The Mayerthorpe Story

by Robert Knuckle

  Roszko angrily told Josephine what was going on at his farm. She tried to calm his anger, but wasn’t very successful.

  Josephine says, “He said there were police everywhere. I wish I could have said something that could have made a difference. Maybe this [incident] wouldn’t have happened.”

  As enraged as he was, he realized the police would be on the lookout for his truck, and he had to hide it somewhere. The first place he thought of was his aunt Ann’s place near Cherhill. He wouldn’t ask her directly, but if he could get in touch with his mother, he knew she would ask on his behalf.

  However, there was a chance that his aunt might say no, so he definitely needed a backup plan.

  Another place that came to mind belonged to a guy he knew named Shawn Hennessey who worked in Barrhead but had told him he owned a few acres in the country.

  In the past few years, Roszko had come to realize that he had worn out his welcome in the Mayerthorpe area. He had no friends there and very few acquaintances he could trust or rely on. So he had turned away from Mayerthorpe and started hanging out in Barrhead, a community of 4,600 some forty-five minutes east of Mayerthorpe.

  Barrhead was another small farm town north of Edmonton. Typically, it had a lowlying profile. The tallest buildings did not exceed two storeys in height — with the exception, of course, of its antiquated grain elevator. But it had a thriving main street with one traffic light and not one big-box store to be seen anywhere.

  Unlike Mayerthorpe, Barrhead had a movie theatre that changed its feature presentation once a week and a twenty-four-hour IGA grocery store. It also had a Chev, Ford, and Dodge dealership and a couple of places where farmers could buy or trade a new tractor or other farm machinery. There was a busy industrial area by the fire station, a hospital, a red brick RCMP detachment office, and three schools that taught the children at various levels of education.

  There was also a good-sized tire store there called Kal Tire that Roszko liked to frequent. They sold and repaired all kinds of tires — for cars, trucks, tractors, loaders, graders, skidders.

  Roszko did business with them for his vehicles and liked to hang around there. From time to time, he would go into town and spend time talking to some of the guys in the shop.

  One of those guys was a twenty-five-year-old driver named Shawn Hennessey, who had become one of the few people in Roszko’s life that he seemed to genuinely like and trust. They didn’t hang around together or anything like that, but Roszko got to know him at Kal Tire and had him come out to his farm to install a stereo in his Camaro. Eventually their relationship included Shawn’s selling some of Roszko’s marijuana to the local youths.

  There is some dispute as to how much he sold. By Shawn’s own admission he did it “numerous times.” Shawn’s father, Barry, says it happened very infrequently where, on three occasions when he was younger, Shawn sold small amounts to some of the boys in town.

  Barry Hennessey was originally from Newfoundland. He had been a commercial deep-sea diver who toiled as an underwater oil patch worker in Aberdeen, Scotland, and South America. In his younger days, he had even worked on commission, diving down to the wreck of the SS Republic, which sank in 800 feet of water in 1903 off Nantucket with a treasure on board.

  After he married, Barry looked for work in Calgary and Halifax, and finally settled in Barrhead.

  Shawn was born in Calgary, but his formative years were spent in Barrhead, where he became an athletic, outdoorsy type who loved fishing, hunting, and boating with his grandfather John Hennessey. Shawn, like his father before him, was particularly talented when he was working with his hands. He could fix any kind of mechanical device or electrical equipment.

  His mom, Sandy, says Shawn was “shy and timid” as a young boy. He was a sensitive kid. On one occasion, Sandy had to go and speak to one of Shawn’s teachers and ask her not to speak to him too harshly.

  His dad says that in high school Shawn was a “pretty good” student who always passed successfully from one grade to another and had no difficulty in graduating from high school.

  In his off-hours, Shawn loved riding snowmobiles and driving vehicles of any kind. On one occasion he drove a car in a local Demolition Derby.

  He was a talented athlete who loved playing all sports, but took a particular interest in boxing. After joining the Brotherhood Boxing Club, he soon began competing in Golden Gloves Tournaments as a junior welterweight, where he won several awards.

