- I'm kate snow,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- It was like being in a nightmare
'cause mom was never late.
Mom didn't miss appointments.
She didn't just disappear.
- A mother of two disappears.
- She waved a quick goodbye--
Walked down the stairs and out the door.
- But she wasn't the first to vanish.
This was a town that appeared to be haunted
By a serial killer.
- It became sickening to hear that another girl
Had gone missing.
- Was wendy another victim,
Or could she have been targeted
By neighbors she tangled with?
- She made an enemy.
- She made an enemy for sure.
- Or maybe the enemy lurked within.
Some said wendy had a history of mental health issues.
- She began screaming obscenities and shouting.
- Could this beloved teacher
Have had multiple personalities?
- He said, "that's not wendy.
"when she does that, she's shanna."
- Was this a woman broken or a woman taken?
To find out what really happened,
An elite group of detectives
Would launch an elaborate undercover mission.
- They're described as right out of hollywood.
The staged kidnappings,
The fake blood is truly phenomenal.
- All leading up to a sit-down
With a man they called mr. Big.
A high stakes gamble to reveal the truth on tape
For the children left behind.
- What was it like to hear that?
- Shattering.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome
To "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
The ratte family had experienced
Their share of hard times.
Yet, through it all, denis, wendy,
And their two children appeared to make it work,
But everything changed the day wendy went missing.
The search for the devoted mother
Would unlock troubling secrets from her past
And threaten to tear the once close-knit family apart.
Here's keith morrison with "deception."
- The story you're about to witness is all too real,
Though it may seem perhaps implausible,
Like a play or a movie,
With, at its dark heart,
Something quite unspeakable.
The actors are the family divided across a thin line
Separating truth and deception.
There's the gambler's last desperate hand,
The voice, the presence,
Summoned from the beyond,
And the audacious undercover caper,
All to solve an 11-year-old mystery
And put under the light of intense personal scrutiny
A most unlikely villain,
Who, depending on whom you choose to believe,
May not be a villain at all.
But, in the beginning, in the beginning,
There was wilderness, vast and lovely,
And a happy little family,
A brother and sister who loved each other
And loved their mom and dad.
- I always thought of our family
As a perfect little family.
Didn't matter where we lived.
As long as we were together, that was home.
- This is anna sieppert,
Who, at the time, was anna ratte,
And home was a country cabin
Surrounded by the trees and mountains
Of british columbia, canada,
And this is her little brother, gabriel.
- And I always thought of my family and my parents
As being perfect, really.
- Especially when you saw the dysfunction
In families around you.
- Yeah, and, like, parents get divorced?
Like, it just didn't make sense to me.
- Yeah.
- Like, how would you deal with that?
[laughing]
- And their parents
Had a story as unlikely and romantic
As anna and gabriel had ever heard.
This shy, rustic french canadian laborer
Named denis ratte,
Who fancied himself a gambler,
And wendy, the sweet, wild girl
Who'd strayed so far from her middle class roots
In the connecticut suburbs.
They met at a hotel in reno, nevada,
Of all places.
- And he hardly knew a word of english,
And she hardly knew a word of french.
- And, yeah, they hit it off.
Um, when-when it came time for him to leave,
She said, "take me with you."
- And so, he did, all the way back to canada,
To northern saskatchewan.
And against all odds, said denis's sister, dian,
The marriage of this wayward teacher's daughter
And a virtually illiterate dropout worked.
- What I really liked about them,
Is that they seemed to be more friends than lovers.
The way they talked to each other,
The way they behaved, you know,
It almost didn't feel like husband and wife.
- And the kids?
Anybody could see how close they were.
- It wasn't just, "oh, how is anna,
"and what's gab doing now?"
It was always anna and gab.
- And as their fried, lois cook, could plainly see,
Denis was fiercely protective of all of them.
- I would trust him to do the right thing
And keep me safe.
He was gonna protect his family,
And he's gonna protect his kids.
- Were you a daddy's girl? - Yeah, I was.
He was the rock that I had.
He was calm. He was patient.
I always considered him about as close as a hero
As a girl could get.
- The strong, silent hero
Who preferred long solitary walks in the woods
To social gatherings,
Except for poker.
There was usually a game in town.
The family could certainly use the cash,
And denis figured he was pretty good.
- He prided himself on being able to read people
And-and know when- when to hold 'em,
When to fold 'em,
And I guess he-he-he sort of could
Because he was winning quite a bit.
- Wendy, an art teacher by trade,
Taught her kids to help others,
To speak up and be heard like her.
- Well, I think you're a little too domineering
For me, right now.
Maybe tomorrow we can talk about that.
- Okay.
- In this video, she organized a peace project
That taught students, including her own son,
About conflict resolution and respect.
- And that's just the ideal of what she tried to do
In her everyday life.
- You were close to your mother, right?
- Oh, very. - Very tight relationship.
- Well, she was incredibly nurturing,
And I think what she succeeded in doing,
Is that she raised a good son and a good man
To live in this world as a sane person.
- Wendy wanted her children
To have the emotional stability
She couldn't seem to manage
Even in her solid middle class upbringing.
She was open about it, too,
How she was constantly seeking something missing,
How as a teenager she ran away from home,
Experimented with drugs,
How her parents sent her to a psychiatric hospital
Back in connecticut.
- She wanted to have a peaceful part of her.
She wanted to be centered, would be the word,
But isn't that life?
Isn't that something common to all of us?
- Nor did her quest seem to be over.
She was drawn to spirituality
And, for a time,
To a little known religious group that called itself
The emissaries of divine light.
- I remember her saying that she felt--
She felt at home there. She did that, though.
She-she religion bounced,
Searching for somewhere to belong.
- And then, finally, she and the family
Seemed to find it, a place to belong,
At the edge of the wilderness far from her connecticut past,
A small house a few miles outside
Of prince george, british columbia.
Denis took a job at a local lumbermill.
Wendy found work off and on as a substitute teacher
At the local high school.
That might have been the whole story, really,
Except, well, every drama needs a catalyst, right?
One day, in 1995,
Denis returned from work at the sawmill
And told his family how a log hit his shoulder,
Knocked him out cold,
And when he tried to return to work,
Tough as he was, he just couldn't.
- It turned out he had a lot of nerve damage
Down the right side of his body,
So he was left high and dry
Without being able to work anymore.
- Denis could no longer be the family's strong,
Stable protector.
- Once he lost his job, I think that she--
It was up to her to figure out,
Okay, how, like, how do we make everything work?
- And then it was a hot morning in August 1997
When everything stopped working.
Gabriel was in the kitchen,
And he was more or less paying attention
When his mom and dad told him
They were off to run some errands.
- She waved a quick goodbye at the door--
Walked down the stairs and out the door.
- The first inkling of something wrong,
Something off,
Was when the phone rang just after lunch.
- Got a phone call from dad asking if we'd seen mom
Because she hadn't shown up
Where they were supposed to meet.
- And his dad told her,
Her mom had dropped him off downtown,
So he could run errands
While she drove on in the family van
To tutor a student, then meet a friend,
Then pick him up again at a hardware store,
But she hadn't returned.
And as each hour crawled by that afternoon,
Anna's worry grew.
By nightfall, there was still no sign of wendy.
- Coming up...
Where was wendy?
- I just kept making phone calls,
And no one had seen her.
No one knew what I was talking about.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- It was late summer,
A hot morning in saskatchewan
When wendy and denis ratte
Drove off to run some errands.
Hours later,
Wendy was nowhere to be found,
And her daughter, anna, then a teenager, was worried.
- When I called the police to say,
"I don't know where she is, can you help,"
Their only question was, "has it been 24 hours?"
And it hadn't been,
So, uh, I couldn't make a report yet.
- So, dark now,
Anna and her father took the family's old truck
And drove to prince george to look for her.
They stopped by a coffee shop,
One of denis and wendy's favorite meeting places.
No wendy, but as anna looked around,
Her eye caught something familiar.
- And there was the van sitting under a street lamp
In a grocery store parking lot.
I was so excited 'cause the grocery store,
I think, was just closing up,
And I thought,
Well, maybe she's on her way out of the grocery store.
