STONY PLAIN, Alta. - A crime scene investigator says the deadly ambush of four Mounties in Alberta was cold, calculated and ruthlessly executed by gunman James Roszko.
"When an element of surprised is involved, I don't think you have much of a chance," Darryl Barr told an inquiry Wednesday into the killings on Roszko's farm near Mayerthorpe six years ago.
Barr studied bullet trajectories and used three-dimensional computer images to re-create the scene in the Quonset hut where the officers were shot.
His testimony suggested Roszko hid behind a large circular drum near the door of the hut when the officers entered just before 10 a.m. on March 3, 2005. Barr believes Roszko allowed them to walk deep into the cavernous semi-circular steel shed before he jumped up and began firing from his semi-automatic military assault rifle.
The bullets came from everywhere, he said.
"There was movement of the shooter," Barr said. "The shots came from different parts of the Quonset."
Roszko shot and moved, shot and moved. He fired from one corner of the building, then the other, then moved to the far side in an apparent counter-clockwise direction around the perimeter of the hut, firing at the officers in the centre.
There were at least 16 shots fired in the Quonset jammed with car parts, farm tools, buckets, barrels and piles of junk, said Barr.
Bullets hit the officers, a plywood sheet, a plastic garbage can. They hit pot plants, smashed into a Shop-Vac, a stovepipe, pinged off a metal flatbed trailer and ripped through the sheet metal outer wall. They hit the floor tarp and the hard ground beneath it, ricocheting like a flat stone skimming on a lake.
It was disturbing testimony that left some of the victims' families in tears, particularly when Crown lawyer Alan Meikle took Barr through his 3-D re-creation of how the four died.
Responding to questions, Barr zoomed in and out, up and down and in a 360-degree panorama through the hut, arrows pointing to bullet trajectories and possible firing positions.
The bodies were shown where they fell. They were faceless figures -- no hair or facial features. The officers were coloured in blue.
Near the door was the figure representing Const. Anthony Gordon. He was on his back, right arm over his head, left arm down, one foot outside the large open vehicle door.
In the middle of the structure, lying amidst three large pots of potting soil, were the bodies of constables Leo Johnston and Peter Schiemann. Johnston was found on his right side; Schiemann just inches away.
A coroner has already testified that the three officers died of multiple and massive chest wounds.
Barr's evidence suggested the last few seconds of Const. Brock Myrol's life may have been the most terrifying.
Myrol was 29 and had been a working Mountie for all of three weeks. With the rising morning sun behind him, he walked into the dimly lit hut. The evidence suggests he had time to gain cover as Roszko fired.
His 9-mm service weapon was out and he had gone dashing to the back of the Quonset. He went down a narrow makeshift hallway between Roszko's two marijuana grow rooms.
But at the end of the hallway there was nowhere to go. The back entrance was covered with plywood.
Barr said Roszko fired in a straight line along the length of the hut. The bullet ripped into the back of Myrol's skull near the right ear and came out through his forehead.
The bullet kept going: through the plywood outer wall and into a dog shed behind the hut. Myrol's body, face down, was found slumped by the wall.
Inquiry Judge Daniel Pahl, who is to recommend ways to keep officers safe in future, refused a media request to release the computer images. He agreed with RCMP lawyer Bruce Hughson, who argued public distribution of the images would be too upsetting to the victims' families, friends and colleagues.
There was more evidence.
The inquiry had already been told that during the ambush, Johnston managed to get his service pistol out and fire at Roszko. But that shot glanced harmlessly off the butt of a Beretta gun tucked in the waistband of the killer's pants.
Barr couldn't determine exactly where that occurred, but said the broken pieces of the Beretta suggested Roszko was almost on top of Johnston, maybe two metres away, when the Mountie fired.
The four officers were ambushed while they were investigating a marijuana grow-op and cache of stolen auto parts.
Roszko -- who was known locally as a violent loner but one who had never threatened police directly -- had fled a day earlier when a bailiff arrived to repossess a truck.
Somehow he managed to acquire the murder weapon and snuck past the police watch that night to re-enter the hut and lie in wait.
An auto theft investigator arrived the next morning just as shots rang out. He and Roszko exchanged fire. Roszko was hit twice. One bullet went through his left hand; the other caught him in the right thigh above the knee. He limped back inside the Quonset and out of sight.
Barr's evidence showed Roszko didn't go far.
He's seen as a yellow figure on the computer reconstruction, just a metre or two inside the main door, near Gordon. There, bleeding badly, Roszko sat down on a tarp near a Pepsi crate stacked on top of two cylinders. Police were outside and more were on their way.
It's believed that seconds later, Roszko placed the assault rifle level to his heart and pulled the trigger. The bullet exploded out his back, hit another rifle slung on his shoulder and lodged in the crate.
Hours earlier, Roszko had phoned his mom to say he was in big trouble but had made out a will.
Roszko's 3-D figure is faceless. He's on his back, right arm over his head, left arm straight out, knees bent and in the air, each leg sagging to the side to form a crooked V.
Also Wednesday, Sgt. Carrie Vander Kracht testified to Roszko's long history of trouble with the law.
Vander Kracht said the 46-year-old had accused the RCMP of harassment and had either been accused of or convicted of crimes including harassment, assault, sex assault, uttering threats, fraud and intimidation.
She said he was once suspected in the murder of an Alberta woman in 1976, when Roszko would have been in his late teens, but she couldn't offer more information on what became of it.
Johnston's mother, Grace, asked Vander Kracht why more wasn't done to keep Roszko behind bars. The officer told her that with few convictions for violence on his record, authorities faced an uphill battle.
