The Mayerthorpe Story

by Robert Knuckle

  And all three of them knew the place was crawling with police. For Roszko to start shooting at gas tanks would have brought an immediate return of gunfire. Besides that, if Roszko had managed to start a fire by puncturing the fuel tanks, the police would have immediately called firefighters to contain the blaze. And the fire trucks would have been at the farm in a matter of minutes.

  If it was Roszko’s idea to burn down the Quonset, it was a misconstrued plan that was assuredly doomed to failure.

  But it is understandable that Shawn would want the Quonset burnt down. If that were to happen, all the evidence that might incriminate his involvement with the marijuana grow would be gone.

  No matter, Roszko demanded he be given the Winchester. Shawn went and got it and before he handed it over, wiped it down. Some interpret this action as an indication that Shawn didn’t want his fingerprints on it. Others think it was just a matter of Shawn wiping off the dust and dirt that had accumulated on the gun with its lack of use. Shawn also gave Roszko a box of ammunition to use with the rifle.

  And Cheeseman took it upon himself to go downstairs and retrieve a white pillowcase and a pair of gloves. Dennis put on the gloves and inserted the Winchester rifle into the pillowcase. This was supposedly done for ease of transporting it.

  Then Roszko demanded that Shawn follow him to his aunt’s place in Cherhill. His plan was to hide his truck there and then have Shawn drive him back to a place near his mother’s home on Range Road 80.

  Feeling he had little choice, Shawn agreed to do it and asked Dennis to come along for support and comfort.

  Whether Roszko’s demand was clearly and menacingly enforced by his threat of using his gun is debatable. However, whether he pointed the gun or he didn’t, it does appear that he alluded to it in some fashion and, in so doing, intimidated them into accompanying him on his travels that night.

  The much bigger issue is whether or not Hennessey and Cheeseman knew that an armed confrontation with the police was a real possibility and concomitantly realized the situation was clearly heading for very serious, violent, trouble.

  In any case, the three of them went out to their vehicles. Roszko got into his pickup; Shawn and Dennis climbed into Hennessey’s Dodge Neon. Roszko led the way, and Shawn followed as they headed south for Ann Chayka’s house in Cherhill.

  When they arrived at her place, Roszko pulled into her driveway. Hennessey pulled over on the side of the highway and waited while Roszko parked deeper in the yard.

  While Roszko was out of the car, Shawn and Dennis discussed taking off and leaving Roszko to his own devices. But their fear of Roszko’s violence and his vindictive thirst for revenge overweighed their longing to flee.

  So they waited.

  How different their lives might be today if they had acted on their inclination to run.

  It wasn’t very long before Roszko appeared on the highway carrying the Winchester and the ammunition with the Beretta tucked into the front of his waistband.

  Roszko ordered Dennis to get into the back seat. Then he put the Winchester, wrapped in its pillowcase, on the floor of the back seat beside Dennis. Then he climbed into the passenger seat and told Shawn to drive.

  Traversing the country roads, they headed for Roszko’s mother’s place.

  The court papers state that Cheeseman said that during the trip he and Shawn remained quiet and did not converse with Roszko. Meanwhile, Roszko was ranting and complaining about the RCMP and threatening to get even with them. Roszko indicated he was going to burn down the Quonset. Cheeseman described Roszko’s ravings as “devil talk.”

  Barry Hennessey differs with this. He says his son told him that en route Roszko was pensive and withdrawn. And what little he had to say was so quiet that, Dennis, sitting in the back seat of the noisy old Dodge Neon, didn’t hear.

  When they got close to Roszko’s road, Roszko made Shawn drive past it to Range Road 80, where his mother lived. Then he directed Hennessey to drive past his mother’s driveway. Shawn says they were about one hundred yards from her driveway when he let Roszko out.

  “You could see the end of her driveway,” is the way Shawn describes the location.

  Court documents state that Shawn and Dennis could see the lights from police cars on James Roszko’s property. Shawn disagrees, claiming he only saw the lights of one police cruiser. The disparity in these two statements is dealt with later in chapter nine.

