Canadian True Crime - The Mayerthorpe Tragedy [2]

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

[Part 2 of 3] With everyone questioning how the Mayerthorpe Tragedy was permitted to happen, the RCMP were convinced James Roszko must have had someone helping him—and they were determined to do whatever it took to find this person and bring them to justice.Look out for early, ad-free release on CTC premium feeds: available on Amazon Music (included with Prime), Apple Podcasts, Patreon and Supercast. Full list of resources, information sources, credits and music credits:See the page for this episode at www.canadiantruecrime.ca/episodes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone. Thank you so much for your patience during this series. You might have seen that there are now three parts. It was not my intention, but this is a very complex and highly nuanced story and despite my best efforts to edit the script down, it's just not one of those cases that can be summarized without losing important context. Part two blew out to be more than two hours and the file had to be split up, but everything is ready for you to listen to right now. Now, if you already listen to the first part, today's episode starts with a recap to bring you up to speed. But if you've waited to listen to the whole thing together and want to get straight into the story, feel free to fast forward about three and a half minutes. Thanks again for your patience, and with that, it's on with the show. And buckle up because it's a ride. So, to recap, it was 2005 in the province of Alberta, near the town of Mayerthor.

Two bailiffs showed up at the fenced compound of 46-year-old James Roscoe to repossess his truck. He was openly hostile giving them the finger before driving off his property. The RCMP were called for backup and they discovered what appeared to be an illegal cannabis grow-op and chop shop operation in the large Quonset hut on the property, a completely separate issue to the missed truck payments. The RCMP accessed James Roscoe's criminal record which they used to apply for a new search warrant and conduct a risk assessment.

In charge of the operation was Corporal Jim Martin from Mayerthorpe Detachment, who brought extra insight as he'd dealt with James Roscoe a few times before. Corporal Martin knew Roscoe as a paranoid loner, who was aggressively protective of his property and didn't seem to like the police much. But he'd last been seen fleeing the site, so it wasn't considered likely that he would return to the scene while the RCMP were there. After returning with a new search warrant, the RCMP processed the cannabis grow-op and the chop shop.

At 3am, they were finished with the grow-up, but the auto-th theft unit weren't due to arrive until more than six hours later. So they paused the search, secured the site and left it overnight. But even though they didn't think Roscoe would return, if he did, they wanted it to be known that they were there. They left several marked police cars in highly visible locations and left the portable halogen lights on overnight. And two RCMP officers were left to stand guard as security, constables Leo Johnston and Anthony Gordon. The next morning, rookie constable Brock Myroll was dropped off by Peter Sheeman, who was off from. duty and just wanted to help. Soon after the two officers from the auto theft unit arrived, they heard several

bangs. James Roscoe had apparently snuck back into the property without being seen and had shot constables Myrol, Sheiman, Johnston and Gordon dead before turning the gun on himself. A senseless tragedy. As Canada grieved, then started to process the news that four young RCMP officers had been shot dead, there were questions. James Roscoe was known to the locals as being dangerous and volatile. As more and more stories came out about how he prayed on vulnerable boys and young men, threatened and intimidated witnesses, and then slipped through the cracks of the justice system

time and time again to continued freedom, people started asking, why didn't the RCMP do more to prevent the Mayerthorpe tragedy? In fact, the RCMP officers who worked the crime scene were asking the same thing. Everyone was shattered. According to the Edmonton Journal, many of them would be permanently scarred by what they experienced and could not function as police officers after that. Several would file lawsuits against the RCMP, claiming that it didn't provide proper support at that time.

Blindsided, the RCMP suspected that Roscoe. had assistance. How else would he have been able to sneak back in undetected? First, they had to eliminate his mother and aunt. His phone record showed he'd been calling them in the hours after he sped off the property in his truck. But neither his aunt nor his mother Stephanie drove him back. So how was he able to get back to his compound and sneak in without anyone seeing him? Where we left off in part one, the RCMP were investigating what had happened. Why was it that they'd not seen any guns? The Green team had found no guns during their search,

yet somehow Roscoe was found with three of them on his person. And a more thorough search of his property had uncovered more guns, strategically hidden. None of them were registered to Roscoe and several of them were reported as stolen. One of the three guns found with Roscoe's body was a rifle registered to the name John Hennessy. Investigators would pay this man a visit and see why his gun was with Roscoe. And there was something else. As you'll remember, a search of Roscoe's phone records revealed that he didn't just try to call his mum and aunt after he fled the property in his truck that day. He also called an automotive repair and tire business called Kempel.

Keltire in the town of Barhead, a larger town located about 65 kilometres away from Mayerthorpe, according to Google. And Roscoe also called another number, which was traced to a man called Sean Hennessey. He worked at that same Keltire in Barhead. At the time of the Mayerthorpe tragedy, Sean Hennessey was a 26-year-old married father of two, who lived on acreage outside Barhead. He was clean-cut, popular and well-liked in the town, known as someone with a fun-loving nature. He was also well-respected at Caltyre, where he worked as a mechanic. Reliable and hard-working, he'd been promoted to the position of assistant manager.

Sean was devoted to his young family. He met his wife Christine Cheeseman when they were teenagers and the pair were inseparable from that point on. Friends described them as a fairy tale couple. But Christine's life wasn't always a fairy tale. According to court documents, she and her younger brother Dennis Cheeseman suffered a crushing blow when their father died in a serious car accident when they were small children. And their mother had issues of her own,

which meant that Christine became the main carer of her little brother. Dennis was described as shy, quiet and naive, a country boy. He didn't have a large group of friends at school and preferred to hang around with Christine and her boyfriend Sean. The three got on super well. As teenagers, Christine and Dennis's mother suddenly abandoned the house and the acreage they lived on, as well as her two children. Before long, Sean moved in to help the siblings out, something that Dennis was happy about since he admired Sean's confidence and looked up to him as a role model. And Sean's family, the Hennessy family, loved Christine and Dennis too.