So, I went and knocked on the door,
And they said, "no, there's nobody here."
- The van, a white plymouth voyager,
Had picked up a dent neither one of them remembered
On the driver's side door. Weird.
The van was locked, but denis had an extra key.
Inside, everything looked normal,
So anna drove the van home.
- That night and the next morning,
I-I just kept making phone calls.
I called every friend of mine,
Every friend of hers.
I called every number in the directory
That she had, and no one had seen her.
No one knew what I was talking about.
- What did all of that feel like?
- It was like being in a nightmare
'cause mom was never late.
Mom didn't miss appointments.
[sighs]
She didn't just disappear.
- The next day,
Denis and the kids filed a report with the rcmp,
The royal canadian mounted police.
They created a missing persons poster,
A photo of wendy smiling, happy,
Her hazel eyes magnified by supersized glasses.
They plastered it around town.
A day went by, then two, then a week.
- I just kept waiting for her
To walk back through that door.
- You expected that to happen?
- I didn't know what else to do.
For me, it was just,
Well, she's gonna come back, right?
[chuckles] I'm 15 years old
And just expecting everything to come and be normal.
One of my really vivid memories is,
We went to see a movie together
Because we felt like
Let's have a little distraction
From this trauma.
So, I remember standing in line
To go to the cinema, just feeling awful,
Feeling the weight of what's happening,
And having it feel so odd that we're doing that.
Like, why aren't we looking for her?
- And denis?
Anna remembered her father
Going for long walks in the woods alone.
Seemed devastated, lost, in denial.
- He broke down for the first time.
I'd-I'd never seen real emotion
Come from him before.
- By then, wendy's disappearance
Became news all over prince george.
- I came into contact with the case
As a news reporter covering the disappearance itself.
- Frank peebles of the "prince george citizen."
- It was quite a-a shock
That somebody who was apparently normal, everyday,
You know, almost a stereotype in that sense
Could disappear without a trace.
She was everybody's mom, and she just disappeared.
- A disturbing echo of other stories peebles knew
All too well.
- This town is used to disappearances,
And when wendy ratte disappeared,
There was a hint of, you know,
I-I would say even a strong whiff of suspicion
That this was another highway of tears case.
- Highway of tears?
Now, what would that be?
- Coming up...
Was wendy just the latest on a long list of women
Who disappeared or had been found dead
Along this stretch of road?
- It's another woman gone missing
In unsubstantiated ways.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- A terrifying specter haunted the lonely highway
That passed through prince george
On its way into the wilderness,
The highway of tears,
837 miles of exquisite natural beauty,
Winding its way past dramatic snowcapped mountains
And breathtaking vistas of lush forest,
And clear lakes reflecting the blue skies above.
And, also, past the sites of unsolved mysteries.
- ...Say there are six active investigations.
- Cbc news prince george.
- Tonight, more missing women on the highway of tears.
- The discovery of a body...
- By the time wendy ratte vanished,
At least 15 women had either gone missing
Or been found dead somewhere along this highway.
Word was a serial killer was on the loose.
- For me as a reporter,
It became sickening after a while
To hear the police issue another release
That another girl had gone missing.
- Had wendy become highway victim number 16?
Her abandoned van wasn't far from the highway.
- You couldn't not look at it as a possibility.
It's another woman gone missing
In unsubstantiated ways,
And, for some, that's all that's needed,
And, in many ways, it's perfectly valid.
- But as reporter frank peebles dug into the story,
He found another so far unsubstantiated theory
Making the rounds around town.
- I know that the police spent a lot of time
Thinking about and investigating the jones theory.
- The jones family,
Once neighbors of the rattes,
Not exactly friends.
In fact, just four months before she disappeared,
Wendy complained very publicly about the joneses,
Appearing [indistinct] in the newspaper
Accusing the family of mistreating their animals
And using their land as a garbage dump.
- She was able to get a fairly big news story happening,
Which made the city react
And-and get them kicked off the property
And the animals taken away.
- It was not only damaging for the joneses,
It was humiliating,
Not the sort of thing they were inclined
To take lying down.
- Allegedly, there were threats made
From the joneses to the rattes.
- Yes, in fact, the jones family matriarch
Sent a scathing letter to the "prince george citizen"
Badmouthing wendy and her family,
Intentionally misspelling the family name,
Exchanging the rattes for the rats.
- I never met the joneses,
But the stories I heard about them
Were that indeed people
Would not have been surprised
If they had acted out some of the threats
That they were alleged to have made.
- Oh, and there was no question, said gabriel,
His mom did feel threatened by the joneses.
They did not make their anger any secret.
- They would hoot and holler at her
As they were passing.
That's one of the examples of her community activism.
Having a bad neighbor like that, um, who are--
- And doing something about it.
- Fearlessly, apparently. - Yeah.
- Because she must have known that they would not like this,
Obviously. - Oh, yeah,
And they might have held a grudge.
- And she made an enemy. - She made an enemy for sure.
- That was just four months before she vanished,
Leaving nothing but her van in the local parking lot,
A van with a dent in the door
That nobody could remember seeing before.
- It was a pretty sizable dent.
So, what was it?
Could it have maybe been,
Um, some kind of a sign of-of a struggle,
If my mom was accosted,
And she was thrown into the van?
Something forceful must have caused this dent.
- And you know how people are.
They talk,
And the longer wendy stayed missing,
The more they talked about the jones.
- So, even in the newsroom,
That was a leading theory.
That's one of your clear first steps
In any disappearance or murder case
Is, what's the motive?
And the joneses could have a motive.
- There was a grudge, certainly.
There-there was, um, some differences,
And it-it certainly was in the media,
And we looked at that angle.
- Prince george detective judy thomas
Was leading the police inquiry into wendy's disappearance,
And this early in the investigation,
Any lead was welcome.
What became your focus?
- This is the difficulty with missing person files.
You don't-- there's no real starting point.
You don't have a scene, you don't have remains,
And-and it makes it difficult.
- Thomas decided to focus her investigation closer to home.
She discovered that none of wendy's clothes
Or personal things were missing from the house
Except for her passport.
So, the obvious question...
Did you have the feeling that this is a woman
Who might have just up and left?
- We had to look at all possibilities.
You have to keep an open mind when you start
On these investigations
Because we had, at that point,
Very limited information on who wendy was.
- Where do you start?
Maybe a phone call to wendy's family
Back in the states.
- And I hear this story, and I think,
Oh, for crying out loud,
You know, she's done it, again.
- A missing person case like no other
Because who actually disappeared,
Wendy or a second personality
Some say lurked inside?
Coming up...
- We asked, and we said, "what is going on?"
And he said, "that's not wendy.
"that's shanna.
"when she does that, she's shanna."
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow.
Wendy ratte was missing.
Some wondered if she was abducted
On the highway of tears,
A stretch of road where 15 women
Had disappeared or been murdered.
Another theory?
That an explosive feud with her neighbors
Turned deadly,
But those who knew wendy best
Were about to reveal secrets from her past
That would move the case
In a troubling new direction.
Once again, here's keith morrison
With "deception."
- Wendy ratte, the sweet free spirit
Of prince george, british columbia,
Had vanished from her life as slick as a magic act.
Her passport nowhere to be found,
And as unlikely as it seemed,
Police had to seriously consider could--
Would a dedicated wife and mother of two
Simply skip town,
Run away from her own family?
Which brings us to the greyhound bus station
A few blocks from the place
Wendy's van was found abandoned.
Gabriel was putting up
A missing persons poster there and...
- I asked the lady who was there at the--
At the cash register,
"do you recognize this lady on the poster?"
She did say that she recognized my mom,
And I was just taken aback. "you do?"
And she said, "yes," very certainly.
We asked her repeatedly. - Wow.
- And she said, "I saw her.
She was sitting at that table over there."
- What does it do inside when you hear that?
- It's hope, you know?
- Then, shortly after wendy disappeared,
Anna was looking through her mom's papers
In search of clues and found an application
For a teacher's job in california.
- So, we thought, well, maybe-maybe she's there.
