| The murder of Manitoba RCMP officer Dennis Strongquill has got to be one of the most brazen, cold-blooded cop killings that has occurred anywhere in North America in recent years.
In December 2001, Strongquill and his partner pulled over a truck in rural southwestern Manitoba because the driver hadn’t stopped at a stop sign. Unfortunately for the two RCMP officers, the Alberta occupants of the truck were on the run and they were prepared to murder any cops who might stand in the way of their freedom.
Before either cop even had a chance to leave their vehicle, Robert Sand calmly walked up to the police SUV with a sawed-off shotgun and opened fire. Instead of shooting back, Strongquill and his partner tried to escape down the highway. Although Robert, his brother Danny and girlfriend Laurie Bell could’ve taken the opportunity to make their getaway, Robert instead ordered his brother to chase after the police vehicle. Strongquill and his partner were just about at the Russell, Manitoba police station when Danny slammed into the passenger side of their vehicle and Robert fired the fatal bullets that killed Strongquill.
"Probably the fact people have problems understanding is (that) these guys actually hunted the police down. They chased the police to the police station," says Winnipeg Free Press reporter Mike McIntyre, who has just written a book about the case.
In Nowhere to Run: The Killing of Constable Dennis Strongquill, published by Great Plains Publications, McIntyre provides a riveting but also poignant account of Strongquill’s murder and its aftermath. McIntyre is an excellent reporter who managed to gather an incredible amount of detail about all the main characters in the tragic saga and, as a result, his non-fiction account reads like a novel.
Instead of just being a sad headline, Strongquill becomes a flesh-and-blood person to the reader. We learn how the aboriginal father of six children and four grandchildren passionately loved policing. But Strongquill isn’t painted as a saint – we also learn about his two failed marriages and his battle with alcoholism. Still, there’s no question he was loved and admired by many.
As McIntyre recreates the events leading up to Strongquill’s death, his murder – or at least the murder of some police officer – feels disturbingly inevitable. McIntyre makes it clear that Robert and Danny Sand, who both had lengthy criminal records, not only had no respect for authority but actually felt intense hatred towards the police. That sentiment is chillingly revealed in Robert’s diary entries before and after Strongquill’s murder.
After robbing a house in rural Saskatchewan and picking up nine high-powered guns, Robert wrote, "Now we’ve got so much firepower that if a cop pulls us over he’ll be one sorry motherfucker."
One of the most compelling aspects of the book concerns Robert’s relationship with Laurie Bell, a junkie that Robert falls in love with and tries to save from the streets of Edmonton. Robert decides to flee the halfway house he’s at in Edmonton and runs away with Laurie and his brother. Robert and Laurie have a fantasy of escaping to some idyllic spot by the ocean and living happily ever after. They then go on to steal dozens of vehicles and commit an armed robbery prior to the murder of Strongquill. Their love affair continues through their criminal trials until Robert attacks one of his lawyers with a razor blade.
McIntyre, who covered Robert Sand’s two-month first-degree murder trial, decided to write the book in order to pay tribute to Strongquill. He says that often in sensational murder trials, the victim tends to be forgotten by the media, which instead focus on the killer or killers.
"I think this case showed how dangerous police work is. Dennis and his partner were doing nothing more than their routine duty that night and their world changed forever," says McIntyre.
The author does a strong job of representing Strongquill and making the reader really care about his pointless murder. However, it’s the Sand brothers who really fascinate us. McIntyre effectively delves into their backgrounds and characters to try to illuminate why they ended up murderers. (Adding to the tragedy of this story, Danny was eventually killed by a police sniper during a standoff with police in rural Saskatchewan.)
McIntyre believes it was a combination of drug abuse and too much time spent in jail from an early age that turned the brothers into cop killers.
"I think this case is an indictment of our prison system. If we think prison rehabilitates people we’re kidding ourselves," he says. "It’s something society needs to look at – how to deal with people in the early stages (of criminal activity)."
McIntyre says he was also struck by how prevalent hard-core drug use is in the small Northern Alberta towns that Robert, Danny and Laurie Bell grew up in.
McIntyre has already received some offers to turn his book into a TV movie. If it proves to be anywhere near as gripping as the book, it will be a must-see. |
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