Victoria (Tori) Stafford, 8 - Canada, Murdered. The trial of Michael Rafferty

[Jezreel]

Christie Blatchford's articles are interesting to read, she doesn't hold back, I have snipped a couple of paragraph's

National Post:

Snipped - For a fellow who was purportedly “horrified” when Terri-Lynne McClintic first abducted and then abruptly killed a little Woodstock, Ont., girl in the spring of 2009, Michael Rafferty appears to have pulled himself together rather quickly.

Indeed, Mr. Rafferty did what any man who had just watched a shocking child murder might do: He went onto a dating website called Plenty of Fish and proceeded to become involved with no fewer than two women.

The suggestion that Mr. Rafferty, now 31, was aghast when McClintic purportedly killed the eight-year-old came from his lawyer, Dirk Derstine, during his cross-examination of McClintic last month.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012...rd-murder/

Another:

As witnesses go, Alexis Lane was in the short and sweet category, called to the stand as a courtesy Wednesday, in the midst of the much denser evidence being given by the lead forensic biologist, because Ms. Lane is about to leave on a trip.

She was probably done in less than 10 minutes, but to Michael Rafferty it was obviously the most compelling part of the day.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012...irlfriend/

Snipped - But from the moment Ms. Lane walked into the courtroom until the moment she left, Mr. Rafferty’s eyes followed her.

She is a pretty 30-year-old with long dark hair who first met the meaty fellow in the prisoner’s box when they were both in Grade 6 in Drayton, a village of about 1,800 northwest of Guelph, Ont.


[/b]

[Kip]

Christie Blatchford's articles are interesting to read, she doesn't hold back, ...

I agree...great editorial writing. She sometimes voices what everybody's thinking but not saying; other times, the way she says something leads to everyone to a conclusion that she doesn't have to state explicitly. I loved her referring to Rafferty as "the meaty fellow in the prisoner's box."

[Jezreel]

Christie Blatchford's articles are interesting to read, she doesn't hold back, ...

I agree...great editorial writing. She sometimes voices what everybody's thinking but not saying; other times, the way she says something leads to everyone to a conclusion that she doesn't have to state explicitly. I loved her referring to Rafferty as "the meaty fellow in the prisoner's box."

And he definitley is that

I was following the tweets today and I think I counted 4 women who testified this morning to meeting him on POF and dating him all around the same time, some just before and some just after Tori's disappearance.

One of the ladies was actually friends with Tori's mum and knew Tori, their daughters had played together. Rafferty met her online i think end of March beginning of April....... things that make you go hmmmmm,

This guys is such an idiot the more I hear about him the worse it gets, besides all the women (who didn't seem to stick around long) he told him he was a dance instructor, had his own contracting business, bought a house for him and his mum in Woodstock, worked at a detention center in London, thought he had colon cancer that's why he took percs, oh and had a step son names Jaden who had passed away!!! Looks like another compulsive liar.

Waiting for the news articles to come out to see what else was said, but I think that's the gist of it.

[Kip]

....I was following the tweets today and I think I counted 4 women who testified this morning to meeting him on POF and dating him all around the same time, some just before and some just after Tori's disappearance. ...

For the life of me, I cannot figure out what all of these women saw in Rafferty. He must be able to come across as charming.

[Jezreel]

....I was following the tweets today and I think I counted 4 women who testified this morning to meeting him on POF and dating him all around the same time, some just before and some just after Tori's disappearance. ...

For the life of me, I cannot figure out what all of these women saw in Rafferty. He must be able to come across as charming.

I guess he wasn't too bad looking

One of his ex's that he dated for a short while described him as needy....

I'm with you though, I don't know either, definitely not my cup of tea!

[Jezreel]

London Free Press - The day after eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford disappeared, a sympathetic-sounding Michael Rafferty told one woman he was searching for the little girl near his Woodstock home.