The two had essentially been orphaned, and even though they preferred to stay in their house their mother had abandoned for stability, the Hennessy family welcomed to the siblings into the fault as part of their family. Before long, Christine and Sean were married and had taken out a mortgage to buy their mother's house so they could all stay living in it together. Dennis obviously came with the house and lived in the basement as Christine and Sean started to expand their family.

He was a great uncle to his two nieces and was a big help with babysitting and later school runs. After years of hardship, this was finally a situation where Dennis felt like he belonged. At 16, he dropped out of school to work full-time as a janitor so he could contribute to the household expenses. At the time of the Mayerthorpe tragedy, he was working at a food manufacturing plant in the town of Barhead,

where he was known to be a hard worker. But he was still fairly shy, a homebody, who preferred to hang out with Christine and Sean and their friends. It was Sean Hennessy who first got to know James Roscoe. After Roscoe had been released from his last prison stent for committing the sexual assault, his reputation in Marathorpe was wrecked. The locals knew of him as a violent sexual predator with a preference for teenagers and young men. So he took a further drive to the larger town of Barhead instead, to do his shopping and run his errands.

He used these trips as opportunities to strike up friendships with a fresh new pool of naive teenagers and young men, who might be impressed by some assistance from an older, more experienced one. Obviously, his end game was sexual encounters, whether consensual or otherwise. On one of his trips to Barhead, he needed a mechanic, so he stopped off at the automotive and tire business Caltyre, and it was there that he met Sean Hennessy, who at that point was in his mid-20s. Because Sean was friendly and easygoing,

he was quick to strike up a rapport with most people, including James Roscoe. Before long, Roscoe started to offer him work on his property back near Marathorpe. They were easy jobs like installing a stereo in one of his trucks or helping plant trees, and Roscoe paid very well. He eventually told Sean about the cannabis grow-up he had in his Quonset hut and offered to sell some to him at a good price. Occasionally, Sean would purchase some of the cannabis and sell it to his own friends and family. Sean Hennessy was confident and no pushover, but he was also relatively young and inexperienced, particularly when it came to the manipulation tactics of an experienced older man with nefarious intentions. About a year before the Marathorpe tragedy, Roscoe was at Caltyre and

overheard Sean talking about a rifle he had. Roscoe told him he was having trouble with a bear and asked if he could borrow the rifle for a few days. The rifle that Sean lent him was actually a sentimental gift from his grandfather, John Hennessy, and it was still registered in his name. Luckily, Roscoe returned it as promised. Roscoe had dirt bikes and other vehicles that he would often lend to young men as part of his ploy to groom them. When he loaned a dirt bike to Sean Hennessy, Sean's father Barry commented that something seemed off. Quote, people don't lend you dirt bikes for no reason. He told his son to be on high alert. Sean started to bring Dennis to help at Roscoe's compound sometimes with odd jobs like planting trees. Dennis was thrilled at the

prospect of earning some extra money while getting to hang with his brother-in-law. But in the months before the Marathorpe tragedy, Dennis's sister Christine noticed that something was off with her brother. She would say to the Edmonton Journal, he was even more drawn back, and Dennis isn't somebody who would sit there and tell you his feelings. He just holds it all in, but he was even more held back than before. Whatever was plaguing Dennis, he wasn't ready to speak about it, yet. The last episode covered the Mayerthorpe tragedy from the perspective of the RCMP. But that was only half the story. Here's the rest of it. On March 2nd, 2005, the day before what would be described as the worst multiple officer killing in modern Canadian history,

Sean Hennessy and Dennis Cheeseman were at their respective workplaces as usual in Barhead. Outside, Aside Marathorpe, Roscoe was on his property too. He had just seen two bailiffs at his front gate and set his dogs on them before fleeing in the Ford pickup truck they were there to repossess. According to court documents, as the bailiffs were calling the RCMP for backup, Roscoe was making calls of his own. He was of course looking for a place to hide his truck and thought his Aunt Anne's property 35 kilometres away would be a good spot. He wanted his mother Stephanie to arrange it with her, but he couldn't get hold of her because she was running errands for the day. He kept trying.

Back at the Roscoe farm, the RCMP had spotted the cannabis grow-up and chop shop in the Quonset hut, and Corporal Martin and Constable Peter Sheeeman had just left the property to get a new search warrant. As they were assessing Roscoe's criminal record as part of their search warrant application, the man himself was on a mission to hide his truck, and when he wasn't making progress with getting hold of his mother, he was going to ask Sean Hennessy if he could park it at his property. First he tried the Caltyre landline,

then the portable phone for the business that Sean was in possession of as assistant manager. When he finally got through, he explained that bailiffs were at his compound and asked if he could park his truck on the Hennessy's acreage, which was rural and often. the highway. Sean told him absolutely not. He knew that Roscoe had stopped making payments on the truck and didn't want to be involved in hiding it. Sean ended the call and immediately phoned his wife Christine, who was at home with their young daughters. She didn't really know Roscoe. She'd only

met him once, but Sean told her that if she saw him, she wasn't to let him park his truck on their acreage. Sean's instincts were spot on, as they were told on. As they were to, Talking on the phone, Christine saw the white Ford pickup truck pull into their driveway. Roscoe got out and walked over to the front door of the house. Christine wanted to go check on her daughters, so she handed the phone straight to him so he could speak to Sean directly. When she came back out minutes later, the phone had been left on the table and Roscoe and his truck were gone. On his way home, Sean stopped off quickly at the house of a friend where he knew Dennis would be. helping them move house.