  In 1999, Shawn was selected as Northern Alberta’s Athlete of the Year.

  Shawn and Christine Hennessey, June 6, 2008. (Rick MacWilliam/Edmonton Journal)

  As a young man, he was employed at local furniture and hardware stores and when he got older, left town to work at high-paying jobs on the big oil rigs in northern Alberta.

  In 2003, he married his high-school girlfriend Christine Cheeseman.

  They had their reception at a local hotel and most of the guests at the party claimed they were “a couple of great kids.” Others thought they were “a dream couple.”

  After they had two daughters together, Shawn resigned his lucrative job in the oil fields and took a job in town at Kal Tire to be closer to his wife and kids. His primary job was driving a service truck, but Shawn was hoping to eventually become an assistant manager.

  Shawn was well-liked in the community. Many people in town thought of him as “a nice quiet, dedicated family man.”

  Shawn, Christine, and their girls lived in a huge house on seven acres out in the country north of Barrhead. The home had belonged to Christine’s mother, but Shawn and his dad had assumed the mortgage a few years ago.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” Barry says. “It has over 3,000 square feet with four fireplaces in it.”

  Christine’s younger brother, Dennis, lived in a bedroom in the basement.

  Both Christine and Dennis Cheeseman had tough early lives. A drunk driver killed their father when Dennis was only two years old and the accident had crushed their mother so badly she never seemed quite the same again. Although she remarried, her new husband and Dennis didn’t have much of a relationship, and Christine played a major role in raising him.

  Although Dennis was four years younger than Shawn, when Christine started dating Shawn, the two men became friends.

  Dennis Cheesman, June 6, 2008. (Canadian Press)

  Christine says, “Shawn is Dennis’s hero. Shawn kind of became his dad, a male figure in his life he never had before.”

  While Shawn is well built and athletic looking, Dennis is slightly pudgy and appears to be less agile.

  Dennis lived his entire life in Barrhead and seldom went anywhere. He was an introverted boy who spent a lot of his time alone building models and reading comic books.

  One of his employers said, “He was reliable. He was hard-working. He was quite quiet. We didn’t know a lot about his life outside of work. Dennis is a lovely guy but he hasn’t been around much. He hasn’t seen much of life and consequently he’s kind of uncultured and has had few life experiences.”

  Christine, who loves him dearly, admits, “He is shy and naïve.”

  A local woman who knows him says, “He was very shy, very quiet … kind of an innocent kid.”

  Dennis knew James Roszko. He worked at his farm one time in the spring digging holes to plant some saplings. Dennis never said much about that experience, but he never went back to work there again.

  School was not something Dennis really enjoyed. He was a polite and cooperative student who was well liked by his teachers, but he dropped out of high school when he was sixteen.

  A year and half later, in 2001, he took a job at Sepallo Foods in Barrhead and eventually became a team leader in the plant.

  Sepallo is a company that processes wheat grass and other health products, and makes health food capsules.

  Dennis worked there as a spray dryer, operating equipment that processes grass products from liquid into powder.

  One of his managers says, “He was movi
ng his way up to a supervisor’s position.”

  Sepallo and two other health food companies listed in Barrhead are partly owned or operated by a man named Brad McNish.

  McNish was once a sergeant with the Calgary Police. But after developing Crohn’s Disease, he began to practise organic farming and ultimately discovered the healing properties of greens like barley and wheat grass.

  He left the police force, graduated in Agribusiness from the Harvard Business School, and eventually became a principal in the three Barrhead health food companies: Sepallo Foods, Stand Six, and Natural Farmworks.

  A passage from his Stand Six Web site states: “From humble beginnings of growing a few acres of green barley and wheat grass then harvesting and processing it by hand to becoming one of the largest producers of inorganic greens in North America has been an eventful and fun journey.”

  The text continues: “With our large state of the art manufacturing facility, my own farms, and a team of bright people working with me, Stand Six was born.”

  McNish doesn’t live in Barrhead. There are rumours that he owns a 2,500-acre farm in the area, but whether he lives there or not is unknown. There are also reports that he has returned to the Calgary Police service as a constable.

