‘I tried stomping on her face a couple of times’

Tori Stafford killer Terri-Lynne McClintic admits prison assault

September 13, 2012 — The woman serving a life sentence for the first-degree murder of Tori Stafford has added another conviction to her criminal record after admitting she beat up a fellow inmate and regretted not causing worse injuries.

Terri-Lynne McClintic, 22, was facing a charge of assault causing bodily harm for what the Crown called a “completely unprovoked” attack at Grand Valley Institution for Women, but instead pleaded guilty Wednesday to assault.

Crown attorney Julia Forward told court that the victim, Aimee McIntyre, was no longer co-operating with the Crown, so they couldn’t prove certain bodily harm such as headaches she had earlier complained of having since the attack.

Ontario Court Judge Colin Westman sentenced McClintic to six months on this assault, but noted it doesn’t change her life sentence because sentences run concurrently in Canada.

Forward noted that the crime should be on her record should McClintic apply for parole under the faint-hope clause, which would come into effect in 2024.

McClintic’s lawyer, Geoff Snow, said she had intended to plead not guilty and go to trial on the charge until the Crown disclosed that prison staff had intercepted a letter McClintic wrote to a friend on Jan. 30, the day of the assault.

In the profanity-laced letter McClintic recounts that she confronted McIntyre about something she had said about her, and detailed the assault, saying she “got in at least a couple shots, good ones, like one or two decent face shots.”

Curled in the fetal position on the floor after several blows to the head, McClintic wrote that she kicked her repeatedly.

“Trying to get some shots through her arms, finally I brought my foot up tried stompin on her face a couple times,” McClintic writes, ending the sentence with a smiley face.

McClintic had specifically requested McIntyre act as a mentor in a peer support program, and launched the assault “out of the blue” when McIntyre scratched her head, the Crown said. McClintic wrote that she could have done more damage — McIntyre received a black eye and other bruises — if she was in a larger room.

“Point made statement just not as loud as I would have liked it to be,” McClintic writes.

The letter was addressed to the same person that she has sent many letters to in the past, writing about her fantasies of violence. Dozens of those were entered as evidence when she testified at Rafferty’s trial.

Westman said McClintic must have some deep-seated anger issues and is “capable of doing a lot of damage.”

He said he hoped McClintic would be able to learn how to live amongst her fellow human beings and be civil.

“It’s tragic and one would hope that somehow you can come to some kind of peace,” he said. “I can’t imagine your turmoil you must feel within yourself.”

At the court appearance McClintic wore a white sweater, jeans, white shower sandals and makeup, speaking only once to say, “Yeah.”

Aimee McIntyre was also serving a life sentence for first-degree murder in the death of her former lover, though a new trial was recently ordered.

McIntyre’s trial heard that she drove two men to her ex-boyfriend’s apartment, one of them stabbed him six times, then McIntyre drove the pair away from the scene, helped them dispose of the knife and helped wash their clothes.

The two men pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. In a decision released in May the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled that the trial judge made several errors that mean she did not receive a fair trial. The court set aside her first-degree murder conviction and ordered a new trial.

'You, sir, are a monster,' judge tells Rafferty at sentencing

Tears flowed in court Tuesday in the final phase of the Victoria (Tori) Stafford trial, and even the man who murdered and raped the eight-year-old Woodstock schoolgirl three years ago seemed affected, wiping his eyes as powerful victim-impact statements were read to the packed courtroom.

Then, in a jarring address that did nothing to ease the sorrow, Michael Rafferty rose in the prisoner’s box to offer an apology of sorts, in which he voiced sympathy for the enormous suffering he has wrought, yet insisted that he remained innocent.

Sentencing judge Mr. Justice Thomas Heeney was unimpressed.

“You sir are a monster,” he told the sniffling 31-year-old killer, convicted Friday night of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and abduction.

“You have snuffed out the life of a beautiful, talented, vivacious little girl. a ‘tomboy diva’ in the trustful innocence of childhood.

“And for what? So that you could gratify your twisted and deviant desire to have sex with a child. Only a monster could commit such an act of pure evil.”

In all, eight short victim-impact statements were read out, five in person and three more by co-prosecutor Stephanie Venne.

And none resonated more strongly than that of Tori’s older brother, Daryn, now 14, who tried to convey what it is like “to have your world ripped out from under you in less than a day. No hugs, no ‘see you later, no goodbyes, just part of my heart ripped out.”

Their mother, Tara McDonald, spoke of the “excruciating, unexplainable pain and heartache” generated by the loss of Tori, kidnapped outside her school by Mr. Rafferty’s partner-in-crime Terri-Lynne McClintic and brought to him as he waited in a nearby parking lot.

Two years ago, Ms, McClintic was also sentenced to life imprisonment in Tori’s death, and she was the key witness at Mr. Rafferty’s trial.

Tori’s father, Rodney Stafford, spoke of “a day of horror that will live on within me, my family and millions of others for the rest of our lives.”

Then came Mr. Rafferty’s turn as he stood facing the court, wearing a three-piece suit and a striped tie.

Watched from the public seating area by nine members of the jury who attended the sentencing he said that “nobody has all the pieces of the puzzle,” that “I am truly sorry to the entire family,” and that “I am a very definite part of why Victoria is not here today.”

He added that he would also like to speak to Ms. McDonald “privately” to tell her something she does not know. Then, in his next breath he proclaimed that while “I am guilty of many things, and for that I am ashamed,” he stands behind his not-guilty plea.

“Classic psychopath,” one of the police officers who took a lead role in the investigation said afterward. “Right to the end, he’s still trying to manipulate people.”

Judge Heeney sentenced Mr. Rafferty to an automatic life sentence, with little chance of parole until at least 25 years have elapsed since his arrest.

By agreement between the Crown and defense lawyer Dirk Derstine he was also sentenced to two 10-year terms for the sexual assault and the abduction, to run concurrently.

As well, he was also placed under a lifetime firearms ban, placed on the sex-offender registry and ordered to provide DNA samples.

In theory, under the so-called “faint hope” clause of the Criminal Code, Mr. Rafferty could try seek parole after serving 15 years of his sentence.

The federal government scrapped that clause last year, but because Tori’s murder predated the change, the old rules apply.

Few such applications succeed, however, and in this instance the chances of Mr. Rafferty walking the street then – if ever – appear remote.

Daryn Stafford was in court but his victim-impact statement was read out for him.

It told of how “My sister was the only person I had to talk to;” of how he is now fearful, and of how Tori’s ghastly death has damaged the family.

“It’s like the world is playing a sick trick on me,” he wrote. “But it’s not. This is reality.”

His father Rodney told the courtroom the crime has made him realize “that evil does exist.”

And in an unscripted aside, he spoke to the killer directly, staring hard at him.

“She was stolen from us by you, you piece of shit,” he said.

Ms. McDonald described the pain of not watching her daughter grow up. The milestones of Tori’s life – graduation, her prom, marriage – have been replaced by grim anniversaries she said; The day the child was kidnapped in April, 2009; the day three months later when her decomposed body was found in woods near the small town of Mount Forest; the court dates.

Ms McDonld also addressed the cloud of suspicion that lingered over her and her former husband, Rodney Stafford, in the weeks that followed Tori’s disappearance.

“I have to live the rest of my life being stared at, listening to the whispers of strangers,” she said.

Court also heard statements from both of Tori’s grandmothers, two aunts and an uncle.

All alluded to the horror of the trial, and of knowing all the dreadful facts.

Before passing sentence, Mr. Justice Heeney also addressed his controversial exclusion of evidence seized from Mr. Rafferty’s laptop, which included child pornography.

The judge reiterated that the evidence was legally inadmissible because it breached the defendant`s Charter rights, and that his decision to exclude it ensured Mr. Rafferty received a fair trial.

He finished by thanking the lawyers and the jury.

For the last time, Mr. Rafferty slipped off the tie he was allowed to wear during his court appearances and handed it to one of the court officers And shortly after 11 a.m. he was led away . . .

Rafferty appears emotional as Tori's brother speaks

Speaking to a packed courtroom on Tuesday, Victoria Stafford's older brother described how the eight-year-old girl's death changed the course of his life.

As 14-year-old Daryn Stafford delivered an emotional victim impact statement, recalling how he had his "whole world ripped out in one day" when his baby sister disappeared, the man convicted of killing the girl was seen crying.

It was a rare unbridled display of emotion for Michael Rafferty who was convicted last Friday of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping in Victoria's death.

The 31-year-old Rafferty is now awaiting his sentencing after victim impact statements read by the young girl's family members. 

Mother laments ordinary milestones Tori will never mark

The mother of Victoria (Tori) Stafford told a sentencing hearing in London, Ont., today for the man convicted in the 2009 murder of her eight-year-old daughter that she has been through a lifetime of pain in the past three years.

Tara McDonald is among family members speaking at the sentencing hearing of Michael Rafferty, 31. Tori's grandmother and father, Rodney Stafford, also spoke about how they have been affected by the murder of the girl, whose body was found in Mount Forest, 100 kilometres north of Woodstock.

Throughout the trial, which began March 5 and ended in a guilty verdict Friday evening, people have jockeyed to get a seat in the courtroom, and Tuesday morning was no different. People lined up early to try to get a seat inside the courtroom or in the overflow room.

Rafferty was found guilty on all three charges he faced following the first full day of deliberations: first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.

A conviction of first-degree murder carries a penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

Tori was last seen outside her elementary school in Woodstock, Ont., on April 8, 2009.

Terri-Lynne McClintic, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder two years ago, testified in March that she lured the Grade 3 student to Rafferty’s car on his orders. The pair then took the girl first to Guelph and later to Mount Forest.

McClintic was one of more than a dozen women Rafferty dated in the spring of 2009, several at the same time.

McClintic told jurors Rafferty repeatedly raped the girl before, overcome with rage, she bludgeoned the eight-year-old to death with a hammer. The 21-year-old had previously said Rafferty killed Tori.

Tori's partially clothed remains were found more than three months later in a field outside of Mount Forest, inside garbage bags and covered with several large stones.
About 30 people were lined up before 8 a.m. at the London, Ont., courthouse where Michael Rafferty's sentencing hearing is being held. About 30 people were lined up before 8 a.m. at the London, Ont., courthouse where Michael Rafferty's sentencing hearing is being held. (Cheryl Krawchuk/CBC)

Defense lawyer Dirk Derstine told the media assembled outside the courthouse after a verdict had been reached that a decision on whether to appeal is in Rafferty's hands and will be made in “due course.”

Over the course of the trial, which began on March 5, jurors were unaware that Rafferty had searched for and downloaded child pornography to his computer, after Justice Thomas Heeney ruled the evidence inadmissible because police obtained the information without a proper warrant.

They were also unaware he had downloaded a movie, Gardens in the Night, which details the abduction and sexual abuse of an eight-year-old girl.
Michael Rafferty's trial in London, Ont., began on March 5. Michael Rafferty's trial in London, Ont., began on March 5. (Canadian Press)

Jurors began their deliberation Thursday and returned a verdict a little more than 24 hours later. Over the course of the lengthy and often emotional trial, the 12-member jury heard from 62 witnesses and viewed almost 200 exhibits.

Rafferty did not testify during his trial and the only time jurors heard him speak at length was through a police audiotape of an interview recorded in May 2009. He will be given a chance to speak at today's sentencing hearing.
 

Michael Rafferty 'likely' to appeal conviction

Family of murdered Tori Stafford to attend Tuesday's sentencing hearing

A sentencing hearing is scheduled Tuesday for Michael Rafferty, who has been convicted on all charges he faced in the death of eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford of Woodstock, Ont., and there is speculation an appeal is likely.

