final credits - alberta RCMP deaths - james roszko

Bill Roszko, father | a victim speaks out | Rsozko memorial | Roszko's autopsy report | Alberta Justice report

While initial public reaction to the events of March 3rd was dominated by the issue of marijuna grow operations, it later shifted to the question of how a man long-known to be a threat to public safety could remain free and have access to deadly weaponry.


James Roszko

At the time of his death, James Roszko was 46. He stood 5-foot-5-inches and weighed 150 pounds.


Roszko's criminal history, which began at age 16, was noted not for his list of convictions but his skill in escaping them. Over thirty years, he faced 36 criminal charges, but was convicted of only 12.


In 1976, he was convicted of breaking and entering and received one-year's probation in 1979. Three years later he was found guilty of harassment as a result of a dispute with The Whitecourt Star newspaper. The paper later secured a restraining order against Roszko. Three charges of failing to comply with a probation order earned him 45 days in jail in December 1993. He was not convicted of another criminal offence until 1999.


In December, 1993 Roszko had an altercation with a school trustee that resulted in his being charged with 12 offences, including unlawful confinement, assault with a weapon, pointing a firearm, possession of a weapon dangerous to the public, impersonation of a police officer and obstruction of justice. Only seven charges went to trial, resulting in complete acquittal chiefly because of the key witnesses' credibility. Rumours of witness intimidation were in wide circulation at the time.


Roszko's lengthiest prison term (2 1/2 years) stemmed from a series of sexual assaults that lasted almost seven years -- from January, 1983 to December, 1989. The assaults began when the victim was 10, and several years elapsed before the victim stepped forward.


While in prison for the sex offences, Roszko faced difficulties stemming from an incident on his farm in 1999. Charges of aggravated assault involving an assortment of firearms offences were laid. Roszko had confronted two area men while they were joyriding in a pickup truck on his property. Roszko confronted them, brandishing a hunting rifle. One man was shot in the shoulder, the other was hog-tied and thrown in the back of the pickup truck. Roszko was charged with five offences. But as the two intruders were also charged with assault, it put their credibility in doubt. All charges were dismissed.


In 2004, Roszko was charged after putting down a spiked belt when election enumerators came onto his property. He was due in court in April, 2005 to face that charge. Roszko was visited on numerous occasions in recent years by bailiffs and other court officials in connection with repossession of property. It was on such a matter that the events of March 3 precipitated.



Gunman's father, Bill Roszko

Canada's leading private television network CTV -- through its Edmonton affiliate CFRN -- was among the first to speak with a man who identified himself as the gunman's father. Bill Roszko, 80, said his son was the shooter. He said Jim had an angry streak as far back as he can remember: "Because of the drugs, you know, and the bad company with bad boys . . . dragged him off the good tracks. I don't want to have him as my son for what he was like, and the way things ended up. He is not my son."


The Roszko family settled in the rural area 130 kilometres northwest of Edmonton about 100 years ago. The family name is common in the area. For the past 15 years, Jim lived in a trailer on 200 hectares of land near Mayerthorpe. The farm looked like a military compound, with guard dogs and two fences around the perimeter. The land was also known to be booby-trapped. Roszko was the youngest in a family of eight children (he had three sisters and four brothers) and was described by area residents as a "walking time bomb."


Bill Roszko later referred to Jim as "a wicked devil." They lived in the same area but hadn't spoken in nine years. Neighbours described Jim Roszko as a loner - a man who went out of his way to remain private.


Neighbours said Roszko regularly confronted people around his sprawling farm property for no apparent reason and didn't hesitate to fire warning shots. The suspect's brother and father also said Roszko started using drugs early on in life and made money on the side by making moonshine before moving on to other substances. As a teenager, Jim once robbed a gun shop. Roszko’s brother George described him as a “psychopath,” but a niece said Roszko simply feared police and wanted them to leave him alone.


On January 23rd, 2006 William Roszko died peacefully at the age of 81. News of Bill Roszko's death came only in the form of a paid obituary in the Edmonton Journal.




The man at the centre of Roszko’s sexual assault charges slept with a knife under his pillow and a gun under his bed for the past 12 years. Even when he learned that Jim Roszko died during a gun battle with the Mounties, he felt he had to see the body of the man who had terrorised him before he could feel safe again. He still can't believe it took the deaths of four police officers to do it.


Heckler & Koch .308 semi-automatic assault rifle

Wishing to remain anonymous, the man is not surprised the police were outwitted and outgunned. Roszko had weapons stashed all over his sprawling, booby-trapped property. He was most proud of his HK .308 assault rifle (possibly similar to the G3KA4 model pictured left), which hung on the wall in the living room of the trailer where he lived.


In describing events surrounding his case, the man said Roszko begged for sexual favours. Sometimes brandishing a gun, Roszko forced the young man to perform sexual acts with him in front of a camera.