  One prominent Barrhead resident says, “He came to Barrhead in 2001. I understand he is a very nice guy. But very few people in town know him. He is not one to give up any information at all.”

  Barry Hennessey worked for Sepallo Foods as a maintenance man and says the company appears to be in trouble. He says it has laid off workers and has fewer employees now than when Dennis Cheeseman worked there.

  Barry claims he is owed a significant amount of back wages by Sepallo and plans to initiate a lawsuit against the company to get his money.

  The only reason that Brad McNish is mentioned at this point is that he will eventually play a very significant role in this story.

  Both Shawn and Dennis knew about Roszko’s scurrilous reputation and both of them feared his propensity for violence.

  Shawn was probably less frightened because he could handle Roszko physically while Dennis probably could not. But both of them knew he had access to weapons and seemed prepared to use them. So both of them were wary of what he might do if he were angered or pushed too far.

  As the afternoon of March 2 wore on, James Roszko was becoming desperate. His aunt was refusing to co-operate, and he needed Shawn Hennessey to let him park his truck in his secluded yard at his country house.

  The record of Roszko’s cell phone calls indicate that between 3:34 p.m. and 4:37 p.m., he phoned Kal Tire. He was told that Shawn was out on a service call.

  After that, Roszko made numerous calls to a “bag” phone that was registered with Kal Tire but assigned to Shawn when he was on the road making service calls.

  Roszko also made several calls to Shawn’s residence.

  He finally got through when Shawn was fixing a tractor tire at a farm north of Barrhead. Roszko explained that the police were swarming all over his farm and he didn’t want to lose his truck. He asked Shawn to let him leave it at his place.

  Shawn told him no, he didn’t want him to do that. Although he didn’t tell Roszko this, he must have thought that if Jimmy Roszko was in trouble for the dope growing in his Quonset, he didn’t want to be tied to him in any way.

  Even when Roszko persisted, Shawn made it clear that the answer was no. He wanted Jimmy to find another place to hide his truck.

  So Roszko called Kal Tire again and found out from one of the guys working there exactly where Shawn lived.

  At 5:24 p.m., Shawn used his “bag” phone to call Christine at home. He told her that Roszko had been calling him. He said, “Roszko wants to hide his truck on our property.”

  Christine says, “Shawn said he was trying to tell him no, but the phones kept cutting in and out.”

  Just then, Roszko took it upon himself to show up at the Hennesseys’ house when Christine and her two daughters were at home alone.

  “Shawn was telling me if Roszko shows up at the house to make sure that I tell him he can’t leave the truck there. And I was standing in the kitchen and said, ‘Well you know what — somebody’s here.’”

  Shawn asked, “What kind of vehicle is it?”

  “It’s a truck.”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know … it’s a white one.”

  “Well, that’s him. Okay, let me talk to him.”

  “I just stood there and waited for Roszko to come to my door. Then I handed him the phone and said, ‘Shawn wants to talk to you.’

  “And then I walked away.”

  The two men spoke briefly on the phone. The gist of their conversation was like before. Roszko pressed Shawn to let him park his truck on his property but Shawn held his ground, telling him he could not do that. So Roszko went away.

  At 8:00 p.m., Ann Chayka received a call from Stephanie Fifield. During their conversation, Chayka advised Stephanie that Jimmy had called again looking for her. Stephanie then told her that she could see a lot of activity at Jimmy’s place. She said there were a number of police cars there and others had come and gone.

  After Roszko left, Shawn Hennessey went looking for Dennis Cheeseman. He knew that Dennis had gone over to Jessie Zasiedko’s house to help him move. And that’s where he found him.

  Shawn took Dennis aside and told him he needed his help because there were RCMP officers at Roszko’s farm and the police were looking for Jimmy’s truck. Shawn said he was concerned because Roszko was insisting that he be allowed to park his pickup at Shawn’s place. He told Dennis they needed to help Roszko because he (Shawn) might be connected to Roszko’s grow-op that was being investigated.

