Dateline NBC - Deception

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

In this Dateline classic, a young sister and brother are torn apart when their mother disappears, and an elaborate sting operation traps a most unlikely villain. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on June 14, 2013.

It was like being in a nightmare. Because mom was never late. Mom didn't miss appointments. But 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 emotional troubles. 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 Shauna. 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, fake blood is truly phenomenal. All leading up to a sit down with a man they call Mr. Big. A high stakes gamble to reveal the truth on tape for the children left behind. Who's about to hear that? Shattering. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Deception. The story you're about to hear 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

eleven-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. It didn't matter where we lived. As long as we were together, that was home. This is Anna Siebert, who at the time was Anna Rattay.

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. 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. Like how would you deal with that? 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 Rattet, 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. 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 Denise's sister Dionne,

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's Anna and what's Gab doing now? It was always Anna and Gab. And as their friend Lois Cook could plainly see, Denise was fiercely protective of all of them. I would trust him to do the right thing and keep me safe.

He was going to protect his family and he was going to 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 a girl could get. A 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 know when to hold them, when to fold them. And I guess 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. 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, 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 at home there. She did that, though. 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. Denise took a job at a local lumber mill. 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 it was up to her to figure out, okay, 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. I 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. Well, 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. 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 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 Denise 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, because 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 there. 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 Denise had an extra key.

Inside, everything looked normal. So Anna drove the van home. That night and the next morning, 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. Because Mom was never late. Mom didn't miss appointments. She didn't just disappear. The next day, Denise 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 going to come back, right? 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 Denise? 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 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 shock that somebody who was apparently normal every day, 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 people knew all too well.

This town is used to disappearances, and when Wendy Ratte disappeared, there was a hint, 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 been found dead along this stretch of road? It became sickening to hear that another girl had gone missing. 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 snow-capped mountains and breathtaking vistas of lush forests. And clear lakes reflecting the blue skies above. And also, past the sites of unsolved mysteries. They say there are six active investigations. CBC News, Prince John. More missing women on the Highway of Tears. By the time Wendy Rattay 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 spend a lot of time thinking about and investigating the Jones theory. The Jones family, once neighbors of the Rattay's, not exactly friends. In fact, just four months before she disappeared, Wendy complained very publicly about the Joneses,

appearing with Denis 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 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 Rattays.

Yes, in fact, the Jones family matriarchs had a scathing letter to the Prince George citizen, bad-mouthing Wendy and her family, intentionally misspelling the family name, exchanging the Rattays 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. And doing something about it. And doing something about it. Fearlessly, apparently, because she must have known that they would not like this, obviously. Oh, yeah. And they might have held a grudge. That she made an enemy for sure.

That was just four months before she vanished, leaving nothing but her van in a 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 some kind of a sign 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 Joneses. 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 was some differences. And 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 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. Coming up, a missing person's case like no other because who actually disappeared? Wendy or a second personality some say lurked inside?

We asked him, we said, what is going on? He said, that's not Wendy, that's Shauna. When she does that, she's Shauna. When Dateline continues. Wendy Rattay, 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 person's poster there. And... I asked the lady who was

there 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. 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. We thought, well, maybe, maybe she's there. I know she'd spent a lot, she'd spent some time in New Mexico when she was getting her teaching degree, and she loved it. Well, maybe she went there. And then there was that religious group she'd been so into years earlier, the Emissaries of Divine Light. Could she have up and joined them? They feel they have transcended the conflict and tension 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 would often ask, how much did you look into this? Because 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 Crider, 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, 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 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 Denise'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, soft-spoken, and all of a sudden she was very cold and very abrupt with them. And I started noticing, when this would happen, Denis would take her away, and 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 Shauna. That's not Wendy. He said, when she does that, she's Shauna. Wait, did Wendy suffer from multiple personality disorder? That was never diagnosed. The stories were all anecdotal.

But... I met Shauna. 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 uninterested in anybody else besides herself. And she said, I'm not Wendy anymore.

Shauna 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. Shauna has magic, she wrote. So, two Wendy's. Wendy was the good mother, conservative, hard worker, wanted to save the world. While Shauna was the wild child, she didn't want to be tied down. She wanted to have a good time.

She felt restrained by the bonds of marriage and family. Maybe it was Shauna who got on that bus. Or perhaps O'Shauna? Yes, three Wendy's. O'Shauna came to life at 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 speaking in voices and things.

