By the end of his life he had become a master of stealth, which served him well for he had much to hide, such as his sexual predation, his marijuana cultivation operation and a stolen vehicle-parts operation in the Quonset hut on his farm.

Since March 3, 2005, when Roszko murdered four RCMP officers, much has come out about Roszko's childhood and his later clashes with the law, but there are many unanswered questions about his actions leading up to the massacre. In death, secrecy continues to shroud this crucial part of Roszko's story.

Roszko's acquaintances and relatives who had dealings with him in his last two days refuse to say much. The RCMP have released only the barest details about what happened.

In the absence of good information, bad information - rumour, gossip and speculation - has filled the void. Alternative theories have come out as to what went on during the massacre at Roszko's farm. Chief among them is a theory aired by the CBC's The Fifth Estate, which contradicted the RCMP's official story and criticized the police for their actions that day, something that has outraged the families of the slain officers and spurred them to fight back.

After Roszko fled his farm on the afternoon of March 2, escaping in a 2005 Ford truck that was to be repossessed, he had contact with his mother, Stephanie Fifield. Through the evening, she worked the phones to help him find a place to park his truck.

It ended up at the residence of her sister, Anne Chayka. It's not known who dropped off the truck at the Chayka farm. If it was Roszko himself, it's not known how he got back to his own farm, 351/2 kilometres away.

But it is now known that Fifield has told her family members that she did not give her son a ride that night.

Fifield herself refuses to grant an interview about the details of that night. News reports on the matter have been full of "lies" and "trash," she says in a brief telephone conversation. As long as such reporting continues, none of the dead men will rest, she says, lumping her son Jimmy in with the four Mounties he killed.

"It's not going to bring our sons back," Fifield says of stories on the massacre. "We want people to rest in peace. We want everybody to leave everybody alone."

Roszko turned to one other person in his last hours, a young man named Shawn Hennessey of Barrhead.

Hennessey, 26, got to know Roszko after Roszko got out of jail in October 2001. Townspeople in Mayerthorpe had turned against Roszko in the 1990s, so Roszko started to conduct his business 60 kilometres down the highway in Barrhead, where people didn't know his reputation.

One of his favourite stops in Barrhead was the Kal Tire shop, where he got to know two young store employees, Hennessey and Aaron Burdek.

Hennessey and Burdek are well-known in Barrhead for their prowess in the ring at the Brotherhood Boxing Club.

"(Shawn) was very dedicated," says his old coach, Mark Waggoner. "He'd always show up for practice and when he'd come, he'd always smile. I called him Smilin' Shawn Hennessey."

Hennessey is also known in Barrhead for a rough period he went through as a young man, drinking too much and getting into fist fights. But Hennessey is now married, has two daughters and has changed his ways, says his friend, Chris Harder. "For all of five or six years, he's been nothing but a good guy. He goes to work, takes care of his family."

Hennessey met Roszko three or four years ago, then later worked for Roszko on his farm. Their last known contact, according to RCMP search warrants, came from 3:34 p.m. to 4:28 p.m. on March 2, 2005, when Roszko talked a number of times to Hennessey over the phone. Hennessey later told the RCMP that despite Roszko's repeated requests, he refused to allow Roszko to stash his truck at Hennessey's home outside of Barrhead.

After information from the search warrants was reported in November 2005, many in Barrhead got stirred up over the issue. Hennessey's mother was so stressed by all the talk, she took a few days off work, a co-worker says. Hennessey's boss at Kal Tire, Steve Hunter, believes Hennessey has been smeared simply because he knew Roszko.

"There's no story with Shawn," Hunter says. "It's been almost a year now and if police had anything on him, they would have charged him. ... Shawn didn't take his (Roszko's) truck or help him in any way."

Hennessey has refused requests to talk to the media, but in the days after Hennessey's name first was reported, Hunter became his unofficial spokesman, telling the

Barrhead Leader that if Hennessey was guilty of anything, it was being stupid about with whom he chose to associate.

In the Leader story, Hunter addressed allegations found in the search warrants that Hennessey was involved in the marijuana grow-op with Roszko. Hennessey was working 60 hours a week at Kal Tire, Hunter told the Leader, making it impossible for him to have had extensive dealings with Roszko. "With the amount of hours I work him, he'd have to be Superman," Hunter said.

Nineteen-year-old rig worker Aaron Burdek also met Roszko at Kal Tire and ended up working at Roszko's farm. Roszko attended some of Burdek's boxing matches.

In the RCMP's search warrants, Burdek is linked to Roszko through a truck which Roszko used to drive, a 1993 F150.

Two weeks after the massacre, the RCMP seized it from Burdek in Grande Prairie. Police later returned it to its registered owner, Roszko's mother. The truck's serial numbers were found to have been covered over with the serial numbers from another truck, a sign that the vehicle had been in a chop shop.

Hunter told the Barrhead Leader that Burdek didn't know about Roszko's troubled past when Burdek went to work at the farm. "Somebody would have had to tell him, 'Don't go work for that guy, he's a convicted sex offender.' The kid didn't know. He was looking at it as easy money."