A jury in London, Ont., on Friday found Rafferty, 31, guilty of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping after deliberating for about 10 hours over two days.
Victoria (Tori) Stafford disappeared outside her elementary school in Woodstock, Ont., on April 8, 2009. Victoria (Tori) Stafford disappeared outside her elementary school in Woodstock, Ont., on April 8, 2009. (Canadian Press)

A conviction for first-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of applying for parole for 25 years. Rafferty's former girlfriend, Terri-Lynne McClintic, 21, is already serving a life sentence for Tori's murder after she pleaded guilty two years ago.

Tori disappeared on her way home from Oliver Stephens Public School on April 8, 2009. Her remains were found more than three months later in a rural area outside Mount Forest, a small community 100 kilometers north of Woodstock.

During the 10-week trial, the Crown alleged the Grade 3 student was lured to Rafferty's vehicle by his then-girlfriend, McClintic, acting on his orders.

McClintic testified she killed the girl with a hammer, but the jury found Rafferty just as responsible as McClintic for the girl's death, regardless of who wielded the hammer.

Rafferty shut his eyes and stood motionless as the guilty verdicts were read shortly after 9 p.m. ET, and his knees appeared to buckle. Tori's family burst into tears, clasped hands and breathed audible sighs of relief.

After hearing the verdict, Tori's grandmother Doreen Graichen said justice has been done and a burden has been lifted.

"What we've been feeling for the past three years has been hell. This is almost a release for us," she said.

Tori's father, Rodney Stafford, said after the verdict that it was hard to contain himself in the emotionally charged courtroom, but it was a relief that this was how the past three years of his life came to an end.

He said felt "happy, excitement, but at the same time there was a sense of loss because Tori's not coming home."

"But we got it, we got the justice," Rodney Stafford added.

Michael Harding, who was the mayor of Woodstock at the time Tori disappeared, told CBC News on Saturday that he was glad the Staffords got the outcome they were seeking.

"I'm so happy for the family that they got the justice that they so desired, but like Rodney said, Tori is not coming home," Harding said, his voice choking with emotion.

"I'm glad two people who did horrible, despicable things are not going to be in our community or anywhere in Canada for some time to come."
Family to give victim impact statements

Stafford's family will have to be in the same room as Rafferty one last time this coming week when they deliver their victim impact statements at his sentencing hearing.

Criminal defense lawyer Michael Lacy told CBC News on Saturday that he believed an appeal is "likely," partly because of the sentencing Rafferty faces, but added there would be more to it.

'I'm glad two people who did horrible, despicable things are not going to be in our community or anywhere in Canada for some time to come.'—Former Woodstock mayor Michael Harding

"I think the appeal will rest on the trial judge's decision to allow the Crown to introduce the prior statement of McClintic," Lacy said, referring to a crucial piece of testimony that implicated Rafferty.

"It's a special procedure that's used. It's a legal motion that the Crown had to bring to introduce that evidence, and I think that will be the subject of an appeal.

"Having said that, given that the trial judge excluded evidence from the car and that came under a lot of attention, obviously before the verdict, that actually hurts Michael Rafferty's appellate chances. Had that evidence been admitted, that would have been another ground of appeal, leaving uncertainty about the conviction going forward."

Police found Rafferty's laptop when they seized his car, but Judge Thomas Heeney ruled the contents were inadmissible because investigators had taken the computer without a proper warrant.

Investigators say there was evidence of dozens of file names that strongly suggested Rafferty had downloaded child pornography.

Rafferty's lawyer, Dirk Derstine, said Friday night that he doesn't know if Rafferty will seek an appeal, which must be done within 30 days.

Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Derstine defended his decision to take Rafferty's case.

“The reality of it is that everybody in our system deserves a strong, proper and effective defense,” he said.

Judge in Rafferty trial instructing jury

A London, Ontario judge gave careful instructions to a jury presiding over the Tori Stafford murder trial Thursday, as the 12-member panel prepares to deliberate on whether or not Michael Rafferty is guilty of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering the eight-year-old Woodstock girl.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Heeney said that while he was the judge of the law, the jury is the judge of the facts.

"As judges of the facts you have to decide what the facts are of the case," he said. "You, not I, will decide this case."

The case has been on trial since March 5, 2012 and wrapped up Wednesday night after two days of closing arguments from Crown Prosecutor Kevin Gowdey. Defence Attorney Dirk Derstine delivered his closing remarks to the jury on Monday.

The judge is expected to charge the jury all day today, telling them to "mentally prepare" themselves but assuring them he will give them a break once an hour.

Tori's father was back in court Thursday after abruptly leaving Tuesday afternoon as the Crown went over the lurid details of the case.

He told reporters this morning that he needed a couple of day to himself and that it was hard to sit there and hear once again what happened to his young daughter.

Victoria "Tori" Stafford was lured away from her Woodstock elementary school on April 8, 2009. Her body was found three months later wrapped in garbage bags, stuffed between a pile of heavy rocks under a tree.

Her body was found badly beaten and naked from the waist down.

Terri-Lynne McClintic, 21, eventually confessed to the crime, telling police Rafferty was complicit in the act.

Rafferty has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and first-degree murder.

McClintic at first told police in 2009 that it was Rafferty who hit Tori with a hammer and stomped on her body. She stuck to that story until January, 2012 but when she took the stand during the trial she told the court that it was in fact she who killed the child.

She explained her change of mind by saying she couldn't accept that she would be capable of such a heinous crime.

On Thursday, the judge addressed this change to the jury, telling them to weigh each of her statements equally.

"The fact a story is told more than once does not make it any more true or less true," he said.

He also cautioned the jury against taking the defence's theory as evidence.

The defence has said that it was McClintic who was the engine behind the crime, that it was her who targeted Tori to resolve a drug debt and that she was the one who killed the child. Defence lawyer Derstine surmised in his closing arguments that Rafferty was unaware of what McClintic had planned and was simply a horrified bystander.

Because McClintic denied every step of this theory, the judge instructed that the evidence submitted during the trial be weighed to consider the probability of the theory but that the theory should not be considered evidence itself.

The judge also talked about the notion of reasonable doubt, explaining the difficulty in coming to a conclusion based on "absolute certainty."

"Absolute certainty is a standard that is impossibly high," he said.

Rafferty ‘in control’ of little girl’s murder, court hears

Michael Rafferty's voice filled the courtroom as the images played on the computer screens.

"My girlfriend, no . . ." he said of Terri-Lynne McClintic as the screen showed a photo he took of her in a hotel room.

"I don't know what I was doing" April 8, 2009, he said, as the screen played a video of his car, or one looking a lot like it, driving up the street outside the school of Victoria (Tori) Stafford that very day.

"I've never gone anywhere with her," Rafferty said, as a video showed him and McClintic at a Guelph Home Depot.

" . . . because you uh know you want to help . . . " he said, explaining why he kept his ears open for word of the missing eight-year-old Tori.

Is that so? Crown attorney Kevin Gowdey wondered in court Tuesday after that last bit of an audio-visual show was done.

Rafferty's words came from the audiotaped May 15, 2009, interview he had with police.

"It was the perfect opportunity to do the moral thing, the right thing to do, to tell them all about what Ms. McClintic had done..." Gowdey said. Instead, he lied, the Crown said.

With a combination of visual aids, drama and a methodical laying out of facts, Gowdey began the Crown's closing arguments Tuesday in Rafferty's first-degree murder trial.

The argument: Rafferty was no "innocent dupe" and McClintic was not, as the defence suggests, "the engine" behind the kidnapping, sexual assault and killing of the eight-year-old school girl.

Instead, Rafferty used his "violent pawn" of a girlfriend, McClintic, to get him a girl, buy the murder weapons with cash he gave her, keep the girl hidden when he had to leave the car, and help clean up and cover up the murder.

"He was leading the events of April 8 from start to finish and he completely controlled what happened after April 8," Gowdey said.

He reminded jurors they only have to find one of three things true to convict Rafferty of first-degree murder; that the kidnapping or rape of Tori resulted in her death, or that the killing was pre-planned.

"We say he is guilty of all," Gowdey told the jury.

His measured delivery gave a sombre tone to the arguments, and put in highlighted contrast his occasional bit of drama.

About 4:30 p.m. April 8, a worried Tara McDonald, Tori's mother, wondered if something had happened to her, Gowdey said.

"Indeed something was terribly wrong. At that very moment, about 4:30, Victoria Elizabeth Stafford was lying on the floor . . .," Gowdey said, and turned suddenly to point with both hands at Rafferty in the prisoner's dock ". . . of this man's car."

He quickly dismissed one of the defence's main arguments, that McClintic is such a violent liar her story can't be trusted.

"There is no question from time to time you are going to find she lied in her evidence," he said.

Even so, the defence never attacked "her evidence in any significant way," Gowdey said.

Rafferty at times rolled his eyes, scowled or muttered to himself during Gowdey's closing.

Tori's family had a different reaction. Aunt Rebecca Nichols, an Alberta resident, sobbed during one recess after seeing and hearing some evidence for the first time. Tori's dad Rodney Stafford left early, telling reporters if he sat in court any longer, he'd have an "outburst."

Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm.

McClintic, 21, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2010 and testified against Rafferty. She told police in 2009 Rafferty directed the kidnapping, raped Tori and killed her, but at his trial, said she killed Tori.

Gowdey told jurors yesterday in a legal sense it doesn't matter who dealt the fatal blows.

"Michael Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic were in this together. Together they did this to Tori Stafford. Together they are guilty."

The Crown presented its case in 12 chapters and Gowdey worked his way through seven Tuesday. Here are some of his major points:

Rafferty picked up McClintic and drove by Tori's school, the second time that day, before getting enough gas for a long trip out of Woodstock.

He then dropped McClintic off and parked up the street, hidden in a nursing home parking lot, with quick access to Hwy. 401.

If Rafferty really believed he was innocently picking up a child McClintic knew, as the defence suggested, why wouldn't he just park across the street from the school, Gowdey asked.

And why did he continue driving a girl to Guelph, who undoubtedly would have asked where they were going and why? Gowdey asked.

"When does the light go on for Mr Rafferty? Why would he not just turn the car around . . . unless he had evil intentions."

The intentions became clear in Guelph, Gowdey said. Rafferty took out cash from an ATM and gave it to McClintic. She used that money to buy the "murder tools": a hammer and garbage bags.

Just as when he parked on Fyfe Ave., he let McClintic expose herself to the danger of being caught and kept himself hidden and ready to drive away if need be, Gowdey said.

"Just because Mr. Rafferty is staying safely out of the picture, that doesn't mean he isn't controlling exactly what is going on."

Then he drove on to Mount Forest, with an eight-year-old girl he did not know in the backseat and murder tools in the trunk.

"No law-abiding person would continue . . . but on they went," Gowdey said.

McClintic didn't know the area, and in fact had trouble finding it later for police. Rafferty knew the area, 130 km away from Woodstock, and chose a spot unseen from the road, Gowdey said.

"Getting as far out of town was the best plan of all and that is exactly what they did."

The reason McClintic was able to observe so much of the scene, giving police detailed descriptions of silos and woods and rockpiles is because she wasn't the one busy raping Tori, he said.

McClintic testified Tori asked for help at a break in that rape, but she delivered the girl back to Rafferty.

"It is detail that could not make Ms. McClintic look any worse as a human being. You do not make that up," he said.

McClintic testified Tori had no clothing on her lower body as she was raped, only a shirt on top. Sure enough, that is how her body was found months later, Gowdey noted.

The rocks that were put on Tori's body were heavy, "clearly a two-person job," he said.

In his May 15 interview with police, Rafferty appeared forceful and confident.

"The lies just roll of his tongue."

-----------

Despite reminding jurors they did not have to decide who dealt the fatal blow that killed Tori Stafford, Crown attorney Kevin Gowdey cast doubt on McClintic's testimony that it was her, not Rafferty, who did it.

