Dateline presents: The Man in the Black Mask
06:21 Share

Hello, I'm Keith Morrison from Dateline NBC. Here's a special preview of our new podcast, The Man in the Black Mask. It was a happy habit, the evening walk, the summer habit, of course. Too soon now that crisp bite in the air would turn bitter cold, but not yet.

That day, Friday, October 3rd, had been uncommonly warm for Edmonton, and twilight seemed to linger as they ambled along the path that wound its way through their neighborhood. It was a good neighborhood. Safe, established. Not quite grand, but not modest either. So they wandered, the two of them, and listened to parents calling in kids from the park. Almost dark now. There!

Out of nowhere, there it was, sudden, shocking, terrifying. I have never in my life felt fear like that. That is Marissa Grohine, remembering the young man who stumbled out of an alley and collapsed at their feet. Came right across our path, just kind of fell in front of us. So stumbling along, yes. Marissa's partner, Trevor Hossinger, was alarmed too, but something about it seemed off somehow.

And to me, that didn't look real. It looked like it was staged. And what was he doing or saying or how was he behaving? He looked at me and said, I'm being robbed. Can you help me? 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. And then, as if on cue, another man appeared, seemingly in pursuit. And then as...

I looked up. The attacker almost actually ran into me. Attacker? Looked that way, at least. Whoever it was was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and

A hockey mask, just like the serial killer Jason in all those Friday the 13th movies. It's like every nightmare you had as a child after watching a scary movie. Sure. Every nightmare you've ever had, all of a sudden it's right here. Like this masked guy is standing there. And then, said Marissa, the masked man did something quite unexpected. Well, he, the guy in the mask, was pretending that they were friends, that...

Those two were friends. Pretending? Maybe they really were friends. Because the way that he fell, to me, looked staged. To get us to stop so that they could rob us. Yeah, we thought it was a setup for us. Now convinced this was some sort of choreographed mugging, Marissa took off, running. I was like, I'm getting out of here right now. I was so scared. I was so scared. And I just, I needed to get out of here.

But not Trevor. He stayed behind, still not quite sure if the man lying at his feet begging for help was in need of saving or out to do him harm. So you didn't know whether he was going to assault you. Exactly. Or whether he was running from that guy for real. Exactly. Exactly.

My response was to run and get the hell out of here. His response was, what's going on here? I need to figure out what's going on. She was down the block. I was freaking out on him. I was yelling at him. I was screaming at him. And I was so mad at him. And I was screaming like high pitched, Trevor, Trevor. Like, cause he kept trying to figure out what was going on. Trevor, what were you trying to do? Why are you trying to be a hero? You're trying to be a hero. And I was like, I just wanted to go. Yeah.

Trevor said the man in the hockey mask then calmly walked away and disappeared back into the alley from which he came. But not the man lying on the path. He stayed right where he was. What in the world was going on? Trevor was done trying to solve this mystery and ran after Marissa, leaving the man on the path behind, still pleading for help.

Rather like a seasoned method actor, like it was an episode of The Twilight Zone. Trevor and Marissa got home quick as they could and called the police, telling them about the man in the mask and the guy begging for help. We said, well, we think we're getting robbed. Like that's how we had described it was we thought we were going to be robbed. And so where could they go from that? It was a weird situation.

A report was taken. Squad cars prowled the streets and alleys nearby, though by then it was too dark to see much of anything. And then they sniffed around and that was that. Didn't find anything. And no victim ever came forward. No one ever reported to police that they had been assaulted in a quiet neighborhood by a man in a hockey mask.

I still have nightmares about that mask. So, was this some sort of staged robbery attempt? Or someone's idea of a sick prank? I really thought that at the end of this thing, he just laughs his way all the way to the bank on it. At the end of the day, it's a big publicity thing for him. Or was it something else altogether? Did you feel sometimes like you were in the middle of, you know, Alice in Wonderland or The Matrix or something? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline's newest podcast, The Man in the Black Mask. Thank you for listening. Search for The Man in the Black Mask to hear the full episode now, completely free. Or subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to get early access to new episodes and to listen ad-free.