I know she had spent a-- she had spent some time
In new mexico when she was getting her teaching degree,
And she loved it.
So, maybe she went there.
- And then there was that religious group
She had been so into years earlier,
The emissaries of divine light.
Could she have up and joined them?
- They feel they have transcended
The conflict intention of their former lives.
- A canadian news magazine show profiled the group
And found it had several branches in the u.S.
- I helped the police look into that
And give them every information I could
And-and would often ask,
"how much did you look into this?"
'cause I knew there was an american sect.
- But still, why would her own kids think it possible
She abandoned her family without so much as goodbye?
The reason for that was history.
She had done it before.
- Just disappeared from her life.
- This is karen cryder, wendy's sister,
Who told how wendy vanished the first time
When she was 17 years old.
The family finally found her living in
A tent in new hampshire.
- Just at our very approach, she began screaming obscenities,
And shouting, and just behaving in a menacing, hateful way,
And she was not a person I'd ever met,
And we knew she was not well
And needed care, um,
And forcibly took her and put her in the hospital.
- Doctors thought wendy suffered from
Drug induced manic depression,
But karen said they didn't have time to make
An official diagnosis.
That's because wendy turned 18,
Checked herself out, and disappeared again,
This time for almost two years.
- When wendy disappeared,
All traces of her were gone.
She did not call anybody.
We couldn't find her. We couldn't track her.
- She showed up suddenly, apparently seeking refuge
From an abusive relationship she was in at the time,
And then was gone, again.
- There was a clear, um,
Disengagement from reality.
She didn't understand
That her disappearances
Were hurtful to her family members.
Didn't get that at all.
- So it went, on and on,
Until, one day, she turned up and announced
She was getting married to denis.
The family was overjoyed.
- Our family thought that
He was a very good influence on her,
And the fact that he chose to take a chance
And take her away
Was nothing short of amazing.
- Wendy became a dedicated wife,
Teacher, artist, mother,
But there were always issues,
Mood swings, for one thing.
- Some days, she would be so happy, and other days,
The world would just weigh down on her.
- But denis's sister, dionne, said that what she observed
Back in saskatchewan when anna and gabriel
Were still young weren't just mood swings,
But something far more complicated than that.
- The first time that I really noticed it
Was with the kids.
She was always so gentle with them, um,
Soft-spoken,
And all of a sudden, she was very cold
And very abrupt with them, and I started noticing denis,
When this would happen, denis would take her away,
And they-- he'd say, "oh, we're going for a walk now."
And when they got back, she was back to normal.
And then, finally, we asked him.
We said, "you know, what is going on?"
Finally, he said-- he said, "you know, that's shanna.
That's not wendy."
He says, "when she does that, she's shanna."
- Wait. Did wendy suffer from
Multiple personality disorder?
That was never diagnosed.
The stories were all anecdotal but...
- I met shanna.
Wendy and I met in a parking lot
Somewhere just to say hi.
She was driving a very fast, very expensive car.
She was bragging about how much money she made.
She was, um...
Uninterested in anybody else
Besides herself,
And she said, "I'm not wendy anymore."
- Shanna seemed to have been around off and on
For quite a while.
She even called herself that in a letter
She wrote her parents when she was just 23.
"shanna has magic," she wrote.
So, two wendys?
- Wendy was the good mother,
Conservative,
Hard worker,
Wanted to save the world,
While shanna was the wild child.
She didn't wanna be tied down.
She wanted to have a good time.
She felt restrained by the bonds of marriage and family.
- Maybe it was shanna who got on that bus,
Or perhaps oshanna.
Yes, three wendys.
Oshanna came to life in seances wendy led,
Sometimes with anna and gabriel.
- I don't know if they were real or if they weren't real.
They seemed real at the time.
She was so-- - she was speaking in voices and things.
- She was very in touch with a spirit,
An ancient spirit,
With the name oshanna.
She found some peace in that.
And one day, she-she said, "let's hold hands
"and speak with oshanna."
- I just remember her
Transforming into this character,
Um, this different self, and it was a surprise to me.
I didn't know she did this.
She was a completely different person.
She wasn't responding in the way that my mother usually does.
- So, everybody was looking for wendy,
Said gabriel, when really maybe they should have been
Looking for one of the shannas.
- I think that she had the capacity
To-to pick up and go.
She might have reached that breaking point
Where she just thought--
Or she didn't think and just snapped,
And she just left.
- Then, one day, after a month of rumors
And unsubstantiated theories followed, one after the other,
There was a break.
Wendy had been getting unemployment insurance,
And two of her checks had been cashed at an atm
In full view of the bank's surveillance camera.
- Coming up...
A crucial moment when a high stakes gamble
Went very wrong.
- She was so angry.
She just vibrated.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- A month into the investigation,
Police thought they were a big step closer to solving
The mystery surrounding wendy's disappearance.
Someone cashed in her unemployment checks
At an atm.
Was it wendy?
Was it someone who had done her harm?
Rcmp investigator judy thomas checked
The bank's surveillance cameras, and there he was,
Denis ratte, wendy's husband.
So, you asked him about it.
- And he admitted it.
- Straight out-- didn't try to lie.
- I don't think he could lie about it
When you have a picture of him cashing the check at an atm.
[chuckles] - yeah, there's that.
Did he have an explanation that made any sense?
- Yeah.
He, uh, explained the fact that his wife had disappeared.
Uh, there was no money coming in,
And he needed to pay the bills.
It made me wonder about his character.
♪♪
- Denis suddenly became suspect number one,
Though it was hardly a surprise police
Would look at the husband.
In fact, in the very first week of the investigation,
Thomas had questioned him three times.
- I introduced myself as a police officer
Coming to talk to him, and, um, I said, "how are you doing?"
His comment was, "better." - better?
- It-it struck me odd right at the beginning.
- Did he seem nervous? Upset?
- He didn't strike me as overly concerned,
Not distraught by any means.
- Frustrated, is what he was denis told his sister, dionne.
- I said, "you know, get used to it.
"you're the husband. They're gonna look at you,"
Um, because 99% of the time,
The husband did it.
- Didn't help that from one interview to the next,
Denis appeared to change vital information
About the day his wife went missing.
- He said she left with no money,
But then, in a following statement,
He claims that he gave her money.
- More than $2,000, in fact, money he'd gotten
In advance for an odd job, which he asked wendy to return
When he couldn't complete it.
- It struck me there . I was going...
- Why didn't you tell me that the first time then?
- Uh, yes, 'cause it was specifically ask,
"did you-- did wendy have money on her?"
- You wouldn't think he'd forget about $2,000.
- Two thousand dollars, exactly.
- And in the fall of 1997, as investigators interviewed
More and more people who knew the ratte family,
They discovered that ever since denis
Had the mill accident and lost his job two years earlier,
The perfect little family
Had not been quite so perfect after all.
- Well, that was really hard for him,
As you could imagine.
He-he liked being the man of the house.
- Sure.
And if both your physicality and your--
And your ability to provide for your family are taken
Away from you-- - yeah.
- That's got to be hard on the ego, very hard.
- Oh, yeah, it was very hard.
- And especially hard on the family's finances.
Their visa card was almost maxed out.
The only income came from wendy's work
As a substitute teacher,
Not exactly a lucrative profession.
So, denis did what he always did
When times were rough.
He played poker.
- He got a little desperate and started gambling
More and more to try to get money for the family,
And gambled too much, and started losing money
And money they didn't have.
- And it was on one of those smoke filled nights,
Sometime around February 1997,
About six months before wendy disappeared,
When, hunched around a poker table
In the company of high rollers,
Denis found himself staring at a hand
That spelled salvation with $25,000 in chips
Sitting on the table.
- Maybe it's every gambler's excuse.
My hand was good that no one was gonna beat it.
- So, he threw everything into the pot.
- Mm-hmm. Yeah, he bet the highest he could,
And, yeah, he lost it.
So, I think that went onto the visa, as well.
And, um, it was terrible.
- Mom was very vocal.
I remember her yelling.
She was so angry. She just vibrated.
- Vibrated? - Mom was emotional.
I'd never seen her yell at him like that before.
