Rampage (24 page)

Among some of Roszko’s more serious offences were those allegedly committed against his friend “Bradley,” a handyman on the farm. While driving together near Drayton Valley in late May of 1993, Bradley claimed that Roszko repeatedly demanded to see his penis. When he refused, Roszko pointed a loaded 9-millimetre Beretta to his head. Then, on July 12, 1993, Roszko paid a visit to Bradley’s home. Once inside, he pushed Bradley onto a bed, and pressed the same pistol against his head, insisting that he “had a job to do.” The sudden arrival of a friend of Bradley’s prevented Roszko from doing his job; however, when the friend left, their physical confrontation resumed. Bradley stabbed Roszko in the chin with a knife, and later drove him to the hospital. The “fool me twice, shame on me” proverb does not seem to have been part of Bradley’s lexicon, as Roszko justified his acts and the two let bygones be bygones. A few months later, he allegedly offered Bradley $10,000 to kill a man using Roszko’s own rifle. Bradley refused, and the two didn’t speak for a month. When they bumped into each other in Whitecourt on December 1, 1993, Roszko convinced the handyman to drive up to his farm with him to examine a vehicle. Bradley agreed, on the condition that a friend be allowed to follow in another car. Roszko easily shook Bradley’s escort from their tail, and once back at the homestead, pulled a shotgun on Bradley, forcing him to handcuff himself. Roszko began aggressively questioning the handyman: why had he been avoiding him; what had he said; who had he talked to? At one point Roszko hit Bradley. Eventually he released him so that they could have a “fair fight.” When the dust cleared, Roszko demanded that Bradley consent to having pornographic photographs taken of him so that he wouldn’t talk. Thus the evening ended with Bradley performing fellatio on Roszko while a camera snapped lurid stills on a timer.

There was also Roszko’s alleged September 28, 1993, attack on “Arthur” for spreading rumours about Roszko’s homosexuality. While Arthur was seated in the back of his friend’s car, Roszko struck him in the face, breaking his glasses. Later that day, Roszko received a telephone call from a Mayerthorpe-area resident about the assault. Determined to obtain the caller’s number, he contacted an AGT security clerk under the guise of being an RCMP officer and requested that the call be traced.

In March 1994, “Edward” came forward, accusing James Roszko of routinely sexually abusing him from January 1983 to December 1989, beginning when Roszko was twenty-four and Edward eleven. These sexual assaults progressed from fondling to oral sex, and even one failed attempt at forcible sodomy. After the charges were laid, Roszko followed Edward to a Whitecourt bar on New Year’s Eve and blasted him with pepper spray, clearing the establishment. On April 12, 2000, Roszko was convicted of sexual assault charges and sentenced to a two-and-a-half-year prison term, throughout which he continued to deny responsibility.

Before he served time behind bars, on the night of September 9, 1999, Roszko took a drunken vandal named “Harold” hostage with a 12-gauge shotgun, after catching him on his property. Binding the intruder’s hands with rope, Roszko marched him over to Harold’s truck, where fellow vandal “Gregory” was hiding nearby. Not one to be fooled, Roszko called out for Gregory to surrender, which he did. Roszko began escorting the two back toward his property. Along the way he supposedly said, “If Wiebo Ludwig can get away with it, then so can I.… I got you where I want you.” Sensing that death was imminent, Gregory told Roszko to either shoot him or he was going back to the truck. When Gregory turned to do so, Roszko fired, but only grazed his target’s left arm and face. Roszko told Gregory and Harold to climb into the truck’s box so he could take them to the hospital. They complied, but he only drove farther onto his property. When Roszko stopped, Gregory and Harold managed to wrest control of the shotgun, and bludgeoned Roszko into submission, shattering the stock. Leaving him severely beaten, they sped off to the hospital and later informed the police of the incident.

Considering everything we know about the tumultuous childhood, personality, and criminal acts of James Roszko, the fact that his own father labelled him a wicked devil is understandable — for he most certainly was. But in a less hyperbolic, more clinical sense, can we accurately diagnose him as a psychopath?

