Death's Shadow (16 page)

Cut and Run

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Central Station Lockup

1:00 a.m.

Hamilton forensic detective Annette Huys observed the suspect through the window in the cell door. Kyro Sparks had followed directions to remove his footwear — a pair of Timberland hiking-style boots, she noted — and belt, as well as a hooded sweater. Huys noticed what looked like blood on the Timberlands.

She confirmed the hunch later, applying a Hemastix strip to the boots to test for blood. The result came up positive — whose blood it was was another question, though. Huys (pronounced
Huze
) opened the cell door, introduced herself. Kyro Sparks was wearing socks, a shirt, and baggy blue pants. She said they needed him to remove his clothes. He would be issued a jumpsuit to wear.

“You’re not getting anything,” he said.

Huys asked again.

“Fuck you, bitch,” he replied, and moved toward her. She closed the cell door.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” she said through the door.

She was tired and didn’t need this. The evening had been a long one for Huys. She had met senior ident man Gary Zwicker at Hamilton General Hospital earlier that evening. After getting called to work the O’Grady’s homicide, they reported to the ER. On a bed in the trauma suite, they had viewed the body and taken photos. Then, they had bagged the victim’s hands to preserve potential forensic evidence — perhaps he scratched one of the killers in the struggle, had skin or blood under his nails — gently tying sterile paper bags around each hand with string to protect them. After returning to Central Station, Huys had stored the victim’s clothes in an evidence locker and headed to the holding cells. There she met with Shane Groombridge and other officers outside Kyro Sparks’s cell.

She again asked Kyro Sparks for his clothes. He refused again. This was not going to go well. He was over six feet tall, and Huys, who was five foot four, was taken aback by his anger. The metal grills on his teeth added to his intimidating appearance.

“You can’t do anything to me. Why don’t you Tase me?” Sparks said. “Go ahead, bitch.”

“I don’t think I’d want to be getting Tasered with all that metal in your mouth,” Huys said through the closed window on the door.

She’d never met a suspect so combative. There had been a suspect who, just before Huys had photographed his hands, had punched a wall with each fist, as though trying to destroy his knuckles and alter forensic evidence. Crazy. But Sparks was off the charts.

Huys had started with Hamilton police in 1997. Before that she had worked for the Ontario Provincial Police as a civilian monitor of wire taps in intelligence investigations. Odd hours, shift work, and there were times she had to listen to everything going on in a household. Such an invasion of privacy, hearing them with their partners — everything. She had heard many things that she never wanted to hear, but that was the job. She started with ident in January 2003, the department’s first female detective. They teased her; she was tagged “forensic Barbie” and given a toy doll. She played right along, kept the Barbie doll in the locker given to her, accessorized with a lab coat and gun belt.

Kyro Sparks continued shouting through the cell, spitting on the door. Huys told Groombridge she needed help to get the clothes. Groombridge, along with several others, including officer Ben Adams, opened the door and walked in.

“We need your clothes for evidence,” Groombridge said.

“Fuck you. Are you going to Tase me? Go ahead. Tase me. I’ve been shot, survived a bullet to the head; I can survive this. You’re going to have to take them from me.”

They left the cell. Minutes later, an officer arrived with a Taser, a rod that sends a type of electrical shock called a dry stun. Sparks pointed at a line on the floor marking the threshold separating the cell from the hallway.

“I bet if I cross that line you’ll Tase me.”

The officer tried to calm him down again. Sparks continued moving toward the line and the open door.

He was almost out the door when five officers wrestled him to the ground. He kept struggling; his strength was impressive. The Taser was applied, and with the electricity rippling through his nervous system, the silver grills popped out of his mouth and clinked onto the jail floor. Blood became visible in his mouth; perhaps it had been cut by the mouthpiece.

Tasering is painful; it is used to temporarily immobilize the muscles of someone. It worked on Sparks, or so it seemed. Thinking that Sparks had been immobilized, the officers started removing his clothes. Remarkably, he resumed the fight. It is rare for a suspect to continue to fight after being Tasered. He was shocked again, and his body went limp. The clothes were finally removed, revealing the fact that Kyro Sparks wore long underwear from the waist down.

At 3:30 a.m. Detective Mike Maloney finished his first interview with Brenda Rozendal. It had lasted an hour. He asked her about Art, his personality, and whether anyone would want to hurt him. There was another person sitting in on the interview as well. He was required to be there, because, in fact, he had been at O’Grady’s Roadhouse, too. It was Art’s eldest son, Neil. Maloney asked him about what he had seen at O’Grady’s.