She talked about how much she loved dad
But was so angry with him and wasn't sure
If she could figure him,
That it was a betrayal,
And that you put years of devotion into someone
To be cut down like that.
- "your father's addiction is ruining us,"
Wendy told anna,
And, as was wendy's way, told everyone else
Who cared to listen, too.
Sixteen-year-old anna, daddy's girl, began
To see the tarnish in her father's halo.
- When I heard that mom had to change bank accounts
Into her name,
She had to protect the family's income,
That was the first waver I had
With my father's character.
- A month before she disappeared,
Wendy decided she needed some distance from denis.
She took the kids and went to visit
Her old friend, lois.
- I feel that the decision wendy was making
Was whether she was going to end the marriage
With denis or not,
But she knew how much denis loved his children
And how much the children loved denis.
- So, she decided to give denis one last chance.
She went back to prince george,
Had a heart to heart with him,
And then called lois.
- When she phoned,
She said, "I had a talk with denis.
I've decided we're gonna give it another try."
That phone call was happiness with a lot of relief in it,
But my sense was,
If denis betrayed her trust again,
It was over. She was finished.
- Denis told wendy he'd do whatever it took
To save the marriage, but anna could clearly see
That wendy's very public complaints
About his failings had been bothering him a lot.
- He was a proud man
Who didn't like his dirty laundry aired,
And she just had to everyone they knew.
- His failings have been put on display.
- And they had never been before.
What it took for her to forgive him,
Hurt-hurt him deeply.
- But denis told police again and again
His marriage was back on track.
He had absolutely no reason, he said,
To hurt wendy
Or have anything to do with her disappearance.
Police said, "prove it."
- We were talking on the phone, and he said,
"they-they want me to take a lie detector test,"
And I said, "denis, you're the husband.
They're gonna suspect you
But don't take a lie detector test.
They scare me. Don't do it."
- Denis did not listen to his little sister.
Four months after wendy disappeared,
He volunteered to take the test.
How did he seem going in?
- A lot of people are nervous when they come in.
Um, they're unsure of the procedure.
Um-- - right.
Be pretty scary, I would think.
- Yeah, if I could categorize him,
He was that way, wondering, you know,
What was gonna happen. What's gonna take place?
- It was a polygraph question that had to be asked.
Last August, did you murder wendy?
Denis ratte answered with conviction,
"no, I did not,"
And waited to see what the machine would say.
- Coming up...
The investigation is transformed
When detectives run up against a fresh
And frustrating piece of evidence.
- Did that seem to you at the time, hey, this is--
This can't be?
- I remember having a thought of
It's not what I would expected.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
Welcome back.
On the surface, denis and wendy ratte
Seemed like a happy couple,
But after she went missing,
Detectives uncovered an ugly secret.
Money problems and denis's gambling addiction
Had pushed the marriage to the brink of collapse.
As investigators continued to dissect his story,
Denis was feeling the heat, but this was a tangled mystery
Filled with unexpected twists,
And solving it would not be quick or easy.
Here, again, is keith morrison with "deception."
- Four months into the investigation
Of wendy ratte's disappearance, no sign of wendy anywhere.
Police radar was squarely pointed at her husband, denis,
Which was no surprise to seasoned prince george reporter
Frank peebles.
- It was just the natural assumption that someone
Of that style, that demographic,
Wouldn't go missing unless it was to someone
That she knew closely.
- Denis, of course, had proclaimed his innocence,
Took a lie detector to prove it,
But there's no shortage of other theories in the case,
Though theories, like rumors, are easy.
Separating rumor from fact,
That's another matter altogether,
As detective judy thomas discovered
As she chased down the leads.
First, the highway of tears--
For years, women had been going missing out here,
A body occasionally turning up beside the road,
A horrifying surprise for passersby,
But thomas had investigated those cases
And expected no such surprise in wendy's case.
Was sure of it, in fact.
Wendy just didn't fit the profile.
- Some of the victims that we see are hitchhikers.
They're also involved in-in drugs
And organized crime,
Or some of the folks that are sex trade workers.
- So, you were able to dispense with that one pretty quickly.
- Mm-hmm.
There was nothing to indicate that she was in any way
Connected to any of the missing or murdered women
Along highway 16.
So, said judy thomas, no highway of tears,
But wendy could still have left prince george
Of her own accord.
There was, after all, that sighting
At the greyhound bus station.
But, no, said thomas, false alarm.
- With various files, you get a lot of people
Saying, "oh, I saw this person,"
And they're quite adamant,
But when I spoke to the woman, she actually said,
"no, I wouldn't be able to say that at all."
We, uh, flagged, uh, bank accounts, credit cards,
Uh, social insurance numbers.
We put, uh, wendy on a canada wide database.
We checked the airlines, the border crossings.
There was just nothing.
- What about the religious group,
The emissaries of divine light,
That wendy had been drawn to years before?
We checked into that and had met with dead ends.
They said they had never heard of her.
- Reports that wendy was mentally ill,
That it wasn't her but her alter ego
That may have left town--
Thomas interviewed wendy's mother
About her daughter's troubled youth.
- We spoke at length.
She told me all about wendy,
And her background, and growing up.
- Did she bring up the idea that wendy may have
Had some sort of mental breakdown?
- There was talk of some issues that wendy had.
We looked into medical records,
And there was nothing recent.
There was a-a time in her life when she did--
I don't know if, uh, you want to call it disappear,
But she lost contact with her family,
But that's in a-- in a person's youth,
Which is much different
Than when you're married with children.
- And thomas interviewed several of wendy's closest friends.
All told her the same thing.
Wendy was first and foremost a mother.
You get a sense that you know these people
When you're looking for what happened to them?
- You certainly develop an idea
Of who that person could be.
- And what idea did you develop about wendy?
- For wendy, a very caring, lovely mother.
When I was talking with, uh, anna and gabriel,
The love that they had for their mother,
I-I knew that it had to be reciprocated,
That obviously wendy loved her children very much,
And I kept hearing that over and over,
That she would not leave her children.
- Right. That was a central fact in your mind.
- Yeah, yeah, definitely.
- So, runaway wendy?
Investigator thomas decided no.
So, what about the jones family,
The neighbors who wendy helped evict from their property?
They would have had the motive to hurt her.
- You look at the full circumstances of it.
That family had moved four months, I believe, prior.
The main person that they eluded to wasn't even
In the area, and, uh, there was nothing else
To support that.
- The jones ruled out as suspects in the disappearance
Of wendy ratte,
Which left wendy's husband, denis.
He'd created the suspicion himself, of course,
When he illegally wendy's unemployment insurance checks,
And his gambling habit almost bankrupted the family,
Led to those terrible fights
Just months before wendy disappeared.
But denis, remember, agreed to take a lie detector test,
And now the results were in.
- The polygraph operator came back and-and told dennis
That he found him to be truthful.
- You heard right, truthful.
Letting him go as a suspect had to have been difficult.
Did that seem to you at the time, hey, this is--
This can't be or-- - it-it-- I...
I remember having a thought of, hmm,
It's not what I would expected.
- Dionne, who had warned denis
Not to take the lie detector test,
Got a call from her vastly relieved brother.
- "did the lie detector test, and I passed it."
He said, "see? Told me not to do it,
And I did it, and it paid off
'cause now, you know, they know I-I didn't do it,
And they're leaving me alone.
See? I was right."
I said, "okay, you were right. You win."
- The case of the disappearance of wendy ratte
Was at a dead end.
- Judy told me,
"we don't understand.
"for other cases, there's usually, well,
"at least bogus information coming in,
"but there was nothing coming in."
- Was her mom alive?
Was she dead?
Could she have abandoned the children
Who loved her so much?
It's a very personal thing the way humans react to trauma.
For three years after his mother disappeared,
Gabriel's way was to forget, force it out of his head.
He went to vancouver, registered for college,
Tried to go on with life.
- I didn't give it a lot of thought
To the point where I tried to remember her face,
And I couldn't.
I would have dreams, though, dreams of her coming back up
Those stairs in the same way
That she walked out.
- Anguish like that couldn't stay hidden for long.
It happened in a drama class.