She was very in touch with a spirit, an ancient spirit named Oshana. She found some peace in that. And one day she said, let's hold hands and speak with Oshana. I just remember her transforming into this character, 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 Shaunas. I think that she had the capacity to pick up and go. She might have reached that breaking point where she just thought, or she didn't think, it 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, another potential clue is about to surface from Wendy's past. A crucial moment when a high-stakes gamble went very wrong. She was so angry. She just vibrated. What that told investigators. 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 Rattet, 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. Did he have an explanation that made any sense? Yeah, he explained the fact that his wife had disappeared, there was no money coming in, and he needed to pay the bills. It made me wonder about his character. To me, he 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 I said, how are you doing? His comment was better. Better? 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 don't get used to it. You're the husband. They're going to look at you. 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'd left with no money, but then in the 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 yes because it was specifically asked did you did Wendy have money on her you wouldn't think you'd forget about 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 liked being the man of the house. Sure. Both your physicality and your ability to provide for your family are taken away from you. That's got to be hard on the ego. Very hard.

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 so good that no one was going to beat it. So he threw everything into the pot. Yeah, he bet the highest he could. And, yeah, he lost it. So I think that went on to the visa as well. And it was terrible.

Mom was very vocal. I remember her yelling and she was so angry. She just vibrated. Vibrated? Mom was emotional. You've 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 forgive 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. 16-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 waiver 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 at a heart-to-heart with him and then called Lois. When she phoned, she said,

I've talked with Denis. I've decided we're going to give it another try. That phone call was happiness with a lot of relief in it. But my sense was, if Denise betrayed her trust again, it was over. She was finished. Denise 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 had been put on display. And they had never been before. What it took for her to forgive him 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 want me to take a lie detector test. I said, Denis, you're the husband, they're going to 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 see him going in? A lot of people are nervous when they come in. They're unsure of the procedure. Right. Be pretty scary, I would think. Yeah, if I could categorize him, he was that way, wondering, you know, what was going to happen, what's going to take place. It was a polygraph question that had to be asked. Last August, did you murder Wendy? Denis Ratté 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 have expected. When Dateline Continues. Four months into the investigation of Wendy Rattay'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 test to prove it?

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 leaves. 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, also involved 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. 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 flagged bank accounts, credit cards, social insurance numbers. We put 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 time in her life when she did, I don't know if you want to call it disappear, but she lost contact with her family.

But that's 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, loving mother. When I was talking with Anna and Gabriel, the love that they had for their mother, 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.

Definitely. So, run away, Wendy? Investigator Thomas decided no. So what about the Jones family, the neighbours 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 alluded to wasn't even in the area, and there was nothing else to support that. The Joneses ruled out as suspects

in the disappearance of Wendy Rattay. Which left Wendy's husband, Denis. He'd created the suspicion himself, of course, when he illegally cashed 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

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? It, it, I, I remember having a thought of, hmm, it's not what I would have expected.

Dionne, who had warned Denise not to take the lie detector test, got a call from her vastly relieved brother. Did 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, because now, you know, they know I didn't do it, and they're leaving me alone. See, I was right. Okay, you were right. You win.

The case of the disappearance of Wendy Rattay was at a dead end. Judy told me, we don't understand. For other cases, there's usually 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? Unsolved cases often carry with them an intolerable uncertainty.

Or maybe, as Anna was about to discover, an unbearable truth. 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? Returning to our story, Wendy Rattay left the house for a morning of errands and never came home. Police have pursued all kinds of leads and come up empty. Now, the investigation is about to take an unthinkable turn, and Wendy's two children will learn that in this case, the only thing worse than not knowing what happened to their mother may be knowing.

Again, Keith Morrison. 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 on the ground. I was heaving. I didn't know. I mean, 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 lot of guilt for not being able to, have been able to replace her. Why should you replace her? Because then maybe he would have been okay. But we were both so lost that we couldn't be there for each other anymore. While Gabriel tried to forget, Anna became obsessed with remembering. Now 20 and 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, but that 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 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, and he was a mess. I saw him at the food banks. I saw him with girlfriends that you had to pay for. I saw his demeanor change from a proud working man to a 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 he did this drug deal because he needed the money to keep her home, Wendy's home. As he said, if I keep the house, he said she'll have a home to come home 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 he'd gone that low. But when I tried to question him about it, he just, you know, he says, hey, my kids are gone, my wife's 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 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 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's this coming from? Who are these people? Have they told the police? And he said, these people don't want to 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 re-reads his charts. Sure.