Roszko was obsessed with his privacy, the man remembered. He planted bushes and trees on his property for protection, taped all phone calls, drove vehicles with darkly tinted windows and always carried a scanner tuned to police frequencies which he carried with him at all times. Roszko once grabbed a gun out of some bushes and pointed to a dugout where a 45-gallon drum was buried underground. Roszko said it was ready for a body.


Roszko also had a "fast bag" to practice his boxing skills in his living room. While not a big man, he was quick and he was strong. He once punched a cow in the head so hard that the animal dropped to the ground. Roszko was a driller by trade in the oil patch but subsidized his income by farming. He would also top up his finances by stealing a snowmobile here or some cattle there, the man recalled.




As thousands gathered in Edmonton on Thursday, March 10th to mourn the lives of four officers killed at Rochfort Bridge, only a few members of Rozko's family attended a service held for the man at the centre this tragedy. Even Roszko's father, Bill, was unaware of the event that other family members did not want publicised beforehand.


At Roszko's eulogy, held in a small funeral home in Mayerthorpe, Baptist Pastor Ed Broadway said he tried to focus on bringing comfort to the man's family.


"We didn't bring up anything of the past concerning the man," said Broadway, who has been counselling the family throughout the past week. "Those kinds of things we leave alone, we leave that in the hands of the Lord."


Broadway said several family members wept quietly during the 30-minute service that included a eulogy by one of Roszko's sisters.


Bill Roszko wanted no part of any remembrance for a son he recently called a 'wicked devil.'


"I'd be making a bad sin to have anything to do with it [a funeral]. Maybe he'll be cremated and the ashes thrown out."


Broadway said Roszko was cremated, with the fate of the ashes undetermined.


Roszko's sister, Josephine Ruel, was one of the few family members to maintain regular contact with Roszko. In recent interviews, she described her family as divided over a dispute with James that originated over a $7,000 loan made two decades ago. Ruel said that just she and her mother, Stephanie Fifield, were close to him.


Broadway said the family is doing well, "but the mother is the most upset of course." Broadway hoped Thursday's service will bring them some closure.




On June 21, 2005, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported it had obtained a copy of the autopsy report for James Roszko, detailing the last moments of his life and shedding some light on the tactics he used to ambush four RCMP officers on his farm.


After being shot twice by officers, in the hand and the thigh, Roszko shot himself with a prohibited semi-automatic assault rifle, putting a bullet near his heart. Roszko's brother John said "He wasn't about to give police the credit for taking his life, so that's probably why he took it himself."


The gun Roszko used, a HK .308 assault rifle reportedly smuggled into Canada 25 years ago, had been modified with the addition of a flash suppressor and telescopic lens.


The autopsy file indicated Roszko was well-prepared for Alberta's March weather. He was wearing two pairs of pants and five layers of shirts and jackets. He also wore black socks cut to cover his boots.


"Hunters used to wear that. That's an old hunter trick," said Roszko's brother John, referring to a method to muffle the sound of approach.


"I'm sure that he was planning for something like this. He always bragged before that if he was ever going to take any of them out, he was going to take out a pile of them."


Earlier reports suggested that Roszko had also covered himself with a white sheet as camouflage.


Toxicology tests revealed that Roszko had no drugs or alcohol in his system, only a slight trace of an over-the-counter cold medicine.


On October 6, 2005, an Alberta Justice investigation into the criminal past of James Roszko showed that despite his lengthy record of convictions and charges he never met the criteria to be declared a "dangerous offender."


The report by Calgary chief Crown prosecutor Gordon Wong states the Crown did everything required while prosecuting the 46-year-old who was only convicted on 14 of 44 criminal charges during his life. Alberta Justice Minister Ron Stevens said that if there is any problem with the justice system it's that it doesn't have minimum sentences.


Roszko was flagged as a potential dangerous offender in 1995 after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a young boy, but likely wouldn't have been designated a dangerous offender even if he had been convicted on all other charges.


Roszko's brother George said Jim avoided convictions by intimidating witnesses, but Wong's report indicated there was "no evidence in the material reviewed to suggest that their non-attendance was due specifically to threats or intimidation."


Roszko avoided a 1993 assault conviction when the Crown put the wrong date on a witness subpoena and witnesses didn't show. The Crown failed to appeal another acquittal in the required time period for reasons Wong could not determine. In another case, a prosecutor released a witness who was being held in custody because of fears he would disappear before the trial. After promising to testify, the witness failed to show up and Roszko was acquitted on multiple charges of pointing a firearm and assault with a weapon.


Stevens also said the review of Roszko's prosecution history won't result in any major changes to the Alberta Justice system. The following is a summary of Rosko's involvement with Albert Justice: