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Missing girls planned to hitch to B.C.
'We tried to get them to come' to party instead, friend recalls
Elise Stolte
The Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
EDMONTON - The last time Naomi Ratcliffe saw Rene Gunning and Krystle Knott, the pair had just polished off a 26-ounce bottle of vodka and were planning to hitchhike home to northern British Columbia from West Edmonton Mall.
"I think about it all the time," Ratcliffe, 18, said from her home in Fort St. John, B.C., on Monday. "It scares me. I was supposed to be with them."
Police are now posting missing-persons photos for Gunning and Knott at the mall, and appealing to the public for help.
As of Monday, it has been three years since the teenagers were last seen. The Project Kare team, which investigates the deaths and disappearances of men and women in high-risk lifestyles, has added them to the caseload.
Ratcliffe can still clearly recall the leadup to the girls' disappearance in February 2005.
It started when Gunning, a 19-year-old she had partied with before but didn't really know, said she was going to hitchhike from Fort St. John to Grande Prairie. Ratcliffe decided to go along, thinking it would be an interesting place to spend the weekend.
"I never hitchhiked before then. I thought it was risky but kind of fun," she said.
First an older man picked them up. They got in the truck, drove a while and then he offered to pay for sex. They got out at the next stop.
Eventually they got to Grande Prairie, but then decided to head to Edmonton. A trucker finally dropped them off at West Edmonton Mall.
Gunning bought the bottle of vodka and they met two friends -- Krystle Knott, 16, and Sara Mcleod, 14 -- who Ratcliffe knew from junior high school in Dawson Creek, B.C.
The group walked around the mall and then sat outside and smoked some pot. Gunning and Knott finished the vodka. Then Ratcliffe and Mcleod decided to go to a party at a friend's house. "We tried to get them to come (with us), but they didn't want to come," Mcleod said, remembering the night.
"They wanted to follow some boy that they didn't even know his name."
Finally, Gunning and Knott said they would meet up with Mcleod and Ratcliffe later, but when the mall closed for the night, they phoned and said they couldn't get a ride.
The two were still drunk, Ratcliffe said. "(Gunning) said, 'Me and Krystle are hitchhiking back to Fort St. John tonight,' and that's the last time I talked to her."
Knott and Mcleod grew up together. They were distantly related but called each other cousins.
"There was a nice side (to her) and an overly spoiled side," Mcleod said.
Knott drank too much and used cocaine, meth and marijuana, but there were lots of good experiences, too, she said. They used to go for walks and out for coffee. "We would talk every day. You were lucky to find us away from each other."
Mcleod hasn't heard from Knott since that night in 2005, although others claim they saw her in Dawson Creek or talked to her over the Internet.
"She's been wanting to run away. She didn't want to go home," Mcleod said. "I really hope she contacts somebody to let us know that she's all right."
As for Ratcliffe, she stayed with Mcleod in
Edmonton until she "got up enough nerve" to call her parents and get money for a bus ticket home. She's now a new mom living with her parents again in Fort St. John.
Gunning's disappearance is troubling because she left a son, now four years old, in Fort St. John, Ratcliffe said. "She wouldn't stay away for that long without saying a word to anybody."
estolte@thejournal.canwest.com? The Edmonton Journal 2008