Gabriel was reciting a scene from a play
That dealt with abandonment, anger, desperation,
The very feelings he'd been trying to suppress.
- I broke down. I was bawling.
- In the performance? - In the classroom.
They couldn't console me.
I was-- I was on the ground.
I was heaving.
I didn't know-- this is, like,
Three years buildup of just holding it in.
I just quit school because I felt like
This is too much, right now.
- My brother was lost.
I say I always felt that I connected with my father more.
I'd always felt that my brother connected with her more.
I feel a lotta guilt for not being able to--
Have been able to replace her.
- Why should you replace her?
- 'cause then maybe
He would have been okay,
But we were both so lost
That we couldn't--
We couldn't be there for each other anymore.
- Coming up...
- Anna gets word there might be witnesses
Who know what really happened to wendy.
- Who are these people?
Have they told the police?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow.
Detectives exhausted lead after lead
In the search for the truth
Of wendy ratte's disappearance.
When their number one suspect, her husband, denis,
Passed a lie detector test,
It seemed they were back to square one.
As the case unraveled,
So would the life of denis ratte.
Wendy's two children were about to learn
That the only thing worse than being in the dark
May have been knowing what happened to their mom.
Here, again, is keith morrison with "deception."
- It had been years since that fateful day
Wendy ratte took the family van
To run errands with her husband
And never returned,
But for the couple's daughter, anna,
The pain of her mother's disappearance
Continued to burn.
Now 20, living with a boyfriend hundreds of miles
From prince george, she was determined to keep
The search for her mother alive.
- Everything else I did was just mechanical motion.
My emotion went into finding her.
- And she began to believe she was quite alone,
That the rcmp had let the case go cold.
- They always promised me it wasn't.
They promised they were still looking.
- Mm-hmm. - But then nobody would--
Nobody would be working on it.
And finally, I was tired of this file shuffle
And went to the media to say, "don't forget.
"this was a person in your community.
"don't forget."
- She came in carrying this folder of news clippings
And possible leads
That were connected to her mother.
I had talked to many families of many disappeared people
Over the years,
And I could see the light in that-- in her eyes that way,
That this was one of those people
Who was not going to let this go.
- But anna's father, denis, it seemed, had given up
Not only on ever finding his wife again
But on himself.
- He was changing over the years in front of my eyes.
This calm, patient...
Sturdy, steady person
Was emotional and angry. - Falling apart, mm-hmm.
- And he was a mess.
I saw him at the food banks.
I saw him with girlfriends that he had to pay for.
I saw his demeanor change from a proud working man
To a s-street thug.
- Denis was in a downward spiral.
Desperate for money, he turned to small time crime.
Tried a bit of drug dealing.
Got caught.
He was lucky. It was his first offense,
So he only got probation.
- He told me that, you know, he did this drug deal
Because he needed the money to keep her home,
Wendy's home, 'cause he said,
"if I keep the house," he said, "she'll have a home to come to."
- Denis lost the house.
Six years after wendy disappeared,
He was living in an apartment
In the seediest part of town,
Collecting bottles to make ends meet.
- It was a blow
That, uh, he'd gone that low and--
But when I try to question him about it,
He just, you know, he says, "hey,"
He said, "my kids are gone. My wife is gone.
"don't have much left."
- But anna had a sense, she said,
A nagging feeling that it wasn't just grief
That kept denis from being the strong,
Dedicated father she had known.
Was it possible, she wondered,
That it was guilt?
- I thought-- I thought he was hiding something.
- What would he know? - I-I don't know.
He said, "I have gone through my story.
If you need to hear it, go see the police.
"ask them to tell you the story."
- So, he was fed up. He was over it.
- He said, "I'm done, I'm not talking about it anymore."
Now, I understand about being fed up.
I-I couldn't imagine how it would feel
To be the one investigated,
But I also believe in truth,
And if you have nothing to hide,
Then you have nothing to hide.
- But when anna kept pushing, her dad snapped back
That he was conducting his own investigation.
His target?
Suspects police had already eliminated,
The jones family.
- He said, that day that she disappeared,
Friends of his saw the family
From down the street that she had had kicked out,
She saw them following her.
I said, "where is this coming from?
"who are these people? Have they told the police?"
And he said, "these people don't wanna go to the police.
"they're afraid of this family."
And I couldn't understand that he would be okay
With not telling the police.
- If her father didn't want to go to police,
Anna decided then she would.
- I asked, "could I have my father's storyline?"
And the police said,
"we don't have a clear picture of what happened that day
"because every time he tells us a story,
"there are big holes."
- What did you think when you heard that?
- Just at a loss.
It felt like there was a-- it's like he was putting
A barrier in front of the investigation.
- But there was something anna didn't know.
The case of her mother's disappearance
Wasn't cold at all.
In fact, police were actively investigating her father.
Four years after denis passed his lie detector test,
The rcmp reviewed it,
Standard practice in unsolved cases,
But this time with a quite unexpected outcome.
- The polygraph operator rereads his charts.
- Sure. [clears throat]
- And then we find that he was actually deceptive.
- Deceptive meaning,
According to the police polygrapher,
That denis ratte lied when he claimed
He had nothing to do with wendy's disappearance.
Investigator thomas wanted to be sure.
- We had five polygraph operators read those charts.
Every one of 'em read them to be deceptive.
- Right.
But a failed lie detector test
Was certainly not enough evidence to arrest denis
Let alone charge him with a crime.
- It was hard for me not to tell anna.
I-I couldn't because you have to balance,
Um, the integrity of this investigation.
You don't want it jeopardized.
- Right.
So, all thomas could do was file the results away
And try to find more evidence against denis,
But as the years slowly ticked by one by one,
Nothing.
Finally, in 2007, a decade now since wendy vanished,
Thomas decided that if she wanted to get closer to denis
To find out what he knew once and for all,
She would need some help.
- That's when we looked at passing it off
To the unsolved homicide unit.
- Vancouver's e division, to be exact,
The premier cold case unit in british columbia.
[speaking in french]
Get ready for an uncover mission
Unlike any you have ever seen.
- Coming up...
A sting by investigators worthy of the big screen.
- They're described as right of hollywood.
The staged kidnappings,
The fake blood is truly phenomenal.
- Meet the man they call mr. Big.
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- It was a sweet wedding, happy and a little sad, too,
Wistful when anna the bride danced with her father.
It was 2003, six years since her mother
Vanished from her life.
Her father insisted he had nothing to do with it,
And tender moments like these, anna said,
Reminded her how much she yearned for
The bond they once hand.
- I had to believe him.
He was still my he-- - sure.
- My hero, childhood hero, was still there.
- But she was sliding,
Sliding into a darker understanding of her father
Until the day in late 2007
When anna met reporter frank peebles
At a downtown cafe.
- There was no one else in the room at the time,
And we were talking quietly,
And after about an hour of conversation,
She finally just shook her head and said,
"I'm very sure that it was dad,"
And the wrench in her eyes
When that came out was something I don't think
I can ever forget.
- By then, the rcmp's lead investigator, robert burette
Of the unsolved homicide unit in vancouver,
Was in charge of the case,
One of 800 unsolved cases on the unit's books.
- Upon our review, uh, we came to
The same conclusion as-as judy did here
That, uh, denis ratte was the suspect
In his wife's disappearance.
- But there wasn't quite enough to charge him.
Is that right?
- No. - That's correct, yes.
And one of the things we decided was
That an undercover operation
May be the best to-to try to move this file forward.
- An undercover operation? - Yes.
- The undercover operation the unsolved homicide squad
Came up with
Was so elaborate and ambitious
It might seem frankly unbelievable.
They created from scratch a fake criminal organization
Complete with detectives posing as crooks.
The goal? To lure denis ratte into their midst
And gain his trust so as to find out
What he really knew about his wife's disappearance.
- The rcmp have, uh, have conducted
Over 350, uh, of these investigations.
- Kouri keenan, a criminologist
At vancouver's simon fraser university,
Has studied these operations
And written a book about them.
- They have creatively fashioned a-a backdrop
That simulates a real world criminal environment
So much so, uh, that fiction is often
Difficult to differentiate from reality.