Maloney left the quiet room to meet with Kyro Sparks downstairs. He had news for his suspect. The initial charge had been assault. Maloney now wanted to tell him that he might well be charged with murder. But before he made it down to the cells, Maloney received an update: Kyro Sparks had been combative in his cell. He had been Tasered. Maloney’s mouth dropped. Tasered?
Now I’ll never get a statement from the guy
, he thought. And even if Sparks did talk, how would it ever stand up in court? Maloney headed for the lockup, fuming. He knew the uniform guys had a job to do, and that Sparks had been out of control, but in a homicide investigation it was crucial to always be mindful that anything said or done might be used in court. He could all but hear the judge now: “Yes, Mr. Sparks, did the officers treat you properly, fairly in custody? And you gave this statement of your own free will?”

At the cell an officer checked on Sparks.

“What, punk-ass?” Sparks barked at the uniform, and spat at the door. He had managed to move his cuffed hands from behind his back to his front by stepping through the loop. He was doing push-ups on the floor.

Maloney arrived outside the closed cell door along with Detective Peter Abi-Rashed. Maloney was the lead investigator in the case; Abi-Rashed, the case manager.

“Do you want to talk?” Abi-Rashed said through the closed window of the cell.

“About what?” Kyro Sparks replied.

Maloney opened the cell door and entered. “My name is Detective Mike Maloney. I need to tell you about your change in jeopardy. You were brought in for assault. It is now murder.”

“What murder?”

“The guy you assaulted.”

“What guy, what murder — this is bullshit.”

“The guy you assaulted died.”

“What guy? I don’t know about no guy and no murder.”

Maloney left and retrieved a phone for Kyro Sparks to speak to a legal aid lawyer in private. He returned at 5:00 a.m.

“My lawyer told me not to say anything,” Sparks said.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Maloney replied.

“I’ve been treated like an animal here.”

“I’ve been told that apparently you acted inappropriately earlier. What were you doing in the neighbourhood where you were arrested?”

“Give me a cigarette and I’ll tell you where I was from morning ’til night.”

“We don’t have any cigarettes. Where did the blood on your shoes come from?”

“It’s my blood. From two or three months ago. Can’t get it out.”

Maloney asked if he would come to a room to talk on video. “Or would you rather go back to the cells?”

“What do you think?”

“Do you want to speak on video?”

“No way.”

At 8:00 a.m. Maloney drove home. His wife and kids were still asleep. With some cases Maloney would crack a lite beer after a long shift, sit back, and unwind before turning in. But with this one, he knew, as the primary investigator, he’d be going right back to the office, so it was straight to bed. Four hours later he was back on the case, organizing a photo lineup with Kyro Sparks in it.

That evening Maloney drove up the Mountain for his first look at the crime scene. Annette Huys and Gary Zwicker were processing the area inside O’Grady’s. They gave Maloney a walk-through of where Art Rozendal had died. Maloney had no idea that, just a couple of blocks away, the second of the killers was making a run for it

On Saturday afternoon Kyro Sparks was still sitting in his cell downtown; at the same time, Cory McLeod was in an apartment just a couple of blocks up the street from O’Grady’s Roadhouse. All day Cory had tried to track down Kyro. No answer on his cell phone. Didn’t make sense. Where could he be? They were both from out of town: Kitchener. Kyro had a cousin in Hamilton, but the cousin hadn’t seen him. Kyro’s girlfriend, Katrina McLennan, a student at Mohawk College in Hamilton, didn’t know where he was, either.

Cory sat in Katrina’s apartment. Her friend, Sherri Foreman, was Cory’s girlfriend, and often stayed in the same apartment. Nobody had seen Kyro since the night before, Friday, when all four of them had been in the apartment moments after the incident at O’Grady’s. Cory had urged Kyro not to leave the apartment. Cops would be looking for them everywhere. Kyro was angry, though. He and Cory had been arguing over stuff all night, so he took off.

Saturday afternoon the local dinner hour news came on TV. The lead story was about a murder. It showed a picture of O’Grady’s. Cory’s attention perked up. A mug shot photo flashed on the screen. It was Kyro. Cory felt his mind spin. The TV reporter said Hamilton police had one man in custody: Kyro Jarreau Sparks, 23, of Kitchener. Police were looking for at least one other man in connection with the murder.

The victim’s name was Arthur Rozendal. Cory watched the video cut to the home of the victim; a teenage boy crying. It was one of Arthur Rozendal’s sons: Jordan, 15. The boy was on TV, in tears, asking why someone would do this to his dad.

