The Mayerthorpe Story

by Robert Knuckle

  Eichhorn, in turn, contacted two of his mechanics, Bruce Pearce and Kenny Poeter, and told them they were going to help the RCMP recover some stolen property. When Poeter found out their destination was Roszko’s place, he says he was “a little worried,” but he was curious, too. Pearce said the police gave them no indication that the assignment was any more dangerous than any other repossession, although Eichhorn did say that Roszko had fled the scene.

  “I guess I felt safe, but I was nervous,” Pearce says. “Nobody knew where he was. He could have been anywhere. We just basically wanted to get loaded and get out.”

  The mechanics describe the Quonset as having a cluttered, untidy interior with a sandy floor and unadorned walls.

  As soon as they got there, they started removing some of the larger pieces of stolen goods. These included the Wermac generator, a 1997 motorcycle, two 1998 Honda motorcycles, a red 2003 GMC truck, a grey 2002 Ford F350 truck, a 1990 John Deere garden tractor, and a number of automotive parts.

  As Martin and his crew kept searching and recording, Sgt. Brian Pinder, the NCO in command of the Mayerthorpe Detachment, arrived with coffee for everyone. Although Brian was on holiday leave, he had not gone away from the area. Upon learning of the situation at Roszko’s farm, he placed himself back on duty and came out to the farm to check things out for himself. Martin gave him a thorough briefing on the progress of the investigation.

  Brock Myrol was assigned to guard Roszko’s trailer. When he looked inside he could see that the place was a mess. It was dirty and dishevelled and reeked of the smell of marijuana. During the search of the trailer, investigators found lists of all the RCMP members in the Mayerthorpe, Evansburg, and Whitecourt detachments, including their addresses and phone numbers plus the call sign and cell-phone numbers of their police cars.

  They also found notes Roszko had made on every encounter he’d had with various police members.

  Other items they discovered on the property included:

  •Police scanners

  •Wallets with various sets of identification, one containing $1,585 in cash

  •Several sets of handcuffs and leg irons

  •Seven long arms, i.e., rifles and shotguns

  It was after midnight when Cpl. Adamitz and his “Green Team” arrived from the city. With him were RCMP Constables Al Gulash and Ray Savage, plus another member of the Edmonton City Green Team unit. It took them over two hours to dismantle the grow operation, and in the process they seized 280 marijuana plants, along with various items of grow paraphernalia. These included carefully recorded harvesting books and other documents pertaining to the science and care of growing marijuana.

  By three a.m., the search was complete, except for the removal of the John Deere garden tractor, some automotive parts, chopped-up truck frames, and a truck shell that was outside the west end of the Quonset.

  All of the police who searched Roszko’s property that day were well aware that he had been in trouble with the law before. More often than not he had managed to wriggle his way out of being convicted.

  This time, he was in very serious trouble and none of them were surprised.

  2 | Roszko

  JAMES ROSZKO WAS a violent, angry, emotionally unstable loner who had a widespread reputation for being an abusive bully and a sexual predator and pervert. He was also a man who hated the police and loved guns and knew how to use them.

  These qualities of being violent, angry, unstable, a loner, and having a facility with a gun constitute the classic profile of a police killer.

  RCMP files document case after case of instances where these types of men have murdered police officers.

  In 1932, Albert Johnson, a reclusive trapper, who was a deadly shot with a rifle, was notorious for stealing gold from dead men’s teeth. As the so-called Mad Trapper of Rat River, Johnson murdered thirty-one-year-old Cst. Edgar Millen during a chase-and-pursuit gunfight in the Northwest Territories.

  In 1962, George Booth, thirty-two, a “mentally unbalanced” loner who reportedly could shoot the eye out of an eagle at sixty yards, murdered three young Mounties in a prolonged gun battle at Kamloops, British Columbia.

