The Mayerthorpe Story

by Robert Knuckle

  We will probably never know the answer to those two questions.

  What we do know is that James Roszko did not have the Heckler and Koch rifle with him when Shawn Hennessey let him off some seven hours earlier on Range Road 80.

  At 9:30 a.m., Schiemann and Myrol pulled into Roszko’s yard and parked their car beside Leo’s and Tony’s vehicles at the southeast end of the Quonset hut.

  After a brief exchange of hellos, Peter told Leo and Tony he had brought some sedated meat to give to the dogs.

  The two curs were still trapped in the old granary shed at the west end of the Quonset. Part of the roof on the shed had some boards missing and it was through that gap that they intended to feed the meat to the animals.

  They got a ladder, propped it up against the shed, and threw the meat down to the two snarling beasts below who tore into the flesh like ravenous predators.

  Out on Highway#18, Vigor and Hoogestraat were having a little trouble finding Range Road 75.

  “We missed the sign and drove a little ways past it before Garret told me to stop and back up.”

  When they got squared around, it was a short trip down the Range Road to Roszko’s lane.

  While the four Mounties were tending to the dogs, Roszko had taken up a position in the Quonset behind some large white plastic casks that had been used to water the marijuana plants. These casks were just inside the southeast corner of the hut a few feet inside the human door.

  The four at the dog shed had just finished feeding the dogs when Vigor and Hoogestraat pulled into Roszko’s laneway. Steve could see all four standing beside the old shed as he steered his way through the yard towards them. He ended up parking his Yukon parallel to the Quonset at its southwest corner. The dog’s granary shed was only a few yards away.

  Hoogestraat climbed out of the vehicle and went behind it to get his coveralls out of the back section. Vigor remained behind the wheel making some investigation notes. His first annotation indicated their arrival time was 9:56 a.m.

  As Hoogestraat was pulling on his coveralls, the four Mounties left the dogs and came towards him. Hoogestraat chatted briefly with all of them, but the one he knew best was Tony Gordon. They had worked on a previous project together. Garret asked him about the crime scene. He wanted to know how big the property was and asked for a layout of the search site.

  Tony pointed out the property lines and told him the main search area was in the Quonset, but there was a piece of a vehicle under a blue tarp behind the steel hut.

  Garret walked with Tony about halfway along the length of the Quonset and had every intention of going inside the building with the other four, but at the last minute changed his mind.

  “I have to go back and get a couple of tools,” Garret said to Tony. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

  And with that the two parted. Tony joined the other three as they headed for the front of the hut; Garret went back to the Yukon to get his tools.

  In reflection, Hoogestraat says, “I guess that was the luckiest decision of my life.”

  As the four disappeared around the corner of the hut, Garret was gathering a scraper and a couple of other tools from the back of the Yukon. Steve was still behind the wheel, writing.

  Garret says, “Then I heard two loud cracking sounds like metal hitting on metal.”

  Steve says, “Initially, I didn’t realize what the loud bangs were. It sounded like someone had hit the inside of the Quonset wall with something heavy. Then, in a very brief period of time following those two bangs, there was a series of more bangs … between twelve and fifteen that I recollect. And I heard someone screaming in pain.”

  When Vigor and Hoogestraat heard the multiple bangs, they both realized the sounds were gunshots. They immediately began to run the length of the building toward the big main door.

  On the run, Vigor pulled out his weapon and when he got about halfway along the building, he yelled, “Garret, get back to the car and call in backup. We probably have officers down. “

  Hoogestraat turned and ran back to the Yukon Suburban, grabbed his cell phone, and dialed 911. When he got Edmonton telecom, he yelled, “Officer down! Officer down! Request backup. Shots fired. Officer down!”

  As Vigor ran past the three police vehicles (Gordon’s, Johnston’s, and Schiemann’s) parked at the east end of the Quonset, he saw a small man emerge from the building with some articles in his hands.

  “A male suspect exited the Quonset hut. He was about thirty-five feet away. He was carrying a long-barrelled weapon in his hands, a semi-automatic rifle. There was another long-barrelled weapon over his shoulder.