Off to the side, he told his younger brother-in-law what Roscoe had told him. Because Sean had refused to let him park his truck on the property, he was a little uneasy about the situation and wanted Dennis home for possible backup. Dennis didn't know Roscoe very well, other than those odd jobs he'd done at the compound, but he could be counted on to help Sean with whatever he needed. Dennis may have had other reasons, that would compel him to help Roscoe, but this wouldn't come out until later.

He promised Sean he'd come home as soon as he could. Back at the Hennessy house, Sean and Christine had a rather uneventful night. But not long after they went to bed, they were woken up by headlights shining into their window. Sean told his wife he was going to check it out, and she could go back to sleep. She would say she thought it was probably just some of Sean's friends. But it was not. Roscoe had returned, and this time he was agitated and panicked, and he was no longer asking for help, he was demanding it. He had a Luger pistol clearly visible, tucked into the waistband of his pants. Dennis arrived home not long after that,

and heard that Roscoe was demanding two things. One, he wanted Sean's rifle, the one his grandfather John Hennessy gave him a few years earlier, the one Roscoe had borrowed before. And his second demand was a ride. After Sean first told him to get lost, he had his mother Stephanie arranged for him to park his truck at her sister's place, but he had no way to get back, so he asked Sean to follow him in his own car

and then give him a ride back to his compound. 26-year-old Sean Hennessey and 21-year-old Dennis Cheeseman were both afraid and wanted Roscoe gone from their house as soon as possible. Sean immediately grabbed the Winchester Magnum rifle and wiped it down and handed it to the 46-year-old along with a box of ammunition. Dennis went into his room in the basement, grabbed a white pillowcase, put in some gloves and stashed the rifle in the pillowcase as a cover for it. Dennis then rode with Sean in his Dodge Neon as they followed Roscoe to his aunt's place. As they were waiting for him to park the truck, they discussed driving off and leaving him there, but decided against it. They didn't want him coming after them. Soon he emerged holding the Hennessy rifle and still with that handgun tucked into the waistband of his pants.

He ordered Dennis to get out of the front seat. Dennis scrambled into the back and Roscoe took his back. place. According to court documents, Dennis and Sean were silent on the way home, as Roscoe ranted and complained about the RCMP and threatened to get even with them by burning down the Qonset hut. Dennis would refer to the way he was talking as devil talk. Obviously, Roscoe did not want to be dropped off out the front of his compound, so he asked to be let out around the proverbial corner on a different road about a kilometre from the Quonset hut. It was a good location to sneak back into the compound.

Roscoe got out, put on a pair of socks over his boots, grabbed the Hennessy rifle from the backseat and set off. While his stated goal was to shoot some holes in gas tanks, which would destroy the quonset and the evidence of the illegal activities, he had no idea that the RCMP had already discovered it and the Green team were processing it at that very moment. Sean and Dennis drove off straight away and went directly home. It was now past midnight and Sean had to be up early the next morning.

On the way home, Dennis suggested that they called the RCMP and warned them about Roscoe. But Sean discouraged that idea. It seemed like Roscoe just wanted to burn down the Quonset hut and with it the cannabis grow up. And since Sean had sold some quantities of that cannabis, he wanted to stay as far as far as away as possible from the situation. But mainly, he was worried that Roscoe would find out they'd snitched, come after them and get revenge. They went straight home and went to bed.

So we know that Roscoe had snuck back onto the compound while the green team were in the Quonset hut. A later inquiry would conclude that at some point during the early morning hours, he had managed to sneak into the Quonset and hide in a hidey seat. spot in the northeast corner. And there he stayed as constables Leo Johnston and Anthony Gordon arrived at around 3am to stand guard overnight until the auto theft unit arrived. And Roscoe was still

there at 9.30 a.m. when constables Brock Myrull and Peter Sheiman arrived. The three constables on duty were armed and wore soft body armor for protection. Peter Sheiman was not on duty, did not have any armor and was of course unarmed. Just before 10am, minutes after the additional two members from the auto theft unit had arrived, the four constables approached the Quonset. By this point, Roscoe had moved to a different vantage point in the southeast corner of the Quonset, carefully hidden behind junk and clutter. From there, he was able to ambush them before they even knew what was happening. The inquiry would conclude that all four officers died inside the Quonset, but Constable Leo Johnston was able to fire off one shot first from the ground where he lay dying.

But, in yet another stroke of luck for Roscoe, the handgun tucked into his waistband took the bullet, allowing him to escape injury. But his luck would soon run out. Roscoe walked out the front door but was surprised to find the two constables from the auto theft unit there. He shot at them, and while both constables escaped injury, Constable Stephen Vigour fired back, shooting Roscoe in the hand and thigh. Not fatal injuries, but serious enough to force him to retreat back inside, where he would realise that his injuries meant there was no possibility of escape.