  In 1970, Wilfred Stanley Robertson, an odd little woodsman with a bad temper and deadeye aim, shot and killed two Mounties who had been called to a domestic dispute at his isolated shack in the Saskatchewan bush. He killed one Mountie at point-blank range. He shot the other, who was a long way off, through the glass pane of a window in his kitchen. As both men lay dying on his premises, Robertson sat down and finished eating his supper.

  James Roszko (Mayerthorpe Freelancer)

  In 1978, a distraught loner named Leslie Crombie, who lived in a mobile home in rural New Brunswick, was being interviewed by two Mounties regarding a custody dispute over his young daughter. In the middle of the interview, Crombie excused himself, went into his bedroom, got his rifle, and came out shooting. He killed both policemen before they had a chance to draw their guns.

  Dog master Michael Buday was shot and killed in 1985 at Teslin Lake, British Columbia, by Michael Oros, a psychotic loner who was a trapper and hunter.

  In 2004, Jim Galloway, another RCMP dog master, was murdered in Spruce Grove, Alberta, by Martin Ostopovich, a desperately unstable man who was in possession of a number of high-powered rifles. Although Ostopovich was living with his wife, he was alienated from almost everyone.

  These are just a few examples of murderers who have killed police suddenly and without provocation. All of them were loners, emotionally unstable, angry, and good with guns.

  This same combination of characteristics fit James Roszko to a tee.

  Roszko was born in 1959, the youngest of Bill and Stephanie Roszko’s eight children. He was baptized as a Ukrainian Catholic at St. John the Baptist Parish near Rochfort Bridge and grew up attending church with his parents.

  But when James was twelve years old, his mother left the family, and Bill, who is now deceased, had to raise the children on his own.

  That seemed to be a pivotal point in his life. His father said, “James seemed to turn against religion then. That’s when I began to see warning signs in his behaviour.

  “I used to tell Jim to get ready [for church], but he fired back at me that I didn’t need to preach to him because I was no preacher. I felt like I was between the devil and the deep blue sea. I used to pray that God would protect my youngest son, because when I tried to reach out to him, he pushed me away.”

  James Roszko at his sister’s home in Whitecourt, Alberta. (CBC)

  Theirrelationship really soured when James was sixteen and Bill found a stolen gun in his room. And it deteriorated even further when Bill discovered James was using marijuana.

  James’s violent temper clearly came to the surface when, at seventeen, he learned that his mother had been badly beaten by an estranged male partner.

  “Jimmy wanted to kill him,” Bill said. “He went and took his mother to the hospital. I think this pushed him over the edge.”

  James’s sister Josephine Ruel felt sorry for her brother. She said he went through a lot. “It started very young. We tried to let him know we’d help him. But he couldn’t overcome it. I knew he was the one kid who needed more love than anyone else.”

  But Jimmy Roszko was hard for people to love.

  Although he was only five feet five inches tall and 150 pounds, even as a teenager he was a snarling, snapping, foul-mouthed ball of anger who seemed to enjoy confrontation. Anyone who crossed him received a curse-laden tongue-lashing. And as he grew older, he began to bully younger people and threaten them.

  As Mayerthorpe’s number one problem child, he became a pariah in the community. Local people dubbed him a “ticking time bomb” and a “nut case.”

  As James grew older and got in more and more trouble with the law, most of his brothers and sisters stayed away from him. Some wanted nothing to do with him.

  His family, his friends, even his lawyer say he hated the RCMP and blamed them for every
thing wrong with his life.

  Kim Connell, who is now retired from the RCMP, spent ten years of his police service posted at Mayerthorpe. He says, “Every time you met him, it was a violent confrontation. Even during routine traffic checks. A member would stop him and the argument would be on … the screaming and yelling and spitting.”

  Roszko’s Quonset hut as seen from his gate on Range Road 75.

  In 1999, Brenda Storm, a bailiff, put on her body armour when she was sent to seize cattle on Roszko’s farm. In her report she wrote: “Called a number of informants including the RCMP about this debtor. Learned he was quite dangerous … possibly in possession of a number of firearms. Has a long history of assaults … is known to have booby-trapped and used a spike belt to discourage vehicles.”

