With regard to “Parties to Offence,” the Criminal Code states: Everyone is a party to an offence who actually commits it, does — or omits to do — anything for the purpose of aiding any person to commit it, or abets any person in committing it.
Therefore, Hennessey and Cheeseman were charged with first-degree murder because four peace officers were murdered, and the two men allegedly abetted Roszko by driving him to the scene of the crime knowing he was going to kill the policemen. They also omitted to phone the police to warn them of the impending mortal danger.
On Thursday, July 12, Hennessey and Cheeseman were not present when the Crown appeared before Provincial Court Judge Ken Tjosvold to ask for an adjournment and to announce that the two accused would be prosecuted jointly (together).
None of the relatives of the murdered Mounties were in court. But the small courtroom was jammed full of family and friends of the accused who had come to show support for Hennessey and Cheeseman.
At times, the crowd became unruly, challenging the judge with comments and questions. One man even called out to the assembly, “I am an ambassador of Jesus Christ. We need to pray.”
Those in attendance considered the murder charges to be extremely controversial, due to the fact that neither Hennessey nor Cheeseman was present at the crime scene when the killings occurred.
The judge adjourned the case until August 9, 2007.
There appears to be two distinct types of reaction to the arrests of Hennessey and Cheeseman.
Some people in Mayerthorpe were pleased, or at least relieved, that the case had been finally resolved with these arrests. Others just wanted to forget the horrible incident that had made their town notorious. They wanted to put the experience behind them and move forward.
Many residents of Barrhead and area were angry that these two nice young men were being used as scapegoats for the Mountie murders.
It wasn’t long before Shawn’s parents began to make their presence felt in support of their son and their daughter-in-law’s brother. Barry and Sandy Hennessey helped Shawn select his lawyer. Initially, the Hennesseys retained an Edmonton criminal specialist named Edmond O’Neill. Then O’Neill brought in D’Arcy DePoe, a senior, more experienced criminal lawyer, a colleague in his law firm, to assist him with the case. Because of the massive size and intricacy of the file, DePoe soon became the lead defence counsel for Shawn Hennessey.
Cheeseman chose Peter Northcott as his defence counsel.
Raising the funds to pay the lawyers was a concern. The families of the two estimated their defence costs would run to approximately $100,000. Many of the residents of Barrhead knew this would be the case and did their best to help out. They organized yard sales and bake sales — some of them on a regular basis. Dennis’s aunt, Marian Power, says she held either one type of sale or the other every weekend.
Barry and Sandy Hennessey opened an Internet site. Their home page began with a thank you.
Dear Friends,
First of all, let us thank everyone who has supported Shawn and Dennis, an enormous thank you to our community, for your kind words, your support, your generosity, and your prayers, which has made our lives a little easier during this indescribable time.
Further on in the Web site they wrote:
Since July 7th 2007 our lives have been drastically altered and will never be the same.
The families have had to begin selling their possessions that we worked so hard for in order to provide both Shawn and Dennis with the best legal representation as possible. Shawn’s daughters ask us often why everything in their lives had to change … unfortunately we do not have an answer for them. We have asked ourselves that very same question many times.
And still further on:
Due to the enormous legal fees that the family is faced with, we need your help to protect the rights of these two young men.
You can donate directly via the PayPal link below, or mail your donation to
Barry Hennessey
(address withheld)
Even with the donations that came in from these different sources, it was Barry Hennessey who had to supply the majority of the money needed for his son’s defence. He raised a significant portion of that by signing for a second mortgage on Shawn’s home.
As the legal process dragged on, Dennis Cheeseman, who was shy and reserved by nature, became more and more depressed in prison. In July, he began refusing visitors. He became so distraught he was reported to be on a suicide watch for a period of time.
His aunt, Marian Power, told Eliza Barlow of the Edmonton Sun, “All we know is that Dennis really isn’t seeing anyone. I really do believe he blames himself.”
Ms. Barlow reported that when Christine Hennessey went to visit Dennis, her brother, at the remand centre, he broke down and went back into his cell.