- The rcmp would not discuss the specifics
Of the undercover operation that targeted denis ratte,
But we reviewed an rcmp summary of the mission.
June 2008, an undercover officer
Approached denis in prince george.
He was looking for someone, he told denis,
But didn't know his way around town.
Denis agreed to help him.
About a week later, another question.
Would denis like to make some money on the side
Delivering bags mostly, their contents unknown?
"no problem," said denis.
And bit by bit, as days went by,
Denis became fully involved in what he clearly believed
Was a criminal gang after a couple of months.
By August, he was helping them smuggle
Illegal cigarettes and alcohol,
To exchange stolen diamonds, and even to transport guns,
Or so he thought.
- Over time, the target is led to believe
That he is an up and comer
In the criminal organization.
- Then it got more serious.
Denis was asked to threaten a man.
He did, though he said he didn't like it,
And he guarded a hotel room door
As an undercover officer savagely beat a woman.
Denis never suspecting it was all an act.
- These undercover officers, they're amazing actors,
And they're described as right out of hollywood.
The types of, uh, scenarios that they do,
Uh, the beatings, uh, the staged kidnappings,
Uh, the fake blood pacts is truly phenomenal.
- Denis bonded with his crime buddies
Over meals in fancy restaurants
And evenings in strip clubs.
The pay was good, too,
About 12 grand in little more than three months,
More than he'd earned in years,
He told his sister, dian,
Without divulging too much.
- He says, "I'm earning some money."
He says, "I'm not eating at the soup kitchen anymore,"
And, you know, I just thought, you know,
"great, he got a job, and he's got people
"he's working with that he really likes,
"and they really like him.
- During one of his delivery trips to vancouver,
Denis stopped to see his son, gabriel,
Now 26 and a college student once more.
Gabriel noticed that the old self-assured denis was back.
- I saw that glint in his eye
Where he felt proud of himself, again,
And he hadn't felt that since he'd--
Since he'd been injured.
- Then, three months into the operation,
The sting was primed.
The real police showed up again in denis' life,
Told him the investigation had been reopened,
He was the prime suspect,
And, oh, by the way, he failed that lie detector test
All those years ago.
Now, suddenly worried, denis, just as planned,
Had no one else to turn to except his new friends.
The undercover detectives had him
Just where they wanted him.
Time for mr. Big.
- Mr. Big is the commanding all powerful boss
Of the criminal organization.
Uh, he's the one who calls the shots.
If he likes you and wants to bring you in,
He can make your criminal problems go away.
- And denis, his crime buddies assured him,
Had all it took to be a made guy,
All because he'd been
What the organization valued the most,
Honest and loyal.
That's a common safeguard of the mr. Big technique,
Said keenan, to ensure as much as possible
That the suspect doesn't lie to gain respect.
- Just be honest.
If you're honest, things will be great.
You'll thrive.
If you lie, uh, there could be very devastating consequences.
Mr. Big will only accept the truth.
- The truth?
So far, whenever undercover officers
Had asked denis about his missing wife,
About a dozen times or so,
He didn't waver from the story he'd stuck to
For more than a decade.
He had nothing to do with it.
September 27, 2008,
A hotel room in winnipeg, perfect place.
Lead investigator, rob burette,
Monitoring the video in a nearby room.
So, you've got this elaborate setup.
What are you trying to get?
- I've been involved in investigations
Where we've actually been able to clear a person
Of, uh, of any wrongdoing,
So it's not just there to-to try
To find a person guilty.
It's there to seek the truth.
- The moment had come, time for denis to come clean.
- Coming up...
His back against the wall,
What would denis say to mr. Big?
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Yeah.
- Denis ratte had come to the moment of truth.
He was meeting mr. Big,
The man he believed to be an all-powerful crime boss,
His audition, he believed, for membership,
For trust, for help from mr. Big.
The royal canadian mounted police disguised
The identity and voices of the undercover agents
On this video.
So, first, mr. Big told denis
He'd have to come clean about his past,
Especially about the mystery of his wife's disappearance.
That is, of course, if he knew anything about it.
The undercover canadian investigator
Posing as the crime boss
Wanted denis to feel comfortable,
So he spoke french, denis' mother tongue.
We have translated and dubbed over
Their conversation in english.
- There are three things I want...
Loyalty, truth, honesty.
- The last one, I didn't-- - honesty, being honest.
- Ahh, honest, honesty, yeah, okay.
- Then a knock on the door.
It was one of the crime boss' alleged cronies
With an internal police memorandum.
Read it, said mr. Big, as denis sat and listened.
That was a lie, of course.
There had been no satellite watching denis
On that August day back in 1997.
For the last 11 years, denis had insisted
He had nothing to do with his wife's disappearance.
Now, suddenly, for a man he believed to be a crime boss,
He changed his story.
- Okay, man, what do you have to say?
- I'm gonna tell you.
I'm gonna tell you.
I'm gonna tell you honestly what happened,
The honest truth.
I never told it in my life.
I ain't happy about it, but I did it.
Yeah, okay.
I'm not happy I did it, but I still did it.
Everything worked perfect, with a rifle, one shot,
You know, nice and easy.
- You shot her where?
- Uh, in the head.
- Where in the head?
- Well, in back of the head, there.
You know, I didn't really check when, uh,
When I hit her. I was pretty nervous.
I guess-- I guess around here.
- He shot wendy, denis told mr. Big,
That morning at their house in prince george,
She was feeding the ducks, her back to him,
When he took aim with a .22 caliber rifle.
- Right or left side?
- Uh, I gotta put myself back there.
- Eerie seeing a husband trying to relive the moment
When he said he murdered his wife.
- Okay, you-you move over there like that.
Yeah, yeah, 'cause I remember turning.
Yeah, and that's your left side, right?
- That-- that's my left side.
- Denis said it was just one shot, not a lot of blood.
After wendy fell to the ground, he said,
He quickly wrapped her body in a black tarp,
And that's when he noticed she was still moving.
- I took a bumper jack, right?
It's, uh, those old jacks you use to put,
Uh, under a vehicle.
- Oh, yeah, okay, okay, okay, yeah.
- There was a big thing
With a cover on. - Okay.
- I didn't wanna leave a mark, right?
So, it's-- - okay.
- I finished her off with that.
- Where? - In the face.
- Then, denis continued,
He put the body in wendy's white plymouth voyager,
Made a left turn on highway 16,
The highway of tears,
And drove to an abandoned loggers road
About 1.5 hours away.
There was a swamp there.
- I made sure, you know, the body--
- What did you put on it? What did you put on top?
- There was mud, right? And-and there was a stick.
- Okay. - You know,
I stirred it around, and it slipped.
- Oops.
- Denis told mr. Big he drove back to prince george,
Got rid of the gun and his wife's I.D.
Along the way, and left the van
In this grocery store parking lot.
Then he wandered around for a bit
Before he called anna
To report her mom was missing.
Later that night, he came back with anna
To the coffee shop
So that she would discover the van.
The day after his meeting with mr. Big,
Denis took two other undercover officers
To the scene of the crime.
Of course, he believed he was talking
To fellow gang members.
Then denis' criminal friends asked him to take them
To where he dumped wendy's body.
They told him they needed to make sure
There was no evidence left.
It took a while to find the place.
He hadn't been back in 11 years.
- From the highway.
- But finally, he was sure.
And as they continued searching the area...
- What?
- Couple of days later, anna got a call.
It was the police asking her to come downtown.
- And they sat me down and-and said,
"we've just arrested your father
"for the murder of your mother."
- What was it like to hear that?
- Shattering.
I-I broke down,
But, at the same time, it's like I knew.
I just didn't wanna believe it.
The signs were all there.
He changed so much.
And just hearing it made it kind of official
That the person I held so dear
Wasn't there anymore.
- Not a big surprise, really.
Anna had doubts about her father all along
But her brother, gabriel,
Well, that was a different story altogether.
- I can't imagine how anyone would say it's 100% certain
That my dad did it.
- And gabriel isn't the only one with doubts.
A confession is one thing,
But did police have anything else on denis?
Coming up...
