Amateur filmmaker arrested for murder he wrote in screenplay

By Sarah Sluis

For all the borrowing that goes on between real life and fiction, occasionally people step over the line.  Severely.  After writing a screenplay called House of Cards about a man who posed as a woman online and then lured his dates to their death by arranging to meet them in person, the man, Mark Andrew Twitchell, allegedly went out and committed the crime.  Police seized the screenplay, which had already been the subject of a dubious "work now, maybe get paid later" Facebook casting call, and possibly was in the midst of shooting:

"I'm casting all of these roles personally so just contact me through facebook to start the process. We're short on time so the sooner the better.

Roles are non paid for House of Cards but we are working on a $3M feature right after this with major A-list talent and I remember things like work ethic and true acting chops when considering roles for that too."

As he wrote in the screenplay, Twitchell reportedly hacked into the e-mail account of the victim and sent a message saying he had left town to go on a tropical vacation.  More details involving the method of the killing and disposal of the body also match up to the screenplay.

The screenplay itself was inspired by the television show "Dexter," about a vigilante serial killer.  Adding another twist to the sordid tale, the man who was killed was apparently his second target.  A first man, attacked while wearing a mask, escaped and did not report the incident--perhaps out of embarrassment for his involvement in online dating?  The "Dexter"-inspired screenplay was not the first of Twitchell's rip-offs: he helmed an unauthorized, 60k "fan film" featuring Star Wars characters a few years ago.

The odd things is, I could imagine the Twitchell story itself being turned into a movie: a film about a
man who makes a film about murder, then commits it.  With this idea in mind, I was reminded of the 1960 Michael Powell film Peeping Tom, a creepy and self-implicating movie about a man (a member of a film crew) who films the murders of his victims.  He gets a voyeuristic thrill out of watching and re-watching his victims' deaths.  The problem is, you're watching his secret films too, and enjoying (or tolerating) them, putting you in the same camp as the twisted serial killer.  If you hate the killer, you must address your own love for the suspense and thrill of his actions.  Twitchell has already been brought into custody, but the bizarre events put a shivering reverse on the oft-heard "based on a true story."

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