He shot himself in the chest. His brother John would tell CBC Radio in Edmonton, quote, least the credit for taking his life, so that's probably why he took it himself. Back at the Hennessy house, Sean's wife Christine was the first of the three to hear the news about what had happened at the Roscoe property. Sean Hennessy had been up early and had already driven 120 kilometres north of Edmonton for an off-site manager's meeting for work. Because he was uncontactable that day,

Christine immediately called her younger brother Dennis at his workplace. She had no idea what had happened the night before, but was shocked that the man who had been at her house was responsible for the murder of four Mounties. When Dennis heard the news, the colour apparently drained from his face, and he left work immediately with the excuse that there'd been a family emergency. When he got home, he told his sister what had happened, how he and Sean had given Roscoe arrived,

that night. According to the Edmonton Journal, Dennis sat down for a long time and cried. Sean drove back from Edmonton, but he listened to CDs the whole way so he didn't get to hear the news until he also got home, and his reaction was the same as Dennis, shock and utter devastation. Christine would say that after that day, her husband and brother were never the same again. Obviously, Christine wanted to know why they had helped Roscoe. According to the Edmonton Journal, Sean explained that when the man showed up that night and he saw a gun tucked into his pants, his only thought was how to get him out of their house. So he gave Roscoe exactly what he wanted, a rifle and a ride.

But Sean explained they had no idea that he was planning to kill RCMP officers. Roscoe had only told them that he was going to burn down the Quonset hut to hide the marijuana grow up. After the Marathorpe tragedy, the RCMP and the media were publicly questioning how Roscoe had been able to get back to his farm. Images of the Hennessy rifle were all over TV and the newspaper. Sean, Dennis and Christine were panicking. Sean knew it would only be a matter of time before the RCMP traced his grandfather's gun. and he had to do something. He decided that he would talk to his parents and see what they thought.

But at the same time, he felt ashamed and devastated and didn't want his parents to know the full story. So he changed it to minimize his own culpability and focus on the problem that needed to be solved, the rifle. According to the Edmonton Journal, Sean told his parents that Roscoe had come asking for his help that night, but he refused, so the man's. left. The problem was, the one found with Roscoe was actually their family's rifle given to

Sean by his grandfather John Hennessy. But Sean didn't tell his parents that he'd given the rifle to Roscoe that night. He said he'd lent it to him a year earlier. That at least was true, but he told his parents that Roscoe had never given the rifle back, and that's why he still had it that night. Sean's father Barry was not pleased. Sean's father Barry was not pleased. that his son had not only loaned out the rifle that his grandfather had given him, but also didn't prioritize getting it back. He chastised his son for being reckless, and then turned his attention to solving the problem that they would soon be facing.

The RCMP will want to know why John Hennessy's rifle was found with James Roscoe. When John was told about the situation, he was dismayed to hear what had happened, but he was more sympathetic to his grandson. He believed it was bad luck that Sean had lent his rifle to a man who used it to kill four RCMP constables, but that didn't mean he deserved to get caught up in the situation. Sean had a young family to provide for, so his grandfather decided to take the fall and leave Sean right out of it. This lie seemed to be the only solution, but it still made the whole

family very uncomfortable. Sean's father Barry would tell the Edmonton Journal that it was a confusing and stressful time for the family. Not all members were on board with the plan. Quote, we were trying to stay together as a group, as a family, and to turn on dad who was trying to protect his grandson. It played out exactly as planned. John told the RCMP the exact story they had agreed to, which was that the rifle had been stolen from his own truck at some point, and he didn't know where it was. And for a while, nothing else happened. The problem was, the gun wasn't the only thing that tied the Hennessy family to Roscoe. The RCMP had those phone records that showed who Roscoe had been calling after he fled in his truck, and it didn't take long before they put two

and two together. Suspicion started to trickle down to Sean Hennessy, but there were no further leads. That is, until they spoke to Roscoe's ever-supportive mother, Stephanie. The RCMP interviewed Stephanie and her husband, Warren Fiffield, several times in the month or two after the shooting. They were both asked to take polygraph tests, which they refused. But it should be noted that it's not in anyone's best interest to consent to taking a polygraph test, given the results are notoriously unreliable and not admissible in Canadian court any. But after the RCMP had discovered the link with Sean Hennessy from the phone records and the link through the gun, they mentioned his name to Stephanie and asked her if she knew him.

She told them that she did know a person called Sean, that was an associate of her son in his cannabis business. She said she didn't know his last name, but apparently James grew the cannabis and Sean sold it. She also told them that when her son called her the night of the shooting, she believed he was calling from Sean's house. When Sean eventually found out what Roscoe's mother had told the RCMP, he was shocked. He didn't know Stephanie, he'd never even seen her, and he wasn't a partner in charge of selling and distributing the cannabis. Roscoe had given him some amounts every now and then to sell to friends and family, but that

was it. He'd never even been inside the Quonset Hut. According to the Edmonton Journal, Sean told a friend that he figured Roscoe must have told his mother a bunch of lies about his involvement in the grow-op. Quote, where would she get my name from? I never met her before. Stephanie fulfilled's initial comments about Sean Hennessy were extremely damaging and put a prominent target on his back. Years later, she gave another statement that was a complete contradiction, but it didn't matter. Her initial comments set a course of action in motion which could never be reversed. Believing that Sean Hennessy was an equal partner in Roscoe's operation, the RCMP investigators honed in on him.

They figured that he had a strong motive to help Roscoe, and they just had to keep digging until they found the answers they were looking for. They still had yet to find out how Roscoe had been able to get from his aunt Anne's place where he ditched his truck, back to his own compound. They suspected that Sean Hennessy was the answer, but there was no proof. And even if there was, that didn't mean that he knew what Roscoe was planning to do. They would need to work harder to get the answers they wanted. A week after the Marathorpe tragedy, Sean Hennessy gave his first interview to the police.

There, he told them the same thing he'd told his parents. Roscoe showed up that day looking for a place to hide his truck. Sean refused him again and Roscoe left and he didn't see him again. The RCMP also stopped in at Dennis's workplace to ask him about it. There was absolutely nothing linking Dennis to the Marathorpe tragedy, but as someone who was close to Sean Hennessy and lived in the same house, they assumed that he might know something. But Dennis told them that he didn't know James.

