The Mayerthorpe Story

by Robert Knuckle

  Dianne Romeo says, “Some people in the area have police scanners and when they heard what was going on, they came out to see what was happening. The police stopped them from going down Jimmy Roszko’s road, so they came over to ours.

  “There’s a big hill just south of our property, and dozens of people started to gather there … including newspaper reporters and a TV van. There must have been at least twenty people sitting on the hill.

  “And a helicopter circled overhead all day.

  “I watched from our back deck. We can see Jimmy’s yard from there. I heard the gunshots and everything. I heard the last shot, too … where Jimmy killed himself.”

  Earlier that morning, Cindie Dennis had just finished breakfast when her mother phoned.

  Cindie says, “My mom said that my grandmother had called and told her there was a problem with the police in Mayerthorpe. She asked if I was okay.

  “I said that I was fine and I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “As soon as I got off the phone, I called the detachment office. Margaret Thibault answered and said I should come in to the office and she would explain everything to me when I got there. At first, I thought there might have been a problem at the Alexis Reserve.”

  Cindie jumped into her truck and when she got out on the highway, she spotted the Edmonton ERT van heading towards Mayerthorpe.

  “I followed it into town. That’s when I learned the problem was at James Roszko’s farm.”

  When she went into the detachment, she saw that Margaret Thibault was tied up on the phone. All of the Mayerthorpe members were gone, but there were a lot of Mounties from other detachments in the office, and some over at the Legion hall across the street.

  It wasn’t very long before the detachment was swarming with out-of-town personnel.

  “There must have been thirty of them — a tactical squad, members from the Major Crimes Unit, members from Grande Prairie, Whitecourt, and Edson, and a number of inspectors and superintendents from Edmonton.

  “There was very little talking. They were all very busy … very intense.”

  One of the officers assigned Cindie the job of pulling files on James Roszko.

  “I was digging into everything we had in the archives about him and his previous history with the RCMP.”

  It was Cst. Rollie White of the Whitecourt Traffic Unit who gave her the most information. He said he’d heard that Peter and Brock were out at Roszko’s place with Leo and Tony Gordon.

  “Rollie told me there was a problem in Roszko’s Quonset hut. The four members had gone inside and weren’t responding to their radios. He said, ‘It didn’t look good.’ One of the members was down. They could see his legs protruding out the Quonset doorway.

  “The members in the office weren’t saying much, but there was an urgency in their manner that made it obvious that something very serious was happening.”

  By the time Jim Martin left the Mayerthorpe Detachment office and got in his cruiser, it was after ten a.m. He was almost out on Highway #18 when he heard the call on the radio: “Officer Down! Officer Down!”

  At first Jim didn’t know who it was on the radio. He responded, “Who is this?”

  The voice said, “It’s Constable Hoogestraat from Edmonton Auto Theft. We’re at the search warrant site. Shots fired. We have an officer down.”

  “When I heard that, I stomped on it.”

  He radioed Jeff Whipple and told him there was an officer down at Roszko’s place.

  “Multiple gun shots fired!”

  Jeff had already heard the call at the detachment. He had thrown on his coat and was hurrying out the door.

  Jeff says, “My regular car was being repaired, so they gave me a replacement car … a used Ford Taurus. It was unmarked … had no roof lights or siren … but that didn’t matter. I drove that car faster than it had ever gone before.”

  Not far ahead of him, Jim Martin was racing his cruiser at top speed towards Roszko’s farm. When Jim turned north on Range Road 75, he saw a car coming towards him. A woman was driving.

  “I had no idea who she was, but she could have been fleeing the scene. So I stopped her and searched her vehicle. She didn’t know what was going on. She was on her way to work and was totally oblivious of the situation at Roszko’s farm.”

  As Jim was dealing with the woman, Jeff Whipple drove up beside him and rolled down his window.

  “Where’s Roszko’s place?” he asked Martin.

  “Just up the hill on the left.”