Rafferty and McClintic were a team - equally guilty - and aspects of McClintic's story, revised on the stand from earlier statements, did not make sense, Gowdey said in his final argument to convict Rafferty for the 2009 murder of eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford.

In a May 2009 video, a distraught McClintic told police that Rafferty wielded the hammer and she agreed with an officer who suggests they "worked together." But at the trial, McClintic testified she killed Tori in a sudden spontaneous fit of rage, fueled by her own horrific childhood, when she saw Rafferty sexually assaulting the Woodstock girl who vanished April 8, 2009 on her way home from school.

Gowdey described the change of story as scripted and unnatural, noting her language at the trial: "I savagely murdered that little girl."

He asked why McClintic chose to target Tori, the victim, rather than Rafferty, the aggressor.

He noted that McClintic's spontaneous attack would have required a hammer that she had purchased earlier in Guelph and that would have required Rafferty to open the trunk of his car to give her access to the hammer.

Caps from water bottles were found in garbage bags also bought at the Home Depot and yet McClintic testified that Rafferty cleaned himself with bottled water only after Tori's body was wrapped in the bags and covered with heavy rocks, he said.

Gowdey suggested McClintic and Rafferty had a plan to kill Tori after the abduction and assault and had bought the hammer and garbage bags for that purpose. But even now, he said, McClintic is in denial.

He also suggested if McClintic did deal the fatal blows it could have been done at Rafferty's direction.
--- --- ---
UPDATE: 11:58 Crown Attorney Kevin Gowdey admitted Terri-Lynne McClintic often lied and rationalized in her testimony, especially when she was talking about her own motivations.

"I know you won't believe everything she says. We don't ask you to."

But Gowdey said at least 25 specific details from her testimony about April 8, 2009, the day Tori disappeared, can be confirmed by independent evidence, including surveillance video, Blackberry records and items that were found by police.

Gowdey said McClintic told some lies to police to avoid testifying about a her "tragic life that didn't make sense."

But Gowdey said McClintic has "stepped up" and has taken responsibility for her actions and was co-operative with police.

He said the jury will have to weigh her two versions of event - one made May 24, 2006 when she told police Rafferty killed Stafford or a later version where she confessed to the actual killing.

UPDATE: 11:21 Michael Rafferty was at “the top of his game” in the days after Tori Stafford’s murder, keeping girlfriend Terri-Lynne McClinitc “onside” by visiting her behind bars.

“He had her right where he wanted her in the palm of his hand,” Crown attorney Kevin Gowdey said Wednesday, day two of his final argument to convict Rafferty for the 2009 murder of eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford.

But Gowdey said that all changed after May 15 when he was interviewed by police.

Worried “the net was closing,” Rafferty bought hair dye, replaced his smartphone, looked for a replacement for the back seat of his car and the Puma shoes he wore April 8, the day the Woodstock girl vanished on her way home from school.

Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm. McClintic, 21, his former girlfriend, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison in April 2010.

Going over Rafferty’s phone records on the day Tori disappeared, Gowdey noted it was not used around 7 pm because that would have been when Rafferty was raping and murdering the girl, but the chatty calls to girlfriends resumed an hour later. “He never skipped a beat.”

He also steered jurors to the eight and a half minutes of surveillance video of Rafferty’s car sitting in the Home Depot parking lot while McClintic shopped inside.

“Just think of what Tori endured sitting there” alone with Rafferty, the Crown attorney said, “tired . . . hungry . . . terrified.”

Gowdey’s final argument continues today.

Rafferty’s lawyer calls McClintic a prolific, skilled liar

Two people called Terri-Lynne McClintic a liar on Monday: Michael Rafferty’s lawyer inside the courtroom, his mother outside the courthouse.

Deborah Murphy, who showed up at the trial, said McClintic was a liar and her son was innocent. “I just hope justice is served and he is freed,” she told a throng of reporters. “He is not guilty and it hurts like hell,” she said.

Inside the courtroom, Dirk Derstine, Rafferty’s lawyer, viciously attacked McClintic’s credibility while making closing arguments in the Tori Stafford murder trial. Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping of the 8-year-old Woodstock, Ont., girl.

“I am going to suggest that Terri-Lynne McClintic is a prolific and accomplished liar,” said Derstine, adding that she was the driving force behind Tori’s abduction and murder.

He called her story, of Rafferty coercing her into abducting Tori, absurd. “The only thing that should be believed (from her testimony) is that she killed the little girl,” he said, and step-by-step proceeded to rip apart most of her testimony, much as he had done while cross-examining her a few weeks ago.

Derstine also acknowledged that Rafferty knew what had happened to Tori but tried to cover it up because “people get scared,” he said.

Tori disappeared while on her way home from school on April 8, 2009, in Woodstock. McClintic and Rafferty, then lovers, were arrested and charged a month later. Tori’s body was found near Mount Forest in July. McClintic pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in April 2010.

Rafferty’s trial started on March 5 and has seen many twists and turns.

McClintic initially told investigators that she lured Tori at Rafferty’s behest and he raped and killed the little girl. She changed that statement drastically in January 2012 and said it was she, not Rafferty, who wielded the hammer that killed Tori.

The statement shocked everyone. McClintic maintained the rest was true, that she lured Tori because Rafferty told her to, that they went to a secluded spot near Mount Forest, that he raped her there.

Her testimony still formed the foundation of the Crown’s case against Rafferty; 61 witnesses were brought in, hundreds of photos were shown, much video surveillance played.

Derstine, however, has said McClintic abducted Tori to settle a drug debt and even “offered” the little girl sexually to Rafferty but he refused. McClintic then hammered Tori to death, he has said.

On Monday, Derstine pointed out to the jury that McClintic maintained a lie for almost three years that minimized her culpability in a child’s death. “She has perjured herself over and over and over again,” he told the 12 jurors who listened in rapt attention as Derstine talked.

The main courtroom on the 14th floor was packed as Derstine picked holes in McClintic’s testimony, dwelling on her extensive drug-abuse, propensity for violence and sadistic writings.

He also told the jurors that it was McClintic on surveillance video leading Tori away, it was McClintic again on video buying murder tools — a hammer and garbage bags from Home Depot in Guelph. Derstine, once again, pointed out that McClintic had opportunities to escape while Rafferty stopped at Tim Hortons to get tea and when he went to a friend’s home in Guelph to get Percocets.

She didn’t.

Derstine also theorized, again, that Tori’s abduction was not random, that McClintic knew the little girl.

“Of 326 students at the school (Oliver Stephens Public School), the one abducted was the one whose parents she knew,” he said, reminding jurors of the defence witness who saw McClintic enter the school.

(McClintic’s mother, Carol, sold OxyContin, the highly addictive painkillers, to Tori’s mother, Tara McDonald, and her boyfriend, James Goris. McDonald has acknowledged she’d met McClintic.)

The lawyer, who addressed the jury for the first time, also pointed out that if Rafferty was the architect of Tori’s abduction, he wouldn’t have stopped at a Tim Horton’s or chatted at leisure with a friend from whom he bought Percocets.

He reminded the jury that Rafferty had a blue knife in his car that he could have used as murder weapon.

The trial is set against the backdrop of an unspeakable tragedy, of a child’s brutal murder, Derstine acknowledged at the onset of his arguments, but he asked the jury to not let it overwhelm them.

“The fact that Michael Rafferty sleeps around is not to his credit but that does not make him into a murderer,” Derstine said, beseeching jurors to consider the evidence dispassionately. McClintic’s credibility is central, he said. “I suggest that you should have a hard time believing anything that she says. It is dangerous to rely on her evidence,” he said flatly.

Meanwhile, the soft-spoken Murphy walked slowly with the help of a cane. To a question about how Rafferty was holding up, asked: “How would you hold up?”

Rafferty defense ends with one witness

In the end, after days of speculation, Michael Rafferty did not testify and his defense opened and closed with just one witness and her testimony — a grandmother who saw Terri-Lynne McClintic go inside Tori Stafford’s school the day the little girl disappeared.

It was the first time evidence was presented suggesting McClintic went inside the school and that she may have targeted Tori.

The lone defense witness, a silver-haired, 60-year-old grandmother who cannot be named, said she was at Oliver Stephens Public School on the afternoon of April 8, 2009, to pick up her two grandchildren.

She had parked her van close to the front door of the school and, sometime after 3:18 p.m., saw a woman in a white jacket with long dark hair go inside the school. The witness did not see the woman leave the school but saw her again a little north of the school as she was driving home with her grandkids.

The grandmother told the jury that the young woman in the white jacket was stern-faced, looked straight ahead and walked quickly, as if on a mission.

The little girl, she said, was skipping happily along and chattering.

McClintic and Rafferty, then a couple, were arrested and charged a month after Tori’s abduction. The little girl’s remains were found near Mount Forest in July. McClintic pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in April 2010.

Rafferty’s trial started on March 5.

The grandmother told the jury she assumed the dark-haired woman was the little girl’s mother but said she had never seen her before. She told Dirk Derstine, Rafferty’s lawyer, that she particularly noticed the white jacket because it was a warm day and it was unusual for someone to be wearing a puffy jacket.

McClintic has admitted to being the woman in the white jacket who lured Tori that day but has always maintained it was a random abduction and she never entered the school.

In her testimony in March, she told the story of a drug-addicted couple who randomly picked up a young girl from school that day and used her for the man's sexual pleasure before McClintic killed her brutally. McClintic asserted again and again that Rafferty, then her boyfriend, had urged her to abduct a young girl and that she chose Tori because she was alone outside that day.

But Derstine accused her of abducting and murdering Tori to settle a drug debt. He suggested to McClintic that she even “offered” the little girl sexually to Rafferty, who declined. She then killed Tori while Rafferty was just a shocked bystander, Derstine contended.

McClintic maintained there was no drug debt and that she didn’t know Tori even though she had met Tara McDonald briefly when McDonald bought OxyContin from McClintic’s mother twice.

During cross-examination of the defense's only witness, Crown attorney Michael Carnegie indicated that she had been vague in two statements she gave to police in the days after Tori’s disappearance. He questioned her memory from that day.

But the grandmother, who admitted she was not happy to be testifying for the defense, stuck to her testimony that it was the same woman she saw enter the school who was with Tori soon after.

The defense will present closing arguments on Friday. The Crown will make its statement Monday, and the judge will give his instructions to the jury on Tuesday.

The Crown wrapped up its case last Thursday after eight grueling weeks. McClintic’s testimony formed the foundation of the Crown’s case against Rafferty, though McClintic drastically changed her statement on Jan. 13, 2012, saying that it was she, not Rafferty, who wielded the hammer that killed the little girl. But she steadfast maintained the rest of what she had said previously was accurate: that she lured Tori because Rafferty told her to, and that they went to a secluded spot near Mount Forest where he raped her twice.

Since March 5, the Crown has meticulously lined up evidence, including some forensics, against Rafferty. Crown Kevin Gowdey suggested in his opening address to the jury that this was a crime committed in tandem by McClintic and Rafferty, and that who specifically did what to the child was irrelevant.

The jury heard from 61 witnesses and saw 186 exhibits from the Crown`s side.

For eight weeks under trial, Rafferty has remained calm. He has chewed loudly on ice, scowled as McClintic testified, looked on with longing at a former girlfriend.

No one from his family has shown up during the trial.

Escort drops bombshell

Woman who thought she’d marry Rafferty gave him thousands earned as an escort

A woman who thought she had an exclusive relationship with accused child killer Michael Rafferty agreed to set up an escort service and give him the money, jurors in his murder trial heard Friday.

The former girlfriend, Charity Spitzig, testified she worked as an escort and gave Rafferty more than $16,000 in the six months before eight-year-old Tori's Stafford's slaying.

That sum included $500 deposited into Rafferty's account the day the eight-year-old Woodstock girl was abducted.