Cory stared at the screen. Someone? Him. It was him. Kyro and Cory had beaten on that guy in the bar. The guy had never even got a punch in, Cory reflected.

Cory decided that he wasn’t sticking around any longer. He was on his feet, out the door, and entered a convenience store close by, one he’d often used while staying at the apartment. He picked up the payphone and called a cab. He’d just got off the phone when someone walked in, a man dressed in business clothes. Looked like an official visit. A cop? The guy started putting questions to the guy behind the counter. He had to be a plainclothes cop.

So, Cory was thinking: okay, he’s asking about us. Cory had been in the store many times, for food, or picking up Century Sams — a type of cigar he used to roll joints. Now, here was this cop asking this Chinaman behind the counter if he’d seen any black faces in there.
And I’m right here
, Cory thought. His mind raced. He was getting ready to cut and run.
No
, he thought.
Stay put
.
Wait
. The cop finished talking to the guy behind the counter and left. Too close. Minutes later, the cab pulled out front, took Cory downtown to the bus station.

On the Greyhound back to Kitchener, Cory McLeod kept replaying the night. Okay. They’d had some drinks. Played some pool. Then the fight. What did the cops have? What had he left behind? His drinking glass on the table? He felt for his neck chain, the one that had dog tags attached.
They have my fucking chain.
At least his name wasn’t on the dog tags, or even his initials. The inscription was just his nickname: Daymein P. Even if they found something, DNA somewhere, he figured that it would take a long time to come up with his name, find him, and arrest him. The plan: Take care of business in Kitchener and leave the country. By the time they came looking for him, he would be gone.

Intersection

Cory McLeod’s relatives were originally from Jamaica, a place where, Cory had heard, several members of his extended family did time in jail — for what, he wasn’t sure. He was born in 1985, and knew his biological father, although he didn’t remember him being around much. As Cory reached his teens, they had built more of a rapport. His father worked as a Waterloo police officer, and later was a school board trustee in Kitchener. He lived at his grandmother’s; in fact a lot of his family stayed in the house.

His mother, Kathy, wanted to make a better life for her kids. She joined the Canadian military and moved the family to Halifax when he was nine, after she had separated from Cory’s stepfather. In Halifax Cory got into drug dealing and stealing with his friends. One day he robbed an older man, who was a dealer. The guy was well respected —feared, really — in the community. After the robbery the guy sent a pack of guys after Cory; they messed him up pretty good, beat on him with steel pipes. He ended up in the hospital for a week.

When he was 13, Cory moved back to Kitchener by himself, lived with an aunt. He attended St. Anne’s elementary school. Didn’t last long, though. The school was almost all white; the only black kids were Cory and a few of his cousins. A lot of the kids were from wealthy families, from good neighbourhoods, and he and his cousins were from downtown, broke.

One day Cory saw a white kid picking on his cousin in the school hallway. His cousin was a yappy kid, in Grade 4; Cory was in Grade 7. All Cory saw was this bigger white kid, in Grade 8, picking on his little cousin. Was the guy calling his cousin a nigger? Spitting on him? Cory lost it, fought the kid. Cory was not a big boy, and the Grade 8 kid got in some punches.

Cory’s hat fell off in the fight. A teacher picked it up and took it away. He was sent to the office, and then, later, Cory went to the teacher’s office to retrieve his hat. He was still burning.

“I want my hat back.”

“Say please,” he heard the teacher reply.

Cory got angrier; the teacher told Cory to just leave, and placed his hand on Cory’s shoulder. Cory snapped. He started screaming and hit the teacher in the face, over and over. A janitor jumped in to break it up. Cory got kicked out of school. Why did it bother him so much to have the teacher put his hand on him? He didn’t think he was obsessive about it. If a friend touched him, it was fine, but if a man put his hand on him in an aggressive manner, that was not only an insult, it was a threat. And if a man threatened him, he was going to defend himself.

Cory was suspended for four days; later he was kicked out of the school. They couldn’t expel him since he was under 16, but they basically said, “Don’t enroll again and we won’t charge you.”

He went back to Halifax. Then back to Kitchener. Back and forth. His mom moved back to Kitchener to be closer to him. He enrolled at Cameron Heights high school. Lasted about two weeks there. Was getting heavier into drugs, crime, living here and there. Got into crack; hung with a friend who stole car stereos, which they sold to drug dealers in Kitchener. Was convicted under the Young Offender’s Act for robbery.

