yeah, be on time. And I'm already late.
So

Speaker 3 I tried to get there as fast as I could.

Speaker 4 And then, as hope was fading, he saw it. The alley, the one she told him about.
And there was the garage with the big door partly open, just as she said it would be.

Speaker 3 The door was high enough so that I didn't have to crawl under. I just had to squat under.
And I get into the garage. At that hour, at that time of year,

Speaker 3 is there any light? Yeah, actually, it was

Speaker 3 quite light out still.

Speaker 3 But once you got into that garage, it got kind of dark.

Speaker 4 So in that dim light, late and anxious, Jills made a beeline through the garage doors toward the door leading to the back patio.

Speaker 4 And this, said Detective Bill Clark, is when Jill's Tetro's account merges seamlessly with the story in SK Confessions.

Speaker 5 I mean, it was chilling. He's telling me things, and I know what's coming next.
I've read the SK Confessions, and everything Jills is telling me is almost

Speaker 5 like he wrote it himself.

Speaker 5 That's how precise the story writing is of the SK So you know what's coming next?

Speaker 3 He says what's coming next. That's right.
I touched the knob to open the door and all of a sudden

Speaker 3 somebody

Speaker 3 attacked me from behind. I kind of turned back to look to see what's going on and I see this man wearing this black and gold hockey mask.

Speaker 3 And this guy was much bigger than me, prodding me with this stun gun. And I still get chills to this day.
I just got one actually just seeing him wearing this mask.

Speaker 4 It was the moment Jill's Tetrow understood he had been caught by a horror movie come to life.

Speaker 3 It was just like the penny dropped. You realized, oh, this isn't a date I've been lured to this for a while.
Right. It's an attack.
That's right. Right then and there.

Speaker 4 Would he live? Would he die? He didn't know. Jill's Tetrow was simply terrified.

Speaker 3 Very terrified, yeah. It was the most horrible feeling.

Speaker 3 I've never been mugged ever or attacked.

Speaker 3 You don't look like you're a fighter type. I'm not normally, no.
And you're not a very, forgive my saying, but you're not a large person. I'm not, yeah.
So this guy was much bigger than me.

Speaker 3 He was about 5'10. How tall are you? I'm about 5'7 or 5'8.

Speaker 3 And he was stun gunning me on my chest, all over my chest. And whenever he triggered it, it just turned blue.
He's wearing this pocket mask. Yeah.

Speaker 3 This guy was terrifying. You know, some slasher movie.
Yeah. And so I tried to make a run for it.
And that's when he actually pulled out a gun. What is that like when somebody pulls a gun on you?

Speaker 3 I was terrified. I didn't know what to do.
I was like, oh my God, I think I'm going to die. Then he yells, get down on the ground, put your face down, close your eyes, and put your hands in the back.

Speaker 3 I don't know where he had it, but he took out duct tape and he ripped off a piece. And then that's when he covered my eyes with it.

Speaker 4 And just about then, Jill's Tetro decided he had come to the moment of his own death.

Speaker 3 I actually started tearing up, and it was like life flashed before my eyes, and it was quite emotional. I'm like, oh my God,

Speaker 3 my family is never going to see me again. I never told anyone where I was going that day.
And all of a sudden, he comes towards the back of me by my legs. And so I hear his belt jiggling.

Speaker 3 I immediately thought he's going to rape me. So I'm like, you know what?

Speaker 3 I better fight for my life. I said, I'd rather die my way than his way.
I knew he's gonna pull the gun out again. And you know what? If it kills me, it kills me.

Speaker 3 So I get up and I rip off the duct tape and I yell at him. I said, I can't do this.
I'm not going down like this. And he started yelling at me, get back down on the ground, back down on the ground.

Speaker 3 So I just darted for the gun grabbed the end of it and pushed it away from my body it was the best feeling i ever felt in my life because i i felt plastic when i grabbed it just immediately immediately so he suddenly realized it was fake gun and in that moment he jills became the attacker and i think i'm high on adrenaline now and uh i'm like i'm gonna break this gun and i kind of see it bending a little bit and that's when i i look down

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 on the ground there's these black metal handcuffs and i that just set me off because i'm like wow he was actually gonna handcuff me now i'm like that's what the clinking yeah that's what it was i had no idea and it just made me even more angry i went down grabbed the cuss put around my knuckles so that i have some kind of weapon so i could strike him with but i realized he's wearing that hockey mask so the only way to be effective was I need to hit him in the back of the head because of this hockey mask was on the front.