  After Brenda met him, she wrote: “One of the worst psychopaths it has ever been my misfortune to run into. His hatred for police was evident. He blamed all of his problems on the RCMP.”

  Roszko used to go into the local newspaper office of the Mayerthorpe Freelancer on a regular basis to complain about the police. He wrote letters to the editor complaining about the police’s harassing him. He claimed the police were following him and he wanted them to leave him alone. But the paper never published any of his paranoia.

  They did print one of his letters where he complained about the local veterinarian’s being stopped for speeding when he was hurrying to save a dying calf.

  But the woman who owned the sick calf sent in her own letter of reply saying that Roszko’s description of the situation was inaccurate. Furthermore, she didn’t need James Roszko speaking for her in the newspaper.

  He would also try to put ads in the Freelancer saying terrible things about his enemies. Margaret Thibault, the newspaper’s editor, says, “I guess he figured if I buy an advertisement, I can put whatever I want in it.

  “I told him we had standards we followed and we would not accept libellous ads.”

  Margaret, like others in the community, found Roszko to be kind of a Jekyll and Hyde. He could be charming and reasonable for a while until he realized he wasn’t going to get his way. Then he could turn into a monster. When he got mad he would vibrate and shake with anger.

  One time he got very angry with Lorraine Dwyer, the Freelancer receptionist, who refused to publish one of the Christmas ads he had composed. It read: “Don’t drink and drive, you might spill some.”

  When Lorraine turned him down, he began shouting and banging the glass top on the office counter.

  Margaret came out of her office and said, “Stop that!”

  James demanded to know what was wrong with his ad. Margaret explained, “Our paper doesn’t condone drinking and driving. And we’re not going to print it.” Then she added, “And I don’t want you behaving like that in here.”

  James seemed to cool down then and said, “I’m sorry. I’m just upset”

  Although he’d stopped his ranting, Margaret says, “He still had that devil dancing in his eyes … like he was smouldering … ready to burst into flames.”

  But Margaret knew the secret to handling James Roszko. People had to stand up to him and show him they weren’t afraid.

  Margaret says, “There were grave concerns in the community about him hurting other people. He clearly had that capability. But that was a reputation he sought … and built up. He wanted to make people believe he was dangerous.

  “I wasn’t afraid of him. Apparently there was a list of places the police told him to stay away from. And the Freelancer was one of those places. I didn’t think we needed to be on that list.”

  And there was a slyness about James Roszko. Especially when he wanted to induce local young men to come out to his farm. First of all he would choose the ones he thought he could manipulate and then he would ingratiate himself with them.

  Once he became familiar with the person, he would invite him to come out and work on his farm for pay. When they got out there, he would make sure they had a pleasure-filled week by feeding them alcohol and drugs. Then he would engage them in acts of homosexuality. He used the automatic timer on his camera to take pictures of them performing drunken sex acts.

  After that, he had them under his control.

  He would tell them, “If you don’t do what I want, I’ll show people the pictures and tell them what you were doing out here.”

  Or he’d threaten them by showing them his guns and saying, “You talk to anyone and I’ll take care of you.”

  It was all very clever. The only witnesses to what went on in his trailer were the ones participating in the action.

  Seldom did anyone complain to the police, because most of these boys — and there were at least thirty of them over the years — were deathly afraid he would carry through on his threats.

  The few who did lay charges would not show up in court to testify, because Roszko would contact them and threaten to kill them.

  Margaret Thibault says, “That’s how it went time after time. We saw charges laid; then saw the charges dropped.”

  On one occasion, Roszko dropped a boy off at the high school who was high as a kite on dope. The police happened to be right there and saw him stagger out of the car. They investigated and laid charges, but the young boy refused to take the stand as a witness against him.

  James Roszko had become Mayerthorpe’s worst nightmare.

  And everyone in town knew it. Andria Gogan, the paramedic supervisor with Associated Ambulance says, “They kept putting him in jail and then he’d get out.”