Roscoe, and that night he'd been helping a friend move house, which was true, but he said he got home even later than what he actually did. And then, a few weeks later, the RCMP received an anonymous tip. Dennis had been overheard telling someone at a local bar that he'd given Rosco a ride back to his farm that night. Investigators questioned Dennis again, and again he denied it. He denied knowing Roscoe. He denied. ever having met him, and his friends backed him up. After the initial few weeks and first interviews with the RCMP, the Hennessy family got an uneasy feeling and decided to consult a lawyer.

The lawyer warned them never to talk to the police, but especially not in a situation like this, where one misstep could result in a long prison sentence. He instructed them to direct any further questions his way. So, when investigators came knocking again, Sean directed them to his lawyer, as he was told. The police asked for a DNA sample and for Sean to take a polygraph test. His lawyer said no. The RCMP suspected that Sean knew more than what he was saying,

and decided he must have instructed his relatives to keep their mouth shut too. But Dennis Cheeseman, on the other hand, couldn't seem to keep his own mouth shut. he was deeply troubled by the whole thing and had blurted things out here and there. He told more friends at work that he knew Roscoe. He'd been on his farm, and he blurted out that Roscoe had been at their house the night before the murders. And he told another friend that he drove Roscoe back to his farm that night, but he said he had no idea that Roscoe had planned to kill anyone. The friend would recall that Dennis was extremely upset about it.

and he swore them all to secrecy. Seven months after the Marathorpe tragedy, media organisations were able to access search warrants related to the case and revealed Sean Hennessy for the first time as being a potential co-conspirator with James Roscoe. The search warrant included the fact that Sean's number was on Roscoe's records, and it also included Stephanie's statement that Sean was a partner in the grow-up. It stated that the RCMP believed that Sean was a person on which Roscoe would turn to for assistance

and it was reasonable to expect that he was, quote, party to the offensive murder through counselling, procuring, inciting, aiding and abetting. When Sean's parents found out through the media that he'd been considered a partner in the grow-up, they were shocked. Barry Hennessy demanded that his son explain what had happened. Sean explained the situation. He wasn't selling Roscoe's weed. He just got small quantities occasionally to sell to friends and family.

He assured his father that he was not the kingpin drug dealer that the search warrants made him out to be. A reporter from the Globe and Mail managed to get Sean to comment on why Roscoe had been calling him, and he tearfully denied knowing anything about it. Quote, I guess he didn't have any friends. I can't tell you why he called.

me. He added that he'd never been in a situation like this before. The media reported that he was clearly devastated by it all. But the damage had been done. Sean Hennessy was no longer just a target to the RCMP. There was so much public anger and grief about what had happened, and with James Roscoe did, Sean was next in line with a target on his back. His mother Sandy would say to the Edmonton journal that it was a horrible time whenever she went out. Quote, I could overhear people saying that's Sean Hennessy's mum, and she knew it was negative. And for all that came out about Sean, he was not arrested. After a while, people started to believe that if the RCMP really had anything on him,

he would have been arrested. While nothing further came out about Sean, Dennis's web of lies involving his co-workers was starting to crumble, as they saw the gravity of the situation. They confirmed to the RCMP that Dennis did tell them he'd given Roscoe a ride back to his farm. When the RCMP went back to Dennis to see what he had to say now that his friends were telling the truth, the 21-year-old saw an opportunity. Dennis would take the blame for everyone and get the pressure off the Hennessy family. He had lost his own father at a young age and didn't want his nieces to lose their father Sean. So Dennis told the RCMP that yes, he did know Roscoe and

had planted some trees at his farm. But this is where the truth to the story ended. Dennis told them that the day before the tragedy, Roscoe had tracked him down in a grocery store at Barhead and asked him for a ride back to his farm. Dennis told the investigators that Roscoe already had a rifle with him and a pistol. Now, even though he said, he said, he was a rifle with him and a pistol. Now, even though Dennis told his co-workers that he had no idea that Roscoe had intended on killing the RCMP officers, his story was now slightly different. He told investigators that although Roscoe didn't mention the RCMP specifically, he did mention that he intended to get even, but Dennis just kept driving because he was afraid. And later in the interview, he admitted that he had a friend

helping him that night, but he refused to say the friend's name because he had a lot to lose. According to the Edmonton Journal, Dennis did not cope well with the stress of the situation and having to lie to the RCMP. Towards the end of the interview, he seemed to have a mental breakdown, so much so that the RCMP investigators decided to drop him off

at the hospital to be checked out by the mental health unit. When he was discharged and arrived home, he walked straight past Sean and Christine, went down to the basement and cried so hard that he could hardly talk. When he could finally put a sentence together, he told them, man, I just told the police, I did it all. They were shocked. Why? Why would you do that? Dennis told them that he wanted Sean, Christine and their girls

to never have to worry about this problem again. Sean hooked Dennis up with a lawyer who told him not to say another word or talk to anyone else. Just keep quiet. Everyone expected that Dennis might be arrested ASAP, but he wasn't. The next day, CBC's The Fifth the State aired one of several documentaries on the Marathorpe tragedy. This one focused on James Roscoe and his history of manipulation, threats and sexual assaults on teenage boys and young men, and the way he was able to get away with it time and time again. and after watching the Fifth Estate documentary, Dennis was ready to talk.

