CLIPPING: Mayerthorpe killings trial delayed

Suspect's plight divides Mayerthorpe

RCMP Slayings

Kevin Libin, National Post

Published: Saturday, July 26, 2008

EDMONTON -A band of reporters had turned out for the event. Family
members of the four Mounties killed by James Roszko's rifle on a
Mayerthorpe farm in 2005 were there; so, too, were family of the two
accused. They had all come yesterday morning to the Alberta Court of
Queen's Bench in Edmonton for what was supposed to mark the opening
chapter in the trial against the only two men charged in that grisly
slaying.

Shawn Hennessey and Dennis Cheeseman were to enter their pleas to
charges of first-degree murder. Only, the defendants did not appear.
Lawyers requested, and were granted, more time to prepare.

The pleas will not come now until September; the trial is not
scheduled to start until spring, 2009.

And so, the details of the peculiar case against the two young men
from Barrhead, Alta., about which little has been revealed since their
dramatic and stunning arrest last summer, will remain under tight
wraps for some time yet.

Up against the Crown's steadfast silence about its case, and the
clean-cut reputations of the accused brothers-in-law -- who friends
and family insist are simply hardworking, stand-up fellows -- the
vacuum of plausible proof has cultivated suspicions among supporters
and strangers that Mr. Hennessey and Mr. Cheeseman are unlucky
scapegoats for a police force desperate for some measure of criminal
justice from the calamity in Mayerthorpe.

It also appears to have left many residents in their hometown, an
hour's drive from Edmonton, split between loyalties.

Mr. Hennessey's parents have long been respected community pillars in
Barrhead, a generally upright community that lays claim to having more
churches per capita than anyplace on the continent.

Mr. Hennessey, his wife and two young daughters shared a home with
his wife's brother, Mr. Cheeseman. Neither were previously known as
troublemakers, all accounts say. After their arrests, a retired local
Mountie wrote to the local paper to insist the two "did not cause the
police nor the community a moment's problem. Not even a traffic
ticket, to my knowledge."

But Barrhead has great affection for its constabulary, too. The
slaughter at Mayerthorpe, 60 kilometres to the southwest, only
deepened those sympathies. "The RCMP here are the good guys. Everybody
likes the RCMP in Barrhead," says Andrew Coffey, editor of the
Barrhead Leader, the town's newspaper. Most locals, he says, "don't
want to say anything bad against the
families, and they don't want to say anything bad against the RCMP."
Mostly, he thinks, folks find it best just to keep out of it.

A donation fund set up to help pay for the suspects' defence could
not find a home in the town's skittish bank branches; supporters
settled for a drop box in a downtown convenience store.

Steve Hunter, manager of the Kal-Tire where Mr. Hennessey was
assistant manager before his arrest, was once Mr. Hennessey's most
public defender. He has since been told by head office to clam up.
"They got a lot of publicity and photos and they didn't really like
it," says a former co-worker of Mr. Hennessey.

It has cost more than $2-million and occupied the time of more than
200 people to amass this case so far. The investigation has produced
nearly 80,000 pages of documents, says Peter Northcott, defence
counsel for Mr. Cheeseman. "It fills a room downstairs." The contents,
for now, remain known fully only by the Crown and the defendants.

Cathy Vessey, mother of Mr. Cheeseman and mother-in-law to Mr.
Hennessey, says her son believes he is being set up for a fall. "He
said, 'Mom, they've got nothing,' " but says he is sure he'll be going
away nonetheless, says Ms. Vessey, who travelled from out of town for
the aborted arraignment. But the admissibility of the evidence against
him and his brother-in-law, and the tactics used by police in
obtaining it, may end up as much a subject of this trial as the
accusations against the defendants.

Arrest warrants indicate police think Mr. Hennessey and Mr. Cheeseman
delivered James Roszko back onto his Mayerthorpe farm before he
ambushed and murdered RCMP constables Peter Schiemann, Brock Myrol,
Leo Johnston and Anthony Gordon on March 3, 2005.

Roszko had fled a day earlier when police appeared, initially to help
a bailiff repossess a truck. Once there, they discovered on the
property a marijuana grow operation and a stolen car chop shop. They
stuck around to guard the farm while gathering the necessary warrants.
Roszko somehow returned under their noses, unseen. Overnight, he snuck
into the barn where he would wait for police to enter so he could
shoot them down.

Phone records show, according to warrants, that in the 23 hours
between his escape and return to his farm, Roszko called Mr.
Hennessey's work phone several times. He knew and was reportedly
somewhat friendly with Mr. Hennessey, following frequent visits to the
Kal-Tire store in Barrhead.