  And it was common knowledge he kept guns at his farm. In spite of a court-imposed ban on Roszko’s possessing firearms, the young people he invited to his farm knew he kept several weapons on his property. He would show them off to the boys and practise shooting in front of them, sometimes on targets 200 metres away. And they all could see he was a crack shot.

  Between 1993 and 1998, the RCMP went to Roszko’s farm three times with search warrants looking for illegal, unregistered weapons. They especially wanted to find the Heckler and Koch semi-automatic assault rifle that it was reported he had bought in the United States and smuggled into Canada twenty-five years before. But the Mounties were unsuccessful in their searches.

  Retired RCMP Sergeant Cliff Wade says, “We didn’t find the one we were looking for.”

  Another nagging concern for the police and the concerned citizens in the community was, how did Roszko support himself?

  At one time, years ago, he had been employed. His most lucrative jobs were in the 1970s when he worked as a driller in the U.S. oilfields. After that, he ran a few head of cattle on his mother’s farm. But in the last few years he seemed to survive with few resources, living alone with no livestock on the property on Range Road 75.

  Rumours circulated about his Quonset hut and what he kept in it, but there was never any proof that something illegal was transpiring there.

  An anonymous Mayerthorpe resident who doesn’t want to be identified for fear that Roszko’s allies might target him says that he worked on Roszko’s property and knew him for twenty years. He believes that after Roszko was released from prison in August 2002 after serving time for sexual assault, he began working with a “small crew of career criminals” from the Mayerthorpe area.

  Was it this group that was involved in the marijuana grow and the chop shop activity in his Quonset hut? Or was Roszko running this operation by himself?

  With so many young men under his control, it’s certainly possible that he was operating like Fagan,1 sending the boys out to steal cars and trucks and anything else of value they could get their hands on.

  Then again, Roszko was crafty enough to do a lot of illegal things on his own, without witnesses.

  In one instance, he supposedly bought a new truck with very little money down but with high monthly payments. Roszko stripped the truck bare in his Quonset and sold the parts. Then he hid the demolished frame in the bush and made an insurance claim for his stolen truck.

  As one Mayerthorpe res
ident remarked, “Oh, he had brains, all right. Except all his energy went in the wrong direction. He had extreme mental problems. He thought he was the centre of the world. And there was no connection between his head and his heart. He had no feelings for anyone except maybe his mother.”

  The best insight into James Roszko’s troubled personality can be gleaned from his documented criminal history in the courts.

  In total, Roszko was convicted on fourteen of the forty-four charges he faced during sixteen criminal prosecutions. Often several charges came from one particular set of circumstances. For instance, eighteen charges came from three prosecutions alone.

  Many of the charges against him were either stayed or acquitted. That’s because there were instances when the prosecutors lacked the evidence to proceed, or uncooperative and/or unreliable witnesses compromised the prosecutions.

  Roszko’s criminal history began on February 18, 1976, when he was seventeen years of age. That’s when he was charged with two counts of break and enter, for which he was fined $150 on each count and placed on one year of probation.

  In November of that same year, he was charged with one count of theft under $200 and fined $250.

  On January 24, 1978, he received a suspended sentence and a probation order of eighteen months for one count of possession of stolen property and one count of break and enter.

  In April 1979, he was charged with one count of making harassing telephone calls plus three counts of breach of his probation. Roszko was convicted and sentenced to thirty days in jail for the phone calls plus fifteen days for breach of probation to be served consecutively.

  In December 1990, as a result of an argument with a school trustee over changes of a school bus stop, Roszko was convicted on one count of uttering threats to cause death or serious bodily harm and fined $250. At this time he was thirty-one years of age.

  In March 1993, he pled guilty to two traffic tickets: driving without his seat belt engaged and having tinted windows on his truck, for which he was fined $25 on each count. That same day he was charged with causing a disturbance by using obscene language with the RCMP officer who gave him the tickets.