Psychopath

Among the many professionals brought in to make sense of the Roszko murders was trained RCMP psychologist Matt Logan, a member of British Columbia’s Major Crimes Unit. His assignment was to perform a “psychological autopsy” on the gunman, in an attempt to learn what Roszko “thought, felt, and did before death, based on information gathered from personal documents, police reports, medical and coroner’s records, and face-to-face interviews with families, friends, and others who had contact with the person before the death.” Logan determined that the attack had been premeditated, and not an instance of a man suddenly flipping his lid. In fact, he believed that Roszko might even have masturbated to the thought of slaughtering policemen. While searching Roszko’s trailer, Logan found evidence of extreme deviance and violent fantasy. A newspaper clipping with a photo of cop killer Albert Foulston had been taped to a sideboard by a sink. Moving into the bedroom, he discovered two magazines, both heavily featuring firearms. One in particular contained an article about Harris and Klebold, the Columbine High School shooters. Logan suspected that given Roszko’s history of sexually abusing young men, he would be harbouring a stash of pornography. He eventually found it sealed in a plastic package and stowed behind a loose panel in the closet. Inside were photographs of Roszko administering alcohol to two adolescent males and then sexually assaulting them. In his essay “No More Bagpipes,” Logan claims to have identified Roszko as a psychopath in the ninety-first percentile of offenders, along with the presence of paranoid, schizotypal, and sexually deviant traits. Likewise, I have run Dr. Robert Hare’s PCL-R on Roszko to determine if he meets the criteria for psychopathy.

Factor 1: Personality — Interpersonal/Affective

Factor 2: Case History — Socially Deviant Lifestyle

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Traits Not Correlated with Either Factor

According to my PCL-R test assessment, James Michael Roszko scored thirty points: the minimum cut-off for psychopathy. Of all the Canadian mass murderers reviewed thus far in
Rampage
, he is the only offender who I can, with all confidence, label psychopathic.

*
The exact amounts he claimed to have unearthed, given his father, and pocketed changed on three separate occasions.

**
Multiple sources contradict the exact number of plants. They fall into this range.

Part C

Spree Killers

In Chapter 1 we differentiated the concept of spree killing from mass and serial homicide. We also addressed some major problems arising from this definition in Chapter 2, such as what constitutes a “location” or a “cooling-off” period. At the FBI’s first Serial Murder Symposium, from August 29 to September 5, 2005, in San Antonio, Texas, a panel of 135 experts reached the conclusion that spree killing should henceforth be considered a subcategory of serial murder. The subsequent report,
Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators
, explains the reasoning behind this proposed departure from the original categories:

According to the definition, the lack of a cooling-off period marks the difference between a spree murder and a serial murder. Central to the discussion was the definitional problems relating to the concept of a cooling-off period. Because it creates arbitrary guidelines, the confusion surrounding this concept led the majority of attendees to advocate disregarding the use of spree murder as a separate category. The designation does not provide any real benefit for use by law enforcement.
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Having addressed this issue at length with some of the symposium’s attendees, I submit that if we are to accept these new parameters, offenders like
Rosaire Bilodeau
and
Robert Poulin
, whose crimes were detailed in Chapter 2, should be considered mass murder subtypes. The offenders presented in this chapter, however, would qualify for the spree killer subtype of serial murderer advocated at the FBI symposium.

Unlike mass and serial murderers, there has never been an adequate classification system devised for spree killers. In the following chapters I propose categories for the three spree killer types that I have noted in Canadian criminal history: Utilitarian, Exterminator, and Signature. Though admittedly this is merely a first step, I believe this system provides a solid heuristic foundation which may be improved and expanded upon. I have noted the need for a fourth category, tentatively called Marauder. As there are no Canadian examples of these types of spree killers, I have been unable to include a chapter on them. The personalities and crime scenes corresponding to the Utilitarian, Exterminator, Signature, and Marauder spree killers are listed here.

Table 6: Preliminary Typology System for Spree Killers