- I'm going wait a minute.
They found absolutely nothing
To co-corroborate his story.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Denis ratte had finally revealed his horrific secret.
In an interview with an undercover detective
Posing as a crime boss, denis gave a detailed account
Of how he shot and bludgeoned his wife, wendy,
Then dumped her body in a swamp.
It was a stunning admission, but many wondered,
Was it true?
Here, again, is keith morrison with "deception."
- Absolutely. The question hasn't--
- Gabriel was at work when the call came.
The police, they said,
They needed to see him right away.
- It was a big mystery until they brought me in,
And they put me in a-- in a room with a camera,
And, um, that's when they broke it to me.
They told me that they know that my father did it,
And they are 100% certain of it.
- And your very first reaction was what?
- It felt like my world came unhinged,
Like it was a dream,
Like reality had ceased to be.
- And right then and there, the police asked gabriel
To record a message to his father,
And so, of course, he did.
- I spoke to him in french about how I loved him,
First of all, and I told him, you know, if this happened,
I just wanna know more, so please be honest.
Please know that I'm here for you.
- Then with a heavy heart,
Gabriel called wendy's family in the states,
But instead of anger, he was surprised
To encounter skepticism. - I didn't believe it.
All of us, I think, saw him as someone
Who would die to protect his family.
That was who he was.
Um, that was his source of pride,
And, at that point,
It was the only source of pride he had left.
- The only way gabriel thought he could make sense of it all
Was to confront his father in jail.
- And I just told him right away, "I want the truth.
"whatever it is, I want you to tell me the truth,"
And he told me, "no, no, no. There's-there's no way.
"I-I didn't do it."
- So, gabriel wondered,
What hard evidence had police found
That proved his father was guilty of murder?
It turned out they hadn't found anything.
- Oh, my gosh!
That's a piece of tarp. - No.
- A day after denis led undercover detectives
To the scene of his alleged crime,
They returned to pick up that piece of tarp
And sent it to the lab for analysis,
But the results were inconclusive.
They also searched the area for a body, of course,
But found nothing at all, not so much as a bone.
- It's not unusual for us to, over that kinda timeframe,
Because of animal activity and things of that nature,
Not to find either any remains or very few remains.
- But the gun barrel, t-the bits and pieces of things
That he stashed places, the driver's license and so on,
None of that showed up.
- Because it had been over ten years that, uh,
I think it's, uh, um, reasonable to expect
That a lot of those items would've just disappeared.
- You didn't have the physical evidence
That would back up his confession
In the undercover operation.
- There wasn't physical evidence.
Correct, yeah. - Yeah.
- And I'm going, "wait a minute."
They found absolutely nothing to co-corroborate his story.
- It was painful for dian to watch the video of
Her brother's confession at pretrial hearing,
But she was shocked to learn that the confession
Was the only thing the cops had to convict her brother
Of killing his wife,
And that's when she became convinced
Denis lied to mr. Big.
His confession was false. - Oops.
- The proof?
First, she says, the chilling details of
His alleged cold blooded murder, they just didn't make any sense.
- I cannot see him, the way he loved her,
Doing that and not--
Especially not with his kids in the house.
There's no way he would have taken that kind of a chance.
So, I asked gabriel, you know,
"do you hear gunshots all the time?"
And he said,
"no, and especially not first thing in the morning
"outside my window."
There was no gunshot.
- He said he did it between the house and the garage.
- You would've heard that, surely.
- I definitely would have heard it.
- Then there were the clothes denis said wendy wore,
A little sweater and jogging pants.
- Couldn't be true because of
My recollection of the morning.
He said that she was wearing totally different clothes
Than I saw her leave with.
- And something else bothered him,
Something denis told his crime buddies
When they asked him whether he was capable of murder.
- Earlier on in the mr. Big sting,
He confessed to killing a man with rat poison,
And it turned that he died of natural causes.
- So, that was-- - never happened.
- It was a fake confession. - It was.
- Why lie?
Gabriel said denis was desperate to be accepted by
His new tough guy friends.
- Let's wait for you to talk to him.
- And if he lied about one murder,
Why not lie about killing wendy, too,
Especially when what was at stake
Was his acceptance in the gang and his new job,
Which he loved, as mr. Big's loyal foot soldier?
- All I remember, is the glint in his eye
When he told me he was working again
And how proud he looked.
Perhaps a regular crime organization
Wouldn't have even brought him in, you know?
They might not have looked at him twice.
- Probably.
- But this crime organization was designed for him.
- He made a lot of money, first of all.
He had more money than he'd made in a long time.
He had found a newfound family, um, that respected him,
That, uh, thought he was intelligent.
He didn't wanna lose that.
- But perhaps the most convincing argument dian heard
Was from denis himself
When she went to see him in jail.
For all those years, he told her,
The police just wouldn't leave him alone,
And his meeting with the crime boss, he said,
Was a chance to finally make the investigation stop.
- We're gonna talk to each other,
And we're gonna work out these problems.
We're gonna fix them, okay? - Okay.
- That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna fix them.
- He says, "I couldn't just tell him I did nothing,
"and, well, then they can't help me."
[laughing]
And so, he says, "I made up a story,
And, you know, that, you know, I thought they would find me
"some kind of an alibi or something,"
He says, "you know, fix it so that,
"you know, those--
"these cops would get off my case."
You know, like, uh, he had such a miserable,
Lonely life, um, that I believe he woulda,
At that point, woulda said almost anything.
- Relatives of suspects nabbed by the mr. Big sting
Have every right to cry foul, said criminologist kouri keenan.
- The technique's ingenuity is also its achilles heel.
While it's capable of exposing the guilty,
It can also induce innocent suspects
To-to falsely confess to a crime they didn't commit.
So, the litmus test, to me, is-is corroboration.
Without it, there's-there's no-no way to tell
Whether the suspect is telling the truth or is lying.
- But anna watched the tapes, too,
And she said she could tell. - I know my father.
I know my father's mannerisms. - Uh-huh.
- I know when he's hiding something,
When he's not being truthful about something.
- And unlike dian and gabriel,
Unlike her mom's family in the states,
Anna was convinced her father was guilty as charged.
- I knew when he was talking about mom's murder
That it was true. That's what he had done.
That's when he folded, and I saw the look in his eye.
I'm caught.
I saw the "I'm caught" look in his eye.
- The gunshot, the tarp, the carjack--
Her brother, gabriel, said it was all a lie,
But anna had another word for it.
- That's-that's cold.
That's cold to talk about let alone cold to do.
How do you talk about the woman you were married to?
I mean, if you didn't do it, could you really--
Could you really tell that story?
- Or could he, or would he tell it again?
[speaking in french]
- Coming up...
Whatever denis was or was not about to say,
Did it really make sense that he would hurt wendy?
- She was the breadwinner.
She was the brains of the operation.
Why would he kill her?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Denis ratte, caught by an elaborate undercover sting,
A confessor to murder, sat in jail,
While outside, his two children, anna and gabriel,
Battled over whether he belonged there.
Anna thought the confession finally proved it.
Her father was guilty. But she stood alone.
Most of her family sided with gabriel.
"there was no evidence," said denis' sister, dian,
And no motive.
- She was the breadwinner.
She was the brains of the operation.
She was his everything. He lost the house.
He lost his kids. He lost his whole life.
Why would he kill her?
- In his confessions, denis said he had a reason,
Though it seemed so twisted neither police
Nor anyone else believed it.
Wendy, remember, was said to have a split personality,
And denis claimed that, on the day he killed her,
He knew wendy's alter ego, shanna,
Was going to sexually assault anna,
And, of course, he couldn't let that happen.
- I had no choice. Save the little girl.
Save my little girl.
- What did you think when you heard that?
- I was disgusted.
Of all the lies you could have said for why,
You had to involve me, again.
- It was all too much for anna, the lies, the betrayals,
And now her dear brother refusing to share her outrage.
He wants very much to think that your father is not guilty.
- I know, and I can't blame him.
- You think he's living in la la land?
- I think he didn't see what I saw.
He wasn't there.