On August 9, 2007, a judge in the Mayerthorpe courtroom announced that the two men’s preliminary hearing would begin on May 12, 2008. He also advised that the hearing would be moved to a larger courtroom in Stony Plain, a town west of Edmonton.
During the time of their incarceration at the Edmonton Remand Centre, Shawn and Dennis shared the same cell. They were good company for each other, but still the long prison days passed slowly. Both of them spent a lot of their time reading. Most of the books in the prison library were quite old, but Shawn enjoyed any stories he could find about sports.
Their only reprieve from the boredom came on Sundays when the Hennesseys would come to visit. Everyone in the family took their turn — Barry, Sandy, Christine and her little girls, Shawn’s sister Alecia and her husband, Neil Osland.
Each visit was to last no longer than thirty minutes, and a prisoner was allowed only two visitors at a time. When the Hennessey family arrived, they would split up. Half of them would see Shawn and the other half would visit with Dennis.
But that changed drastically in September when Shawn and Dennis were separated. Hennessey was sent to the Red Deer Remand Centre; Cheeseman remained in Edmonton. After that, the Hennesseys had to split up their group and make two separate trips.
The drive to Edmonton isn’t too bad, but the trip to Red Deer takes two and a half hours. When the family went to see Shawn, they had to travel five hours for a thirty-minute visit. And all their visits were “closed,” which meant the visitors and prisoner were separated by a glass window that prevented any physical contact between them.
The winter in prison was long and tedious. Both of them looked forward to the start of their preliminary hearing.
Then, on April 15, 2008, Shawn was released on $525,000 bail. His family and friends contributed a half-million-dollar surety. Shawn put up $25,000 in cash.
The judge stipulated that Shawn had to live at his home near Barrhead. He was required to report to his parole officer daily. He was not to use the telephone and he was not to have any contact whatsoever with Dennis Cheeseman.
Cheeseman did not apply for bail at that time. He was released almost a month later, just hours before his preliminary hearing was scheduled to begin.
His bail requirements specified that he put up $10,000 in cash and his family members were required to provide $245,000 as a surety. His bail conditions stipulated that he had to abide by a curfew, get a job, stay in Alberta, and have no contact with Shawn Hennessey.
The purpose of a preliminary hearing is to determine whether or not the Crown has sufficient evidence in a particular case to proceed to trial.
The proceedings pertaining to Shawn Hennessey and Dennis Cheeseman commenced on May 12 in Stony Plain before Provincial Court Judge Peter Ayotte. He ordered that all the evidence presented to the court in this matter be subject to a publication ban.
The hearing lasted a month and involved a lengthy list of witnesses.
Several Mayerthorpe RCMP members took the stand and told about the events that occurred before, during, and after the tragic incident. Rob Perry, the bailiff, spoke of his experiences with James Roszko on the day before the murders. Steve V
igor told about his confrontation with Roszko on that fateful day. He hushed the courtroom as he described how he and the killer stood face-to-face and shot at each other. Vigor became quite emotional as he recalled how he waited in vain to hear a response from his fallen colleagues.
Brad McNish gave testimony regarding Cheeseman’s confession to him.
Part of the court transcript reveals McNish testified that Dennis told him, “I knew that Roszko was going to kill those RCMP officers.”
Dennis told McNish, “… and he [Roszko] said they’ve got me and I’m going to get them.”
McNish said he asked Dennis, “… and how did you know that? And he [Dennis] said because Roszko told me.’”
Later in the transcript it is recorded that McNish testified: “… and I found out that he [Roszko] had told him [Dennis] that in … when … when he was driving Roszko to the scene. And also at a time when he … prior to them leaving.”
Still later McNish testified: “… when they were at his house … ‘his’ being Dennis’s and Shawn’s house … that Roszko indicated to them, while they were standing there, that he … that he was going to go and kill these RCMP officers.”