The revelation about the escort service drew gasps from at least one juror and some spectators in the court.

Spitzig, 26, is a mother of five who lived in London in 2009. She was one of many women who connected with Rafferty through the online dating site Plenty of Fish.

Spitzig testified one of her children had died.

Earlier in the trial, one of Rafferty's girlfriends said he was upset about a stepson who had died.

Spitzig testified Friday she hoped to marry Rafferty and "move on as a family."

"It was pretty promising -- exclusive, you could say," said Spitzig.

Spitzig, still living in Southwestern Ontario, said she and Rafferty discussed their financial situation.

"We discussed me going into the escorting business, which I did, and from there on in any money that I was making would go directly to him," Spitzig said.

Bank records presented in court show Spitzig deposited $16,835 into Rafferty's account from December 2008 to May 7, 2009.

That amount didn't include cash she handed to Rafferty directly, Spitzig testified.

On the morning of April 8, 2009, the day Tori vanished on her way home from school, Spitzig deposited $400.

About 1 p.m., she said, she received a message from Rafferty that he needed "gas money," prompting her to deposit another $100 into his account.

Rafferty told most of his girlfriends he was a dance instructor and contractor, but there's been no evidence so far that he was actively engaged in either occupation.

Following Spitzig's testimony, Rafferty's lawyer, Dirk Derstine, asked for the jury to be excused to discuss legal issues.

When the jurors returned, Justice Thomas Heeney cautioned them that testimony that Rafferty was dating numerous women, including an escort who supplied him with money, isn't relevant to the charges he faces in the Stafford case.

"All of this may lead you to believe that Mr. Rafferty was a philandering cad or worse . . . Whatever you may think of Mr. Rafferty's character, it has no relevance to whether he is guilty of the crimes he is charge with," Heeney said.

The court also heard from Elysia Haid, 23, who testified she and Rafferty had sex in his Woodstock home the day after Stafford was murdered.

Haid was a Sarnia college student in the spring of 2009 and met Rafferty through the Plenty of Fish dating website.

She first met him face-to-face at a hockey game in London on April 4, 2009. She said Rafferty texted her on April 8, the day Stafford was abducted, and asked her about getting together the next day.

Haid said she went to Rafferty's house on the morning of April 9, went for a drive and then had sex with him in the afternoon.

When she left, she testified, Rafferty told her he was going to a candlelight vigil for Tori.

In his cross-examination, Derstine noted Haid seemed unsure of the date of that encounter in a earlier statement to police. But Haid insisted it was April 9.

The court also heard from three other women who met Rafferty through online dating and chat sites.

Patrycja Demidas, Celina Horvath and Tara MacLelland were all questioned about records showing they'd received calls or messages on from Rafferty's BlackBerry on April 8.

Demidas said the calls were about an "argument" she was having with Rafferty and the other two women had no recollection of the calls.

Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in Tori's death.

Terry-Lynne McClintic, 21, has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the case and was sentenced to life in prison.

Stafford Autopsy Pictures Shown to Jury

By the time Victoria Stafford's remains were found - clad only in butterfly earrings and her Hannah Montana T-shirt with the words "a girl can dream'' - they were so badly decomposed that it was impossible to tell if she was sexually assaulted, court heard Tuesday.

What is clear is that the eight-year-old girl died from at least four hammer blows to her head, and 16 of her ribs were broken or fractured, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist testified.

The Crown alleges Michael Rafferty, 31, raped Tori before killing her, but Dr. Michael Pollanen said that cannot be determined through the pathology.

Tori's remains were so decomposed by the time of the autopsy on July 20, 2009 - one day after a police officer acting on a hunch found them - much of the physical structures in that region of the body had deteriorated completely, he said.

Her body, which lay in the fetal position, was wrapped in garbage bags and placed beneath an evergreen tree, court heard. Large rocks from a nearby pile were put on top, forming a "sort of clandestine grave,'' Pollanen said.

By the time she was found 103 days after she went missing, Tori's remains were unrecognizable, and had to be identified through dental records.

A broken piece of a hair clip and the earrings court has heard Tori borrowed from her mom were in the garbage bags with her.

The Grade 3 student from Woodstock, Ont., was found in an isolated nook of a farmer's field far from home and out of earshot from the nearest house months after she went missing on April 8, 2009.

Rafferty has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm, and kidnapping.

Tori's mother Tara McDonald wept silently while autopsy photographs were shown and Tori's father Rodney Stafford left the courtroom.

Before the photos were displayed, Ontario Superior Court Justice Thomas Heeney told jurors to brace themselves, saying what they were about to see "cannot help but tug at your heartstrings.'' But he said they had to decide the case without emotion.

"We are, after all, dealing with the death of a little girl,'' Heeney said.

"You've been warned about graphic images being shown before and they've no doubt been disturbing, but I can tell you that this will be the worst that you will see during the course of this case, so you really need to steel yourselves.''

Pollanen, who did the autopsy, also warned jurors, saying such images are "confronting'' even for pathologists.

"The body is going to be in a state of decomposition,'' Pollanen said. "So, while you will recognize some of the body you might not recognize all of it.''

When her remains were transported to the coroner's office in Toronto, Pollanen said it was obvious they were dealing with a child.

"The teeth are not fully developed and the bones are not quite fully developed at that point, and obviously she's quite small.''

The remains were in a moderately advanced stage of decomposition, to the point where some parts had already become skeletonized, he testified.

Pollanen said Tori was hit with such force that the fractures radiated to her face, 16 of her ribs were broken or fractured, some in several places, and even her liver was damaged while still alive.

In court, Rafferty wore a purple shirt and purple striped tie - the same shade of deep purple as the ribbons and clothing Tori's family has taken to wearing in her memory because it was her favorite color.

Rafferty's ex-girlfriend Terri-Lynne McClintic, 21, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty two years ago to first-degree murder in Tori's death.

Rafferty worked near where Tori was killed, court hears

The trial of a man accused of killing Victoria Stafford is hearing that he was familiar with areas near where the eight-year-old was killed, including working at a landfill site a few side roads away.

Michael Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping in the girl's April 8, 2009, death.

Tori's remains were found in a farmer's field just southeast of Mount Forest, Ont., in July 2009 and Rafferty's trial has heard he went to middle school near there.

An ex-girlfriend testified today that while they were dating a few years ago, Rafferty often took her on drives down side roads in areas south of Mount Forest and seemed to know where he was going.

Court also heard today from a man who employed Rafferty at his landscaping business, and he testified that Rafferty worked for him at landfill sites in the area, including one about five kilometers from where Tori was killed.

Other women Rafferty dated testified today, including one who was a friend of Tori's family, who said Rafferty consoled her during the girl's disappearance by saying he believed she would be found safe.

Amanda Chambers testified that when she was helping search for Tori on April 9, 2009, Rafferty texted her to say he too was out searching.

The next day, Chambers says, they met up at a Tim Hortons. She was upset that Tori was still missing, so Rafferty told her Tori would be all right.

"He kept telling me he believed she's OK," Chambers testified. "I'm sure she'll return safe."

Another woman who had chatted online with Rafferty after meeting him through the same dating website, Plenty of Fish, testified that Rafferty changed his status message shortly after Tori disappeared to read: "Bring Tori home."

Rafferty spoke of abducting children

A woman who dated Rafferty shortly after the disappearance of Tori Stafford said he spoke to her about abducting children.

The woman met Rafferty on the website Plenty of Fish just after Easter 2009 and saw him often over the next two to three weeks.

She said Rafferty followed the news on the Stafford case closely and claimed to have inside information on Tori's mother's drug habits.

He once told her that children who are are kidnapped come to look at their abductors as parents.

She said Rafferty's car had no back seat. He told her that he was installing bucket seats.

Rafferty also told her he was a dance instructor and contractor. Rafferty was taking oxycontin -- explaining to her that he had colon cancer.

The court also heard from another long-time female friend of Rafferty who lived in Guelph. She said Rafferty visited her in early May 2009 and his car had no back seat.

The court also heard two more neighbors of Rafferty when he lived in Woodstock. They both saw a car seat put out in Rafferty's trash in April 2009 confirming testimony from two other neighbors.

UPDATE: 1:06Two neighbors of Michael Rafferty said they saw a car seat in a garbage pile front of his home.

Michael Griswold and David Pushie said, both residents of Tennyson Street, said they saw the car seat, covered by a couch during a spring clean up week in Woodstock on April 2009 about a week after Victoria Stafford disappeared.

Police officials testified the bottom portion of Rafferty's rear car seat was missing when it was seized in May and was never located.

Griswold said the car seat appeared to be ripped with a sharp object.

Terri-Lynne McClintic testified Rafferty told her to cut out part of the seat because it could not be cleaned.

Defense lawyer suggested to Griswold that he saw Rafferty remove the seat earlier to install speakers but Griswold said he did not recall that.

Griswold said the rear seat was in the car when he helped Rafferty move his car from Guelph a year earlier to move in with his mother on Tennyson Street.

The court also heard from a woman who briefly dated Rafferty at about the same time. She said his car seemed very dirty and littered and the rear seat appeared to be covered with a blanket.

She said Rafferty appeared "nervous" and "needy" and she moved to break off the relationship quickly.

UPDATE 11:25 a.m.: Dirk Derstine, the defense attorney for Michael Rafferty, attempted Thursday to discount the DNA evidence linking Tori Stafford to Rafferty's car.

Derstine's cross examination of forensic expert Jennifer McLean began Thursday morning in Rafferty's murder trial.

McLean agreed with Derstine that there are a number of ways that DNA can be transferred to an object.

McLean also agreed that "sperm cell" DNA traces found in multiple sites in Rafferty's car did not necessarily come from semen. McLean said there was only one sample from the car that was definitely linked to semen.

Derstine then focused on the tiny spot of blood on a gym bag in the back seat that appeared to have mixed DNA from Stafford Rafferty and other sources.

Derstine presented McLean with a number of scenarios on how mixed DNA could have appeared on the bag.

The court then recessed for 20 minutes.

Rafferty has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in the April 8, 2009 disappearance of the Woodstock girl.

Tori’s ‘missing’ poster found in Rafferty’s home, jury hears

Warning: This story contains graphic details.

A police search of the tidy, three-level duplex shared by Michael Rafferty and his mother in Woodstock yielded numerous items linking Mr. Rafferty to the murder of Tori Stafford and to the woman jointly charged in Tori’s death, a jury heard on Thursday.

They included a “missing” poster of the eight-year-old girl identical to one found in the home of Terri-Lynne McClintic, who has confessed to murdering Tori. Also found was a peacoat alleged to have been used to conceal Tori on the back seat of Mr. Rafferty’s Honda Civic after she was kidnapped.

The Honda, too, was closely examined, Mr. Rafferty’s trial heard.

The evidence came from Ontario Provincial Police Constable Gary Scoyne, the lead identification officer in the Stafford investigation.

Mr. Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and abduction.

In April, 2010, Ms. McClintic, now 21, was convicted of murdering Tori and is serving a life sentence in a federal women’s prison.

On Thursday, the jury had its first glimpse of Mr. Rafferty’s Tennyson Street home, which was in marked contrast to the rundown house two or three kilometres away Ms. McClintic had shared with her mother.

Inside and out, the grey-and-white frame duplex on a quiet street with a big grassy yard at the back was neat as a pin.

Four cats also lived in the house, and three of them appeared in the police slide show that accompanied Constable Scoyne’s testimony.

The two homes were searched shortly after the two accused were arrested in May, 2009, six weeks after Tori’s death.

And one item that immediately drew police attention at the Rafferty home was an orange-handled claw hammer found in a closet that was very similar to the one believed to have been used to beat the little girl to death in a secluded patch of woods northeast of Woodstock.

That hammer was not the murder weapon – which has never been located – Constable Scoyne told prosecutor Michael Carnegie.