I was up to my neck in investigation
Trying to find mom, and I can absolutely understand
Wanting to be blind to-to-to the truth
'cause I was there, too.
- You know, I don't wanna speak badly about my sister,
I really don't, but she, because of her activism
In trying to find my mother for so many years,
It was a lot easier for her, I think,
To-to put everything aside and create an easy solution.
Me, I'm happy to live with a question mark.
I'm not gonna pretend it's anything else.
- Why don't you want to see something,
Some kinda evidence,
To back up what you've seen on tape?
- The look in his eye on that tape was the evidence.
- That's all it needed? - That's what I needed.
- Or is it that you cannot stand
Living in this kind of doubt any longer?
You had to make a decision,
And that's the decision you made.
- Absolutely not.
I saw the truth on his face in that tape.
- The man who ran the undercover sting,
Lead investigator robert burette,
Insisted his team took all precautions
To make sure denis did not lie when he met with mr. Big.
- We're always mindful of false confessions and--
- Allegations are made all the time, I suppose.
- Correct.
You know, I think no loved one, um, really wants to believe
That, you know, um, someone they know and care about
Could be responsible for some-- somebody's murder.
- In fact, the mr. Big undercover technique
Has been repeatedly upheld by canada's supreme court.
And although the rcmp did not find any physical evidence
To corroborate denis' confession to mr. Big and his gang,
It turned out they did have evidence
That was perhaps much more compelling,
And they got it after denis ratte was arrested.
- By that point in time, um,
Denis ratte is read all his rights, uh, um,
That he-- that he's provided
Under the canadian law. - Sure.
- He had access--
- So, he could've said, "oh, I-I thought
"I was talking to a crime boss, and I was just lying to him."
- Absolutely and-- - and he didn't.
- No, he didn't. - Bon jour.
- When denis was arrested, he had no idea
He'd been caught in a sting
And that his confession to mr. Big was on tape,
But then police showed him the video.
- Does this come back to you?
Is it coming back to you, denis?
- At first, for almost an hour, denis seemed to be in denial.
- I have never said that, that I killed her, first of all.
- Yeah, but, denis, we know that you killed her.
- Well, I've never said it, though, huh?
- No, you said it. - No.
- You said it there, denis.
- I said it there? - Yes.
- And that's when the interrogator
Decided to show denis another tape,
The one police made of gabriel the day they told him
They'd arrested his father.
- So, essentially, denis,
Your son is asking you to tell the truth.
- And then a couple of minutes later,
A silent nod from denis, and he began to confess, again,
The same details, the gunshot, the tarp, the carjack.
- She didn't suffer.
- No.
- It was fast?
- It still hurts.
- It had been a heavy burden to carry that with him
All those years, said denis.
- You know, uh, it's hard.
You know, someone who looks at you,
And, uh, I've always loved my wife.
I still love her even. We were friends, okay?
- You have killed your friend. - Yes.
It took everything for me to do it.
I even cried when I did it.
- There, he admitted it, and this time...
- Check the tapes. It's all true.
- It's all true what you told them?
- It was all true.
- You didn't tell any lies at all?
- No.
- A confession is the strongest evidence
Anybody ever gets, and, you know,
It generally does the deed. - Mm-hmm.
- And that was a pretty detailed confession,
Not just once but twice.
- And that's the one I don't understand
More than anything.
I've asked him more than once, "why did you confess
"when you knew you were in front of a police officer?
"why wouldn't you say,
"'oh, well, of course, I didn't do it?
"you know, I was just trying to get in with this organization.'"
And, you know, he didn't have much of an answer.
So, if he-- if there's an ounce of-of-of me
Not believing him, it's there.
This is the biggest weakness in the story.
- But given the continued absence
Of any physical evidence, that second confession
Still wasn't enough to convince gabriel
His father killed his mother.
Is it possible, though, that you're living in denial?
[sighs] - no.
Um, you're not the first person to ask me.
- I bet.
- I've definitely thought about it, right?
But I think I'm very balanced about it.
I can be swayed by the evidence whether it is gonna be for
Or against my dad.
So, show me the evidence.
- Were denis' two confessions evidence enough?
As a jury was about to decide, a brother and sister
Were prepared to fight for what they believed was right
Even if that meant losing each other.
- Coming up...
Anna and gabriel face off in court.
- What was it like to testify at the trial?
- It was hard. [sighs]
- I kinda hold my breath and go through it and-and, um,
Hope that whatever I say is gonna work for my dad.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- December 2010, 13 years after wendy ratte disappeared,
In a prince george courtroom, the battle lines were drawn,
But this case wasn't only the crown versus denis ratte.
It was brother against sister on the witness stand.
What was it like to testify at the trial?
- It was hard. - You looked out there,
And you saw everybody else who, in the family,
Who disagreed with you. [sighs]
- They're still my family. - Mm-hmm.
- It was tough for all of them.
They all felt I should have been with him more,
Siding with him more, but I had to make it clear
That someone has to defend mom.
- Denis ratte pleaded not guilty
And recanted the confessions he made both to mr. Big
And to the police after his arrest.
His son, gabriel, was one of just two witnesses
The defense presented to the court.
[sighs]
- I kinda hold my breath and go through it and-and, um,
Hope that whatever I say is gonna work for my dad,
And I'm utterly aware that I'm the only person there
Who is speaking in favor of my dad.
- Denis' defense lawyer hammered undercover detectives
About the lack of physical evidence
And pointed out lies denis had told mr. Big and his gang,
Proof, he told the jury,
That denis' confessions should not be believed.
And after four weeks, the end of a 13-year-old mystery
Was finally at hand.
It took the jury just two hours to find denis ratte guilty
Of second degree murder.
- So much of my life had been devoted to finding the truth,
And now I had the truth.
It's not the truth I wanted,
But nonetheless, that's what I had.
I'm happy I have it.
- Interesting that getting the truth isolates you
From the people you love.
- That's true, but isn't the truth more important?
It doesn't matter that my family might be angry with me
For the results of where this trial led.
The truth is all that matters,
And that's how mom led her life.
- Anna knows all too well the truth will never replace
Her mother's soothing voice.
It's what she yearns for most these days.
If only she could speak to the spirits
The way her mom once did.
- Because I think maybe then I could hear her.
Maybe then she could speak to me.
If I open up enough, she'll come talk to me but...
Not today.
♪♪
- And there was one last moment of melodrama.
Right after denis was sentenced to 15 years to life,
He suddenly turned to anna.
- As she was leaving, he said to her,
"keep looking for your mother."
- Gabriel was not there for the guilty verdict.
He had to leave right after his testimony
Back to vancouver to his college graduation
That very same day.
- It was such a whirlwind, and I was just in the lineup,
Late to get my gown,
Get ready to go into the ceremony,
And just think, "oh, my god, you know, what is this life?
"where are my parents to watch this, you know?"
- His father was in prison,
And his mom, well, his mom...
Do you really believe in your heart
That there is a possibility
That your mother is still out there somewhere,
That she-- that she's still alive?
- That's the part of me that is of the-the dreamy,
Hopeful, optimistic side.
You hear the odd story once in a while
Of someone returning after 25 years of absence.
You do hear it. It does happen.
So, man, whenever I do hear one of those, I just--
My heart fills with optimism.
[chuckles]
- There hasn't been a happy ending for anybody
Except... - No.
- Your sister, anna, thinks it's the right ending.
- It's hard being on the other side of-of this
With her because I'd love to have
A better relationship with her.
We try to talk with each other every once in a while,
And it's kind of a thing where she says,
"I can't believe you can't see it.
"it's so obvious. He's guilty."
And I say, "how on earth could you think that?
"there's no evidence."
And we just go back and forth like that.
It's impossible to get around.
♪♪
- Gabriel is a father himself now with a daughter.
His father, in prison, has met his little girl,
But when we last spoke with gabriel, anna had not.
- We love each other very much.
We have a bond as brother and sister
That was very strong as children,
And it will always be there.
[sighs]
This is a really difficult situation for both of us,
But we'll get through it.
It's all that's left of our perfect family,
Is the two of us.
We can't let that go.
♪♪
- That's all for this edition of
"dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow. Thank you for watching.