Three Mounties remember day that changed everything
EDMONTON – Stephen
Scott remembers confusion giving way to disbelief as the news rolled in.
It was March 3, 2005, and Scott was a senior officer in an RCMP financial crimes unit. At first, all they knew was something bad had happened near Mayerthorpe — a town of about 1,500 almost 400 kilometres north of the unit’s Calgary office.
“Very little came through the RCMP email system,” recalls Scott, who is now retired. “It was more of ‘there’s been a shooting, there’ve been deaths, stand by, we’ll give you more when we have more.’”
Within 24 hours, Scott and his team would be standing on James Roszko’s farm, where the blood of four slain comrades still stained the snow. For the time being, though, all Scott could do was wait. The only constructive thing he could think to do was burn off some stress at the office gym.
“So I went down to the gym, had a workout at about 3:30, came back up, got the call later that evening saying ‘yeah, you guys are going tomorrow.’ We drove up the following day.”
That day 15 years ago is widely held as the worst in Royal Canadian Mounted Police history, when Roszko gunned down RCMP Constables Leo Johnston, Anthony Gordon, Brock Myrol and Peter Schiemann.
Schiemann was the youngest at 25. Johnston was the eldest at just 32.
The four had been guarding some stolen trucks and a marijuana grow op found on Roszko’s farm. Roszko later turned his gun on himself. Two men who helped him return to the farm to ambush the Mounties were convicted of manslaughter.
Mayerthorpe was long enough ago that some current police officers are too young to remember it. But for those serving at the time, the day is imprinted in their memory, a where-were-you moment that will never leave them.
Scott was a member of the RCMP’s proceeds of crime division, which worked out of an office on 16 Avenue in Calgary.
On the day of the murders, everything in the office came to a standstill. Information came in bits and pieces. Eventually, Scott got word the RCMP was activating its Alberta Special Tactical Operations team. Scott was placed in charge of the Calgary team and ordered to report to Mayerthorpe.
For the next two weeks, the team of around 20 took over the Mayerthorpe and Whitecourt detachments, where the fallen officers served. “The people that had worked there had basically been given time off,” Scott said. “So our guys worked 12-hour shifts — day shifts, night shifts, regular policing if you will, to fill in for the members who weren’t there.”
Others were assigned to the crime scene, near Rochfort Bridge, helping collect evidence and keep the scene secure.
“I’m almost in tears talking about it,” he said Tuesday. “Totally surreal. I mean, there’s still blood in the snow … it was horrible. There’s no way to describe it. You’re standing there thinking ‘I don’t get this.’”
He also remembers working night shift at Roszko’s farm, sitting, on high-alert, in the back passenger seat of his police vehicle with his gun in his lap.
“It was lonely, it was scary … you’re sitting at the end of a road in the dark by yourself.”
Rod Knecht says March 3, 2005, was the worst day of his long career in policing.
The former Edmonton police chief, who was secondin-command of the Alberta RCMP at the time, was about to go for coffee with his boss, Bill Sweeney, when the phone rang.
“His admin assistant called down to my admin assistant, very upset, and said you’ve got to come back to your office immediately,” he said in an interview. The district officer for Mayerthorpe was on the line.
“(He) advised us that there had been an incident, that four members had gone to the scene in Mayerthorpe and that they were missing, they hadn’t been heard from.”
Two minutes later, the district officer confirmed at least one of the men was dead. Officers on the scene couldn’t see the three other men, who had gone further into the quonset hut on Roszko’s property.
“It wasn’t too long before we knew we had four members deceased.”
“I think it was probably one of the most impactful events in RCMP history,” he said.
“It touched a lot of people. I think it impacted a lot of people’s lives — it impacted a lot of people’s lives to this day.”
Corp. Deanna Fontaine is still helping to organize memorials for the Fallen Four 15 years later.
On the day of the killings, she was a traffic services officer in Leduc. She was soon seconded to help with the flood of media inquires and later, the officers’ memorial service, held at the University of Alberta’s Butterdome.
“We worked with the families leading into that memorial,” she said. “It (was) just very difficult to see what they’re going through.”
“In terms of the memorial, I felt very proud of how we honoured the lives of those members and the sacrifice they had given.”
On Tuesday, she was again liaising with media for a memorial at Mayerthorpe’s Fallen Four Memorial Park.
“We actually have members who are working with the RCMP now who have no memory of this, because they weren’t old enough,” she said.
“As hard it is to think about all of this, it’s important for us to remember and pay tribute, for all those members who come afterwards.”