  When Roszko got out of Hennessey’s car, he pulled socks on over the boots he was wearing. This was done to muffle his footsteps in the snow as he approached the Quonset. He then pulled the Winchester off the floor of the back seat. Armed with the rifle, his Beretta, and a box of .300-calibre bullets, he left them and started heading towards the police at his Quonset.

  According to court documents, the time was estimated to be between one a.m. and three a.m. Barry says his son told him he thought it was between one a.m. and two a.m.

  As soon as Roszko got out of the car, Shawn and Dennis departed and drove directly home. Along the way, Cheeseman suggested that they should call the police and warn them about Roszko. Shawn discouraged this idea. He felt if they did that and Roszko were to then evade the police, he would end up coming after them intent on revenge.

  So in those early morning hours of March 3, 2005, these two men watched an enraged, heavily armed James Roszko leave them. He went with socks over his shoes to muffle his approach on a number of unsuspecting policemen who were performing their duty at a crime scene filled with marijuana plants and stolen vehicles.

  And their only reason for not warning the police was their fear of a possible reprisal by this lunatic.

  The scenario that unfolded that early morning brings up a number of interesting issues.

  First of all, when Roszko was found later, he had in his possession the following items:

  1.TheWinchester rifle

  2.The Beretta handgun

  3.A pair of socks

  4.A semi-automatic assault Heckler-Koch rifle

  5.A white sheet that he used for camouflage

  6.A can of bear spray

  7.A plastic bottle of water

  When he left Hennessey and Cheeseman on the road that fateful morning he had items one to three with him. Where did he get items four to seven?

  Jim Guiry, a Professional Engineer who worked for several years as a land surveyor, was made familiar with a drawing of the three-quarter section of land on which James Roszko lived. Because a section of land equals one square mile, it measures 1,760 yards by 1,760 yards. Thus, the length of a diagonal across this area can be geometrically calculated rather accurately.

  Guiry estimates the overland distance from the place on Range Road 80, where Roszko got out of Hennessey’s car, to his Quonset hut on Range Road 75 is slightly more than one mile.

  An average healthy person walking steadily can travel three miles in an hour. Even if Roszko crawled, crept, and slithered his way from brush patch to brush patch, he should have been able to cover the distance in two hours.

  Shawn Hennessey claims they left Roszko off on Range Road 80 between one and two o’clock in the morning. Using Shawn’s latest estimated time, Roszko would have about five and a half hours before the sun rose that morning at approximately seven-twenty a.m.

  This means Roszko had approximately three and a half hours to spare to get himself to the Quonset before sunrise.

  Where did he spend those hours? Huddled out in the field with the wind blowing and the temperature near zero?

  Where did he get the white sheet to help him sneak up on the police without being detected?

  Where did he get the bear spray and the bottle of water?

  Wouldn’t he have been hungry? It seems the only bit of food he had all day was a bowl of soup at Shawn Hennessey’s place.

  As one investigative reporter has commented, “He would have had many needs during the course of that long night.”

  Later that morning, just before dawn, Dennis Cheeseman left
for his job at Sepallo Foods in Barrhead.

  Sometime between seven a.m. and eight a.m., Shawn Hennessey showed up for a Kal Tire meeting at the Mayfield Inn in Edmonton.

  When Ann Chayka woke up in Cherhill, she saw that Jimmy, against her wishes, had parked his white pickup truck at the far end of her driveway.

  As the new day began, no one across the broad expanse of beautiful Alberta could have suspected that this would soon turn out to be one of the ugliest days in the history of the province.

  5 | Thursday Morning

  IT WAS CLOSE TO TWO in the morning when Julie Letal, Clayton Seguin, and Brock Myrol were released from their duties and left the Quonset hut.