  “He turned and had a surprised look on his face. He obviously didn’t think there were more officers outside.”

  No words were exchanged between them.

  “I had never seen James Roszko before, but somehow I knew it was him.”

  6 | Officer Down!

  AS SOON AS TOM PICKARD at Whitecourt Detachment heard the alert “Officer Down! Officer Down!” he determined that the location of the problem was at Roszko’s farm. Then he contacted Superintendent Marty Cheliak, the commander of the RCMP’S Western Alberta District. At that time, Cheliak was on an assignment in Grande Prairie, Alberta. When he received Pickard’s alert, he, in turn, immediately phoned Assistant Commissioner Bill Sweeney, the commanding officer of “K” Division, to advise him of the situation. Sweeney notified Chief Superintendent Rod Knecht, the officer in charge of Criminal Operations.

  Throughout the morning — as Cheliak sped for Rochfort Bridge — he received constant updates from Pickard and passed them on to Sweeney and Knecht in Edmonton.

  It would be one p.m. before Cheliak arrived at the command post on Range Road 75. “By then,” he says, “I suspected the worst. My heart so badly wanted those four members to be alive, but my mind told me that … that it probably wasn’t so.”

  When Clayton Seguin heard the first call of “Officer Down!” on his radio, he was in the courtroom on the Alexis Reserve waiting to testify.

  “My radio was on, but out there the reception is terrible. So I was getting a lot of static and bits and pieces of what the dispatcher was saying.”

  But it very quickly became clear to Clayton that there was a major incident occurring where one of their members had been shot.

  “I yelled to Julie Letal that we had to get out of there and get going.”

  They ran out of the building and jumped in their PC. By then they knew the location was Roszko’s farm. Seguin drove as fast as he could to get there.

  Rev. Arnold Lotholz, the minister of the Pentecostal Assembly Church, is an electrical contractor. In 2005, he also held the position of being the Director of Emergency Management for the Mayerthorpe community.

  “It was my responsibility to lead the town and help them get through times of crisis and disaster.”

  On that Thursday morning, he was doing some electrical work at the Mayerthorpe Detachment office.

  “Around ten a.m., I noticed the members moving about rather quickly, and pretty soon they had all vacated the building. Then I saw Margaret Thibault, the Victims’ Service Coordinator, preparing to leave the building. She was the one who told me there was an officer down.

  “And at that moment my role changed.”

  The first thing that Arnold did was to call his church prayer line, a network that’s used to get people praying for various causes. Then, because he knew that all of Mayerthorpe’s volunteer fire brigade would respond to the Officer Down emergency, he phoned the Lac Ste. Anne county office and asked Jeremy Wagner to have his firefighting unit cover for the town’s brigade.

  Then he declared a Level Two emergency for the town of Mayerthorpe.

  Pastor Wendell Wiebe, the chaplain of Mayerthorpe’s volunteer fire brigade, was in the shower when he heard his pager go off. When he checked it, the pager indicated an alert that there was an “officer down” near Rochfort Bridge.

  “Because the fire hall was so far away, I ran over to t
he Uptown Auto Garage whose owner, Tom Eichhorn, was also the town’s deputy fire chief. He drove me over to the fire hall and we climbed aboard the rescue vehicle and headed for Range Road 75.

  Dr. Kyle, the veterinarian, didn’t hear a radio call or any other alert but, when he saw an ambulance and several police cars go roaring past his clinic, he knew that something serious had happened somewhere.

  The mayor of Mayerthorpe, Albert Schalm, was working at his “day job” on a huge cattle farm south of town. His boss owned five and a half sections of land — well over three thousand acres. And every year in early spring, Albert was busy helping 400 new calves come into the world.

  Normally Albert would have had the radio on in his pickup truck or in the barn, but this particular morning he didn’t. Sometime between ten and eleven, his wife, Janet, phoned him and said, “There’s an incident happening with the RCMP. There’s a possibility that one officer has been shot.”

  Albert was very concerned about the situation, but decided to stay working at the farm until he received more definite news.