With the “missing” posters and the peacoat, police found a Wal-Mart receipt for hair dye that matched a box of hair dye discovered in the McClintic house.

There was also a blue folding knife similar to one that Ms. McClintic had said was in the Honda when Tori was abducted outside her school.

There was also a scribbled note that referred to “Carol” – the name of Ms. McClintic’s mother.

A Sony digital memory card was found too, containing pictures of Ms. McClintic mugging for the camera in a Woodstock motel.

All those items were on the main floor.

Upstairs were three bedrooms, one converted into an office, and in Mr. Rafferty’s small, blue-walled bedroom was a prescription bottle of oxycodone pills in his name and three empty unlabelled pill bottles.

During cross-examination by Mr. Rafferty’s lawyer, Dirk Derstine, the courtroom boomed to the sound of some death-rap music found on Ms. McClintic’s iPod.

Devoted entirely to violence, torture and murder, the songs were by Necro, a Brooklyn rapper of whom Ms. McClintic has admitted being a big fan at the time of Tori’s death.

Almost all the lyrics are unprintable, but a sample from a song entitled The Most Sadistic reads: “Walk, walk or get stabbed with a fork, I’ll be remembered after I’m dismembered.”

Since her initial confession to police, Ms. McClintic has radically altered her accounts of events in one key regard.

She now insists that she – not Mr. Rafferty – wielded the hammer that killed Tori.

Mr. Derstine had the music played in court, as he has done before, in an attempt to reinforce his contention that Ms. McClintic did not just kill Tori, she orchestrated the entire crime.

The jury later heard Constable Scoyne describe the contents of Mr. Rafferty’s Honda Civic. Items included a laptop computer, a BlackBerry, clothing, shoes, a gym bag, another hammer, sanding disks, condoms and $935 in cash.

When the trial resumes next week, scientists from Toronto’s Centre of Forensic Sciences will tell the jury what they learned from examining those items.

As well, the trial heard that while Mr. Rafferty was in a police cell in Woodstock after his arrest, he asked two undercover police officers if they had any OxyContin. He told them he had a serious drug habit and that if he could not get some of the pills, “it was going to be a hard few days.”

McClintic 'driving force' in Tori's death, lawyer says

A defense lawyer suggested in court Friday that Terri-Lynne McClintic was the "driving force" in Victoria (Tori) Stafford's death, and that jurors are being forced to rely on the convicted killer's testimony to decide what really happened.

McClintic, 21, is testifying at the London, Ont., trial of Michael Thomas Rafferty, her former boyfriend, who is accused in Tori's death.

Tori, 8, vanished after walking away from her school in Woodstock, Ont., on April 8, 2009. The Grade 3 student's remains were found three months later, in a rural area near Mount Forest, Ont.

McClintic later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence in the 2009 death of the schoolgirl. Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and abduction.

On Friday, defense lawyer Dirk Derstine questioned McClintic about Rafferty's knowledge of Oliver Stephens Public School in Woodstock, which Tori attended, as well as his knowledge of the little girl herself.

McClintic said that to her knowledge Rafferty did not know Tori's mother, Tara McDonald, her stepfather James Goris or Tori herself. As well, he lived on the other end of Woodstock.

McClintic has previously testified that on the afternoon of April 8, 2009, she led Tori to a waiting car that Rafferty was driving, after which they then drove along Highway 401, eventually making several stops in the Guelph, Ont., area. Those stops included a visit to a Tim Hortons, during which McClintic said she and Tori were alone in the vehicle while Rafferty went inside.

On Friday, Derstine pressed McClintic on why she didn't simply walk away with Tori when they were at the Tim Hortons if Rafferty was directing the abduction and had said he was going to sexually assault the girl, as she has claimed.

"I don’t understand how my mind was working that day," McClintic said.

McClintic also could not explain why she didn't seek help in Guelph when they stopped to buy drugs or when they were at the Home Depot.

Derstine suggested that she was the driving force behind abduction, pointing out that she bought the "murder tools" at the Home Depot and that she was the person who walked with Tori when she left her school.

"Largely what we have is your word of who was the engine in this case, who made it all happen," Derstine said.

McClintic agreed, but reiterated that she has testified that she was given instructions.

Derstine suggested to McClintic it was she who brought Tori to the car in a friendly manner and Rafferty thought nothing of it; that later on she said the girl was taken for a drug debt and offered her to Rafferty "sexually."

The defense lawyer further suggested that when Rafferty was uninterested, McClintic directed him to drive to a rural area and told him to walk away from the vehicle because Tori was scared of him.

Derstine said it was then McClintic who murdered the girl and Rafferty returned horrified but offered to help clean up the crime. McClintic said that was not the case.

"Your characterization of him as being the driving force behind this girl’s death was a lie and that it was you," Derstine said.

But McClintic disagreed with all of the suggestions Derstine made.

Derstine also questioned McClintic about other inconsistencies in her story, beginning from the time when Tori was abducted to her recent testimony in court.

He asked her about a statement she made to police in January 2012 in which she claimed it was Rafferty's idea to stop at the Home Depot, but she decided what to get. McClintic said she did so because she didn't want to testify in the current trial.

Going back to the day of the abduction, Derstine suggested McClintic had to get rid of her clothing, including her shoes and white jacket, because she was covered in blood as a result of killing Tori and transporting her body.

McClintic denied that was the case.

Jurors also learned another detail about McClintic's troubled past: As a child she killed a dog by putting it in a microwave, but made up a story that the animal was injured by another neighborhood dog and had to be put down.

Derstine said people accepted the story because no one could believe that McClintic "could be so cruel to such an innocent."

Derstine wrapped up his cross-examination late Friday morning, marking the end of McClintic's testimony. The Crown then called its ninth witness to testify, OPP Det. Const. Colin Darmon.

Darmon, who was called in to help with the investigation after Tori's disappearance, took part in reviewing wiretap evidence and social networking sites for leads, as well as investigating various persons of interest.

Earlier Friday, jurors heard clips of rap songs that McClintic once kept on her iPod, including violent lyrics that the young woman admitted she listened to when angry.

Derstine began playing a clip on Thursday afternoon of songs by a "death rapper" known as Necro, the artist that McClintic once told police she was listening to on the day that Tori was abducted.

The lyrics of the initial song played for jurors on Thursday were full of blood-and-death imagery. But McClintic told Derstine on Thursday that she didn't remember what music she was listening to as she approached Tori.

On Friday morning, Derstine played clips of a Necro song called Garbage Bag, which describes a violent murder. The chorus says there is a garbage bag with your "name written on it." The lyrics are similar to letters that McClintic wrote when she was in a youth facility in 2007 and 2008, which described the hypothetical torture and murder of a person.

Derstine then played another song called Dead Body Disposal, and the defense lawyer suggested the lyrics are similar to McClintic's writings. She agreed and said she had Necro on her iPod around the time of Tori's disappearance. McClintic said she listened to the artist when she was angry.

Rafferty peered intently at the lyrics of the songs as the defense played more for the jurors.

Derstine continued to ask whether she listened to Necro as she walked up to Tori's school on April 8, 2009, but McClintic said she did not.

However, she did tell police on April 12, 2009, that she was listening to the artist the afternoon Tori disappeared.

Rafferty had 'powerful role' in McClintic's life

Terri-Lynne McClintic told jurors in a London, Ont., court Thursday that her former boyfriend "had a very powerful role" in her life at the time that Victoria (Tori) Stafford was abducted and killed.

McClintic, 21, is serving a life sentence for the eight-year-old's death after pleading guilty to first-degree murder almost two years ago.

She has been testifying at the trial of her former boyfriend, Michael Thomas Rafferty, 31, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and abduction in the death of the Grade 3 student.

Under cross-examination Thursday, McClintic was asked about the relationship she had with Rafferty.

McClintic said the two were merely seeing one another. However, the court has previously heard that when McClintic was arrested on an outstanding warrant shortly after Tori went missing, she listed Rafferty as her boyfriend on a prison contact form so the two could stay in touch.

Jurors heard Thursday about an occasion in which the couple once visited a pawn shop, when McClintic said Rafferty used her finger to test a ring size, saying she could be the "lucky girl" one day.

Rafferty raised his eyebrows and appeared shocked in the prisoner's box when McClintic recounted the pawn shop anecdote.

Defense lawyer Dirk Derstine asked McClintic to explain why she went along with Rafferty — if according to her testimony, he was the person who wanted to abduct a child — when the two only had a casual relationship in her mind.

"At that point in time, he had a very powerful role in my life," she said.

Derstine also pressed McClintic about the circumstances surrounding Tori's disappearance, and her reasons for holding back from police about what happened in the days that followed the abduction.

But as McClintic stated several times Thursday, she said she was unable to believe that she was involved in the girl's death so couldn't recount what happened.

Tori vanished from her hometown of Woodstock, Ont., after leaving school on April 8, 2009.

Her remains were found three months later in a rural area near Mount Forest, Ont.

McClintic has told jurors that she is the person who used a hammer to kill Tori, testimony that is at odds with what she told police almost three years ago, when she claimed that Rafferty killed the schoolgirl.

Derstine asked McClintic what she would say a year from now, if her testimony would be any different.

But McClintic replied that her story will stay the same.

"It's taken me this long to come to terms to accept that I was capable of doing something like this," McClintic said.

And she again insisted that her current version of what happened is the truth.

"So yes, it did take me time to come to terms with that. But now I have come to terms with that and I'm sitting here today telling the truth. And it doesn't get any more real than that. My testimony wouldn't be any different from a year today than it is today," McClintic said.

On Thursday, Derstine also went over McClintic's criminal record, which was entered into evidence last week. The first entry included two charges of assault, which Derstine said were a result of altercations with her mother. The jury was shown a picture of McClintic's mother with a black eye.

McClintic choked her mother with her left hand as she punched with her right after the two got into a fight over McClintic's dismissal from work, Derstine said, adding McClintic's mother lost partial vision in her eye as a result.

McClintic said her mom poked her so she hit her back.

The other charge involved McClintic punching her mother in the back of the head. According to McClintic, the two got into a mutual confrontation and her mother burned her with a cigarette.

In court, Derstine listed a number of other assault charges, many the result of altercations with other inmates in youth facilities.

McClintic replied she has seen many counselors over her issues with rage, mostly while in correctional institutions.

Derstine asked McClintic how she could later remember remarkable details of Tori's disappearance, but not of fights that she had been involved in while serving time in prison.

"I’m not denying that I have a history of violence, but I'm not violent towards children and I've never hurt a child in my life. To try to fathom and comprehend the fact that a child lost their life by my hands is something I could not comprehend," McClintic said.

Derstine also pressed McClintic about entries from a journal she kept in 2007 and 2008 — well before Tori went missing from Woodstock in April 2009.

Derstine presented a page from June 2007, which was titled "Respect." The fictional entry described killing a person.

Another page, "Locked Up," described an actual incident where McClintic stabbed a person during a robbery.

Derstine asked her about the event, which resulted in her incarceration between September 2007 and July 2008.

McClintic approached two men waving a knife and demanding money or drugs. She stabbed one of them, and when police arrived she refused to drop her weapon even though police had their guns drawn. She also got into a physical altercation with the officers, punching one in the face.

In describing the event, Derstine suggested McClintic had no remorse.

McClintic said she "didn't feel certain emotions" at the time.

Derstine said McClintic had worn a blue bandana during the robbery. In court, Derstine showed a picture that she later posted on her Facebook page, in which she was also wearing a blue bandana — a decision the defense lawyer suggested was a bid by McClintic to present a violent, tough image.

 

Tori Stafford murder trial:

Terri-Lynne McClintic describes killing little girl

Rosie DiManno

(Toronto Star)

LONDON, ON — I can’t begin at the heart-shattering end, with a confessed murderess wielding her hammer against the covered face of an 8-year-old child.