Two days after, he comforted that woman by joking he’d tackle “the girl in the white coat” seen in a surveillance video with Tori, adding, “I’m sure she’ll return safe.”

That day he posted on his MSN site in bold letters “Bring Tori home” and commented to a different woman on MSN, “We’re all praying for her.”

Three days after, he told yet another woman they couldn’t go out that weekend because he was looking for a missing little girl.

Eleven days after, Rafferty met that woman and repeated he was still looking for the girl and worried about her.

About three weeks after Tori disappeared, he comforted yet another woman about the “traumatic” incident.

Several women who communicated with Rafferty by Internet, phone and in person in the spring of 2009 described for a jury Friday all the ways he seemed worried about the disappearance of Tori.

Those jurors have heard testimony from “the girl in the white coat,” Terri-Lynne McClintic, that her boyfriend Rafferty knew where Tori was, knew Tori wasn’t returning safe, knew prayers for Tori were too late, and knew Tori was never coming home alive.

On Day 22 of his first-degree murder trial, it became clear Rafferty cast a wide net on the dating website Plenty of Fish in early 2009.

It became equally clear the Crown has cast a wide net as well, bringing six of Rafferty’s online catches into court to wrap up testimony about his behaviour after Tori’s disappearance.

The Crown also began calling witnesses Friday to support its case Rafferty directed Tori’s abduction and knew what he was doing when he drove her to the Mount Forest area.

Former employer John Cruickshank testified Rafferty did landscaping work for him in 2006 at the Riverstown landfill site. That landfill is about three kilometres southwest of the spot where Tori’s body was found.

Tori disappeared while walking home from her Woodstock school on April 8, 2009. Six weeks later, McClintic confessed to being the woman in the white coat seen walking with Tori. McClintic pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in April 2010.

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

McClintic, 21, earlier testified Rafferty drove her and Tori to the Mount Forest area and raped Tori before the girl was killed. Then she and Rafferty hid the body, McClintic testified.

To Amanda Chambers of Woodstock, Rafferty seemed “to have a big heart” about Tori’s disappearance, jurors heard Friday.

A single mother of two, she started communicating with Rafferty, “a friendly-type person,” on Plenty of Fish in late March 2009. They met for the first date April 3, had sex that night and continued seeing, texting and calling each other for a month.

“One of the things that drew my heartstrings was that he told me he had a stepson . . . that had passed away just a few weeks prior to us talking,” Chambers testified. “Being a mother, that’s one of the worst things you can deal with, is losing a child.”

They had conversations about her children, a daughter, 13, and son, 10, at the time.

“I loved being a mom and he seemed very supportive of that.”

Chambers said her children played with Tori, and she knew Tori’s mother, Tara McDonald. She learned of Tori’s disappearance the day after it happened and texted Rafferty the news.

“He seemed surprised. He seemed like everyone else that day . . . sympathetic,” Chambers testified.

Chambers searched for Tori that evening and Rafferty texted her to say he was searching ,too, around the tracks at his end of the city.

The next evening, an upset Chambers met a “very supportive” Rafferty at a coffee shop. “We were talking about how she may have went missing, how this could happen.”

Rafferty made some jokes to lighten the mood, saying he’d seen a woman in a white jacket and if that was her, “he would tackle her to the ground.”

Their relationship ended May 2.

Rafferty told Ashley Reid, 25, a Fanshawe College student in April 2009, he was working with a young woman at a London detention centre.

He told her “how good it would feel if he knew that she got out of this and she was able to go with her life and that he had some part of it,” Reid testified. McClintic was in custody at London’s Genest detention centre on an unrelated matter at the time.

Some of the women kept their relationship to texting or ended things after a date or two. Rafferty didn’t take rejection well, pleading with some to explain why they didn’t want to see him again.

Rafferty refused to look at one woman, Stephanie Cooney, 29, of Kitchener, as she described an April 19 date that she soon “just wanted to be over.”


Today we will hear more about Rafferty's connection to Mt Forest.