Speaker 3 Like somebody wearing armor. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, I decide that the cuffs are no good, and it's getting him very angry and more agitated.

Speaker 3 So, I decided I'm just going to throw these handcuffs to the corner of the garage where there's a whole bunch of junk over there, and it makes it a little harder for him to go get these cuffs in case he needs to use them again later.

Speaker 3 And that's when

Speaker 3 he grabbed me by the arms. And we're kind of struggling all over the garage.
So I tried to kick him. But as I did that, he saw me going to do that.

Speaker 3 So he actually went and swiped my leg and I almost fell down

Speaker 3 and I almost lost my shoe. And I'm thinking, wow, I can't.
get down. If I get down on the ground, I'm...
I'm cooked. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 His adrenaline had been pumping so ferociously, he was quite unaware of how the shocks from the stun gun or cattle prod or whatever it was had sapped his strength.

Speaker 3 And I'm thinking,

Speaker 3 why am I so weak? My muscles just couldn't move. And

Speaker 3 I was just so weak. Well, he goes forward and tries to headbutt me.
That's when he says, because you didn't cooperate, this is the way it has to be.

Speaker 3 And then he starts punching me in the head.

Speaker 4 Jills stumbled backwards with every blow, closer and closer to the open garage door.

Speaker 3 I'm letting him punch me. He punches me again, multiple times on the side of the head, and I moved again.
And all of a sudden, I looked at the door and he grabs my jacket.

Speaker 3 So then I slipped out of my jacket, rolled underneath the garage door, and finally made it out of that garage. So I started to try to run.

Speaker 3 And all of a sudden, it was like my legs were paralyzed and I just couldn't move. And I just fell

Speaker 3 right on my face. And uh, that's like being in the nightmare where you can't get away from the bed, yeah, monster, and I start crawling away on this unpaved driveway.

Speaker 3 Sure enough, he comes back underneath the garage after me and um grabs my legs and he starts dragging me back. And I'm like, oh no, what am I gonna do?

Speaker 3 I have nothing left, there's nothing else I can do.

Speaker 4 Jill's Tetra was exhausted from his fight with a masked man, paralyzed from repeated shocks from a cattle prod or

Speaker 4 stun gun.

Speaker 4 and quite powerless as his attacker pulled him across the gravel driveway toward his apparent doom.

Speaker 4 Here's Gills.

Speaker 3 And so he drags me back and throws me back into the garage underneath the door.

Speaker 4 But the author of SK Confessions admitted he too was exhausted.

Speaker 3 My energy was depleted and the human survival instinct is one of the most powerful forces on earth.

Speaker 4 And sure enough, In one last surge of adrenaline-fueled energy, Gilles fought back.

Speaker 3 He tried to grab my mask and came quite close to pulling it off,

Speaker 4 which created a brief life-saving opportunity. The masked man momentarily let go of Jill's leg.

Speaker 3 And I'm thinking, hey, he doesn't have a hold on me anymore. So I'm like, this is my chance.
I can maybe get away again. And then I rolled back underneath the garage door.
I got back up.

Speaker 3 And in my head, I was like, there's no way I am not running this time. Legs carry me.
Yep. And I made my legs move.
And then I ran off, but it wasn't really running. I think it was more like a jog.

Speaker 3 So I turn left and to my surprise, there's actually a walking path right beside this house. So I get onto the walking path and I'm so weak, I stumble.

Speaker 3 And I fall down. I get back up and I look up.
There's this couple walking their dog. They're coming towards me and I yell to them.
There's a man after me. He's trying to mug me.
Please help me.

Speaker 4 They were, of course, Trevor and Marissa, who, you'll recall, described their encounter with Jills this way.

Speaker 3 He looked at me and said, I'm being robbed. Can you help me?