Yes, hide her face so you can’t see what’s being destroyed.

I can’t begin in the middle, with an accused killer in the back seat of a Honda Civic with the little girl, allegedly raping her repeatedly.

I can’t even begin at the beginning, with Tori Stafford trustingly putting her small hand into the palm of the teenager who’s admitted to abduction: Come see my Shih Tzu puppy, sweetheart.

There is no soft place to land in any of the ghastly testimony that Terri-Lynne McClintic delivered in a quiet, halting voice from the witness stand Tuesday, entire minutes of silence passing between questions and answers.

It is a wrenching narrative that can’t be told with dignity for the victim or sensitivity for her parents, both of whom listened with expressions of horror and excruciating pain.

Tara McDonald buried her head in her fists, a curtain of dark hair obstructing the view of a mother’s grief. Rodney Stafford wiped tears away with his shirt sleeve. They came to bear witness to a beloved daughter defiled and slain. These are the images they will carry to their graves, and Tori’s voice in McClintic’s mouth.

“Don’t let him do it to me again,” the child had begged.

“Stay with me,” she’d pleaded.

McClintic ignored Tori’s screams, walked away from the torture being inflicted on a child, turned her back on the youngster she’d procured.

And then, says McClintic, she killed her.

Stopped gazing mutely, stupidly, at the horizon from where she’d been standing at the edge of a field.

“I went back to the vehicle and I savagely murdered that little girl.”

She was the one, McClintic told court, and not Michael Rafferty, who’s on trial for first-degree murder, sexual assault and kidnapping. And though McClintic had pleaded guilty to first-degree murder two years ago, is serving a life sentence for it, the raw statement, the claim, stunned everyone in the packed courtroom.

It just hung there, the inhumanity of so beastly a crime.

The witness doesn’t look much like she did in a Woodstock courtroom on April 30, 2010. Her hair has been lopped off, cut to chin-length and stylishly framing a round face that still carries pudgy baby fat. McClintic is 21 now. In the defendant’s dock, 31-year-old Rafferty has shorn his hair from a week ago, shaved now into a military cut, like a jarhead.

He keeps his head down mostly, scribbling on a note pad.

Under direct examination from Crown Attorney Kevin Gowdey, McClintic described what she says happened late on the afternoon of April 8, 2009, a few hours after Tori had been lured away while leaving Oliver Stephens elementary school in Woodstock.

She’d stared at a silo in the distance, trying to block out the sounds of assault coming from the car parked about 12 metres away from where she stood.

“I kept having flashbacks. Sometimes it was like I wasn’t even there. I realized I needed to do something so I turned back to the vehicle and . . . when I saw what was going on, all I saw was myself when I was that age and all the anger and hate and rage that I’d had and blame that I still feel towards myself came boiling up out of me.”

It was all about her rage, you see, not what Tori was suffering; Tori who was still alive at that moment, lying on the ground alongside the Honda, as McClintic recalled it. “I . . . I . . . I started kicking her.”

A garbage bag — one of those McClintic had bought earlier — was placed over Tori’s face. Who put it on her, Gowdey asked? “I believe it was me.”

Then, in the passive voice: “She was struck with a hammer.”

Gowdey: “Who struck her with a hammer?”

McClintic: “Me.”

This is the Crown’s witness, their key witness against the accused.

Then Rafferty, McClintic testified, began “putting the rest of her” in more garbage bags.

“He yelled at me to help him . . . that I was in just as far as him now. So I helped him.”

Together, court heard, they buried Tori under a pile of rocks beneath a tree. The child’s remains would be found 103 days later.

Yet McClintic knew how it would end for Tori, realized it when the couple was driving away from the school, with the child sitting on the floor in the back seat, Rafferty’s pea jacket thrown over her, and certainly knew when they turned down a rural laneway north of Guelph.

“We can’t keep her and we can’t take her back,” McClintic says Rafferty told her.

It could have halted there, if McClintic had done . . . something, anything. Instead, she chose not to challenge Rafferty. So she made small talk with Tori, convinced Rafferty to at least allow the child to sit up.

“There was a little bit of conversation with Tori. That was me trying to reassure her, tell her everything was going to be okay. I guess reassure myself at the same time.”

Stop it here, McClintic’s account of what happened to that frightened yet preternaturally brave youngster. Go back to the start, a few hours earlier, a few months earlier.

McClintic fatefully crossed paths with Rafferty in February 2009, while picking up a pizza. She was a teenager of low self-esteem, born to a mother who’d given her away to “a fellow dancer” at birth, raised by this woman who was both an alcoholic and drug addict. By her late teens, McClintic — who only finished Grade 8 — was also a heavy user of OxyContin and other drugs, with six arrests on her record, charges ranging from robbery to assault.

On the day McClintic met Rafferty she had sex with him in his car.

They dated, though Rafferty could be cruel, “like he was so much better than me, making me feel real down on myself.”

That April 8, McClintic, after signing in at a local employment centre, returned home and found Rafferty waiting in the driveway. Rafferty said he was going to Guelph and would she like to come? Instead, he parked beside Oliver Stephens school. “So, are you gonna do it?” he asked McClintic, she told court. “I said, ‘do what?’ He said, ‘I knew it. I knew you were all talk, no action.’ ” She understood what he meant. Earlier in their relationship, Rafferty had casually asked: “Would you think it was weird if I asked you to kidnap somebody?”

McClintic told court she became defensive when Rafferty accused her of being all talk and no action, ready to prove herself game. “He said I just want you to grab someone. He said it’ll be easy. ‘All you have to do is talk about dogs or candy or something like that.’

“He told me he wanted a younger female because the younger they were, the easier they were to manipulate.”

She got out of the car. “My plan was to say I couldn’t find anybody.” As she walked toward the school, Rafferty pulled up closer, parking at a nearby retirement home. Kids were just getting out of school. McClintic spotted Tori, a little girl walking by herself. McClintic fell in alongside. “I remember asking her name and if she wanted me to walk with her. I remember her telling me her name was Victoria but everybody called her Tori.”

They chatted about dogs. Tori said she had a Shih Tzu. McClintic said she had one too, a puppy in the car, inviting the child to come have a look. As they crossed the road “she grabbed on to my hand.”

When Tori peeked into the back seat of the Honda, McClintic pushed her in and they took off.

From the back seat, a frightened Tori asked where they were going. McClintic said she tried to calm the child by asking her favourite colour (purple), favourite time of year (Halloween) and favourite TV character (Hannah Montana).

They drove to a Tim Hortons where McClintic stayed with Tori while Rafferty went inside. They stopped to buy Percocet at a dealer’s house. When they made another pit stop so Rafferty could withdraw money from an ATM, Tori told McClintic not to leave her with the man. In Guelph, they pulled into a Home Depot where, as instructed, McClintic purchased garbage bags and a claw hammer.

Tori demanded to know “when could I go home?”

“I said I’d make sure she got home, that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”

She lied.

Coming off the highway, bumping over country roads, Rafferty began masturbating as he drove. That’s when he said they couldn’t keep Tori.

In a secluded copse, with McClintic allegedly out of the vehicle, Rafferty clambered into the back seat. “I knew what was going to happen and I didn’t want to be there when it happened,” she testified. “I believed he was going to rape Tori.”

He did.

“I could hear voices, yells. I heard Tori scream.”

McClintic said Rafferty summoned her because Tori needed to go to the bathroom. “She grabbed on to my hand.” The child was naked except for her Hannah Montana T-shirt. As the child urinated near the car, McClintic noticed “blood in the snow.”

“I told her I was sorry. She said, ‘Just don’t let him do it again.’ I told her she was a very strong girl.”

When McClintic returned Tori to the car, “she still had a hold of my hand. She didn’t want to let go. She asked me to stay with her. So I got in the front seat and I tried to hold on to her hand. But I knew what was about to happen and that I couldn’t be there for that.”

Again, McClintic left Tori to her terrible ordeal.

And then this woman — who professes such tender feelings for Tori, who couldn’t bear to watch a rape — kicked her, bludgeoned her, killed her.

*     *     *     *     *

Columnists

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No real justice in Rafferty verdict, law is in this monster’s corner

( Mark Bonokoski )

After the jury recently delivered its first-degree murder verdict against child-sex killer Michael Rafferty, Sun Media’s flagship newspaper, the Toronto Sun, ran a front-page headline with just one word.

Justice, it read.

If only it were so.

As I stated in my opening monologue Thursday while guest-hosting on the Charles Adler Show for the Sun News Network, the prime emotion I felt that day was anger.

In fact, I was livid.

While pleased the jury in London, Ont., had come to the right verdict, despite the judge withholding evidence that would have revealed Michael Rafferty as being as odious and reprehensible as they come, I was livid that all this country will do with monsters like him is send them to prison for a minimum of 25 years.

And then, after 25 years of living and breathing, they are allowed to roll the dice for parole while their victims, and their victims’ families and friends, have no dice at all.

Tori Stafford is no longer in life’s game, and hasn’t been for three long years.

At the age of eight, her innocence allowed her to be lured away by monsters, and she paid the price no child should ever have to pay.

The fact that Michael Rafferty, now 31, might one day walk away from prison should never happen.

In fact, it should never have any chance of happening if Canadians truly believe in true justice.

But the day will come. And who knows?

Rafferty will only be in his 50s when his mandatory

25 years are served — he already has three in the can — and he applies for his version of Freedom 55.

He will have no doubt found God by then, have become a “changed man,” and likely have a lawyer who can play the sweetest violin this side of Woodstock.

If the heroin-addicted Craig Munro, one of the most brutal cop killers who ever existed, can be paroled, why not Michael Rafferty?

The law is now on his side.

Even in their victim impact statements, which were read out Tuesday at Rafferty’s official sentencing, those left to grieve among Tori Stafford’s family were not allowed to say what they really feel.

The law has them muted.

They could not say, for example, that they wish Michael Rafferty could be tortured and then hanged.

Or that he be put in the general prison population so his fellow inmates could decide whether he lives or dies from a shank through the heart, or ends up crippled for life.

They cannot express hatred, or even wish him ill will.

All they can do, by law, is state how the loss of little Tori Stafford at Michael Rafferty’s hands, and the hands of his girlfriend, Terri-Lynne McClintic, has turned their own lives upside down.

This gives little closure. How could it?

Anger can assist at bringing closure. Tori’s father, Rodney Stafford, managed to blurt out to Rafferty that he was a “piece of shit.”

Good for him.

The Sun Media newspaper chain, beginning with the Toronto Sun, has long advocated capital punishment for first-degree killers.

But it is a tough sell today.

Some editors, and some publishers, are not the advocates of the ultimate penalty. But I have no qualms.

If Tori Stafford were my daughter, I would want Michael Rafferty dead and, being the age I am now, I would likely try to make that happen.

Doing the time for the crime would bother me none at this stage and, as a father, I do not suspect for a moment that I am alone.

That’s why I was so angry when the verdict came down. It wasn’t justice for Tori Stafford, not real justice.

In fact, it wasn’t even close.

A referendum on the return of capital punishment will never happen because the politicians of today will never let it happen.

And the next Michael Rafferty knows it.

In fact, the next Michael Rafferty is counting on it.

Tears of joy and relief greet verdict as Michael Rafferty found guilty on all counts

(Toronto Star)

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

Michael Rafferty was found guilty of first-degree murder, abduction and sexual assault of little Tori Stafford after a gut-wrenching, 10-week trial.

As the first verdict, for first-degree murder, was read out Friday night, Tori’s family reacted with tears and a resounding “yes.” Rodney Stafford, Tori’s father, held hands with his mother and his girlfriend, and cried openly, as did Tori’s mother, Tara McDonald, who sat a few feet away with her partner.