One day, when he was about 15, he met a guy in Kitchener named Kyro Sparks through one of his uncles, Kyro was a year older, but they clicked; had similar backgrounds. Kyro had moved to Kitchener from Montreal when he was 16. A radical change from a crummy apartment in Montreal to living with an aunt who seemed to him well off, lived in the Doon Valley area, had a pool with a diving board. He missed some friends in Montreal, but how could anyone ever be upset about moving to a place like Kitchener, Kyro wondered.

His first day of high school at KCI, Kitchener Collegiate Institute, a staff member took Kyro Sparks aside. “I don’t want any big city gangsters coming in here causing trouble,” she told him.

So that’s it
, thought Kyro.
That’s what I am?
I am from the big city
.
Yeah, that’s right
. Other students, they were giving him the same thing: “Yo, bro, are you a Crip or a Blood?” Kyro grinned at it all. Didn’t think of himself as anything but a little snotty kid. But he started enjoying the attention, played it up. Started wearing different clothes than the others. Got in trouble. Around that time he started smoking a lot of marijuana. It was weird: in Montreal, guys bought drugs, did a bit, but sold most of it to make money. Here, the kids were rich. They bought it to get high, and that was it. Kids doing acid, smoking weed all day, skipping class every day. He was one of them.

In Kitchener he hung out with some friends who called one another by the nickname “King.” You know,
King
: pride of the people. Black people, Kyro reflected, they’ve been convinced they are slaves of the world, but it wasn’t so. In fact it was the exact opposite. So Kyro said, “What’s up, King? Here is my Queen.” That swagger came out in the rap music Kyro made. He even made a homemade album. He called it
Heaven Sent And Hell Raising
.

One day someone ripped off Kyro. Kyro and some friends took care of it. Went and got back what was his. There was a gun involved. In court they were saying that Kyro and the others were part of a gang called the Kings. Got 16 months for it, was put in the bucket in Cambridge, then Guelph, before being kicked out of there for carrying a concealed weapon in prison. Anything can happen in prison, right?
Gotta be prepared
, he thought. In jail he was getting more of the gangster thing, was grouped on ranges with guys from Toronto, gang members, black guys. “Yeah,” people told him, “you’re one of those Toronto guys.”

His identity, cultivated as a boy in Montreal, reinforced in Kitchener, was now formalized in prison. Was he a badass? That’s what he was told. And he was doin’ it. Kyro was like, “Okay, it is what it is.”

His friendship with Cory McLeod was interrupted by jail time. Cory was put on ice first, for armed robbery; he did time with his buddy Dwayne. They were 17. Dwayne got nine months; Cory, 15. Later, Cory was also charged in a stabbing attack. He proclaimed his innocence, was certain he’d be found not guilty in the end. Some guy ratted him out that hadn’t even seen who attacked him; just threw Cory’s name in there.

He decided he wasn’t going to stick around to learn his fate. He hit the road, for Hamilton — a place to lie low for a while, out of sight of the Kitchener police, hang with his girlfriend, Sherri Foreman, and figure out his next move. Funny thing: in Hamilton, Cory ran into Dwayne, and the guy had become a born again Christian. No more drink, weed, sex. Totally committed his life to God. Sherri started calling him preacher boy.

“This man did all this shit with me, now he’s found God?” Cory said.

He laughed at him. But they hung out. Dwayne wanted Cory to come to church with him. Think about getting baptized, turning it all around like he had. Cory was dubious, but went to church with him one day.

“I think there’s someone in here who needs to be saved,” said the minister.

Cory grinned.

“You set me up,” he said to Dwayne.

“You gotta come get baptized,” Dwayne told him.

“Right.”

Cory thought about it, though. Might be something to consider. But he would put that off for a while.

In January 2005, Cory, 19, was still on the run in Hamilton. Kyro Sparks, 22, hung in the city, too. Kyro had worked through temp agencies on and off in Kitchener. Had his forklift licence. Maybe he could get a job in Steeltown, he figured.

They hung with their girlfriends, Katrina and Sherri, at an apartment on Upper James Street. Cory and Kyro started to frequent a bar just around the corner from the apartment. They’d get some food, play pool, drink some beer, double Crown Royals, Grand Marnier. The bar was called O’Grady’s Roadhouse.

While his childhood buddy Art Rozendal had been living in Winnipeg, Bill Murray finished Grade 8 at Oneida Public then went on to Cayuga High School. As his senior year wound down, Dofasco came recruiting for their steel mills, and Bill got hired. On a summer day in 1980, a month or two after he started on the job, Bill came home from work to find Art in his driveway. He had come home. And in the driveway with Art was an old Buick Gran Sport GSX. It was like they had never been apart; they picked up right where they left off, and the next night they’re working on the Buick.