[Jezreel]

Another 'tell it like it is' article from Christie Blatchford

National Post - It is the modern wisdom that everyone grieves differently and therefore, no judgment should ever be made of a person who doesn’t behave conventionally.

If the same can be said for a reaction of stark horror, then and only then would Michael Rafferty’s conduct in the days after Victoria (Tori) Stafford’s slaying be considered remotely within the widest of normal ranges.

Mr. Rafferty, of course, is the 31-year-old man now on trial in Ontario Superior Court here for kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and first-degree murder in the little girl’s April 8, 2009, death.

He is pleading not guilty, but from what his lawyer Dirk Derstine has told Judge Thomas Heeney and the jury, it doesn’t appear that Mr. Rafferty is disputing that he was present when Tori was stolen off the street in nearby Woodstock or that he helped bury her body under a rock pile off a country road south of Mount Forest, Ont. When last month Mr. Derstine was cross-examining Terri-Lynne McClintic, a former girlfriend of Mr. Rafferty who already has pleaded guilty and been convicted of first-degree murder in the child’s death and who now claims to have done the actual killing, he acknowledged his client’s presence when he said, “I’m going to suggest to you that Mr. Rafferty came back [to the car] after the death, was horrified, but helped you clean up.”

By Mr. Derstine’s scenario, Mr. Rafferty was a poor sap who “thought nothing of it” when Ms. McClintic arrived at his waiting vehicle with the blonde eight-year-old in tow, nobly refused her alleged proffered gift of the child sexually, left the area at Ms. McClintic’s direction and returned to find the little girl dead.

But if he was as appalled and shocked as Mr. Derstine suggested, Mr. Rafferty certainly had an odd way of showing it.

Promiscuous already in the spring of 2009 – he was involved with no fewer than 11 women at that time – seven of those relationships started after the little girl’s death, when it appears he embarked on a whirlwind of activity on the Plenty of Fish dating website, contacting multiple women simultaneously starting on April 9.

For days now, the court has seen a parade of these women – as young as 23, as old as 50; many with long dark hair and glasses; some buxom and plump, some slim; some professional women, some stay-at-home mothers – to the witness stand.

Tuesday came another one, 29-year-old Jessica Meloche.

She met Mr. Rafferty on Plenty of Fish on April 12 (four days after his purported moment of horror), and soon he was spending most weekends at her place. It was he, she said, who proposed they see one another exclusively, and she agreed, unaware that he was also seeing another woman, Sarah Hodge, almost every day about that time, making connections and having coffee dates with other women, and, in his fashion, wining and dining a lucky few.

Most of the women seem to have been wowed by him, and to have found him to be all that he said he was, for instance, on his Facebook profile.

There, he demonstrated himself to be a thoroughly modern fellow – illiterate, vacuous and narcissistic – even if he used enough capital letters and LOLs (short for laugh out loud) and OMGs (short for omigod) to have passed for one of his younger paramours.

“I love camping and value friends more than life it’s self, lol,” he wrote there. “If that means anything.”

Under “interests,” he blathered on at misspelled length. “And culture to the max with me,” he wrote. “I want to learn as much as I can all the time about other people and there culture.” He claimed to love Grey’s Anatomy, CSI and Survivor, as well as several cooking shows, fitting for a fellow who claimed to have a “master’s” in culinary arts (he also told various women he had a kinesiology degree, taught ballroom dancing, and to have had his own contracting company).

In the “About me” section, which he watched with some evident fondness as it was flashed on courtroom monitors on Wednesday, Mr. Rafferty wrote, “I am slowly becoming somebody. I’m complex and have lotsa layers…. I have many accomplishments in my life and for those I am greatfull for haveing the chance to do.”

About 10 o’clock on the morning that Tori Stafford was taken and killed – her DNA later found in Mr. Rafferty’s car – he changed his status on his Facebook wall to read, “Everything good is coming my way.”