Veteran police officers including Bill Renton and Mike Bickerton, who have been on the case for three years, had tears in their eyes.

Rafferty did not show any emotion, did not get up from the bench in the prisoner’s box as the jury left the courtroom after delivering the verdict.

Outside the courthouse, where dozens of reporters and people waited, there were loud cheers and whoops of joy as Rodney Stafford walked out flanked by family.

“We got justice,” he said.

He said he wanted to scream in the courtroom but could not do it. “There was excitement but at the same time, a sense of loss as Tori is not coming home.”

McDonald did not talk to reporters. Her boyfriend, James Goris, said “thank God” as they left the court.

Crowns lawyers Kevin Gowdey, Michael Carnegie, Brian Crockett and Stephanie Venne came out to briefly talk to reporters and were clearly emotional. Gowdey called it an “unprecedented investigation, thorough and extremely professional.”

Rafferty’s lawyer, Dirk Derstine, said his client was disappointed with the verdict, which came at 9:30. Earlier, the sequestered jurors returned to the courtroom with four questions for the judge, each related to sexual assault.

Tori, 8, disappeared while on her way home from school in Woodstock on April 8, 2009. Terri-Lynne McClintic and Rafferty, then lovers, were arrested and charged a month later. Tori’s body was found near Mount Forest in July. McClintic pleaded guilty in April 2010 and was sentenced to life in prison.

Rafferty, 31, had pleaded not guilty to all three counts. His trial started on March 5 in London and saw its share of drama.

The most explosive moment came with McClintic, the Crown’s star witness. She had initially told investigators she lured Tori at Rafferty’s behest and that he raped and killed the child. But she dramatically changed that statement in January, and at trial testified it was she, not Rafferty, who killed Tori. She maintained the rest was true, that he had pushed her into abducting Tori and that he had raped the child.

The Crown still based its case on McClintic’s testimony, arguing that it did not matter who wielded the hammer that killed Tori, that they were both equally guilty. The Crown also maintained that Rafferty orchestrated the events of April 8, 2009 and that McClintic was just his “violent pawn.”

The Crown called 61 witnesses, filed 185 exhibits and closed its case on April 27.

In closing arguments, Derstine attacked McClintic’s credibility, calling her a prolific and accomplished liar and saying she was the driving force behind Tori’s abduction and murder. He said McClintic abducted Tori for a drug debt and offered her to Rafferty sexually, but that he said no. Derstine said McClintic then killed her in a fit of rage.

Rafferty, who spent most days in the courtroom listening attentively to testimony, did not testify.

As the ghastly trial rolled on, sordid details emerged about Rafferty: his womanizing, his drug use, how he pimped off one of his girlfriends and lived off the avails of prostitution.

There were some tense moments, and some poignant ones. Through it all, Tori was not forgotten.

The 4-foot-5, 62-pound girl, with cropped blond hair and a button nose on an elfin face. The little girl who hopped and ran instead of walking.

Her family was a constant presence in the courtroom. Her father, mother, grandparents, aunts and uncles showed up every day and all wore purple in some form — a shirt, a tie, a ribbon, a wristband. Something purple.

Purple was Tori’s favorite color.

When Rafferty’s trial started on March 5, Rodney Stafford told reporters he wouldn’t let anyone forget Tori and he kept that promise: he held a media scrum every day of the trial to talk about her.

Tori’s mother once said those who knew Tori came under her spell.

The little girl stole everyone’s heart, even in death. Veteran police officers lost their composure on the stand, while spectators, mostly strangers, shed tears when they heard testimony about her.

That was Tori.

Prosecutors close case against Michael Rafferty

Christie Blatchford

(National Post)

Michael Rafferty doesn’t have to lift a finger to prove his innocence, but should he take the witness stand at his trial next week, he will have what Ricky Ricardo once famously told his wife on the ancient I Love Lucy TV series – “some ‘splainin’ to do.”

The 31-year-old Mr. Rafferty is pleading not guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and first-degree murder in the April 8, 2009, slaying of the little Woodstock, Ont., girl named Victoria (Tori) Stafford.

As with anyone accused of a crime, Mr. Rafferty isn’t obliged to testify in his own defense or call a whit of evidence. The burden of proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt rests entirely upon the prosecution.

But as those prosecutors closed their case against him Thursday – some eight weeks, 61 witnesses and 186 exhibits after the trial began – it was with a compilation of video footage linking Mr. Rafferty to Terri-Lynne McClintic, the young woman who two years ago pleaded guilty to and was convicted of first-degree murder in the eight-year-old’s death.

Now 21 and serving a life sentence – unlike her notorious predecessor, Karla Homolka, Ms. McClintic received no cushy deal in exchange for her plea and her efforts to help police find the little girl’s remains — she testified here over six days.

And though she stuck tenaciously to the new version of who actually killed Tori, which she first confided in January this year to a prison counselor – she now claims to be the killer, where for the almost three years prior she said it was Mr. Rafferty — Ms. McClintic was equally firm that the crime itself was Mr. Rafferty’s idea, that it was sexually motivated and that he raped the little girl.

Admittedly violent and troubled, the breadth of her criminal tendencies were most dramatically revealed in cross-examination by Mr. Rafferty’s lawyer, Dirk Derstine.

Under his questioning, Ms. McClintic admitted that she recently told her godmother, visiting her in prison, that she regretted only that the victim was a child but would otherwise kill again, and that she had had, as a youngster herself, once cooked a puppy in a microwave oven until it screamed.

Mr. Derstine’s point was that it is Ms. McClintic who, with her criminal record for violence, lurid and bloodthirsty diaries and language, is likely telling the truth that she was the one who wielded a hammer and killed Tori.

Yet for all that her story changed in this one critical aspect, Ms. McClintic’s evidence was frequently independently corroborated.

It was her detailed map of the crime scene, a rural area off a country road south of Mount Forest, which led police to discover Tori’s remains 103 days after her disappearance. And cell tower maps showed Mr. Rafferty’s BlackBerry pinging off towers north of the Guelph area on the day in question, while security video from Tori’s school and stores and businesses appears to essentially confirm Ms. McClintic’s rough time line of events that day.

And prosecutors proved that it was Mr. Rafferty, not Ms. McClintic, who had longstanding ties to the Wellington County area and the remote location where Tori was found: Witnesses testified he had once lived in the county as a boy, once worked within about five kilometers of the crime scene, and frequently travelled the back country roads.

Scientists also found the little girl’s blood on the frame of the rear passenger side door of Mr. Rafferty’s car – the very area where Ms. McClintic said he raped her – and Tori’s DNA mixed with Mr. Rafferty’s on the bottom of a gym bag in the car.

Interestingly, some of the most compelling revelations of the trial aren’t considered evidence at all.

These came during Mr. Derstine’s cross of Ms. McClintic, when he put a series of suggestions to her in which he alleged she was the driving force of the crime, that Mr. Rafferty had “thought nothing of it” when she brought Tori to the car, that she told him it was part of an unspecified “drug debt,” that he refused her sexual “gift” of the little girl and walked away from the vehicle when she asked him to do, and that though he was “horrified” to return and find Tori dead, he nonetheless helped Ms. McClintic “clean up.”

Thus did Mr. Derstine reveal the defense theory of the crime: That Mr. Rafferty was but a poor innocent dupe who had no idea the young woman with him would kill the little girl.

Prosecutors countered this by calling to the stand no fewer than 15 women who were, like Ms. McClintic, dating Mr. Rafferty in the spring of 2009. The sum effect of their testimony was that if as Mr. Derstine suggested, his client had been horrified by the slaying of that little girl, he got over it in a big hurry – indeed, by the day after the murder, when he consummated a new relationship at the Woodstock house he shared with his mother and was enthusiastically trying to arrange other rendezvous.

And earlier this week prosecutors played video footage taken from the Genest Detention Centre, where Ms. McClintic was incarcerated on an unrelated probation breach from April 12 until May 19, when she confessed and implicated Mr. Rafferty.

SEE THE FULL VIDEO HERE

He visited her twice there, and the video showed the two hugging, flirting and gaily laughing in the visitor area – just weeks after they’d buried the little girl under a pile of rocks, and even as her family was growing more desperate and police were widening their search for her.

Most important is that Ms. McClintic vehemently denied Mr. Derstine’s pointed suggestions.

Since lawyers’ questions aren’t considered evidence unless the witness agrees or “adopts” them, the questions remain just that until and unless Mr. Rafferty testifies, at which point, jurors would be left to believe some, all or none of what he said, just as they may with every other witness.

Mr. Derstine is expected to announce whether he will call a defense next Tuesday, when the trial resumes.

Rafferty girlfriend says he tried to rent car days before arrest

On April 8 2009, the day Tori Stafford disappeared, Michael Rafferty wrote on his Facebook page: “Good things are comming (sic) my way.”

That was at 10:01 a.m. Five hours later, Tori was gone.

That one sentence and a plethora of other information Rafferty had provided about himself on Facebook came under scrutiny at his first-degree murder trial on Wednesday and gave another glimpse into the life of the 31-year-old man accused of abducting, raping and killing Tori.

The eight-year-old from Woodstock was abducted on April 8, 2009. Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic, then lovers, were arrested a month later and charged. Tori’s body was found on July 19 near Mount Forest. McClintic pleaded guilty to first-degree murrder and was sentenced to life in April 2010.

Rafferty’s trial started on March 5.

Little was known about Rafferty till a couple of weeks ago. Then, as evidence was presented, it turned out he was a womanizer — dating several women at the same time — and a shopaholic. On Wednesday, the jury heard how prolific he was on Facebook.

Cassondra Harnum, a past girlfriend, told the jury that Rafferty routinely posted updates about what he was doing, where he was. Sometimes, he even wrote on Facebook that he was in his car, she said.

On April 2 2009, he had posted about wanting to hang out with “old friends” and wondered why everyone was so busy with their lives, Harnum said.

Harnum met him on a bus some years ago and developed a friendship over the years.

OPP Det. Const Leslie Waldon, who investigated Rafferty’s online activities, including his Facebook, MSN and Plenty of Fish accounts, told the jury he spent about 22 minutes on Facebook on April 8 2009. After posting “Good things are comming (sic) my way,” Rafferty went to the profile of Alexis Lane, a former girlfriend, and stayed on it for most of the 22 minutes.

(Lane and Rafferty were together in Grade 6 and 7 at a Drayton, Ont., school and reconnected and started dating in early-2009. Rafferty, the court had heard, told a friend that he hoped to marry her.)

Rafferty also shared copious information about himself on Facebook. He said what he liked in music, movies, TV shows, books and quotes.

At one point, he wrote: “I am slowly becoming somebody, I’m complex and have lotsa layers.”

In all capitals, Rafferty wrote about himself: “I have only one thing to say and that is... whatever you do in life, do it right the first time because there are no second chances and everyday all day. You will always wish you could go back and do it again.”

The man whose Facebook profile was being laid threadbare, scribbled on sheets of paper almost all day only looking up sporadically.

Earlier on Wednesday, another ex-girlfriend of Rafferty’s said after he was first interviewed by officers in Tori’s disappearance, he tried to get a rental car saying he did not want to be hassled by police.

Jessica Meloche, who Rafferty was literally living with in mid-May, said he called car rentals in London on the weekend of May 16 2009 but could not get a car.

Rafferty was first interviewed by police on the evening of May 15.

While he didn’t seem upset by the questioning, Meloche, 29, remembered he said he was questioned because he knew McClintic, a young woman he told Meloche was a family friend and in a youth detention facility. He told Meloche that police were trying to pin Tori’s disappearance on McClintic because she looked like the woman seen walking away with the little girl in a surveillance video.

“He just said he was helping her out because her mother was ill and she didn’t have anybody else.”

He took clothes for McClintic at the detention centres and kept track of her court dates, said Meloche. He attended those hearings. Rafferty also told her that McClintic was arrested because of prior charges.