And then we find that he was actually deceptive. Deceptive? Meaning, according to the police polygrapher, that Denis Raté 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 them read them to be deceptive. 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 couldn't because you have to balance the integrity of this investigation. You don't want it jeopardized. 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. Get ready for an undercover mission unlike any you have ever seen. Coming up... A sting by

investigators worthy of the big screen. They're described as right out of Hollywood. The staged kidnapping, the fake blood is truly phenomenal. Meet the man they call Mr. Big when Dateline 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 had. I had to believe him. He was still 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 Barrett 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, we came to the same conclusion as Judy did here, that Dennis Rattay was the suspect in his wife's disappearance. But there wasn't quite enough to charge him, is that right?

That's correct, yes. And one of the things we decided was that an undercover operation may be the best 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 Ratté into their midst and gain his trust,

so as to find out what he really knew about his wife's disappearance. The RCMP have conducted over 350 of these investigations. Corey Keenan, a policy analyst for the Canadian government, has studied these operations and written a book about them. They have creatively fashioned a backdrop that simulates a real-world criminal environment, so much so that fiction is often difficult to differentiate from reality. The RCMP would not discuss the specifics of the undercover operation that targeted Denis Rattay, but Dateline NBC reviewed an RCMP summary of the mission. June 2008, an undercover officer approached Denis and Prince George.

He was looking for someone, he told Denis, but didn't know his way around town. Denis agreed to help. 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 has 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 suspected it was all an act. These undercover officers, they're amazing actors. And they're described as right out of Hollywood.

The types of scenarios that they do, the beatings, the staged kidnappings, the fake blood packs, it's 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 a little more than three months, more than he'd earned in years, he told his sister Dionne, 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 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. 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, 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 27th, 2008.

A hotel room in Winnipeg. Marketplace. Lead investigator Rob Barrett 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 any wrongdoing. So it's not just there 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? I'm going to tell you honestly what happened.

I want you to take this as a job interview. Okay? Yeah, okay. As a job interview. We're going to put everything on the table. Sure. Okay? Denis Rautet had're going to put everything on the table. Sure. Okay? Denis Rautet 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. Royal Canadian Mounted Police disguised the identity and voices of the undercover agents. Right now, I haven't decided if I'm going to help you or not going to help you, okay? Right now, I want to see who are you as a person. 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's 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. Ah, honest, honesty, yeah, okay. Then, a knock on the door. It was one of the crime boss's alleged cronies with an internal police memorandum. Read it, said Mr. B, as Denise sat and listened. Our good primary suspect and only suspect husband, Dennis Florian,

are at date, but just about finished their investigation. And they're waiting for satellite results from the U.S. Satellite results? That was a lie, of course. There had been no satellite watching Denis on that August day back in 1997. And they're 100% sure he's the one who did it. 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 going to tell you. I'm going to tell you. I'm going to 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? 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 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? I got to put myself back there. Eerie. Seeing a husband trying to relive the moment when he said he murdered his wife. Okay, you move over there like that, yeah. Yeah, because I remember turning.

Yeah. And that's your left side, right? That, that's my left side. Denise 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 those old jacks you used to put under a vehicle. Oh, yeah, okay, okay, okay. There was a big thing. Okay. With the cover on. I didn't want to leave a mark, right? So it's... Okay. I finished her off with that.

Where? In the face. Then, Diddy 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 logger's road about one and a half 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 there was a stick. Okay. You know, I stirred it around, and it slipped. Oops. Today he told Mr. Big that he drove back to Prince George, got rid of the gun and his wife's ID along the way, and left the van in a grocery store parking lot.

He wandered around for a bit before he called Anna to report her mom was missing. And later that night, he came back with Anna to the coffee shop so that she would discover the van. Right after they curved in, the house is right there, you know. The day after his meeting with Mr. Pig, Denis took two other undercover officers to the scene of the crime. Of course, he believed he was talking to fellow gang members. So after you shot her, what happened then? I brought her more behind the garage.

You just shot the once, right? Once, but even twice. 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. But finally, he was sure. And as they continued searching the area...

Oh, my gosh! I'm putting my gloves on. If that's black at the other side, that's the tarp. That's a piece of a tarp. A couple of days later, Anna got a call. It was the police asking her to come downtown. And they sat me down and said, we've just arrested your father for the murder of your mother.