The temptation is to imagine those words as creepy or foreshadowing or somehow telling, but it’s a much safer bet that this was just another inane spewing from a fellow who counted among his favourite books self-help bibles.

Much more revealing, much more difficult to explain, was Mr. Rafferty’s rabbit-like behaviour after he purportedly got the shock of his life on April 8.

As he confessed in the “About me” Facebook section, “I wear my heart on my sleve and sometimes that can be my downfall.”

No dear: That wasn’t your heart on your sleeve, or rather sleve: It was a picture of your exceptionally busy penis.

Well, everyone does react differently to being horrified.



I saw Dirk Derstine and Laura Giordano yesterday while out at lunch, and as I saw them laughing and joking I wondered how they defend someone like Michael Rafferty?? Yeah I know defense lawyers, that's their job, but I couldn't defend and child killer/rapist, also good thing I am not on the jury as I made my mind up long ago...

[Kip]

There, he demonstrated himself to be a thoroughly modern fellow – illiterate, vacuous and narcissistic – even if he used enough capital letters and LOLs (short for laugh out loud) and OMGs (short for omigod) to have passed for one of his younger paramours.

LOL. More great writing from Christie!

I saw Dirk Derstine and Laura Giordano yesterday while out at lunch, and as I saw them laughing and joking I wondered how they defend someone like Michael Rafferty?? Yeah I know defense lawyers, that's their job, but I couldn't defend and child killer/rapist, also good thing I am not on the jury as I made my mind up long ago...

I can't imagine having to sit next to this guy if I thought he did what he's accused of doing.

[Jezreel]

OMG!!! So yesterday (article below) they were talking about his cell activity on the day Tori was taken and what is showed..... it basically put him in the areas decsribed by TLM, thus giving her testimony more credence. They mentioned about him bbm'ing with a Charity Spitzig throughout the day and that's all we heard... until today!!

So Charity is the first witness on the stand, she met him on POF in April 2008, she is 26 and mother of 4 (was 5 but a son passed away, which i assume is the stepson he told Amanda about). So they discussed how to make money easily and she got into the escorting business..... with all of her money earned going to Rafferty!!! Between December 2008-May 2009 a total of $16,835 was deposited by her to Rafferty's account, and she handed over cash too! She said they were exclusive and wanted to marry etc, we know now he was dating plenty of other women, he was basically pimping this girl and using that money to buy things for his other g/f's, their kids, his drugs, shopping trips to the states, the hammer and garbage bags. Wow, just wow

Article about yesterday's testimony:
LondonFreePress - The phone company uses cell tower technology to pinpoint where and when you make phone calls and send you a bill.

The Crown trying Michael Rafferty for first-degree murder is using the same technology to pinpoint his phone calls April 8, 2009, and send him to prison.

A connect-the-dots map of his BlackBerry usage shown to jurors Thursday backs up earlier testimony -- from timeframe to locations -- about the abduction of eight-year-old Victoria (Tori)Stafford that day.

Rafferty's former girlfriend, Terri-Lynne McClintic, testified earlier that Tori was snatched after school in Woodstock and put in Rafferty's car.

Rafferty then drove to Guelph, where he stopped for drugs and to get a hammer and garbage bags, she said.

According to Bell Canada records, four calls from Rafferty's BlackBerry were transmitted by Guelph cell towers from 4:18 to 5:03 p.m. April 9, 2009.

McClintic said after leaving Guelph, they travelled north up Hwy. 6 to Mount Forest, where Tori was raped, killed with a hammer and hidden in garbage bags. It was daylight when they arrived at the scene, and when they left. A BlackBerry call hit a tower southeast of Mount Forest at 7:47 p.m.

From Mount Forest, she and Rafferty drove to Cambridge about 8 p.m. There, they washed his car, threw out old clothing and the hammer, and changed into new clothing, McClintic testified. A BlackBerry call was routed at 8:41 p.m. from a tower in Cambridge.