  Whipple gunned his car straight ahead.

  As he roared away, the confused woman in the car must have been wondering what was going on. But she didn’t ask.

  Martin released her immediately and sent her on her way.

  When he got to the top of the hill, he radioed Hoogestraat and asked him, “Where were the shots fired?”

  Garret replied, “At the Quonset.”

  Jim thought he meant someone was shooting at the Quonset from the tree line near Roszko’s trailer. But then, as he pulled into the yard, he spotted Hoogestraat and Vigor crouched down behind their Suburban.

  It was then that Hoogestraat radioed Jim, “The shooter is in the Quonset.”

  “When I heard that, I made a beeline towards their position in front of the building. From there, I contacted our guys as they arrived and instructed them so we would cover off the area as best we could.”

  Meanwhile, other RCMP members were rushing to the scene from all directions. A bunch of them were taking a course in Whitecourt, and when they heard the alarm, they all headed for the scene without weapons and wearing their civilian clothes.

  As Clayton Seguin and Julie Letal raced from the Alexis Reserve, they tried to find out as much as they could about the crisis. They phoned other members and listened to the busy radio traffic that was calling for ambulances and members from several detachments to respond to the scene.

  In all the confusion, they tried to piece things together. Both of them were crying.

  From what they could tell, at least one officer was down. But who was it? And were there more than one? How many were involved? Were they hurt — or worse?

  “And we knew there was only one .308 rifle in the detachment. So we definitely needed more firepower at the scene to contain the shooter.”

  As they roared along the road, they used their cell phone to contact other members and see if they could get some rifles.

  Clayton recalls, “Our basic message was, ‘Get guns and get there.’”

  They called Al Starman and Joe Sangster at their homes. At first, both men had a hard time believing such a disaster was really happening.

  “I could hear the disbelief in their voices,” Clayton says, “But when they heard the quiver in my voice, and then heard me crying, they knew it was no joke.”

  Starman said he could get a couple of rifles and told them he was on his way. He called several of his farmer friends who had hunting rifles. All of them promised to drop off their rifles and some ammunition with the police at the crime scene.

  Sangster was a crossbow hunter. He didn’t have access to any rifles but said he would leave for Roszko’s place immediately.

  Clayton continued to drive as fast as could … almost recklessly.

  “We got there in fifteen minutes … right after Jim Martin and Jeff Whipple had arrived.”

  Clayton remembers, “As soon as I jumped out of the car, the first horrible thing I saw was a member’s leg … the yellow stripe on his pant leg … it was sticking out of the main door of the Quonset.

  “Julie and I were assigned to cover the back of the building. We went around and crouched down behind a fence post with our guns drawn. Our job was containment. Others were assigned to cover each of the four corners … to make sure the shooter didn’t get out and run away.

  “We didn’t know where Roszko was. Maybe he already got out by the back door. It was so quiet out there. It was eerie. We kept hoping that some of our guys were hiding,
keeping quiet so they wouldn’t be detected.

  “Then we heard gunfire in the distance. It was really kind of alarming, but we soon learned it was our guys testing rifles out on the range road.”

  Jeff Whipple was the first member to arrive on the scene. As he drove through the second gate into Roszko’s compound, he saw Vigor and Hoogestraat hunched down behind their Yukon with their guns drawn and aimed at the Quonset.

  Jeff jumped out of his unmarked Taurus and ran towards them. Vigor and Hoogestraat quickly advised him of what had happened so far and warned him that the gunman was inside the Quonset and well armed.

  Hoogestraat kept calling into the Quonset trying to get a response but there was none.

  Whipple kept darting back and forth trying to get a better angle of vision,

  He says, “I saw a member down in the doorway and I wanted to go in there.”

  But Vigor would not allow it.

  “I couldn’t let him go in there,” he says. “Everything was against us. It was dark in there. He [Roszko] knew the interior of the building. He had high-powered rifles and wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot anybody trying to get in there. Roszko was looking out into the bright light. We would have been silhouetted in the driveway. It would have been a suicide attempt.”