Art dreamed of being a veterinarian, and got accepted at the University of Guelph’s acclaimed veterinary school. But money was an issue. To save he was living at his mom’s place off Mohawk Road. He never did enroll at U of G. A more immediate way to earn a solid living was using his expertise with tools and machines. He wanted to get hired at Dofasco like his friend Bill, but there were no positions open. He was able to walk right into the job at Big Steel competitor Stelco, though. He worked as a millwright, or industrial mechanic — someone who maintains and repairs machinery. He was stationed in the coke ovens.

Whenever Art and Bill’s shifts coincided, they spent time off working on cars at Bill’s place. He had a big garage out in the country. They could fit half a dozen cars in there, put them up on blocks — old street rods, muscle cars. Art loved his Buicks and Bill was a Chrysler guy. They always checked newspapers for spare parts, went to car shows — part of a network of car guys in the area. Sometimes they fixed cars for resale; other times just did it for fun. Put the radio on, listen to some Zeppelin, and crack a few Old Vienna beers. Art had a special affinity for body work, chrome, paint. Given Art’s roots, cars had long been his focus, but he could have just as easily have been a commercial artist, perhaps a sculptor. He had that kind of imagination and ability.

Art was Bill’s best man at his wedding in 1982 — that same year he met a 22-year-old woman named Brenda Merrill. She was a year older than Art, had grown up in the Bruce Park neighbourhood on the Mountain. Brenda had hazel eyes, red-brown hair, and small features. She never believed in love at first sight, and did not love Art off the bat. But when they met, she instantly locked eyes — it was like she could stare right into his soul, feel his kindness, empathy. She knew from the start she would marry him someday.

Art fell hard for Brenda. He’d had girlfriends in Winnipeg, but nothing too serious. Brenda was different. She was funny, outgoing, said what was on her mind. He talked her up to his friends all the time, unabashedly telling them how amazing she was, how much he loved her. They never really talked marriage, but discussed buying a house together. In May 1983 they viewed a house on Carrick and knew it was the one. They put an offer in, even though neither of them had much money. Art had a solid job but spent most of his money on cars. He said he would sell his blue Trans Am.

They headed to Jackson Square for lunch. Afterward, Art went off on his own for a bit, shopping. Later, back up at Brenda’s family home, hanging with Art, Brenda was thinking, I just bought a house with a man; we’ve never talked about marriage, and we’re not engaged. What am I doing? She had just finished painting the last coat of red on her nails at the kitchen table, when Art pulled out the ring he had bought hours earlier and proposed. After teasing Art — “Couldn’t you have at least proposed in the park or something?” — Brenda slipped on the diamond.

Brenda and Art wed on June 8, 1985, at New Westminster Presbyterian Church, the reception held at the old Glass Workers Hall down on Barton and Lottridge Streets. A couple of years later, they moved from their house on Carrick into the home that had belonged to Brenda’s family. Art renovated and expanded the place, Brenda’s mom lived downstairs in a basement apartment. Their first son was born May 20, 1986. Art named him after his father, Neil. Their second son, Jordan, was born September 3, 1989.

Two years later they went through a tough time. Brenda had two aneurysms, right around Art’s 30th birthday. When she got out of the hospital, they decided to renew their vows, having a refreshed appreciation for their love and lives. Rev. John Hibbs, who had married them, did the honours.

Their son Neil was diagnosed with epilepsy in Grade 6. Neil was teased at school after he had a couple of seizures. A couple of kids called him “devil child”; it drove him to tears. But Neil thrived on love and laughter at home. His dad had a madcap sense of humour that Neil inherited. Art loved watching comedies with his kids; the animated movie
Ice Age
was a favourite, especially the squirrel in the quest for a single acorn that eluded him.

Back in Winnipeg, meanwhile, Art’s brother, Darren, had hit tough times. He had a young son, but he and his girlfriend had just split up. She moved east to Mississauga and took the boy. Darren wanted to be closer to him. Although he felt some reservations about it, he phoned Art one day and asked if he could stay with him for a while until he got his own place.

Art and Brenda with Neil and Jordan.
Hamilton Spectator.

“When can you be here?” Art said without hesitation.

Darren had kept in touch with Art since he left Winnipeg, and knew how big his heart was, but this time even he was taken aback. Art was married, with kids, a house, and Darren hadn’t seen him in a while. And yet Art had instantly invited his brother into his home? But that was Art.