The BlackBerry was used again at 11:21 p.m. between Drumbo and Woodstock and 16 minutes later in Woodstock, according to cell tower records.

Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm in Tori's disappearance. McClintic, 21, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2010 and is serving a life sentence.

Jurors were given a lesson Thursday about cell towers from Bell Canada Enterprises forensics and security manager David Broad.

The cell phone network, made up of towers and switches at those towers, "has always got to know where your device is," he said.

Cell phones will always try to send radio signals to the nearest tower first, he said.

Calls are divided into voice calls, event calls -- such as texts and downloads -- and data calls - a session on the Internet.

Under police orders, Bell collected Rafferty's BlackBerry records from Feb. 1 to May 19, 2009, the day he was arrested.

Broad helped prepare a map of voice and data calls made on Rafferty's BlackBerry April 8, and analysed other records for the jury.

Some of the records suggest a possible inconsistency in McClintic's testimony, one Rafferty's lawyer Dirk Derstine questioned.

The tower records show the BlackBerry was turned on and used from 4:18 p.m. to 7:03 p.m. the day Tori was abducted. But McClintic testified Rafferty directed her to take out the battery shortly after leaving Woodstock until they reached Guelph.

Also questioned was inconsistency in the cell tower records that showed the BlackBerry being used at 7:46 p.m. near Fergus and a minute later 43 kilometres away near Mount Forest.

It's possible both calls were made in the Mount Forest area, but one bounced off the Fergus tower, Bell engineer Mustafa Bakhtyar testified.

"I cannot guarantee it," he added.

To Derstine, Bakhtyar acknowledged the inconsistency shows cell tower records must be used with caution when trying to prove exactly where a caller was. Weather conditions or obstructions can block calls, he said.

According to the Crown's opening statement, jurors will also learn who Rafferty was calling or messaging. The trial continues Friday.

[Jezreel]

I saw Dirk Derstine and Laura Giordano yesterday while out at lunch, and as I saw them laughing and joking I wondered how they defend someone like Michael Rafferty?? Yeah I know defense lawyers, that's their job, but I couldn't defend and child killer/rapist, also good thing I am not on the jury as I made my mind up long ago...

I can't imagine having to sit next to this guy if I thought he did what he's accused of doing.

Maybe that's why he is sat in the prisoner box instead.... I wouldn't want to be near him either.

On a side note, the courtroom they are using for his trial is the one that was built especially for the banditos trial a few years back in 2009.

[Kip]

Jezreel, I was going to ask you if there was any hint of when the proseuction might be winding up their case. (As they had been having testimony about MR's behavior after the crime was committed, I thought maybe the end was near for the prosecution's case.) But after reading the story you posted today where evidence is presented about MR whereabouts during and immediately after the crime, maybe they still have a lot more????

[Jezreel]

Jezreel, I was going to ask you if there was any hint of when the proseuction might be winding up their case. (As they had been having testimony about MR's behavior after the crime was committed, I thought maybe the end was near for the prosecution's case.) But after reading the story you posted today where evidence is presented about MR whereabouts during and immediately after the crime, maybe they still have a lot more????

I think the Crown is nearing the end of their case, the Blackberry was one of the last chapters, they have jumped around here and there, but I think most chapters they laid out in the beginning are done. I think there is a recap of video surveillance still to come and not sure if there are anymore witnesses as that information is not released publicly. Next week week could probably be the last for the crown, then on to the defense. They are hearing legal issues Tuesday, so jury will return Wednesday.

[Jezreel]

Video showing Charity Spitzig and Tara McDonald:

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...60781.html

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.

[Kip]

Thanks for all your updates and info, Jezreel.

From the article above:

"All of this may lead you to believe that Mr. Rafferty was a philandering cad or worse . . . " Heeney said.

I'd go with the "or worse" option.