  Moments later, Jim Martin arrived and ran to join the other three Mounties behind the Yukon. Vigor apprised him of the situation.

  All the while, Jeff kept saying he wanted to charge into the Quonset. But Martin sided with Vigor and ordered Whipple not to try that.

  “It would have been suicidal,” Jim says.

  Whipple is not so sure. He says, “My biggest regret is that I didn’t go in there. I should have gone in. Everyone tells me there was no use … that I couldn’t save them. But we’ll never know that for sure. We can only presume that was the case. I should have gone in.”

  When Staff Sgt. Tom Pickard arrived from Whitecourt, he set up a command post on Range Road 75 and took charge of the operation. He, too, issued an order that no one was to try and enter the Quonset.

  So they waited.

  And, as the four of them hunkered down behind the truck in front of the Quonset, the situation became more and more unsettling.

  It was eerie. They could hear the radios continue to echo inside but could not detect another sound from anyone.

  Nevertheless, they had to assume that Roszko was still alive in there.

  Martin says, “I thought he’d used a ladder and had positioned himself on the high ground on the platform above the marijuana sheds.”

  As more members from Mayerthorpe and Whitecourt Detachments arrived, they, too, wanted permission to charge the Quonset and rescue their friends.

  Vigor says, “I had to put a stop to that. It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make but I had to do it.

  “Some of the younger members weren’t happy with my decision. They were very emotional about it. And I understood their feelings. They worked with these men … they loved them. But it wasn’t wise to go in there … our position was not good … I just couldn’t let it happen.”

  Jim Martin knew that Vigor was right. Steve was an ERT member who understood dangerous situations and was trained to handle them. And Jim was in total agreement with him that they should not go in.

  “Every fibre in my body wanted to go in there, but that was our emotions trying to overrule our thinking. But still … waiting for the ERT to arrive was the longest minutes of my life. I felt so useless … and we continued to get no response from the Quonset.”

  As they waited, Steve Vigor described the type of guns that Roszko had in his possession to use against them.

  Jim Martin remembers being very impressed with Vigor’s accuracy. Steve had only seen Roszko for a flash, yet he could describe the assault rifle with its scope, the Beretta pistol in Roszko’s waistband, the Winchester rifle over his shoulder.

  For forty-five minutes, they continued to call to Roszko. But then all the radios completely went silent and stopped echoing any calls.

  Still there was no reason to assume that Roszko was dead. Especially since Steve Vigor didn’t think he’d hit him.

  By this time, Brian Pinder and Tom Pickard had set up a command post on the range road. They took charge of the outer perimeter surrounding the farm. Jim Martin was in charge of the inner perimeter adjacent to Roszko’s barn.

  Out on Highway #18, Wendell Wiebe and his firefighters were directing traffic, making sure no unauthorized vehicles proceeded up Range Road 75. They were also making sure that people weren’t stopping and gawking on the highway and thereby congesting the flow of traffic, which would prevent the arrival of essential police and military personnel at the crime scene.

  While Wendell was sitting in the fire truck, Tom Eichhorn, the deputy fire chief, approached him and said, “There’s a need for your chaplain services with the police at the Legion hall. You need to go back right now.”

  Without hesitation, Wendell complied with Tom’s suggestion and was driven back to Mayerthorpe.

  In town, the news of trouble at Roszko’s farm had spread like wildfire. Everyone seemed to have their radios on and their televisions, too. People gathered in shops and stores to speculate on what was happening. Items of information were gradually transmitted to the public — initially to the local area, but then across the province; the military was being called in, a light armoured vehicle called a Coyote was on its way from Edmonton, and the Mounties were bringing in the bomb squad with a robot.

  Rev. Lotholz knew the situation had to be very bad when he saw the Mountie Detachment from Grande Prairie come into town and take over the policing responsibilities in Mayerthorpe.