  And in all likelihood, James Roszko watched them leave. He had a good view of his barn from Range Road 80. From there, he dashed from one stand of brush to another. When he came to open areas, he crawled and crept his way uphill among the dips and hollows of the fields, carefully working his way towards his Quonset hut. He would have seen several uniformed Mounties get in the cars and drive away, but would not have been able to identify them.

  It seems clear what his intentions were. He was scorned and laughed at by a lot of people in the area. Some of his own family had turned against him. Now he was going to lose his truck. That’s why the bailiffs had come. But worst of all, as soon as the cops got into his barn and saw the marijuana plants, he knew they were going to send him back to prison for trafficking. And the chop shop would be added on top of that.

  He was afraid he would be going to jail for a long stretch this time. He hated it there. And he hated the police.

  In his twisted mind, it was all the Mounties’ fault. They had harassed him for years over every little thing … speeding tickets, no seat belt, tinted windows on his truck. He’d always wanted to get back at them … give some of their own grief right back. This was his time to do it. It was now or never. He had nothing more to lose. He was going to kill as many of them as he could.

  All he had to do was get close to them without being seen. But even if the police spotted him, he was ready for them. Even if they came out after him, he had Hennessey’s Winchester rifle loaded and ready. And if they got close to him and tried to jump him, he had the Beretta in his waistband.

  It was a long way from the Range Road to his Quonset, but he could cover that distance easily. There was a half moon to guide him, and he knew the terrain very well. And the weather was in his favour. During the day, the temperature had approached double digits and it would barely dip below zero overnight.

  For the first part of the trek, he could run and walk upright and never be seen. As he got closer, there were large patches of poplar and willow bush that would hide him. When he darted from one patch to the other, he would have to be more careful. And when he got closer to the Quonset, he knew there were two big patches of brush that would help conceal him.

  He would have to creep and crawl from the last stand of brush to the Quonset, but that was a long way off, and he was confident he could do that without being seen.

  For now, he had to keep walking and crawling to make sure he arrived at his Quonset before daylight.

  When Brock Myrol got home, it was close to two-thirty a.m. Anjila was waiting for him at the door and was relieved to see him.

  “God, I can’t stand the smell,” he said, referring to the skunky odour from Roszko’s Quonset hut that clung to his clothes. “I have to take a shower right away.”

  “Was the guy there that owns the place?”

  “No, he was gone … early in the afternoon.”

  “Do you think he’s coming back?”

  “No,” Brock said with conviction. “He has no reason to.”

  Then he was off to take his shower and get some sleep.

  Out at Roszko’s farm, Cpl. Jim Martin had put in a phone call to Sgt. Tom Pickard, the NCO in command of the Whitecourt Detachment. The purpose of his call was to explain to Tom that his Mayerthorpe members were exhausted and to ask Tom if he would send one of his constables out to guard the evidence in the Quonset overnight.

  Pickard said he would be glad to help and would make the necessary arrangements. He had Cst. Barry Baskerville phone Cst. Tony Gordon at home.

  Baskerville told Tony that the Mayerthorpe Detachment needed assistance with a surveillance project on a farm near Rochfort Bridge. He asked Tony if he would be willing to work some overtime on his last day off.

  Tony, who was always willing to work, agreed to come in and do it.

  Baskerville told him to get dressed and come to the detachment office and get further instructions about the surveillance job. He could also pick up a cruiser to drive out there.

  Tony put on his police gear and, before he left the apartment, looked in on Kim. Seeing that she was sleeping, Anthony flashed the overhead light on and off a few times.

  Kim opened her eyes and saw him standing in silhouette, outlined by the hall light behind him.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, half asleep.

  “I’m going out to do surveillance on a place.”

  “Okay,” Kim replied.

  “See you in eight hours,” Anthony said.

  “Okay.”

  Anthony put on his bulletproof vest, quietly left the house, and headed for the Whitecourt Detachment.

  The image of his silhouette at the door still lingers in Kim’s imagination to this day.

  Leo and Kelly Johnston had a similar experience.