[Jezreel]

I would go with 'worse' too, I haven't heard philandering cad in a long time.... I wonder if the jurors can actually look past his character. I wonder how they are feeling about this case right now?

[Jezreel]

Seems like the crown could wrap up their case today..... Here is an article from yesterday's testimony:

LondonFreePress - They act like young lovers everywhere, hugging, holding hands, teasing each other, laughing.

He shows off his biceps and caresses her hair. She knocks away a magazine he uses like a telescope to peer at her.

It is all so romantic, so normal.

Except that a month earlier, the young lovers were -- at the very least -- present when a charming little eight-year-old girl was beaten to death with a hammer, stuffed in garbage bags, and discarded under a pile of rocks.

Except that their acts of young love were caught on surveillance camera at the Genest youth detention centre in London, and the young woman, Terri-Lynne McClintic, would confess a few days later to abducting the girl, Victoria (Tori) Stafford, April 8, 2009.

The lawyer for the man, Michael Rafferty, has suggested that abduction was McClintic's idea and his client was a horrified bystander who didn't see the killing, but agreed to help clean up.

Yet through a timeline of phone calls and showing of Genest surveillance video, the Crown painted a picture Wednesday of Rafferty keen on keeping in touch with McClintic and showing no signs of being horrified with her behaviour.

The two contacted each other at least 97 times through cellphone calls or texts between April 9 and May 19, the day McClintic and Rafferty were arrested. He visited her once at Woodstock courthouse when she had a hearing on an unrelated charge and visited her twice in Genest while she was in custody on that charge.

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 and received a life sentence in April 2010.

She's admitted to luring Tori to Rafferty's car while the girl was walking home from school. She testified Rafferty drove the three of them to the Mount Forest area, and raped Tori.

McClintic first told police Rafferty killed Tori, but at his trial, accepted the blame for dealing the fatal hammer blows.

Four days after Tori's abduction, McClintic was arrested on a breach of community supervision relating to another offence and was sent to Genest.

The detention centre doesn't usually allow friends to visit, Kerri-Lee Cushing-Mitchener, a program manager at Genest, testified.

But McClintic had said her mother was gravely ill and sometimes she had trouble reaching her. So she asked if Rafferty, a family friend, could visit.

Rafferty got approval to visit April 27, and made his first appearance outside the doors May 8.

The detention centre videotapes the visits, but does not audiotape them because of the privacy rights of inmates, Cushing-Mitchener said.

It takes a moment on that first visit, from 7:19 p.m. to 8:18 p.m., for the two to embrace, happening only after McClintic gets up and walks over to Rafferty, motioning with her arms for a hug.

Court was shown a 10-minute clip of the visit, where Rafferty models his clothes and caresses her hair several times. They hold hands across the table and at one point it appears she's kissing his hands. They share a couple of hugs before he leaves.

In her earlier testimony, McClintic said the two spoke about what to do if police started asking her questions.

"I said that I would take the fall for everything," she testified.

The second visit lasted from 6:52 p.m. to 7:40 p.m. May 12.

In about a six-minute clip shown to court, Rafferty looks like he is showing off his biceps, picks her up and tries to teach her to lift him up.

He rolls up a magazine and pretends it's a telescope to view her. Laughing, she knocks it away.

In her testimony, McClintic described her last visit with Rafferty at Genest. She told him again she'd take the fall.

"I remember touching his face and he looked up and almost laughed at me and said, 'You'll do anything for a little bit of love, eh,' " she testified.

Earlier that same day, McClintic met police at the Woodstock courthouse, where her hearing on the other matter continued, and agreed to a polygraph test.

On May 15, police interviewed Rafferty to prepare for the McClintic polygraph. Eight minutes after the interview, Rafferty called McClintic at the detention centre.

On May 19, McClintic confessed to her role in the abduction and Rafferty was arrested.

Crown attorney Kevin Gowdey told court Wednesday "the end is near in terms of the Crown's case."