What was it like to hear that? Shattering. I broke down, but at the same time, it's like I knew. I just didn't want to believe it. The signs were all there. He changed so much. It's like I knew. I just didn't want to 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, Reedy. 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 Deneen?

I'm going, wait a minute. They found absolutely nothing to corroborate his story. When Dateline continues. 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 room with a camera, and 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 want to 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. 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 no way. 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 a tarp. 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 kind of time frame,

because of animal activity and things of that nature, not to find either any remains or very few remains. But the gun barrel, the bits and pieces of things, the stash places, the driver's license and so on, none of that showed up. Because it had been over 10 years that I think it's reasonable to expect that a lot of those items would have 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 back up his confession in the undercover operation?

It wasn't physical evidence, correct, yeah. Yeah. And I'm going, wait a minute. They found absolutely nothing to corroborate his story. It was painful for Deanne 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 it. And 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 have heard that, surely. I definitely would have heard it. Then there were the clothes Denise 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 Denise 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 out that he died of natural causes. So it was... It never happened. It was a fake confession. It was. Why lie? Gabriel said Denis was desperate to be accepted by his new tough guy friend.

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 that respected him, that thought he was intelligent. He didn't want to lose that.

But perhaps the most convincing argument Dion 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 going to talk to each other

and we're going to work out these problems. We're going to fix them, okay? That's what we're going to do. We're going to fix them. He says, I couldn't just tell them I did nothing. Well, then they can't help me. 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, I'll fix it so that, you know, these cops would get off my case. You know, like, he had such a miserable, lonely life that I believe he would have, at that point, would have said almost anything. Relatives of suspects nabbed by Mr. Bates Sting have every right to cry foul, said criminologist Corey 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 falsely confess to a crime they didn't commit. So the litmus test, to me, is corroboration.

Without it, there's 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. I know when he's hiding something, when he's not being truthful about something. And unlike Deanne 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. I've just about finished their investigation. And they're waiting for satellite results from the U.S. Satellite results? 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 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, would he tell it again? 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? Denis Ratté, 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 Denise's sister, Deanne. 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, Denise said he had a reason. Though it seemed so twisted, neither police nor anyone else believed it.

Wendy, remember, was said to have had a split personality. And Denis claimed that on the day he killed her, he knew Wendy's alter ego, Shauna, 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 the truth because I was there too.

You know, I don't want to 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 put everything aside and create an easy solution. Me, I'm happy to live with a question mark. I'm not going to pretend it's anything else. Why don't you want to see something, some kind of evidence to back up what you've seen on tape? The look in his eye on that tape. That's all I 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 was the decision you made? I saw the truth on his face in that tape. The man who ran the undercover sting, lead investigator Robert Barrett, 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

really wants to believe that someone they know and care about could be responsible for 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 Ratté was arrested. By that point in time, Denis Ratté has read all his rights that he's provided under the Canadian law. He had access. So he could have said, I thought I was talking to a crime boss

and I was just lying to him. Absolutely. And he didn't? No, he didn't. 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. 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, it's hard. You know, someone who looks at you and... 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? A confession is the strongest evidence anybody ever gets, and, you know, it generally does the deed. 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 there's an ounce 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? No. 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 going to be for or against my dad. So show me the evidence. Were Denise's 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. December 2010, 13 years after Wendy Rattay disappeared. In a Prince George courtroom, the battle lines were drawn. But this case wasn't only the Crown versus Denis Rattay. 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 in the family who disagreed with you. They're still my family. 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. Denise Rattay 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. I kind of hold my breath and go through it and hope that whatever I say is going to 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. B and his gang. Proof, he told the jury, that Denise's confession should not be believed. And after four weeks, the end of the 13-year-old mystery

was finally at hand. It took the jury just two hours to find Denise Rattay 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 that 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, 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's still alive.

That's the part of me that is 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. There hasn't been a happy ending for anybody except your sister Anna thinks it's the right ending. It's hard being on the other side of this with her. It's impossible to get around. It's been almost 15 years since his dad was arrested for killing his mom. Gabriel is a father himself now to three children.

His father in prison has met two of them. Anna has too, a couple of years ago at their grandparents' place in Cape Cod. They've tried to reconnect since then and chat once in a while. Though never about their father, who was up for parole this August. 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. This is a really difficult situation for both of us.

And 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.