Rampage (22 page)

Between November 30 and December 10, 1959, Robert Raymond Cook was tried for the murder of his family in a Red Deer courthouse. As the case against him was entirely circumstantial, Justice Peter Greschuk reminded the jury that, in order to convict, the evidence had to be consistent with guilt and not with any other rational explanation. Nevertheless, they deliberated for a mere hour and a half before finding Cook guilty of capital murder. Judge Greschuk sentenced the twenty-two-year-old to hang on April 15, 1960. Shocked by the surprise conviction, Cook’s defence team filed for an appeal from the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Alberta. Their request was granted, and a second trial commenced in Edmonton on June 20, 1960, under Judge Harry Riley. Ultimately, the jurors reached the same verdict in a fraction of the time, and after the Appellate Court denied him a third trial, on November 15, 1960, Robert Raymond Cook became the first man to be executed in Alberta since 1952, and the last in the province’s history. In accordance with his wishes, Cook’s cadaver was donated to the University of Edmonton to be used for medical research. Whether the recipients of his transplanted eyes ever learned what horrors they had once fallen upon is unknown. Then again, there were many who did not believe that Bobby Cook was responsible for the murders at all.

Harmless?

One need not look any further than Bobby’s implausible tale of the days surrounding the murders for indications of his guilt.

1. Alberta’s greatest salesman: If we are to believe Bobby’s account, within an hour and a half this compulsive criminal had not only managed to convince his father and stepmother to go into business with him, but also to uproot to British Columbia with their five children … immediately.
   
2. Leave it to the convict: Instead of travelling to Edmonton to swap the vehicles himself, for some reason Raymond Cook had chosen fraud, entrusting a habitual car thief with the transaction.
   
3. Paperwork — why not? Rather than completing the necessary paperwork and returning promptly to Stettler with the station wagon, Bobby had embarked on a drunken joyride through Camrose and Whitecourt, inexplicably neglecting to fill out the documentation in Edmonton. If he had intended to turn over a new leaf, why would he do this, knowing it would eventually cause problems down the line?
   
4. Conveniently overlooking carnage: On Saturday Bobby had spent an hour in his family home, and found it unexpectedly vacant. Yet somehow he failed to notice the bloodstained mattresses and walls, along with the remnants of broken skull and shotgun.
   
5. Mr. Dressup or Jack the Stripper? Finally, if the killer was anyone other than Bobby Cook, why was the blue prison-issued suit secreted under a mattress? Raymond had been found in his bedclothes, so unless the perpetrator had stripped him of his bloodstained suit and redressed him, Bobby’s father could not have been wearing this article of clothing. It seems even more unlikely that the murderer would have donned the suit himself, exterminated the family, changed his apparel, then concealed the bloody clothes. In both cases, there would be no purpose for these elaborate and time-consuming actions. Is it not more feasible that Bobby himself had committed the massacre while wearing his own suit, which as a result became bloodied? Surely if he had left the house spattered in gore, he would have put himself at great risk of being detected. Given the options, the quickest way for Bobby to solve this problem was to change his clothes and hide the evidence.
   

Some mental health professionals doubted that Bobby was capable of slaughtering his family because of the lack of violence in his history. Then again,
Valery Fabrikant
’s past was similarly free of bloodshed. Others have argued that Cook did not qualify for the type of major personality disorder that would lead a man to cull his entire family. These assessments were wrong. Though it is obvious that Cook was not psychopathic, there is ample evidence to suggest he was governed by anti-social personality disorder. In DSM IV, anti-social personality disorder is diagnosed as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age fifteen years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

[46]

This disorder, paired with the inconsistency and improbability of Cook’s account and the mountain of circumstantial evidence against him, suggests that the juries who convicted him of murder were correct. A possible explanation for the massacre was that Cook had developed an overwhelming desire for the Impala, and after days of neglecting to visit his family, realized how they might be useful to him in this acquisition. When he had approached his father on Thursday, June 25, about trading the family station wagon for the Impala, Raymond had declined the offer. Not only would he have been a fool to trust Bobby, he probably sensed that he was being used. Enraged that the father who had once doted on him now cared more about his step-siblings, Bobby had entered the home after 9:30 on Thursday night and massacred them one by one. After concealing the bodies in the grease pit, he had absconded with the station wagon. Unlike Robert’s execution, the massacre had been a poorly planned and hot-blooded affair. He had been as incompetent at murder as he had been at theft: in the end, he gained nothing but pain.

Up to 50 percent of Canadian prison inmates may harbour anti-social personalities just as Bobby Cook did. The psychopath, with whom ASPs are often confused, is a much rarer entity. The notorious case of Mountie murderer
James Roszko
, a terrifying and utterly ruthless character, reflects the significant difference between the two.

   
      
James Roszko

“If I ever have to go, I’m taking a hell of a pile of them with me!”

Victims:
4 killed/committed suicide

Duration of rampage:
March 3, 2005 (mass murder)

Location:
Mayerthorpe, Alberta

Weapon:
Hechler and Koch .308 automatic assault rifle

Shark Tank

March 2, 2005: 3:00 p.m. Bailiff Robert Parry’s car horn broke the snowy Alberta silence. Beyond the chain-link fence, two large Rottweilers emerged from the Quonset hut, baring their fangs. Predictably, the debtor, James Michael Roszko, was not co-operating; now it was simply a matter of how aggressively he would resist. Outside the padlocked pipe gate barring the driveway, fellow bailiff Mike Hnatiw scoured the 1.2-kilometre-square enclosed property. Roszko had built himself a small fortress. Within the prison of paranoia, Hnatiw spotted three granaries, a mobile home, and a white 2005 Ford F-350 truck. After discovering irregularities in Roszko’s credit history, Kentwood Ford Sales of Edmonton had requested that the bailiffs travel 120 kilometres north of the city to repossess the truck. Given Roszko’s legendary animosity toward authority figures, it was like asking them to dive into a shark tank. On a previous occasion, he had used hidden spikes to flatten a visitor’s tires. There were also rumours Roszko had threatened people with guns. Hnatiw attempted to gain entry through the gate, but one of the Rottweilers raced toward him, prompting him to blast it with pepper spray. Deciding that it was too dangerous to proceed, Hnatiw returned to Parry’s vehicle and advised him to contact the RCMP. As they sat outside the compound awaiting the police cruisers, a runtish man in a ball cap, dark jacket, and jeans emerged from a building, entered the truck, and revved the engine.