That case has tried to unravel a tangling and tumble of events, phone calls, BlackBerry messages and dates between Rafferty and more than a dozen different girlfriends from April 8 to May 19, 2009.

Through Det. Const. Gord Johnson, the Crown presented a timeline of some of the major events and cellphone calls and texts, minus most of the ones involving Rafferty's many dates, to jurors Wednesday.

April 8, 2009, was a typically busy day for Rafferty's BlackBerry. Noticeable were the gaps in outgoing calls from 2:54 p.m. to 4:18 p.m, just before and after Tori was abducted, and from 5:05 p.m. to 7:46 p.m., which matches the time McClintic said Tori was raped and killed.

Under cross-examination by Rafferty's lawyer Dirk Derstine, Johnson acknowledged that the phone records showed gaps in usage many other days as well.

Here are the two videos from his visits to TLM at the detention centre....... for someone who the defense suggested was horrified when he walked back to the car to find TLM had bludgeoned Tori to death, he doesn't appeared scared of her nor in the least bit upset or horrified.....

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...80306.html

Christie Blatchford strikes again.....

LONDON, Ont. – For just a minute, there in the visitors lounge at the Genest Detention Centre on the evening of May 12, 2009, it looked as though Terri-Lynne McClintic and Michael Rafferty were slow dancing.

Their arms were wrapped around one another; their feet shuffled just a bit.

Thirty-four days before, though there has been quibbling over the details ever since, the two had presided at the burial of the little girl named Victoria (Tori) Stafford.

So there they were, now dancing or almost dancing, on that child’s grave.

More: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012...ord-death/

[Jezreel]

The crown rested it's case this afternoon and court has been adjourned until Tuesday. Dirk Derstine will then advise at that time if he will be presenting evidence. Mike Knoll who does the tweets for London Free Press gave a little tidbit today that if Rafferty is to testify in his own defense he would have to testify first before anyone else the defense may call. There has been a lot of speculation by reporters that he might as he has been furiously writing notes almost throughout the entire trial. I guess we will find out Tuesday, Hmm I may even go down if I can to see what happens.

On another note, this is about Terr-Lynne McClintic who pleaded guilty to the murder in April 2010.

LFPress - Terri-Lynne McClintic, already serving a life sentence for the murder of eight-year old Victoria Stafford, will set a trial date next week on an assault charge in Kitchener.

McClintic made a brief video court appearance in the Ontario Court of Justice Thursday. Her defence lawyer Geoff Snow told the court he had instructions to set the case for trial.

That date is to be set on Tuesday.

McClintic, 21, is charged with assault causing bodily harm against fellow inmate Aimee McIntyre, who is also serving a life sentence at the Grand Valley Institution for Women.

Snow would not give details of the allegations and said that the decision to go to trial was entirely McClintic's "I support her taking this to trial," he said.

McClintic was one of the key witnesses at the ongoing first degree murder trial of Michael Rafferty, who has pleaded not guilty to first degree murder in the little girl's death on April 8, 2009.

She pleaded guilty in the Stafford case and was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 25 years.

During her testimony, she changed her story and said she killed the little girl after Rafferty allegedly sexually assaulted her. The jury was allowed to see a prior confession where she said it was Rafferty who killed the child.

[Jezreel]

LondonFP - The first steps in the kidnapping of Victoria 'Tori' Stafford April 8, 2009 were caught on a surveillance video: an unknown woman walking up a Woodstock street with the eight-year-old girl.

Sixty-one witnesses and 185 exhibits later, the Crown finished its first-degree murder case against the woman's former boyfriend, Michael Rafferty, Thursday by stringing together several surveillance clips from that day.

Much like that first video, viewed repeatedly across Canada, the string of clips offered tantalizing clues but not necessarily conclusive proof of what happened to Tori.

OPP forensic video analyst Gerald Lanna had broken down each video clip into individual frames, more than 2,800 in total when they were strung together.