Dennis's boss at work was a man called Brad, an ex-police officer and someone he considered a trusted figure in his life. According to the Edmonton Journal, Dennis told his boss Brad that while he'd been telling everyone he didn't know Roscoe, he actually did. He then broke down as he told Brad that the year, year before the tragedy, he had been sexually assaulted by James Roscoe at gunpoint. This was obviously the first time he'd ever spoken about it. Dennis said that he couldn't tell anyone what had happened, and after all that it happened,

he'd been having trouble sleeping and had thought about killing himself. He then told Brad that he was the one that drove Roscoe to the farm, and again he left out Sean's involvement. He said he'd been at a friend's house helping the move, when Roscoe pulled up. Dennis said that Roscoe had been stalking him and had even asked him to sell drugs for him, although Dennis refused. He told his boss that he felt intimidated, so that's why he did as Roscoe asked and didn't tell anyone. And about that rifle, he told his boss the same thing he told the RCMP, that Roscoe already had the Hennessy rifle. His boss then asked him why he didn't call the RCMP after dropping off Roscoe.

Quote, he intimidated me. The conversation was only casual and not recorded, but Dennis's boss took detailed notes and then took this new information to the RCMP. The sexual assault information about Roscoe was certainly plausible and damning, but they also knew that Dennis's latest confession had elements that weren't true. They knew Sean Hennessy's. was involved, so why was Dennis still saying he wasn't? Whatever the truth was, it was still not

enough information for an arrest. A confession alone isn't enough unless it's thoroughly vetted and checked. And Dennis's confession didn't pass the test. March 3, 2006 was the first anniversary of the Mayer Thorpe tragedy and it made headlines across the country as people paused to remember the four young Mounties who lost their lives. And the RCMP continued to assure the public that they were comprehensively looking into the case, but these things take time. But behind the scenes, the RCMP was stumped. They had gone as far as they could with the investigation with the witnesses they had. There was no other path for them. But, as it turned out, Dennis Cheeseman would unintentionally clear one. Two weeks after,

the anniversary, he went and spoke with his boss again about something work-related, and at the end of the conversation, he was asked if he had anything else to discuss. This time, Dennis would say something that would change everything. He said that he knew Roscoe was going to kill those RCMP officers. Dennis's boss, Brad, was shocked to hear this and asked Dennis if he actually remembered Roscoe saying the words, I'm going to kill those RCMP officers. Dennis said he did. Apparently Roscoe said, They've got me and now I'm going to get them.

And there was more. In this latest confession of sorts, Dennis implicated Sean Hennessy for the first time, likely unintentionally. While his story was always that Roscoe had tracked him down personally, he told Brad that it was Sean who had contacted him, saying Roscoe had told him the RCMP were at the Quonset and he needed help. Dennis then told Brad about how he and Sean had followed Roscoe to his

aunt's place and then dropped him back at his farm. He added that when he later arrived home, he sat in the dark and cried. Again, Brad took detailed notes of the conversation and took them to the RCMP. Even though they were dubious about some of the statements, it was the big break that they needed, the information that showed a link between Sean, Dennis and Roscoe. But the problem was, Dennis's confessions to his boss could not be used in court as evidence against Sean Hennessy, because it was the very definition of hearsay. They needed more evidence to press charges. As far as the public were concerned, the situation seemed to stagnate in the time after the tragedy. But behind the scenes, the wounded Royal Canadian

mounted police officials, mourning four of their own that had fallen, while also being questioned for not taking the proper precautions needed, were on a manhunt. They needed more evidence than hearsay to press charges, so a decision was made that this warranted a Mr Big Sting. Quick recap for those who aren't aware. big is a Canadian police procedure that was developed in the 1990s and is used when police lacks sufficient evidence to charge a suspect and all their other investigation methods have failed. It's basically an elaborate undercover operation involving RCMP officers who pose as gang members, their friends and a crime boss. The goal is to stage situations that convince

the suspects they're joining a lucrative crime gang, with plenty of friendship and and camaraderie, lots of money and a sense of belonging. All they have to do is participate in the illegal operations of the gang, which are of course all staged. And then when they're eager enough to move up the ladder, they're told they have to confess something bad they've done to the crime boss, or Mr Big, as collateral. The Mr Big technique is so controversial that it's banned in the US.

It's a long game that can take months to pay off, and is incredibly expensive, costing upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars per investigation. Also, the schemes are so flashy and elaborate that they have been shown to influence people who are actually innocent of the crime they're being investigated for. Often, the suspects are naive and immature and might not be in the best position to judge a situation, so in those cases they may give a false confession. The RCMP's Mr Big tactic has been used hundreds of times. And as for the success rate, in 2008, the RCMP claimed that at least 75% of Mr Big schemes

resulted in a conviction or exclusion of a suspect. The other 25% stays unsolved. So, short of a miracle, the Mr Big technique is the final one as far as the RCMP is concerned. The Big one, the one they use when nothing else has worked and they need to try and elicit a confession out of their primary suspect. And Mr Big isn't just used on any case, they have to be sure that it's worth it. And in this case, they had the attention of the public. Canada was watching. If any case was going to Mr Big, it was this one.

The RCMP strategy was this. One team of undercover agents would cover 21-year-old Dennis Cheeseman and another would cover 26-year-old Sean Hennessy and all their phones were going to be wiretapped to make sure that if they talked, the RCMP would be listening. The Mounties would later claim that they weren't just doing it to catch them. They were doing it to find the truth and were prepared for Sean and Dennis to be exonerated.