  At 12:05, the Edmonton ERT team arrived on the scene and was deployed around the Quonset. Fifteen minutes later, the Explosives Disposal Unit pulled up on the range road with a motorized robot in their caravan. From that time forward, their truck was used as the command post. A helicopter from the Edmonton Police Services began circling overhead ready to help out in any way it could.

  Not long after this, the RCMP contacted the Edmonton garrison and asked them to recall their military vehicles and personnel.

  At 12:40 p.m., the EDU deployed their robot inside the Quonset. Its video camera relayed pictures back to a monitor in the command truck. The first tragic image on the screen was a picture of Cst. Anthony Gordon lying motionless near the entrance.

  Then Constables Schiemann and Johnston were located near the centre of the Quonset.

  There were no signs of life among the three Mounties.

  Constable Myrol was not seen by the robot.

  The machine turned and showed Roszko lying on his back. He appeared to be dead. His Beretta was still tucked into the waistband of his pants. Lying to the right of him was the .300 Winchester Magnum. His semi-automatic .308 Heckler and Koch assault rifle was between his legs.

  He was wearing two pairs of pants and five layers of tops and jackets, as well as black socks that covered his boots. The socks are an old hunter’s trick that allows someone to muffle his footsteps in the snow so he can sneak up on his prey.

  It was later determined that neither the Beretta nor the Winchester had been fired in the Quonset hut.

  In the command truck, the bomb disposal controller decided that, just in case Roszko wasn’t dead, he would use the arm of the robot to hold the shooter down and keep him away from his weapons.

  The ERT team was then deployed and entered the Quonset. Members moved the weapons away from Roszko, rolled him over, and handcuffed him. Not far from him, the police found the white bedsheet he used for cover plus a bottle of water and a container of Bear Spray.

  Other members went deeper into the building looking for Brock Myrol. They found him near the rear door, which was padlocked from the outside.

  Two of the officers were carried out of the building in the vain hope that they might be resuscitated.

  It was no use. All four RCMP members were dead.

  Ji
m Martin was in a daze. He could not believe it. Even though he feared the worst, for a while he had retained some small hope that at least one of them might be alive. But in time, even that expectation had diminished.

  “After watching the Quonset for an hour, I had a bad feeling that they all might be dead. We should have heard something … but we didn’t.

  “But when you actually see them … it’s awful … it’s like losing a member of your own family … Peter and Leo were really good friends of mine.”

  As stunned and pained as Jim Martin felt, he knew their first responsibility was to notify the next of kin.

  In tragic situations like this, there is a concern at all levels of the RCMP that the wives and parents of the slain members be notified of their deaths in a personal, dignified manner, as opposed to their hearing the news from the media.

  Martin radioed this concern to Sgt. Pinder and Staff Sgt. Pickard in the command truck. And they both agreed. Pinder asked Martin to come out to the caravan and said that he and Jim would proceed into town together.

  Pickard would assume the grim task of officially identifying the members’ bodies. It was an act of agony that still haunts him.

  Early on Thursday afternoon, Kim Gordon, Kelly Johnston, and Anjila Steeves had begun receiving calls from friends and relatives who had heard disturbing rumours about RCMP members having been shot near Mayerthorpe.

  As the day wore on, representatives from the Mayerthorpe detachment came to see Kim and Anjila personally and confirmed the fact that they had lost radio contact with Tony and Brock. They asked the two women to come with them to the Mayerthorpe Detachment office.

  Kelly Johnston was at home and she did not like what she was hearing from friends and neighbours. She had made two phone calls to the detachment office but couldn’t get any kind of satisfactory explanation as to what was going on.

  After Kelly’s second call, Margaret Thibault of Victims’ Services came over to the house and asked Kelly to accompany her to the detachment office. When Kelly got there, one of the members told her that a few hours had passed since they’d last had radio contact with Leo.