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December 10, 2010
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Ratte's children get their turn to speak
Mark Nielsen Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
The son and daughter of Denis Florian Ratte gave decidedly different views when they provided victim impact statements during a sentencing hearing Thursday in B.C. Supreme Court.
Gabriel Pelletier, 29, pleaded for leniency in deciding how long Ratte, 58, should spend behind bars for the second degree murder of his wife, Wendy Ann Twiss Ratte, before he’s eligible to apply for parole.
A jury found Ratte guilty of the act on Nov. 3 in connection with her Aug. 18, 1997 disappearance and he automatically received a life sentence for the conviction. However, Justice Glen Parrett must still decide on how long Rat-te must serve before he can seek parole and is looking at a range of 10 to 25 years.
“All 12 jurors ruled against him but I have enough reason and enough doubt, as a victim, to want my father to spend as little time in prison as possible,” Pelletier said.
But a tearful and sobbing Anna Sieppert, 30, said Ratte “deserves to spend the rest of his life
An artist sketch of Denis Ratte during his second-degree murder trial. Ratte was found guilty of murdering his wife Wendy Ratte, whose body has still not been found.
Sketch by Milan Basic
in his self-made hell,” characterized her father as a “self-centred lowlife” who was full of deceit and clearly committed the act.
“I cannot understand why murder was chosen over divorce,” she said.
The loss of her mother had a deep and profound impact on Sieppert’s life, from her absence at important milestones like high school graduation and her wedding, to a lack of ongoing motherly advice to a stress-related stomach ailment brought on by a preoccupation with finding her.
“I went from an idealistic free spirit who loved life with great passion and optimism to an emotionally-crippled human being who has trust issues, health issues and fear,” Sieppert said.
Wendy’s body has never been found and Ratte has continued to maintain she left the family although he told undercover police he shot her with a .22 caliber rifle in the back yard of their East Perry Road home and dumped her body in a swamp about 60 kilometres east of Prince George.
— Turn to ‘TWO-FACED LIAR,’page 3
Lover’s quarrel not at heart of testimony: Munoz
Rodney Venis Citizen staff rvenis@pgcitizen.ca
Councillor Debora Munoz denied Thursday a bitter break-up with Coun. Brian Skakun and her mayoral aspirations spurred her to reveal Skakun leaked a confidential city report.
Munoz was forced to dismiss the allegations levelled by Skakun’s lawyer Jon Duncan as she wrapped up the second day of her testimony. The councillor is the star witness in the ongoing trial into whether Skakun gave the CBC a copy of a report by labour lawyer Kitty Heller into civilian complaints at the Prince George RCMP detachment.
In his cross examination, Duncan accused Munoz of deceiving then-mayor Colin Kinsley and city manager Derek Bates during a meeting in November 2008 in which she told the pair Skakun confessed to her three months earlier he was the source of the Heller report leak. He said Munoz falsely claimed Skakun was suicidal and that she feared for her safety, in part, because he told her he’d slashed another person’s tires.
Judge Ken Ball reminded Duncan Munoz didn’t claim Skakun was suicidal; in earlier testimony
City councillor Debora Munoz arrives at court on Thursday afternoon.
Citizen photo by Brent
she said she was worried when he said he thought he wanted to die during his September confession but didn’t think he wanted to kill himself. She denied she made up the tire-slashing story and said she genuinely feared for her safety.
— See ‘RELATIONSHIP,’ on page 3
CFIB sticks to guns on city spending report
Frank Peebles Citizen staff
There may be contention over the methods, but the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) stands by its report that Prince George city hall is overspending.
Prince George municipal leaders were asked for their input on this issue and The Citizen was assured that comments were pending.
The report’s co-author Laura Jones, Vice President-Western Canada for the CFIB responded to Mayor Dan Rogers’s suggestion to The Citizen that a reason Prince George showed a poor spending result in the organization’s study, particularly for 2008, was the costs associated with the ice jam.
“That could be,” said Jones. “But it wasn’t like you were looking like a star before then, even if you take out 2008. There are sometimes logical reasons for jumps in spending, but every year?
“And your per capita spending is a bit on the high side - $1,521 per person. Not only has the growth in Prince George municipal spending gone very high, but the per capita spending is also high. We don’t want to be Greece (a total economic collapse), but we are on the
road to Greece and it is time for taxpayers to wake up.”
Jones suggested ways to cut back that spending without upsetting the balance of the local economy - namely, freeze certain municipal wages.
“We keep ignoring the elephant in the living room and that is the drastic imbalance on the wage side and that has to be addressed,” said Jones.
She said that CFIB research pins the gap of 35 per cent, on average, between the amounts being paid in the private sector with the amounts being paid similar positions in municipalities.
“Yes, wages are set in contract and this report raises questions about the amounts being promised. These are way out of whack with the private sector and if that is true of the past contracts then what does it suggest for future ones?”
She stressed that firefighters and policing are big line items for any city, and it is hard to compare those professions to anything in the private realm, but clerks and janitors and labourers can be directly cross-referenced, and that is where the disconnect is.
— Turn to ‘ONE IDEA,’ page 4
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