The Mayerthorpe Story: From Ambush to Aftermath

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.

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.

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.

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 the 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.

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.

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.”

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.

“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 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.”

Vigor 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.”

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.

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.

“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.

“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.”

“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.”

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

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.

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

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

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jim 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.

The three women were gathered in a room together but no one was telling them very much about the situation. They were advised that the four men had gone into a Quonset hut on an investigation and there had been no communication with them for quite a while. They were also advised that a motorized robot was being sent in to the Quonset to survey the site.

Upon hearing that information, Anjila and Kim were horribly upset and began crying. Kelly, who was equally disturbed, kept a brave face and tried to comfort the other two.

Their apprehension heightened as several members of the media began to gather in front of the detachment office. Eventually the media numbers grew to such a size that the three women were hurried out the back door of the detachment office and escorted to the fire hall nearby.

Now, isolated from the distracting activity of the excited media, their wait was quieter, but more intense and no less apprehensive.

Meanwhile, Jim Martin and Brian Pinder were on their way to the fire hall carrying the unbearable burden of being the messengers of death. They would be telling these women the worst news they would ever receive in their lives. What made it all the more devastating was the fact that the three women were so young and had shared such precious little time with their mates.

Kim and Anjila and Kelly had waited in the lunchroom of the fire hall in anguish until mid-afternoon.

Martin says, “Sgt. Pinder did all of the talking . . . and it was a very tough thing for him to do.”

Kelly Johnston didn’t seem to be correctly interpreting his words. When Pinder told her he was so sorry that Leo was gone, Kelly asked, “Gone where?”

Kim Gordon says she should have known what he was going to say by the look on his face.

“His face was pasty white and there were tears in his eyes. I don’t know what he said. All I can remember is his last word — ‘dead.’”

She didn’t believe it. “No, he’s not. It’s not right. Just let me see him. I know he’s all right.”

After that, Jim Martin went over to the detachment to tell the members in the office the terrible news.

Cindie Dennis says, “Later in the afternoon, Julie Letal and Clayton Seguin came in. They looked awful. And they were soaking wet from lying in the snow out there.

“Then Jim Martin came in and told us, ‘They’re gone. They’re all gone.’ He could barely speak. But I knew what he meant and I felt sick. It was horrible.”

Peter Schiemann’s father, Don, was in Winnipeg at a church conference. His daughter Julia phoned him because she had heard that police officers in Alberta had been shot. Don tried to alleviate her fears and said he would look into the matter and get back to her.

While listening to the radio, he heard even more alarming news that the shootings had taken place near Mayerthorpe. And that four officers were not responding to radio contact. Don Schiemann’s worst fears were realized at the Winnipeg airport when he was about to board his plane home to Edmonton.

Superintendent Marty Cheliak contacted him and told him that Peter was dead. He apologized for giving Don such dreadful news over the phone but explained that he wanted to tell him personally before he heard the news via the media.

Don, who was heartbroken, then phoned his wife and told her and his two children the awful news. He says, “It was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.”

Wendell Wiebe was in the lounge at the Legion hall. He says, “There were about six Mounties in the room watching TV. Some of them were crying.”

Wendell thought he wasn’t doing much good there. He’d heard that the firefighters were gathered in the basement of the hospital, so he decided to go over there. He wasn’t there long when the fire chief, Randy Schroeder, came in and announced that he had just learned that all four RCMP officers had been killed.

Wiebe says, “It was one of those overwhelming catastrophes that are beyond understanding. It was simply too much to grasp. I remember I had the feeling I was floating through it . . . like it was a dream.”

After Mayor Albert Schalm finished his lunch, he decided to go to the town office and stay there for the rest of the day. All afternoon he was either on the phone or dealing with the media face to face. He had refrained from calling the RCMP detachment for information because they had enough on their plate without him interfering. So Albert had to pick up his information in bits and pieces from whatever source he could find.

What seemed to be confirmed was that the RCMP was involved in an investigation and hours ago had lost radio contact with four of their members on the site.

But then some time after two p.m., a media person came in and said to Albert, “Haven’t you heard? Four of them have been shot . . . and killed.”

“It was such a shock,” Albert says. “It’s a good thing I was sitting down at the time. I just couldn’t believe it. And then I started to think, who were they? I knew almost all of them, so I wondered who it was that had been killed.”

Earlier that day, Andria Gogan, who had married and was now Andria Reid, was driving her car to her house in Spring Grove. The road conditions were good, and everything seemed normal until she saw three police cars go racing by her. They appeared to be heading towards Mayerthorpe.

When Andria got home, she asked her husband, Rachied, if he knew what was going on with all the police activity on the highway.

Because Andria was pregnant, he didn’t want to tell her what he’d heard on the radio, so he said very little.

Andria wasn’t satisfied with that and phoned her friend Karen Killen in Mayerthorpe.

Karen told her, “Something major is happening . . . a shooting, I think. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think it’s bad.”

On hearing that, Andria immediately got back in her car and headed for Mayerthorpe to be with Kelly Johnston. On the way, she heard on the radio that the STARS helicopter ambulance had transported two Mounties to Edmonton.

Andria says, “So I thought to myself . . . well, that doesn’t sound too bad. Maybe they were just wounded.”

She continues, “Because I couldn’t get Kelly on the phone, I decided to drive over to the Mayerthorpe hospital. As soon as I got in the door, I saw Tanya Kendall, a paramedic, walking in the hall. She was bawling her eyes out.

“I was in shock. I had to sit down. That was the worst thing . . . the saddest news I had ever received in all my life.”

Cindie Dennis says, “After Jim Martin informed us of our friends’ deaths, we all sat around in shock . . . sobbing and crying. I do remember looking outside and seeing all the media gathered around the building . . . TV satellite trucks, guys carrying television cameras, others with notebooks and tape recorders.

“They gathered up Julie and Clayton and me . . . I can’t remember who else . . . and told us we had to get out of there.

“They rushed us out the back door and piled us in the green Victims’ Services van and took us all over to Joe Sangster’s house. Almost everybody from the Mayerthorpe and Whitecourt detachments . . . and their families . . . were there.

“Everyone was terribly upset . . . people were trying to talk to each other, but it was difficult, because most of us were bawling.

“I finally got myself together and called my parents on their cell phone. They were already in the car on their way to Mayerthorpe. They had left right after my mom phoned me in the morning. It’s a six-hour drive from their place in Pincher Creek, and now they weren’t that far away.

An aerial view of the crime scene taken on March 3, 2005. Notice the dog’s shed at the rear of the Quonset and the distance of the fuel tank (behind the three steel grain bins) from the Quonset. (Mayerthorpe Freelancer)

“After that, I sat around with the others watching television. The incident was all over the provincial news . . . every channel.”

Banner newspaper headlines announced the awful truth: Four Mounties Slain in Alberta. National radio and television programming was interrupted to convey the dreadful news to an astonished nation.

And ever since that terrible Thursday in March 2005, the most notorious mass murder in the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would be forever tied to tiny, unpretentious Mayerthorpe.