Police are investigating reports that Curtis Dagenais, the prime suspect in the fatal shooting of two Mounties in rural Saskatchewan, wrote a letter to the Edmonton Sun blaming the RCMP for the tragedy.

"I feel terrible about what has happened, but they [the police] would not leave me alone," the newspaper quotes the letter as saying.

Alberta RCMP Cpl. Wayne Oakes said he received a copy of the five-page letter late Monday and is trying to determine whether it was written and signed by Dagenais, as the newspaper claims.

The Edmonton Sun said the letter itreceived is critical of police and Dagenais's sister, with whom he had been feuding.

It blames the RCMP for the July 7 shooting that killed two Saskatchewan Mountiesand alleges that the police fired onthe writerbefore he got out of his truck, CBCRadio News said.

Const. Robin Cameron, 29, and Const. Marc Bourdages, 26, died on the weekend of wounds they suffered while responding toadomestic dispute in Spiritwood 11 days ago.

They had followed a suspect for 27 kilometres before they were shot. Their cruiser was found a short time later with several bullet holes in the windshield. A third officer was fired on, but she escaped unharmed and called for help.

Police have issued a Canada-wide warrant for Dagenais on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

The letter saysthe dispute started when the authortried to evict his sisterfrom his home across from the police detachment in Spiritwood, a community of about 1,000 people two hours north of Saskatoon.

The writer of the letter says he wanted to remove"so-called family of mine" from his home, according to the Edmonton Sun.

The writer sayshe and his motherown the property, "not my sister, who I wanted removed … because she has told me things to mislead me, to give herself more time to screw me over as to division of family property due to the divorce of [my parents]."

But the writer claims police wouldn't helpremove the sister from thehouse because of a pending lawsuit.

The writer says that on the night of the shooting, he was placed under arrest on assault charges. "I couldn't believe it. I had a screaming match with my sister, but never touched her."

He says he was so startled at being placed under arrest that he fled. During the chase that followed, the writer complains that police "would ram me hard, hoping to spin me out of control, hoping that I would roll."

When he eventually stopped, the writer says,the Mounties started firing at him. "They wanted to kill me, to hush me about their dirty work."

The letter was postmarked last Friday at Shell Lake, a hamlet about 30 kilometres from Spiritwood, according to the newspaper.

That's one day after police announced they were scaling back their intense search for Dagenais in the Spiritwood area, saying they believedhe had left the region.

A funeral will be held for Cameron on Friday in her home community, the Beardy's and Okemasis First Nation reserve near Duck Lake, Sask.

There will be apolice funeral for Bourdages on July 25 in Regina and a private family ceremony in his hometown of Saint-Eustache, Que.

Meanwhile, Dagenais's mother, Elsie,issued a statement through a local pastor Tuesday,repeating a plea forher son to turn himself in to police peacefully, without hurting anyone else.

Rev. Leigh Sinclairread Elsie Dagenais's message, which said there has been enough grief and loss of life.

Also, police say they are looking into reports that an ambulance was not dispatchedto the shooting scene until more than an hour after Cameron and Bourdages were shot in the head.

Garry St. Onge, who runs the ambulance service in Spiritwood, said paramedics did not receive a call until nearly 10:30 on the evening of the shooting, nearly 75 minutes after it happened.

"I'm assuming, given the situation where you have an armed and dangerous man in a particular vicinity, things take time," St. Onge told CBC News.