BLOODY END SEALED BEFORE POLICE ARRIVED

A bad seed can find fertile territory even in the most bleak and
un-nourishing of landscapes.

It doesn't need the hothouse environment of a marijuana grow-op. It
doesn't need real or imagined grievances against the institutions of
law and authority. It doesn't need self-imposed isolation and a
virulent antagonism towards the entire world.

It requires only the fecund soil of a twisted, impenetrable mind. And
that's a place where no legislation, no social covenant, can be imposed.

James Roszko was, from all reports, a walking time bomb, a man so
distorted by seething hatred and violent belligerence that he will go
un-mourned even by his own father, a rejection of blood by a staunchly
religious old man that might possibly shed a thin ray of light on the
pathology of this cop killer.

It was left to the father of one of Roszko's victims to forgive the
unforgivable.

"I bear no bitterness in my heart towards the family and I bear no
bitterness in my heart towards the man," Don Schiemann, a Lutheran
minister, said on the weekend in a gesture of mercy so gracious it
astonishes and humbles. "If I was to harbor bitterness and hatred,
then I would become another victim of the shooting."

His son, Const. Peter Schiemann, was only 25 years old, the youngest
among the four RCMP officers massacred by Roszko before the hermit
lunatic turned the semi-automatic rifle on himself.

A satisfactory explanation for what went so terribly amiss inside the
rural Quonset hut in northern Alberta where Roszko was cultivating
what now appears to have been 20 mature marijuana plants -- hardly a
sophisticated or big-time grow-op -- has not been forthcoming. RCMP
officials have divulged details only in small doses and some of that
information has been subsequently contradicted, both by the police
agency and others who claim to have some knowledge of events.

Roszko's mother, Stephanie Fifield, who lives in a trailer on her
son's property, insists her admittedly volatile son is not the demon
as described by his father, from whom she has been long-divorced. "No,
my son was not the devil," she told reporters. But he was a malevolent
and brooding creature, quick to rage and endlessly nurturing a bilious
resentment towards a vast array of enemies. "When he gets a grudge
against someone, he will be mad at you for the rest of your life.
That's the way he is."

He was also a notorious cop hater before he became a cop killer. Just
as he hated bailiffs, school board trustees, civic and court
officials, neighbours, and anybody who represented authority, every
manifestation of the common law that he so savagely and
self-righteously disdained.

But he loved firearms. Friends, or at least those who've described
themselves as such, have said Roszko surrounded himself with weaponry,
had buried ammunition all over his property, perhaps anticipating some
future time when he would have need to defend himself against
encroachers, might even have booby-trapped his land with grenades.
That would explain the nervousness of investigators scouring his ranch
over the weekend, how quick officers were to draw their guns at one
tense point, another incident which has gone without illuminating
comment from officials.

And he liked little boys, allegedly hanging around a school in the
past, attempting to lure kids with offers of candy. A convicted
pedophile, Roszko served 2 1/2 years for sexually assaulting a boy
between 1983 and 1989. He denied the accusations, never expressed
remorse and spurned all treatment while in prison. One of his victims
distributed posters of Roszko around town, describing his tormentor as
a child molester, just one more valid reason for the local population
to shun the man they viewed as a menace and a crackpot, capable of
anything.

But nobody could have foreseen the worst massacre of police officers
in Canada in a century.

Or could they? Countless townspeople have wondered aloud how the four
slain RCMP officers could have exposed themselves so disastrously to
what even agency officials are now describing as an "ambush."
Everybody knew, or should have known, what a threat the 46-year-old
Roszko posed, how combustible his temper, how easy he was to provoke
when anyone so much as approached his property gate.

Bailiffs, a particular bane of Roszko's miserable existence, were
loath to go near him when executing court orders. One such bailiff,
who attempted to seize property from Roszko's farm in 1999, wrote in
her report afterwards: "The debtor is known to be extremely aggressive
. (I) learned he was quite dangerous, has a long history of
assaults, (was) in possession of a number of firearms, (and) would
most likely shoot anyone on the property on sight."

That bailiff was handed a police vest by an RCMP constable who'd
accompanied her during that futile repossession mission.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, a nation looked inwards to
try to make sense of the disaster. Were the officers properly armed
and sufficiently protected for the assignment? How could such a
chronic malefactor remain in possession of lethal weapons? What of the
federal government's wildly ineffective and controversial firearms
registry? Had a lenient justice system failed to protect not just the
officers but also an entire community?

The public debate centered at first on the scourge of marijuana
growing operations and Canada's pot laws. Opportunists seized on the
ghastly scene near Mayerthorpe, Alta., to either promote tougher
sentencing for hydroponics operations or champion the legalization of
cannabis.

Predictably, politicians and activists provided a cacophony of sound
bites, even as the grieving families asked that the focus remain on
the victims, on the sacrifices they had made for duty and country.

Yet it now seems the marijuana crop was only peripheral to the raid
and the events that ensued.

It was Roszko's mother who first made mention of a pick-up truck-- and
an internecine family squabble over a sibling loan that remained unpaid.

If this tragedy indeed arose from the repossession of a truck, then it
is eerily reminiscent of previous confrontations between Roszko and
bailiffs supported by RCMP personnel.

How was it that Roszko could disappear into his Quonset hut at one
moment and then reappear some distance away, with no one having
noticed any movement? It was as if he'd secured for himself secret
avenues of escape. Or, more disturbingly, entry.

The Edmonton Journal reported that two bailiffs drove to Roszko's farm
on Wednesday afternoon to repossess a 2005 white Ford pickup, on
behalf of an Edmonton dealership.

Roszko ignored their honking but unleashed a pair of Rottweilers, Mark
Hnatiw told the paper. Then Roszko, who'd gone inside the Quonset hut,
somehow popped up beside his truck and burned rubber as he fled the
farm, later crashing through a fence. The abandoned truck was found on
Saturday.

On the farm, bailiffs and two RCMP officers they'd summoned by cell
phone -- one of them was Const. Schiemann -- discovered the marijuana
plants in a shed at the rear of the Quonset hut. They also found a
number of brand new trucks in pieces, strewn about.

The bailiffs left at 6:30 p.m., leaving behind two RCMP constables to
guard the farm overnight.

In the early morning, they were joined by two other RCMP colleagues.
It must have been assumed that Roszko was nowhere on the premises and
the quartet of officers were waiting for the arrival of an auto theft
unit from Edmonton. Just as those officers got to the scene -- they
were actually stepping out of their car -- gunfire erupted inside the
Quonset hut.

Roszko ran outside shooting and the Edmonton officers returned fire. A
wounded Roszko -- it's unclear which officer struck him, whether
inside or outside the hut -- retreated back inside where he killed
himself.

"Suicide by cop" -- a known phenomenon whereby an individual,
unwilling to submit to custody, all but forces police to shoot -- is
suspected by some. But that doesn't seem to fit the scene because
Roszko allegedly ran from the enemy outside before taking his own life.

It is mystifying. Nor is it clear when the murdered constables were
shot.

An official inquiry should determine whether the constables inside the
hut ever had a chance to draw weapons and defend themselves.

Or whether they were slaughtered in cold blood.

Only one thing would appear to be grimly true: That events conspired
to give a paranoid, delusional James Roszko precisely what he feared
most and surely imagined often, what his entire life had been building
towards -- siege, standoff, shootout. Even if, as it seems entirely
likely, there never was an actual siege or standoff. Rather, a
stalking and an ambush.

Roszko's fate might have been pre-ordained or a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

It was the dreadful misfortune of four young RCMP officers to be
trapped within the horror of his blood-drenched destiny.