Meloche, who works and lives in London, met Rafferty online through the dating website Plenty of Fish on April 12 2009 and met him face-to-face the next day. He told her he was a dance instructor and had recently bought a house for his mother in Woodstock.

For the next few weeks, until his arrest on May 19, Meloche saw him almost every day, she said, adding that he usually showed up at her place late at night and stayed over.

She last saw Rafferty on the morning of May 19 when he left her home.

He was arrested that evening.

Somber trip to Tori Stafford murder scene shows the uncanny accuracy of McClintic’s description

Christie Blatchford

(National Post)

Just about the only features Terri-Lynne McClintic didn’t tell police about in this almost garishly bucolic place where Victoria (Tori) Stafford died were the decorative bridge, small silver-bladed windmill and that curious statue of a be-hatted black farm worker seated by a pond.

Otherwise, McClintic’s descriptions — and the crude but detailed maps she drew to illustrate them — of the area where the sunny eight-year-old was killed on April 8, 2009 were uncannily accurate.

The 21-year-old, who almost two years ago pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the little girl’s slaying, first confessed to Ontario Provincial Police Detective-Staff Sergeant Jim Smyth on May 19 that year, about six weeks after Tori vanished on her way home from school in Woodstock, Ont.

McClintic’s former boyfriend, 31-year-old Michael Rafferty, is now on trial in London for kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and first-degree murder.

He is pleading not guilty to all charges.

On Monday, Mr. Rafferty himself, Ontario Superior Court Judge Thomas Heeney and the jurors, court officials, lawyers and even the media covering the case travelled about two hours from London to the isolated spot south of Mount Forest where Det.-Staff Sgt. Smyth discovered the little girl’s remains on July 19, 2009.

It was a discovery born of McClintic’s drawings and the copper’s urgent desire, common to the huge police task force whose members scoured so much of southwestern Ontario looking for Tori, to find the missing child’s body.

The entire scene McClintic had described — but for the little bridge, windmill and statue on the grounds of a neat bungalow set on an unusual angle to the Concession 6 side road and the adjacent property across the road — was briefly deemed to be Judge Heeney’s de facto courtroom.

He cautioned the jurors last week that the site visit, unusual but not rare in a criminal trial, was to increase their appreciation for the evidence they already have heard and will hear at trial.

What the somber excursion arguably did most was inform the jurors of a central fact — that though McClintic, as her testimony in court amply demonstrated, may be a violent and irredeemably damaged human being and though she only recently confessed to being the actual killer, she remembered the killing ground with striking accuracy and appears to genuinely have wanted to help police find the little girl’s remains.

She even sketched two sorts of trees — the evergreens (it was beneath one large pine tree where Tori’s body, stuffed into garbage bags and underneath the tail end of a huge rock pile, was found), and the stand of leafless deciduous trees, wind-bent, which overlook the rock pile.

The latter were bare still Monday, during the jurors’ visit, just as they were in April three years ago.

Other geographical features — the culvert running underneath the country track; the broken-down fencing; the rise to the path and the curve at the top of the hill to the left to the location of the enormous rock pile — were right on the money.

But it was the views McClintic described that were probably most compelling and which were really brought into sharp focus by the tour.

Though she changed her story earlier this year and reiterated it at trial to say she was the actual murderer, in her first confession May 19 and then again on May 24 that year, McClintic admitted having lured Tori away, but blamed the killing on Mr. Rafferty.

But what has remained consistent throughout is her allegation that the kidnapping was Mr. Rafferty’s idea, that it was sexually motivated and that he violently raped the eight-year-old in his car by that rock pile.

According to McClintic, the duo parked the car by the rocks.

As Mr. Rafferty began to sexually assault the little girl, McClintic said, she couldn’t bear to watch and with Tori’s pleas for help ringing unanswered in her ears, she walked away from the vehicle to a section of the fence.

From that vantage point, she said, she could clearly see — when she dared look back — Mr. Rafferty, naked from the waist down through the open door of the rear passenger seat, assaulting Tori in his lap.

Sure enough, the sightline she described and which the jurors saw would have afforded a clear view.

Other times during the assault, McClintic told police and testified at trial, she would look away, toward farmers’ fields and, in the distance, silos.

Sure enough, the site is surrounded by dun-coloured fields and off in the distance in no fewer than two directions are silos.

In the first version of McClintic’s confession, after Mr. Rafferty finished assaulting the little girl, he kicked her and then hit her in the head with a hammer she bought just hours before, allegedly at Mr. Rafferty’s insistence, at a Home Depot in Guelph.

In the more recent version, she said that when she saw the little girl being assaulted, it brought back her own unspecified childhood trauma and she snapped — and that she was the one who kicked and killed the little girl.

Reporters and photographers were allowed on the site only after the jurors, judge, lawyers and Mr. Rafferty left the scene.

The jurors, with three constables, travelled in a bright teal bus bearing the company’s slogan: “Miles of Smiles.” There were none to be seen, not this day, not on this terrible hallowed ground.

Terri-LynneMcClintic told godmother she'd kill again

Michele Mandel

(London Free Press)

So now at last, the story that Michael Rafferty plans to use to be acquitted of abducting, raping and killing little Tori Stafford.

The long-awaited defense theory was unveiled as lawyer Dirk Derstine ended his cross-examination of Terri-Lynne McClintic, Rafferty's former girlfriend and the Crown's key witness against him.

Derstine has spent hours over these last three days methodically tearing away at this convicted murderer who says that while she wielded the hammer that killed the eight-year-old, it was Rafferty who orchestrated the abduction and carried out the sexual assault on the Woodstock, Ont., child three years ago.

His defense lawyer has convincingly unmasked the meek-sounding and remorse-filled 21-year-old as a violent, gangster wannabe who filled letters and journals with her macabre fantasies of viciously tearing people apart, limb by limb.

But when it seemed there could be nothing further he could reveal about this rage-filled, Oxy-snorting, mother-punching, time bomb, there was still more.

Despite her claims to have changed and reformed, Derstine had McClintic grudgingly admit that just seven weeks ago, she ambushed a fellow inmate, kicking and stomping on her as she lay helpless in a fetal position.

But what was most shocking, he saved to the end.

"Do you remember telling your godmother when she came to visit you in custody that you were only sad because it was a little kid, but otherwise, you could do it again," the lawyer demanded.

There was a long pause. "Yes," McClintic finally admitted.

"Remember telling something else to your godmother that day?" he continued without mercy. "A secret that you'd kept hidden for some time?"

When she didn't answer, Derstine filled the silence.

"That there were a couple of little dogs when you were a kid and that you microwaved one until it screamed?" he asked. "Nobody could believe, apparently, that you could be so cruel to such an innocent."

"I was a child," she whimpered.

A sick, abused child who would grow up to be a child killer.

With the Crown's star witness badly battered from the evisceration of her character, Derstine moved in to unveil the defense theory of what really happened on April 8, 2009. If she'd really been the "horrified bystander" as she claimed, he said, McClintic would have used the numerous opportunities she had to set the girl free or ask for help. Instead, according to his scenario, this dangerous woman acted alone without her poor boyfriend ever knowing the murder she had planned.

Derstine suggested -- as defence lawyers are wont to do -- a series of plot lines that deviated wildly from the story McClintic told on the stand: That she had brought Tori into Rafferty's car with the explanation that she was holding the little girl as part of a drug debt; that it was her idea to stop at a Guelph, Ont., Home Depot and Rafferty had no idea that she purchased a hammer and garbage bags as part of her plan to kill Tori and was unaware of what she'd bought when she put the bag in his trunk.

As the lawyer reminded her, there is only video footage of McClintic luring Tori away from her Woodstock school and of her buying the murder weapon. The jury hasn't seen Rafferty at all.

According to the defense version of events, McClintic offered the child to her boyfriend as a sexual gift - a present the former landscaper declined.

She then asked him to drive to a safe house north of Guelph and told him to leave her with Tori because the girl was frightened and she wanted to speak to her alone. But when he returned, he found her with the little girl's bloodied and broken body.

"I'm going to suggest to you that Mr. Rafferty came back after the death and was horrified but helped you clean up," Derstine said. "Your characterization of him being the driving force behind this little girl's death is a lie and that it was you."

To all of these suggestions, put to her at a gunfire pace, a shrinking McClintic repeatedly disagreed. But it didn't matter - Derstine just wanted this alternate scenario to linger in the minds of the jurors long after the evil, damaged woman had left the witness box and slunk back to prison to serve out the rest of her life sentence.

The trial resumes Tuesday.

McClintic was puppetmaster
Graphic lyrics of death rap song fill courtroom

Michele Mandel

(London Free Press)

The graphic lyrics of a death rap song filled the staid courtroom.

"Stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stab you to death," sang Necro in Creepy Crawl, one of Terri-Lynn McClintic's favorite songs. "Face down on the bed, pillow case over ya head. Lamp chord choked, leave everyone in the place dead..."

With dramatic flourish, defense lawyer Dirk Derstine then paused the shocking music.

"Is that the song that was playing on your iPod when you walked up to Oliver Stephens Public School that day?" he asked the young woman who lured little Tori Stafford to her death.

Derstine would like the jury to believe that McClintic was the puppetmaster, that she was such a violent, drug-snorting, gangsta rapping toughie that she was the one who orchestrated the abduction and slaying of the eight-year-old Woodstock, Ont., girl, and not her ex-boyfriend Michael Rafferty, now on trial for first-degree murder.

"When can we expect that you will be able to tell us that you did more than just kill her? That, in fact, I'm going to suggest to you, that you were the engine that drove the events of that day," charged Rafferty's lawyer.

"That will never happen because that is not the truth," a combative McClintic hotly replied. "I'm not the only guilty party here."

The Crown's key witness has owned up to what she did, has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, has admitted to a long criminal record that includes stabbing a stranger and leaving her mother partially blind in her left eye. But despite the insistent suggestions of her ex-boyfriend's lawyer, she will not absolve Rafferty for what she says was his powerful role in planning and executing their horrific crime.

"I was just doing what I was told to do," said McClintic, 21.

"What you chose to do," corrected Derstine.

"What I was told to do," she repeated. "I do have a mind of my own but unfortunately I tend to be influenced very easily by other people and when you have a manipulative person that is willing to take everything they know about you and use it against you, your triggers to push your buttons, they know what to say."

As she spoke, Rafferty, 31, wore his usual smirk and shook his head.

"When I woke up April 8 (2009), I never had murder on my mind. I did not plan on kidnapping a little girl," she said, her wavering voice thick with disgust and regret. "When I walked down that street with that little girl, I did not think I was walking her to her death and I sure as hell didn't think it would be my hands that would take her life."

McClintic maintained that it took her until January of this year -- 19 months into her sentence -- to finally admit to herself that she was the one who wielded the hammer, and not Rafferty, as she'd originally told police. "Now I have come to terms with that and I'm sitting here today, telling the truth."

And her truth is that while she snapped and did the killing, it was Rafferty who had ordered a little girl, and he then repeatedly raped Tori and helped dispose of her body.

Derstine, though, cast McClintic as a "good liar" who repeatedly lied to police in the past and continues to lie to this day. He played the videotape of her early statements to investigators, where she laughs easily and insists she's not the woman in white seen leading Tori away. He accused her of deliberately trying to deflect blame by telling them she'd heard Tori's mother had a $20,000 cocaine debt. And he suggested McClintic knew Tori and specifically targeted her out of the 326 students who emerged from school that day.

Once again, she refused to agree. "She was the only one that was alone," she said.

"And yet it just happened that you knew her parents?" he demanded. "And as you spoke to her about her dog, her shih tzu and your shih tzu, that was just a coincidence, just a crazy coincidence?"

"Yes, it was," McClintic maintained.