  Later in the morning, he phoned the town office, and the secretary, Candi Graumann, told him a lot of media were milling about the town hall asking the staff for answers about the RCMP incident. Arnold told her he was on his way home for lunch and would check into the office for an update.

  The incident was beginning to sound serious to him.

  In fact, it was very serious.

  Reconstruction of the crime scene told a grim tale of what had happened that morning inside the Quonset hut.

  Schiemann, Myrol, Gordon, and Johnston had rounded the southeast corner of the Quonset together. Brock Myrol went inside and headed towards the back where the two makeshift marijuana sheds were located. Schiemann and Johnston followed Myrol inside and went about halfway into the building. Anthony Gordon remained outside standing in the middle of the big doors.

  Inside the hut, Roszko waited until he thought the time was right and then opened fire with his semi-automatic weapon. The Heckler and Koch rifle spit out large-calibre bullets with the same rapidity as a machine gun.

  His first target was Tony Gordon, whom he killed with two shots to the torso. Then he fired repeatedly at Johnston and Schiemann. Peter was unarmed and defenceless. Leo got his gun out and, although badly wounded, fired one round from a prone position that ricocheted off the butt plate of the Beretta pistol in Roszko’s waistband. Tragically, that was the only shot he got off. The slide on Leo’s gun got caught in his clothing and failed to properly eject the shell casing of the first bullet he fired. Consequently, his gun jammed.

  Both he and Peter were felled by multiple wounds to the upper body.

  The three Mounties were killed within a matter of seconds.

  While Roszko was firing at them, Brock Myrol made a valiant attempt to get out the back human door, but it was locked from the outside. When he realized this, he tried to lunge for cover behind the frame of one of the marijuana sheds. As he was diving, Roszko hit him with a shot to the head. He also had a superficial gunshot wound that grazed his left hip.

  It is estimated that the total elapsed time for the murder of these four men was less than fifteen seconds.

  Roszko’s semi-automatic rifle held a clip of twenty rounds. Nineteen spent shell casings were found scattered inside the Quonset hut.

  Then, after killing the four young policemen, Roszko went outside to take a look around.

  As he emerged from the building, he immediately saw Steve Vigor moving towards him with his gun drawn.

  Steve says, “I could tell he was surprised to see me. But he recovered very quickly. In a split second, he raised his automatic weapon and fired two shots in my direction.”

  One of the shots missed Vigor by inches, shattering the mirror of the police car beside him. The other shot blew out the window of the cruiser.

  “When a situation like this arises, your senses seem to shut down and adrenalin and instinct take over. You concentrate on the target. It’s all a blur to me now but I know I didn’t hear the shots from his gun. But I saw the flashes from its muzzle.

  “By instinct I went into a crouch and got off two two-handed shots. I thought I hit him but I couldn’t be sure. I saw him stumble back into the Quonset hut.”

  Hoogestraat says, “It all happened so fast that I didn’t even see the gunfight between Steve and Roszko. Steve thought he’d hit him, but he wasn’t sure, because Roszko went back inside on his own steam.”

  Later they learned that Vigor had hit him in the hand and in the thigh.

  When Roszko went back inside the Quonset, Vigor called for Hoogestraat to drive their large Yukon vehicle to the east end of the building so they could use it as cover in a location where they could keep a watch on the Quonset’s front door.

  Leo Johnston, photo taken April 2001.

  Brock Myrol, photo taken February 1, 2005.

  Anthony Gordon, photo taken October 2002.

  Peter Schiemann, photo taken November 22, 2000.

  “I maintained cover on the entranceway to the Quonset so no one could go in or out. Then Garret slowly backed up the vehicle to my position and I backed myself up so that I was behind the rear corner of the passenger side.”

  While Hoogestraat continued to back the vehicle up, Vigor used it as a shield, walking in a crouch behind it. They kept moving back until they reached a sand pile outside the hut. From here, they were in a position to have the best possible view of the two front doors of the building.

  Steve says, “Garret was unbelievable through all this. He put himself at such risk backing that Yukon up. And he was so thorough, calling for backup and talking to Control.”