“Mr. Roszko!” Hnatiw hollered. Parry blasted the horn again. The man drove over to two gates on the south side of the property, alighted, opened the first, and then began to fiddle with the second. Clambering back inside the truck, he drove north toward the chain-link gates and opened them. Before re-entering his vehicle, he turned to the bailiffs and shouted, “Fuck off.” Hnatiw and Parry watched as one of the most dangerous men in Alberta accelerated rapidly to the north and veered west down a hill, leaving his compound behind him. Not long after, the RCMP arrived. Hearing the bailiffs’ account, several officers drove north in search of Roszko, while others helped Hnatiw and Parry safely infiltrate the property. Hnatiw damaged his gate cutters trying to snip through the padlock, but eventually gained access using a pry bar on the gate, warding off the dogs with more pepper spray. The bailiffs and RCMP officers entered the Quonset to find an auto-theft chop-shop, a stolen generator, and an illegal cannabis-growing operation consisting of between 192 and 280 marijuana plants and $8,000 in cultivation materials.
**
Realizing that they would now require a
Criminal Code and Controlled Drug and Substances Act
search warrant, RCMP Corporal James Martin ordered his officers to vacate the property, leaving Constables Julie Letal and Trevor Josok to watch over the Roszko farm. He returned to the Mayerthorpe RCMP detachment with Constable Peter Schiemann to obtain the warrant. At 6:30 p.m., bailiffs Mike Hnatiw and Rob Parry posted seizure documents on the door of Roszko’s mobile home and departed.

Back at the detachment, at 7:40 p.m. Corporal Martin faxed the warrant request to Queen’s Counsel Robert Philp in Edmonton, and within fifteen minutes received approval to search the Roszko property over a twenty-four-hour period, beginning at 8:00 that evening. Martin then telephoned the RCMP Edmonton Auto Theft Unit to request their help in identifying which auto parts had been stolen. They agreed to send Constables Garrett Hoogestraat and Stephen Vigor sometime after dawn. In the meantime, the RCMP Edmonton Operational Communications Centre had issued a BOLF (“Be on the Lookout For”) for Roszko. As Corporal Martin descended upon the farm with his warrant and six officers, police vehicles continued to patrol the surrounding area, their eyes peeled for any sign of the fugitive. At 11:30 p.m., members of the Edmonton Police Service’s Green Team arrived to assist with the search. The team included a forensic identification specialist from Edson and a tow truck driver to remove the stolen parts. According to CBC’s
The Fifth Estate
, items seized over the next day included the following:

• Evidence of marijuana cultivation, stolen and suspected stolen property, namely, marijuana lamps, pots containing seven marijuana plants and 88 hanging harvested plants, and notes pertaining to the maintenance and harvesting of marijuana from the residence at the location.
  
• One hundred and ninety-two growing marihuana [
  sic
  ] plants complete with pots, irrigation and lighting systems from the quonsit [
  sic
  ] at the location.
  
• A Warmac generator, the property of Trident Exploration reported stolen on the 16th of February, 2005.
  
• A newer Sierra 2500 truck, red in colour, with the vehicle identification numbers removed from the door frame and dashboard.
  
• A newer model grey Ford truck which was partially disassembled and the interior stripped. This vehicle contained a vehicle identification number plate which appeared glued on the dashboard and thus is suspected to be from a different vehicle.
  
• A Honda 400R dirt bike with serial numbers altered.
  
• Pick truck [
  sic
  ] box containing newer truck seats, truck grilles and various other new model truck parts.
  
• Firearms ammunition of assorted calibers.
  [47]
  

Eeriest of all was the handwritten list of officers from the Mayerthorpe RCMP detachment, along with the call signs and cellphone numbers of their respective cruisers.

Mountie Murderer

Early the next morning, Constables Peter Schiemann and Brock Myrol paid a visit to a local veterinary clinic where they acquired Xylazine, Acepromazine, and a syringe. At 8:00 a.m., Auto Theft Constables Hoogestraat and Vigor arrived from Edmonton to find less than a handful of Mounties patrolling the Roszko property. They witnessed Schiemann and Myrol feeding sedative-injected meat to two Rottweilers in a shed. While Hoogestraat and Vigor changed into their coveralls and prepared their equipment, Schiemann, Myrol, Constable Anthony Gordon, and Constable Leo Johnston walked over to the Quonset hut. Schiemann, who had intended to go to Edmonton to purchase camera equipment, was both unarmed and clad in civilian clothing. Upon entering, Myrol, Johnston, and Schiemann walked to the middle of the structure, while Gordon lingered in the doorway. Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by gunshots. The three officers turned to see Gordon topple to the ground, struck twice in the head at point-blank range. Hidden behind three plastic barrels to the left of the door, James Roszko turned his Hechler and Koch .308 automatic assault rifle on them and pulled the trigger. All hell broke loose. Schiemann and Johnston were cut down before they could react. Myrol ran for the cover of two sheds at the back of the hut, but the bullets caught him. In seconds, James Roszko had committed the single worst massacre of RCMP officers in the past hundred years.