Speaker 6 And it was just an instant bad feeling. It was like everything in my body just tensed up.
I felt bad. This is a bad situation.
I knew right away something was wrong.

Speaker 3 And I'm hunched over, trying to get my breath. And they look stunned.
They didn't know what was going on. And to me, it felt like it was taking the masked man forever to come after me.

Speaker 3 He comes toward me.

Speaker 3 I'm standing close to the couple. I tell him, hey, that's the man.
And then as I looked up, the attacker almost actually ran into me.

Speaker 3 It's like every nightmare you had as a child after watching a scary movie.

Speaker 6 Every nightmare you've ever had, all of a sudden it's right here.

Speaker 3 Like this masked guy

Speaker 6 is standing there.

Speaker 3 Once he saw the couple there, he goes, hey, Frank. Or come on, Frank.
That's what the guy in the mask said. To me.
Hey, come on, Frank.

Speaker 3 And then he pretends like he's going to lift the mask off, like we're playing.

Speaker 3 But he doesn't. And then he turns around and he starts walking back to the garage.
So he's making out like you've just been having fun. Right.

Speaker 4 Which is when Marissa and Trevor took off, believing somehow that it was all an act and that they had been the intended targets of a mugging.

Speaker 3 I couldn't believe they weren't going to help me out. So I'm like, I yelled towards them.
I said, aren't you going to help me out?

Speaker 4 But Marissa and Trevor had already helped, whether they knew it or not. Merely by stopping when they did, they may have saved his life.
And the masked man was gone.

Speaker 4 For the moment, anyway, Jills had time to catch his breath and regroup and get help.

Speaker 3 I can go onto the street, flag a car down.

Speaker 3 Or I could go to a neighbor's house. Maybe they might help me out.

Speaker 4 Or he could have called the police on his cell phone, which was still sticking out of his back pocket.

Speaker 4 But Jills did not do any of those things.

Speaker 4 No, what Jills decided to do instead was go back to the garage.

Speaker 3 For some reason, I thought it was the best thing at the time was to actually go back to the garage on my own because I figured I had the advantage and he didn't know the couple had left me.

Speaker 3 So I go back, start going back, and from a distance, I can see him pacing back and forth in the garage. But he's not looking out.

Speaker 3 No, no, he's still completely in the garage, and he's pacing back and forth. Just see his feet down there.
They just see his feet. The man could see him any second.

Speaker 4 Jill's looked at the door, at the pacing feet, at his truck, his mind worrying.

Speaker 3 So I'm thinking, okay, once I slam the door, I gotta do everything at the same time.

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Speaker 4 Maybe he was in shock, or had a concussion, or was just stun-gun silly.

Speaker 4 Whatever the reason, Jill Cetro became fixated on getting to his prized truck, a Black Ford Ranger, parked right on that gravel driveway outside the garage where Jills had just fought for his life.

Speaker 3 So I decided the smartest thing was to actually go back and get into my truck because I'd be safer in a locked vehicle. You'd have to break the windows to get to me.

Speaker 4 So, willing himself into silence, Jills tiptoed across the crunchy gravel driveway.

Speaker 4 The masked man just a few feet away on the other side of that partially opened garage door.

Speaker 3 I get the keys out of my pocket and uh I quietly open the door and

Speaker 3 quietly Gideon. So you're trying to do all of this without

Speaker 3 hearing you. Right.
You're sneaky. Right.

Speaker 3 So I'm thinking, okay, once I slam the door, I got to do everything at the same time. So that's what I do.

Speaker 3 I slam the door, start the truck up right away and lock the door and then put it into reverse.

Speaker 3 And I peel out of that driveway and I took off. You put that car into drive and tore down that alleyway.
What was it like? Oh, it was like

Speaker 3 an amazing feeling. I'm like, I can't believe I got away.
Must have been shaky. Yeah, I was shaky.
I started coming down off the adrenaline after a bit.

Speaker 3 And then all of a sudden, everything started hurting.

Speaker 3 My ribs were hurting.

Speaker 4 And Jill's began to feel woozy, sick to his stomach.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the punches he gave me to the side of the head, just started throbbing.