Roszko -- in racking up 44 criminal charges and 14 convictions,
including sexual assaults against children and threats of violence
against adults and police -- had worn out his welcome at home in
Mayerthorpe. Roszko turned up at Mr. Hennessey's house on March 2,
asking to hide his pickup there. Mr. Hennessey later told police that
he refused when Roszko called, phoning his wife at home and
instructing her to refuse, too. The truck later turned up at Roszko's
aunt's acreage.

How Roszko travelled the 35 km from his truck back to the farm fully
armed for killing officers lies at the heart of the Crown's case.
According to the arrest warrants, "Hennessey is a person on which
Roszko would turn for assistance." Ms. Vessey says she believes her
son and Mr. Hennessey may have driven Roszko some of that distance
under duress. The killer was a bullying, armed madman with a
reputation for vengeance.

One close relative of the defendants reports that Roszko told the two
that day something about having a "score to settle" back on his farm,
while holding a gun close to Mr. Cheeseman riding in the backseat of
Mr. Hennessey's vehicle. They were the only two that knew of Roszko's
plans and were petrified, family members maintain, that calling the
police would make them the next target of Roszko's fierce retribution.

In the 28 months between the Mayerthorpe murders and the arrests last
summer, Mounties built their case against the men by conducting
against Mr. Cheeseman what is known as a "Mr. Big" sting, Mr.
Northcott confirms. It is a highly controversial technique.

An undercover agent draws a suspect into a fake criminal
organization, entangling him with a few dodgy errands -- say, bringing
him along to deliver a suitcase of money -- and rewarding him richly.

In this case, a single, reportedly lonely Mr. Cheeseman was the
target, lured, friends say, by "Mary," a pretty lady passing through
town claiming car trouble. They began dating. She would soon introduce
him to "Mark," who set Mr. Cheeseman up with lucrative chores.

For the sting to work, the key is for the suspect to eventually meet
the "boss," someone he's told has a habit of dealing violently with
turncoats. Mr. Big says the suspect knows too much; he had better
confess something the gang can hold against him to ensure loyalty.
Often the boss helpfully suggests something, based on his surprisingly
intricate knowledge of the suspect's life. If the target doesn't cop,
Mr. Big insinuates, he or his loved ones will pay.

The pressure to come up with a story is undoubtedly intense. And
while Mr. Big operations are widely used by the RCMP, they're
prohibited for that reason in the United States and Britain.

On July 5, 2007, Mr. Cheeseman met a mysterious man who reportedly
flew into Barrhead on a private plane. What he and the agent acting as
Mr. Big discussed that day is waiting to be revealed in court. But two
days after the meeting, a heavily armed SWAT team, backed up with dogs
and helicopters, arrested Mr. Cheeseman and Mr. Hennessey.

The two currently face four charges of first-degree murder. They
needn't have pulled a trigger: those assisting in the murder of a
police officer automatically face the most severe charge -- that's if
they knew that's what they were doing.

"To be found guilty of first-degree murder because it was a police
officer, then you'd have to have knowledge it was a police officer,"
Mr. Northcott points out. But whatever Mr. Cheeseman may have said in
the sting will likely be inadmissible as evidence against his
brother-in-law. How Mr. Hennessey and Mr. Cheeseman may have aided
Roszko, if at all; how much they knew of the monstrous nature of his
plans; and whether they did something willingly or at the forceful
urging of a man who traded in violence and threats, are the questions
waiting to be answered by this trial.

As tragic as the Mayerthorpe murders were for the national police
force, there was almost surely a feeling of humiliation, too, that
four highly trained officers could be hunted like deer by a clever
lunatic thought, initially, to be acting all alone. National sympathy
for the fallen officers was followed by public criticism. Distraught
colleagues and families of the murdered officers have, so far, had
only the corpse of Roszko (he shot himself after killing the
constables) to hold accountable for the crime.

RCMP maintain that other conspirators must have helped him. In
obtaining the arrest warrant, Constable Ian Ross swore that "[It's]
reasonable to expect that he had contacted and received the aid of
another person or persons … who was party to the offence of murder
through counselling, procuring, inciting, aiding or abetting."

A fatality inquiry examining the force's own handling of things that
bloody day in Mayerthorpe has been delayed, and now will wait until
the end of a trial that will determine whether Mr. Cheeseman and Mr.
Hennessey were a witting and willing part of such a plot.

Mr. Northcott insists his client was guilty of no such thing, and
will eventually plead as much, but declines to reveal his strategy to
demonstrate that claim. He's concerned any indiscretion could risk an
already grave case in which two young men face spending the next
quarter century in prison. More details, as usual, will have to wait.

Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest
MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

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