Two pages later in the transcript, McNish told the court that Dennis told him: “… as we got closer to the farm we could see the RCMP cars … we were close enough that I could tell they were RCMP cars.”
On that same page of the transcript, McNish testified: “And I recall asking if there were conversations going on at the time while they were driving and he [Dennis] indicated that Roszko … was definitely indicating that these guys have, again, made a mess of his life, that they’re out there, and that, you know, this has to stop, this is … you know … I’m going to get these guys, I’m going to kill these RCMP.”
Still further on, McNish testified he said to Dennis: “… do you actually recall Roszko saying, I’m going to kill those RCMP officers? And Dennis said, ‘Yes, I do.’”
Later, on the same page, McNish testified: “… I asked Dennis if Shawn was there … when Roszko said that, and Dennis indicated that he was. Because, you know, as I said, he said that once when they were at the house and once again when they were in the car.”
The substance of McNish’s testimony appeared to be very incriminating.
John Hennessey, Shawn’s grandfather, gave evidence that he had made up a story about how his Winchester rifle had been stolen from his truck when in fact he had given it to Shawn.
Neil Wiberg, general counsel of the Alberta attorney general, testified that he was convinced that the confession Dennis Cheeseman made to Brad McNish was sufficient to have Cheeseman convicted on charges of first-degree murder. However, his remarks were not direct evidence admissible against Hennessey. Eventually, Hennessey made his own admissions to the undercover officers.
Many members of Project Kourage, including Mr. Big, testified about the various roles they played in the sting operations against the accused. Some of them played portions of their incriminating audio and videotapes for the court.
The result of the hearing was that both of the accused were committed for trial on four counts of first-degree murder.
Their trial was scheduled to begin on Monday, April 6, 2009, which meant the two men had eleven months before their case would come to court. Because the proceedings were expected to last approximately three months, the Hennesseys were worried about the financial demands of such a lengthy trial.
Barry Hennessey says, “The family finances were depleted. My wife and I had done everything we could do to raise money but we didn’t have much left. It was going to be very difficult for us to finance the cost of a long trial.”
Their concerns came to a head on January 1, 2009.
On that day, Barry Hennessey, his wife, Sandy, their daughter Alecia, Shawn, and Christine met with D’Arcy Depoe in his Edmonton office. Because Dennis was prohibited from speaking to Shawn, he was excluded from attending the conference.
Barry Hennessey says in that meeting, D’Arcy Depoe recommended that the two accused should consider pleading guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter.
“He gave us an ultimatum. He said that if Shawn went to trial, he would be convicted of manslaughter. But he also said that Shawn would risk being convicted of first-degree murder with no chance of parole for twenty-five years.”
DePoe, who had been defending people for twenty-seven years, including more than seventy homicide cases, categorically denies this.
“I don’t issue ultimatums. Generally, I give advice on what I see as the issues, the pros and the cons of a trial versus the entry of a guilty plea, the potential defences, the likelihood of success at trial, and so on. I leave the decision as to how to plead to the client.
“I discussed the full range of sentence with the family several times. I advised them that if the judge saw things our way, and with the potential at least for early parole, he could be out in a year. I also said that this was unlikely, and that we ought to be satisfied with a sentence in the range of seven to eight years. I made it very clear that the sentence could be in the range suggested by the Crown … ten to fifteen years.”
Shawn seemed to lean towards pleading guilty to manslaughter, but he wasn’t sure.
Barry was adamantly opposed to the idea. “I thought it was crazy,” he says. “Why should they plead guilty when they were not guilty of nothing.”
In this regard, Mr. DePoe says, “The basis of party liability was explained to Barry Hennessey numerous times. And the facts of what the two accused had admitted to doing were explained to him several times. But it just didn’t sink in.”
In any case, Barry was so upset that he left the meeting in tears. “They all stayed there talking, and I went out in the parking lot and stood by my car crying. I knew it was wrong. You don’t plead guilty to something you didn’t do. The whole idea was tearing me apart.”
The decision was left to Shawn, and it weighed heavily on his mind.