But essentially, their plan was to fight the lies of Sean and Dennis with lies of their own. With Sean, an undercover Mountie posed as a tradesman, a welder who moved into the area with another operative acting as his girlfriend. Their goal was to befriend Sean and Christine Hennessy as a couple, and then get Sean into the gang via the welder. To lure him, the RCMP knew that Sean was a fun-loving guy who loved snowmobiling, and the welder had a nice, new, shiny one that they suspected Sean might like.

to ride. And the RCMP also figured that while Sean was a public target, he might appreciate a close friend to talk to to let off steam. Just like with Roscoe, it started at the Cal tire where Sean worked. The welder had car issues and Sean was the mechanic. Because the welder already knew about Sean's interests, the two soon found out they had much in common and before long had exchanged numbers and made plans to hang out. Sean was happy to be invited along to try out his new friends' toys, and his friends were happy to come along as well. Before long, the welder introduced them to his brother, also an undercover officer,

and they would all meet to hang out. As that sting was getting going, they had another iron in the fire with Dennis Cheeseman. As you remember, he was just 21 at the time of the shooting, described as a country boy, naive and relatively inexperienced in life. The RCMP chose the seduction technique. The plan was to send an attractive undercover female officer to flirt with him and make him believe that a romantic relationship was a possibility. Now, Dennis was not very experienced with the ladies.

He'd only had one short relationship and he wasn't an overly social person. When he wasn't working, he spent much of his time at home where he lived with the Hennesse's. An objective analysis would likely conclude that these factors would not make Dennis Cheeseman an ideal candidate for a Mr. Big Technique. And this particular approach, the seduction technique, made it even more problematic. It would later come out that top RCMP officials apparently seriously considered the morals and ethics of this particular ruse. and decided it was okay as long as they took very careful steps. Their main concern was around sex. If an officer went too far with a suspect, it might lead to a false confession,

and another concern was that in trying to gain sexual favours, the suspect might say things that he might otherwise not have said. In these situations, the RCMP leaves it up to the undercover agent to decide how comfortable they are with the physical side of a fake relationship. This particular agent was not okay with sex. The Roo started with her car breaking down on the road right outside Dennis Cheeseman's place of work where they knew he would be able to see. Inside, his colleague saw an attractive woman out there and egged him to go on and help her.

The woman introduced herself as Mary and immediately began confiding in him, telling him that she'd just broken up with an abusive boyfriend in Calgary and was currently living in Edmonton. Dennis and Mary got to chatting and things took off from there, with her requesting that they exchanged numbers before she left. Dennis and Mary continued to spend time together with Dennis's thrill to have a promising love interest in his life. His sister Christine, Sean's wife, would say that he talked about Mary all the time and would always run to the phone when it rang in case it was her. The whole Hennessy family was excited for Dennis, wondering if he might have finally found his girl. But Dennis's friends noticed that the relationship was taking an unusually long time to move past the potential love interest phase.

It hadn't progressed into an actual relationship and there was no physical interaction. Luckily, Dennis didn't seem to mind, but his friends didn't. would say they thought it was weird. Now, because the phone wiretaps had failed to bring anything up, the RCMP wanted to bug the Hennessy House, where they all lived, to listen in on their in-person conversations. And to do that, they chose a night where Sean, Christine and their girls would be out of the house, but they just needed to get Dennis out too. After all, he was a known homebody. So a bunch of female RCMP officers got together to fake a call to Dennis and act like they were Mary's co-workers at a party and had called him without her knowledge.

They giggled as they told him that she was interested in him and then they suggested he come to their upcoming work holiday party in Edmonton. When the phone was finally handed to a sheepish Mary, she told him that all his expenses for travel and accommodation would be paid for by her employer. Of course he said yes. Who wouldn't? The RCMP actually staged a fake office holiday party at a hotel in Edmonton. According to the Globe and Mail, an undercover officer even dressed up as Santa Claus and distributed fake gifts to everyone. All of this was paid for by the budget for the operation. The office party was also designed to be used as a plot device for a new

story tangent. The RCMP needed to deal with that whole sex situation before Dennis lost interests, and it was also time to introduce the criminal gang part of the undercover operation. So, at that same holiday party, Mary introduced Dennis to a man called Nick, who she said was her old high school friend. And then, halfway through the party, Mary was suddenly delivered the fake news that her grandmother in Winnipeg had just died. She immediately, immediately became distraught and said she needed to leave the party immediately to pack her bags and go home. She apologized to Dennis for having to leave him with people he didn't really know and said that they would stay in touch while she was away.

Dennis stayed on at the party. With Mary now out of the picture, the sex issue was delayed and this meant the criminal gang operation could begin, led by Nick, her supposed high school friend. It started straight away at that holiday party with the friend Nick suggesting that they continue partying at a strip club. Dennis told Nick that when he first met Mary, he thought she was an RCMP officer, but he didn't think that anymore.

Nick replied that it wouldn't have made much sense. As the night went on, he eventually brought up the criminal gang he was a part of and asked Dennis if he could help him steal a piece of machinery from someone who owed the gang money. Dennis had had a fun night and liked these new people that had met independently of his family, Christine and Sean. And it was a quick $300.