Burdek's father, David, says his son has no connection to the events of March 2 and 3. "My son had nothing to do with the incident. What was in the police reports is all that needs to be said. Anything else is just speculation and rumour."

Rumour, gossip and speculation have also arisen from photographs of the Quonset hut crime scene after the massacre.

When the RCMP at last entered the Quonset hut, tactical officers pulled out two of the shot officers so they might receive medical attention outside of any possible line of fire, RCMP officials have said. This is why news photographs of the crime scene, taken after the tactical team's entry, show slain officers on the ground outside the Quonset hut, RCMP spokesman Cpl. Wayne Oakes says.

The photographs are at the centre of the uproar over The Fifth Estate's documentary, which aired in December 2005. It contradicted the RCMP's official chronology of events and questioned the training and competence of the four slain officers.

On air, reporter Linden MacIntyre suggested the four junior officers were unaware of the danger posed by Roszko, so much so that they allowed him to sneak into the Quonset hut while they were feeding the dogs drugged meat that morning of March 3: "It was almost as if they had forgotten about the man who owned the place."

The Fifth Estate also "reconstructed" the massacre. In its version - which MacIntyre said was based on the photographs and other sources - the gunfight happened outside the Quonset hut, not inside, with Brock Myrol shot first, Anthony Gordon drawing his gun before he and Peter Schiemann were cut down, then Leo Johnston, taking cover behind a police car, firing on Roszko before being killed.

Outraged by the CBC documentary, relatives of the four slain officers are now blasting The Fifth Estate.

"I can't believe what The Fifth Estate has done," says Rev. Don Schiemann. "It's kind of like we're down and they just went and kicked us in the groin on top of it, with all the misinformation and the lies and the misrepresentation, implying that all four of them were untrained junior officers that didn't know any better, and that they weren't even aware of this Roszko, which is just bizarre."

Peter Schiemann had long known of Roszko's potential for danger, his father says. After Peter's death, his family went through his papers and found an old list of 12 to 15 names of dangerous criminals in the Mayerthorpe area. Roszko's name was on it.

Rev. Schiemann has been told by officers who were present that on the evening of March 2, as Mounties searched Roszko's farm, one officer was standing so that he was silhouetted by a light, making a target of himself, until Peter Schiemann reminded him he should be more careful.

Const. Anthony Gordon's wife, Kim, taped the CBC documentary but later erased it, not wanting her two boys to ever see this "fictional" account of their father's death. "I will not have them hear how some reporters thought their dad was playing with a bunch of dogs and ignorant to his surroundings before he was murdered."

Gordon says she knows The Fifth Estate's reconstruction to be false because MacIntyre stated her husband drew his gun.

Based on autopsy reports and her conversations with RCMP officers who were at the scene, Gordon says she's certain her husband never had his gun out and there is a very good chance he never even saw Roszko.

"They (The Fifth Estate) literally must have made it up on their own, just pulled things out of the air, I guess."

The Fifth Estate's executive producer, David Studer, maintains the documentary was fair. "We believe that our story was both correct in its statements of fact and clear in labelling theses and scenarios as such. ... It is impossible to respond to allegations of error based on secret RCMP information which we can neither assess or even know."

The Fifth Estate's only goal was to get out the real facts, but the RCMP fought against this, added MacIntyre and producer Scott Anderson: "We attempted to do so without any assistance from and in spite of some obstruction from the RCMP."

While both Schiemann and Gordon think The Fifth Estate's reconstruction was inaccurate, it's ultimately inconsequential to them whether or not the four men were ambushed inside or outside of the Quonset hut.

"He (Roszko) still would have got them," Gordon says. "If they had 20 years experience, he still would have got them. It wouldn't change the end result."

There was little the officers could do against a suicidal killer, who planned to place himself at utmost advantage and his prey at utmost disadvantage, Schiemann says.

"If they had done things differently I'm sure Roszko would have found another way to take them out."

In the wake of the killings, wild rumours circulated, such as the notion that Roszko moved around his property through a series of tunnels. Oakes says he pushed hard within the RCMP to get out as much accurate information about the massacre as he could in those early days, which is why a six-page report with a chronology of events was released on March 20, 2005.

Since The Fifth Estate documentary aired, Oakes has gone back to the RCMP investigators on the case and found there is no new information that contradicts the original news releases. The officers were killed inside, not outside, Oakes says. "I feel very confident that that is a factual, truthful statement."

Oakes says the RCMP have no choice but to be careful releasing any new information, as two separate investigations looking at the massacre are ongoing: a federal government probe that takes place whenever federal employees are killed on the job and an RCMP investigation that could lead to criminal charges against anyone who helped Roszko commit his crime.

The criminal investigation will only wrap up after there are no more investigative avenues. Only then, perhaps years from now, will a fatality inquiry be held. The facts will become public once the various investigations are complete, Oakes says. "We know that the Canadian public wants to know what happened. We want to know."

The families of the four slain officers are content to wait to find out more about the massacre. Rev. Schiemann doesn't like to dwell on what happened.

"Everybody is curious and interested in those two minutes in the Quonset hut, and obviously that happened, and it has changed everybody's life since then, but if you stay there, it will drive you crazy."