  Dennis knew about Roszko’s marijuana grow operation but he was not involved in any way with it. Nevertheless, he understood why Shawn was concerned and promised he would get home as soon as he could.

  Roszko’s mother continued to watch James’s residence throughout the night. She could see vehicles driving in and out and assumed that they were police vehicles based on what she had seen in the daylight. She also saw the lights go on in Jimmy’s trailer.

  Between 8:13 p.m. and 11:55 p.m., Roszko made five phone calls to his mother’s place. From the first of those calls, he was aware that the police were there in significant numbers checking out his Quonset and his trailer. When he learned that a tow truck had arrived, he knew he was done for.

  His desperation was evident in one of his later calls when he told his mother that he had made out his will and said she should pray for him.

  That seems to be the point where he made up his mind that all was lost and he was ready to die before they caught him and sent him back to jail.

  Up until then, his mind had been in an escape mode. He had planned to hide his truck and play for time — somehow find a place to stay where the cops couldn’t find him and then decide what he was going to do next.

  Maybe he could get to Edmonton or Calgary and hide in the tangled maze of their crowded streets. Or run out of Alberta and avoid being detected in the anonymity of a big city in Saskatchewan or British Columbia. Maybe he could get someone to smuggle him across the border into the U.S., where he could play it smart and evade the American police.

  Although his thoughts would have been scrambled, his plans vague and imprecise — and most likely impossible — they were focused on escape.

  But now — from what he told his mother — he was prepared to stay and fight. And ready to die in the process.

  And once his mind was converted to this more aggressive attack mode, he would have started to conceive his suicidal plan. He was going to sneak back to his farm, surprise the Mounties that were there and kill as many of them as he possibly could … knowing full well he, too, would be killed in the violent encounter.

  At 10:30 p.m., Stephanie Fifield called Ann Chayka asking her to let Jimmy park his pickup truck on her property. Chayka did not comply with her request.

 
; After watching her driveway for a while, Ann Chayka phoned Stephanie to let her know that Jimmy had not shown up at her place with his truck and she was going to retire for the night.

  Shawn had driven straight home after speaking to Dennis at Jessie Zasiedko’s house. He and Christine had just gone to bed when Roszko pulled up in his truck at their house.

  Christine says, “I was laying in bed with my husband and I saw headlights.”

  Shawn hopped out of bed and said, “I’ll be right back.” He wasn’t terribly concerned. He says, “I didn’t think anything of it.”

  But when he answered the door, Roszko was standing there with a 9mm Beretta pistol in plain view, tucked into the front of his waistband.

  From this point on in the story, there are some actions by the principals that are in dispute. Some people contend that Roszko threatened Shawn by holding the Beretta to Hennessey’s head or his chin. Other evidence indicates the gun remained in Roszko’s waistband throughout the entire conversation between them.

  Roszko knew that Shawn was in possession of a high-powered .300 Winchester Magnum rifle. The rifle had been given to Shawn by his grandfather John Hennessey. And Roszko had borrowed it one time previously to hunt a bear that was being a nuisance on his farm property.

  As the two men were talking about the Winchester, Dennis Cheeseman pulled into the yard and came into the house. When he entered, he found Roszko and Shawn sitting at the kitchen table. Dennis knew his sister was home and seeing she had chosen to remain in the bedroom with her children, it was obvious she was avoiding Roszko.

  Court evidence states that it was clear to all present that Roszko was enraged at the police and made comments to the effect that he intended to return to his property and burn down the Quonset that contained the illegal marijuana grow and chop shop operation.

  In an interview on Fifth Estate, Shawn says it was Roszko’s plan to use the Winchester to blow up the gas tanks that were in his yard and thereby burn down the Quonset and all the incriminating evidence inside it.

  There is a possibility this might have worked, but it is very doubtful. The fuel tanks in Roszko’s yard were located about thirty yards from the Quonset, and it is difficult to comprehend how he could imagine that exploding them would somehow ignite the Quonset. Furthermore, the Quonset is a steel structure, and it’s equally difficult to understand how anyone or anything could burn it to the ground.