Those who knew Johnny Altinger testified during the first-degree murder trial of Mark Twitchell that they were concerned their friend was meeting women for sex from a dating website back in 2008.

Twitchell is charged with first-degree murder in the alleged life-imitates-art murder of Altinger. Investigators accuse the independent film producer of acting out his own film-script storyline.

Altinger mysteriously vanished on Oct. 10. The Crown alleges after several months after Altinger's disappearance, partial skeletal remains of Altinger were found in a city sewer.

Altinger's friends testified they did not believe him when he stated in an e-mail he had hit it off with a woman and was heading to Costa Rica. His friends had their suspicions and reported missing. They told the court they also found his passport at his apartment.

The court heard how other e-mails were sent to Altinger's friends allegedly from Altinger where it stated he was enjoying life on a tropical beach, but that he could not call because phone lines were bad. One of the notes went to a woman who barely knew Altinger. Following that, the e-mails stopped coming.

In 2008, Twitchell was making a movie called House of Cards. The court heard the script, which includes a role played by Chris Heward. In the script, Heward's character steps out on his wife to hook up with a woman from a dating website. The character ends up dead when the liaison he hooks up with is actually a twisted scriptwriter who extorts money and fatally stabs him with a samurai sword.

"It was a different experience, not something I expected to have. I just got into this because I've been studying to be an actor and a comedian and this was never anything I expected," said Heward.

Police allege Twitchell posed as a woman and lured Altinger to the same movie set where they say he killed and dismembered him.

The two men who helped build props for the film testified Twitchell encouraged them not to talk to police once the investigation got underway.

One of the men testified he got an e-mail from Twitchell on October 23, 2008, asking him and others involved in the film not to talk to police, saying it was their right not to talk to detectives.

In the e-mail one man alleges Twitchell stated to tell police to "pound salt" and wrote "if they want you to come in for a statement, politely refuse."

Both men testified they were asked by Twitchell to make props for the film, a film that his ex-wife testified as being a horror movie, and mirrored the marital problems the couple was having at the time.

The men said they were asked to build a special table with a metal top and a chair that had the capability of being bolted to the floor for the movie.

The jury was shown drawings of the table and chair, as well as pictures of the props located at a south-side garage, where it is alleged the movie was filmed and where the Crown alleges Twitchell lured Altinger and killed him.

His ex-wife, Jess Twitchell, testified Monday morning that police came to her home in 2008 telling her they thought her husband had killed someone.

Jess was emotional on the stand and started to cry when she was shown a picture of the home the couple had once shared.

She also choked back tears when telling the court about the daughter the couple had during their two-year marriage.

The court heard the couple had met online in 2005 on the website plentyoffish.com, the same website the Crown alleges Twitchell lured Altinger through.

Jess testified in 2008, they were having some martial problems.

"We were living pretty separate lives," she said.

She told the court she divorced Mark late last year and hasn't seen him since police searched their home on October 20th, 2008.

"The police came to our house and said they thought that Mark had killed someone."

She testified that Mark was seeing a psychiatrist on Friday nights at that time, and said she believed that's where he was on the evening of October 10th.

Jess said she called her husband to find out why he wasn't home yet from his counselling session.

She said he told her he was at the gym. But when she said knew the gym was already closed at that time, he told her he was at a different gym that night.

With files from David Ewasuk