  Leo had come to bed after midnight because he had been chatting with his brother Lee in Surrey, British Columbia, for a half hour or so on their MSN Messenger computer service. This was something they did every day — either by phone or on their computers.

  Lee recalls, “We didn’t talk about anything special … just brother talk … like we did all the time.”

  Just before three o’clock Thursday morning on March 3, Leo was awakened by a phone call from the detachment office that gave him some detailed instructions about leaving immediately to carry out a surveillance assignment at a farm out in the county near Rochfort Bridge. A member was going to bring over the detachment pickup so that Leo could take the truck and “go sit on this shed for the night.”

  Leo clearly understood the details of the assignment: He was to drive out to a farm owned by James Roszko on Range Road 75, secure the scene, and make sure nobody touched or altered the evidence in Roszko’s Quonset hut. He was told that two members from the Edmonton Auto Theft Unit would be out to search the farm around nine a.m.

  Leo was also advised he would be joined on this surveillance job by Tony Gordon, a member who was heading out there from the Whitecourt Detachment.

  That suited Leo fine. He knew Tony pretty well and looked forward to seeing him again.

  Leo got dressed quickly and prepared to leave the house.

  Before he went out the door, Kelly gave him a kiss and said to him, “I love you, handsome. Be safe.”

  “I love you, beautiful,” Leo replied. “I’ll see you when I get home.”

  And with those few final words, he was off into the night.

  It was about three-thirty a.m. when Leo Johnston and Tony Gordon got to the farm. By then, only Jim Martin and Cindie Dennis were still on the property.

  Leo was to replace Cindie for the overnight security watch. He was armed with his 9mm service pistol and had a loaded detachment .308 calibre rifle in his vehicle. Tony was also armed and had a loaded detachment 12-gauge shotgun in his cruiser. Both were wearing their soft body armour and their full RCMP uniforms.

  Jim Martin greeted them and gave them a brief summary of what had been found on the property. He told them that Roszko had fled the scene yesterday afternoon, and, although there had been a couple of sightings of him on the nearby roads, as yet he hadn’t been apprehended.

  He repeated the information that the Auto Theft specialists from Edmonton would be out first thing in the morning to go over the articles in the Quonset. And Brock Myrol would be out to relieve them at that time, t
oo.

  Before Jim left, he told both Leo and Tony to position their vehicles in such a way that they could observe the site in all directions.

  “Right now, I’m bushed. I’m going home to get a couple of hours’ sleep. I’ll see you guys tomorrow morning.”

  After Martin left, Cindie stayed only a few minutes longer. She was the last member to leave the crime scene that early morning.

  Martin got home around four o’clock and kept his PC at his house because he figured he would be going straight back to Roszko’s place around nine in the morning.

  Meanwhile, Tony and Leo took up their posts on the farm. They parked their vehicles on the southeast side of the Quonset hut in such a manner that they were able to see both the front doors of the barn and Roszko’s trailer, which was about eighty yards to the south.

  Their responsibility was to make sure no one entered the Quonset hut and touched anything inside. In this type of surveillance work, they had been trained to maintain the scene and regularly walk the perimeter.

  As they walked around the outside of the Quonset, they would have checked both outside the hut and inside the large, open door at the front of the Quonset.

  Kelly Johnston says, “I have no doubt that Leo was diligent and focused on that assignment. When Leo went to work, he went to work. He always had his game face on.”

  Tony Gordon was equally diligent and careful in performing his police duties.

  It was a matter of professional pride for the two of them.

  Both Leo and Tony were aware that this was going to be a long night. One thing they could be thankful for was the fact that it wasn’t horribly cold. Although the temperature hovered around zero, the wind was moderate, which helped make their time out in the open more tolerable. They knew the weather could have been an awful lot worse.

  There was a light on inside the Quonset, but outside the building the night was pitch black, with little reflection from the snow in the fields. At that particular time, the land was only lightly covered with a thin layer of snow that mostly gathered in the dips and hollows. On the crest of the hills there was hardly any snow at all.