  After Hoogestraat used his cell phone to make the initial call to 911, he switched over to the radio to make further communication with telecom control. He also listened to the radio traffic as Control directed other members to the scene.

  While Garret was crouched down on the floor of the Yukon working the radio, Steve kept an intense watch on the front doors of the building.

  It was dark inside the Quonset.

  “I couldn’t see Roszko inside the Quonset, but I could see a fallen officer at the entrance. There was a boot and the lower right leg … from the knee down … of one officer that could be seen to the south of the main entrance, inside the Quonset. That’s all you could see.”

  There were no movements, no sounds in the Quonset, with the eerie exception of the voices being broadcast over the radios that the fallen Mounties had on them inside the building. These were the frantic calls of members at various locations calling back and forth as they made their way to the scene.

  When Hoogestraat heard the members’ voices being broadcast inside the Quonset, he realized that Roszko could hear them, too. So he used the radio to try and talk to the fallen members and to establish some kind of rapport with Roszko himself.

  Vigor says, “We decided that we would call over the radio to try and get the officers’ radios to work so that if anybody was alive we would get them to press the mike buttons … talk to us … anything. And we were hoping to get Mr. Roszko to give up.”

  Using his radio, Garret called to the members inside, “If any of you can hear me in there, key your mike.”

  He repeated this several times but there was no response — just silence.

  He alternated these calls with pleas to Roszko: “We can see a member down. Let us come in so we can help him.”

  Roszko’s semi-automatic Heckler and Koch assault rifle. (RCMP)

  Roszko’s 9mm Beretta pistol and Hennessey’s .303 Winchester rifle. (RCMP)

  The effect of Hoogestraat’s voice emanating from the radios and echoing throughout the Quonset was chilling.

  Moments later, he tried again: “We’ve got officers down in there. We want to get them out. Give yourself up and let us come in and get our officers out.”

  But Garret says, “We got no response whatsoever. No clicking of the mikes. No nothing.”

  Vigo
r became more and more disturbed with the lack of response. He recalls the emotions that swept over him. “I had such feelings of helplessness. I suspected the worst. I felt this was not going to be a rescue attempt. This was going to be a recovery.”

  What Vigor and Hoogestraat didn’t realize was that Roszko was dead.

  After Vigor shot him twice outside the Quonset, Roszko had stumbled back inside and hidden among the debris. As he sat there in pain, he must have quickly assessed his wounds. The hit he had taken to his hand from Vigor was debilitating, but not lethal. Leo Johnston’s shot that hit the butt plate of Roszko’s pistol had fragmented and superficially scarred his face.

  But the bullet wound in his upper leg was serious. It was bleeding badly and his thighbone had been shattered. He couldn’t bear to move his leg, let alone stand on it. Unable to get around, Roszko was virtually defenceless. He must have thought it was just a matter of time before the Mounties rushed in and killed him or captured him.

  And he was determined not to go back to jail. After he assessed his wounds, it only took him a few seconds to decide to kill himself. From a sitting position, he raised his assault rifle and pointed it at his chest. Then he pulled the trigger.

  But Vigor and Hoogestraat hadn’t heard the suicide shot and didn’t know he was dead.

  Consequently, they assumed that Roszko was lying in wait with his powerful weapon and would kill anyone who entered the hut.

  Vigor called Edmonton requesting the ERT team. Hoogestraat called for an Explosive Disposal Unit Remote Mobile Investigator — a robot.

  In Edmonton, the RCMP dispatcher raised two ERT crews — one from Red Deer and one from Edmonton. A police service dog, a STARS air ambulance, and an Edmonton Air-1 police helicopter were deployed to the scene. A request went out to close the airspace over Roszko’s farm area.

  Canadian Forces Base Edmonton was contacted for military assistance. The garrison dispatched two armoured personnel carriers, an armoured ambulance, and twenty military personnel to the scene.

  Meanwhile, people were starting to gather on a hill on Range Road 80 that is located directly across from the rear of Roszko’s Quonset.