He said yes. But there were still suspicions. While Sean and his friends had occasional adventures with the welder, he had a lot of friends to split his time with. And the welder just seemed to be trying too hard to spend time with him. Something seemed off, but Sean couldn't quite put his finger on it. The wiretaps installed by the RCMP at the house picked up a conversation with Sean and a friend

as they discussed the likelihood that their new friends might be cops. After all, his lawyer had advised him to look out for new people in his life, but ultimately they decided it was unlikely. After three months of wiretapping, the sting was going nowhere. Sean and Dennis never said anything incriminating and none of them ever spoke about Roscoe. So the next month, the RCMP decided to inject some new information

into the situation to see if it might stir up a conversation they could listen to. They approached Sean's boss, but he said he didn't want to talk. They tried it with his wife Christine, who said the same thing. Next, they tried Sean's father Barry, who seemed to be receptive. They told him what Dennis Chene's. Cheeseman had confessed to his boss and warned him that they were about to arrest his son Sean. But as you'll remember, the version Sean gave to his family was highly sanitised. They had no idea that Dennis and Sean had picked up Roscoe and driven him back to his compound,

so this was the first time Barry heard anything like this. He was shocked and called Sean as soon as the Mounties left just as they had hoped. The conversation was caught on the wiretap. Barry told his son that he was devastated that he would lie to him. Sean said, Pardon me? His father said that he meant he was devastated to know that the RCMP knew things that he didn't. Quote,

They just told me that Dennis said that you drove him out, gave him the gun and took the gun out of Dad's truck and gave it to Roscoe, took him home, dropped him off in the back. That's what they told me tonight. This was essentially the true story, but Sean doubled down, telling his father it was horseshit. Barry asked Sean why Dennis would say all of this, and Sean said he had no idea. They went back and forth before concluding that the RCMP were up to their usual tricks. Barry said, they had me worked up pretty good. They tried to break me.

But according to the Edmonton Journal, behind the scenes, Barry was now distraught about the whole thing. He eventually confronted his son Sean again in person, where the RCMP weren't listening. And this time, Sean told his father the truth, that he had given Roscoe a ride and he had also given him the rifle that night. But he had no idea that Roscoe planned to kill anyone. The RCMP's attempts to get more information through squeezing the Sean Hennessy situation had failed. And the sting with the welder was going nowhere. Sean was just too busy to be available as they needed.

They would put the welder story on ice and focus on Dennis. It seemed he was still having doubts. Wiretap operators caught him saying to his sister Christine that Sean had suggested Mary might be an FBI agent. The siblings laughed about it and decided she probably was. But while Dennis and Mary continued their relationship long distance, His friendship with her high school friend Nick, aka an undercover officer, was intensifying.

The fake criminal gang job started to come in. Dennis was paid for essentially watching gang members as they stole a boat. Another time, he was paid $500 for watching them pack up crates of automatic weapons from a plane and then $700 for taking part in a stolen cigarette scheme. The RCMP had to make sure that the... Mary's situation was still engaging Dennis to keep him interested in the crime gang, so they staged a scenario where she told him that she was back in Calgary, moving out from the house she shared with her abusive ex-boyfriend.

She asked Dennis for his help. He brought Nick and another gang member slash undercover officer and the three of them traveled to Calgary. When they arrived, they saw that Mary had been badly beaten up by her ex. In reality, the undercover officer playing Mary was completely fine. Her facial injuries came courtesy of a special effects makeup artist employed by the RCMP. Dennis fell for it hook, line and sinker. After that, a team bonding situation was invented

whereby Dennis and the two undercover officers would stalk the supposed ex-boyfriend of Mary and beat him up. Obviously, this was stage two, and the majority of, of the fight took place in another room where Dennis couldn't see, with the two officers pretending to wrestle and then covering themselves in fake blood. After that bonding experience, the RCMP hoped that Dennis would be primed to open up to Mr Big. In the meantime, the Mayerthorpe tragedy happened to come up in conversation. They were hopeful when Dennis started to talk about it, but it turned out to be another version of the story, where he said he gave Roscoe the gun directly.

The undercover officers told him everything was okay. They'd done much worse than that. But behind the scenes, they knew they didn't have the whole truth, and also, Dennis had said nothing about giving Rosco a ride. On the way home, with Mr Big out of the situation, Nick pressed him for more information. Dennis said there was one other thing that he didn't say, and that was that Roscoe had been following him around before that. Stalking him. Nick asked him why and Dennis explained that Roscoe was a loser who liked boys and because of that he was intimidated by him. Quote, wouldn't let him in the truck, that's for sure. The undercover officer playing Nick took this as an opportunity to see if Dennis would confirm the story he had apparently told his boss.

Nick brought up Roscoe's history of sexual assault against teenagers and young men. Dennis told him that the first he ever knew of that history was when the fifth the state aired their special. Nick asked Dennis if Roscoe ever tried anything on him. Dennis said, no. Nick tried to reassure the 22-year-old telling him he knew it was a hard thing. to tell another guy about, but it was okay. Dennis said, no, I never checked that shit. Many have speculated on what that might mean. But then, he added, Honestly, what would I have done in the first place, though? The guy has a gun.

David Staples from the Edmonton Journal reported extensively on the Mr. Big operation, and at this point questioned whether Dennis was referring to the assault at gunpoint he'd told his boss about, or if he was talking about Roscoe demanding Dennis get him a rifle. After all, both incidents were allegedly at gunpoint. And also, Roscoe had a history of sexually assaulting young men and then threatening them afterwards if they said anything. So it was plausible that he had done the same thing to Dennis. And if Dennis knew far more about Roscoe's dark threatening side than Sean Hennessy did,

perhaps that knowledge paralyzed him with fear that night, causing him to interpret everything Roscoe did and said in a much more threatening manner than Sean did. After all, it was Dennis who floated the idea of contacting the RCMP after they'd dropped him off. And the problem was the answers to these questions were not forthcoming because Roscoe was dead and Dennis's statements were so inconsistent. The RCMP still wanted him to open up about giving Rosco a ride and were particularly interested in whether Dennis would again claim he knew what Roscoe was planning. So now it was time for the culmination of the Mr Big Sting,

which we'll explore in part three.