But the best he could conclude for jurors was that a car that drove into an Esso gas station 12 minutes before and just around the corner from the abduction was Rafferty's 2003 Honda Civic.

"To me I would have to say, that's our vehicle," said Lanna.

Lanna could not, however, confirm the vehicle seen on video driving three times on the same street and on the same day Tori was kidnapped -- the last time less than two minutes before Tori walked up the street -- was Rafferty's.

"Can you say it's the same car?" Rafferty's lawyer Dirk Derstine asked during a short, but testy exchange.

They have the same characteristics, Lanna repeated several times.

"We can go round and round the mulberry bush on this. Can you say it's the same car?" Derstine pressed.

"No, I can't. I can't say it's the same car," Lanna said.

If there was any emotional moment during an exhaustive and dry analysis that wrapped the Crowns' case, it came during the 20-minute presentation of the clips strung together.

For seven long minutes, jurors, family members, media and spectators watched in silence at a car sitting in the parking lot of the Home Depot in Guelph, caught on the store's video camera about 5 p.m. April 8.

Inside that car, jurors have heard, hidden on the back seat floor was Tori. During that segment, one of Tori's uncles glared across the courtroom at Rafferty.

The accused was busying writing notes, something he's done for the past four days. Jurors won't know until next Tuesday if Rafferty, or any other defence witness, will take the stand.

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

The woman spotted in the first surveillance video, Terri-Lynne McClintic, 21, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received a life sentence in April 2010.

Her version of what happened to Tori has formed the basis of the Crown's case, despite one dramatic change. McClintic told police in 2009 Rafferty dealt the fatal hammer blows that killed Tori. But at Rafferty's trial, she testified she killed Tori.

Even so, her basic story has remained the same: on April 8, 2009, she lured Tori away after school under Rafferty's direction. She walked Tori to a parking lot where Rafferty was waiting with his car. Rafferty told her to cover up Tori with his black pea coat.

Rafferty drove to a Guelph Home Depot where he told her to buy a hammer and garbage bags, McClintic said. Rafferty then drove to a woodlot near Mount Forest and raped Tori. Rafferty directed the coverup of the crime and told her to throw her running shoes out the car window on a rural road, McClintic said. He then gave her a pair of his shoes to wear.

Surveillance from several Woodstock businesses showed Rafferty wearing a coat and shoes similar to the ones described by McClintic and seized by police.

Surveillance videos also show McClintic wearing running shoes similar to ones found on the side of a rural road south of Mount Forest.

In the Home Depot videos, the car appears similar to the 2003 Honda Civic owned by Rafferty.

But Lanna could only testify in each case the items in the video were similar to the items seized by police.

There were not enough unique features to prove the items in the videos were the actual items seized, he said.

Rafferty/McClintic surveillance video, part 1
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...84816.html


Rafferty/McClintic surveillance video, part 2
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...84866.html

Trial evidence: Day 29
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...84426.html

[Kip]

Thanks again for all your updates, Jezreel.

It will be interesting to see whether MR testifies. My guess is that he wants to - he knows he's good at fooling women and thinks he can get the jury members to like and believe him - but that his attorneys don't want him to.

I'm glad the jury got to see the video of MR and TLM interacting with each other after the murder.

[Jezreel]

Thanks again for all your updates, Jezreel.

It will be interesting to see whether MR testifies. My guess is that he wants to - he knows he's good at fooling women and thinks he can get the jury members to like and believe him - but that his attorneys don't want him to.

I'm glad the jury got to see the video of MR and TLM interacting with each other after the murder.

Yep, neither of them look in the least bit horrified or afraid of one another, who would have known by watching them that just a month earlier the both participated in a most heinous act, found naked from the waist down, in garbage bags, in the fetal position, her liver lacerated while still alive, numerous broken and fractured ribs, her skull & face so badly damaged from hammer blows both from the claw and flat end that they had to piece it back together! I wonder if anyone out there believes he is innocent?