Speaker 3 And I'm just sweating. I feel sick.
I feel like I want to throw up, but I can't. And I just, I couldn't drive anymore.

Speaker 4 So Joe's pulled over, drank some water.

Speaker 4 Maybe he wasn't out of trouble after all.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I'm so tired and in pain, so I rest a little bit.

Speaker 4 But not for long.

Speaker 4 A few minutes later, Joe's willed himself back onto the road, forced himself to drive home, where he stood, barely comprehending, in front of a mirror.

Speaker 3 I'm like, wow,

Speaker 3 my face is all

Speaker 3 swollen up on my left side.

Speaker 3 And I'm just red and I'm sweating.

Speaker 4 What in the world just happened? Why had he, of all people, been attacked?

Speaker 4 And who was that man who seemed to want to kill him, the man behind the mask?

Speaker 3 And then then

Speaker 3 I decided, you know what? I need to

Speaker 3 go back onto that online dating website. I want to get as much information as I can so I can give this to police.

Speaker 3 And so I go back on and all of a sudden, everything was gone. Her profile was gone.
All the sent and received messages that I got from that person were all gone.

Speaker 3 What is it like to be sitting alone in your apartment in front of your computer with that realization in your head.

Speaker 3 I felt

Speaker 3 almost ashamed. It was like, I can't believe I got duped by this woman.
It's like, you know what, I just want to put this behind me. I just don't want to think about it.
I want to move on.

Speaker 3 And did not call the police? No.

Speaker 3 I didn't.

Speaker 4 And sure enough, the author of SK Confessions had anticipated perfectly what would not happen when his intended victim escaped. It was as if he had been reading the mind of the terrified Jules Tetrow.

Speaker 3 It was the fear in his eyes that told me deep down he wouldn't report the incident.

Speaker 4 But why did that man in the black mask attack Jilles in the first place?

Speaker 4 It must have been he himself who wrote about it later and in such incriminating detail. Though for now, the why of it all wasn't the important thing to the investigators.

Speaker 4 What was important was proving that the man in the black mask and the author of SK Confessions and Mark Twitchell were one and the same.

Speaker 4 And most important, finding their missing man.

Speaker 4 Was he dead? Was he alive?

Speaker 4 Where was Johnny Altinger?

Speaker 4 SK Confessions described two vicious assaults. One of them, the attack on Joe's Tetro, was accurate in every one of its bizarre details.

Speaker 5 How he's tasered and it's not really working, and this is all in the SK Confessions. And then he gets knocked down and he gets duct tape put on his eyes.

Speaker 4 And of course, both in real life and in the story, the victim survived. But the other story in SK Confessions?

Speaker 4 In that one, the victim died a particularly horrible death. Was that story true, too?

Speaker 4 And was that what happened to Johnny Altinger?

Speaker 4 If it was,

Speaker 4 then where was his body?

Speaker 3 The part we'd never had.

Speaker 5 We never had Johnny.

Speaker 4 Still no sign of him anywhere.

Speaker 4 Unless

Speaker 4 just about then, the tech people uncovered something else in the Twitchell laptop.

Speaker 4 It had been erased, of course, buried so deeply it might have disappeared forever.

Speaker 4 Three more paragraphs from SK Confessions, in which the masked man leaves a clue.

Speaker 4 Truth

Speaker 4 or fantasy.

Speaker 5 He talked about dumping the body in a sewer, and then it ended.

Speaker 4 In the next episode of The Man in the Black Mask.

Speaker 5 Our guy pretended he was going to invest in his movie making business.

Speaker 3 Somebody wants to give you $30,000, $35,000. come and meet me.
Yeah, come and meet me.

Speaker 4 The Man in the Black Mask is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Vince Serle is the producer.
Brian Drew, Deb Brown, and Marshall Hausfeld are audio editors. Justin Ratchford is field producer.

Speaker 4 Leslie Grossman is program coordinator. Adam Gorfane is co-executive producer.
Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

Speaker 4 From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau, Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

Speaker 2 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 6 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 3 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 2 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 5 We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 5 NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 3 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 4 NBC News, reporting for America.