As the weeks passed, he remained undecided. It was a very difficult choice between the possibility of receiving four life sentences for first-degree murder or accepting a definite but lesser term for manslaughter.
Finally, Shawn decided to plead guilty to the manslaughter charges. The court date for the guilty pleas was arranged for Monday, January 19.
Long before that plea date was established, Linden MacIntyre and the CBC had come calling. Linden wanted to interview Shawn for The Fifth Estate, but the Hennesseys’ lawyers were vehemently opposed to the accused having anything to do with the media.
It was only after the Hennesseys became profoundly uncomfortable with the compiled Agreed Statement of Facts that they became sufficiently concerned to defy the lawyer’s instructions.
Even then, Shawn Hennessey needed to be convinced.
After a preliminary discussion with MacIntyre, Shawn and his wife, Christine, agreed to be interviewed for television. They spoke to MacIntyre on tape at Shawn’s house on Sunday, January 18, the day before his plea date for manslaughter.
Barry claims, “Shawn remained undecided about pleading guilty right to the very end. Even during the course of that television interview with Linden MacIntyre when Shawn said he had decided to plead guilty to manslaughter, he wasn’t sure he was going to go into court and do it.”
Nevertheless, the next day, Shawn and Dennis appeared in the Court of Queen’s Bench before Mr. Justice Eric F. Macklin and somberly pled “yes” to the accusations that they had committed four counts of manslaughter.
The courtroom was jammed with a standing-room crowd of over one hundred people who listened intently to the lengthy proceedings that followed their pleas.
As part of the public record, an Agreed Statement of Facts was read into the court transcript (Appendix A at the end of the narrative).
In this document, seventy-seven articles or facts are listed that were agreed to by both the Crown and the defence.
For example, the first article reads:
1.On March
2, 2005 bailiff Rob Perry (“PERRY”) set out to execute a warrant authorizing the seizure on behalf of Kentwood Ford of a 2005 Ford F350 Super Duty pickup truck, white in colour, Vehicle Identification Number 1FTWW31P55EA94067.
For the purpose of this book, the most salient articles in the Agreed Statement of Facts are as follows:
49.The RCMP commenced an extensive investigation to try to determine, among other things, how ROSZKO returned to his farm to ambush and murder the four peace officers and whether or not he had received any type of assistance. Additionally, the police wanted to determine how ROSZKO had armed himself with respect to the .300 Winchester as it was discovered through the National Firearms Registry that that particular rifle was in fact, legally registered to John HENNESSEY who, as previously noted, is the grandfather of the accused HENNESSEY.
50.The police further conducted numerous interviews of relatives of ROSZKO and executed search warrants with respect to ROSZKO’S cell phone.
51.Red Deer ERT members had approached from the north side of the Quonset. After their entry into the Quonset, someone mentioned seeing a bed sheet on the north side by the east corner of the Quonset. Later, in addition to the bed sheet, a pillow case containing a pair of work gloves along with a small water bottle and a can of “Bear Scare” pepper spray was seized from the location.
53.The search of the Telus cell phone records relating to ROSZKO’S cellular phone indicated that between 3:34 p.m. and 4:37 p.m. on March 2, 2005, ROSZKO placed one phone call to Kal Tire in Barrhead and numerous calls were made between ROSZKO and a “bag phone” then utilized by the accused, HENNESSEY, by virtue of his employment with Kal Tire. Additionally, numerous calls were made to HENNESSEY’S residence. The last call made by the bag phone was to HENNESSEY’S residence at 5:24 p.m. The bag phone was not used again until March 4, 2005.
54.ROSZKO asked HENNESSEY if he could hide his truck at the HENNESSEY residence, however, HENNESSEY steadfastly refused. At one point, HENNESSEY was aware that ROSZKO was at his residence by reason of a phone call received from his wife, Christine HENNESSEY. HENNESSEY also spoke to ROSZKO at that time on the telephone.
The Mayerthorpe Story Page 18