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

[Jezreel]

Quite Day in court, they were ahead of schedule also so they adjourned before 3pm. They will resume tomorrow at 10am, and the jury will not be sitting Thursday.

Globe&Mail - Roughly one hour after Michael Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic allegedly abducted eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford in Woodstock, Mr. Rafferty showed up in Guelph and bought drugs from a woman he knew, his murder trial heard Tuesday,

The evidence came from prosecution witness Barbara Armstrong, 44.

She testified that she met the accused killer six years ago at a meat plant where they both worked, dated him for a few months, and subsequently sold him Percocets, a powerful prescription painkiller, about a dozen times.

This particular occasion was April 8, 2009. Ms. Armstrong described their relationship as “friends, confidants.”

Charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm, Mr. Rafferty 31, has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Ms. Armstrong told prosecutor Michael Carnegie she arrived home from work and a chiropractor’s visit at around 4:30 p.m. to find Mr. Rafferty’s car parked outside, with a dark-haired woman in the passenger’s seat.

Ms. Armstrong made no mention of seeing a child in the vehicle. (The trial has been told that Tori was by then in the back seat of Mr. Rafferty’s Honda Civic, hidden under a coat.) She testified that Mr. Rafferty came inside the house, stayed for about 10 minutes and that she sold him the “Percs” for $3 apiece - a one-dollar markup from what she had paid.

She could not recall how many pills she gave him that time, but Ms. McClintic has told the trial that he emerged from the house with a sandwich bag filled with them, and that she thought he parted with about $300.

In other evidence Tuesday, the jury heard from a police officer who retraced the movements of Mr. Rafferty and Ms. McClintic later that same afternoon when they allegedly bought the hammer and garbage bags used to murder Tori and hide her body.

Since the trial got under way March 5, the jury has listened to an array of disturbing evidence about Tori’s death.

He had been the boyfriend of Ms. McClintic for just a few weeks when Tori vanished in Woodstock, in April, 2009, en route home from nearby Oliver Stephens Public School.

The Grade 3 student’s remains were discovered three months later, outside the small town of Mount Forest, 130 kilometres away, wrapped in green garbage bags and concealed beneath heavy rocks.

Ms. Armstrong also told the trial Tuesday that after the drug deal she next encountered Mr. Rafferty a couple of days late and that he appeared haggard.

“He said he hadn’t been eating or sleeping, that there were so many things going on in his life,” she recounted.

And he also mentioned Tori, who by then had become the focus of a huge search.

“He said that a friend of a friend’s daughter had gone missing and he was going to look for her,” Ms. Armstrong told the court.

“He had heard that it was drug-related, he said the mom owed a lot of money and that’s why (Tori) was taken.”

By then, the famous video of Tori leaving her school with an unidentified woman (now known to be Ms. McClintic) had been aired, and Mr. Rafferty told Ms. Armstrong “he thought he recognized the girl in the video,” she said.

He also told her he believed the police knew who the mystery woman was, too, and were forcefully trying to get her to confess.

Tori’s remains were found after police, aided by Ms. McClintic, had scoured the area for weeks.

The subsequent autopsy concluded Tori died as a result of massive injuries to her skull, inflicted by a hammer. She had also sustained fractured ribs and a lacerated liver - injuries that by themselves could have been fatal, In April, 2010, Ms. McClintic, now 21, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is serving life imprisonment with scant prospect of parole for at least 25 years.

She is also the pivotal witness in the prosecution’s case against Mr. Rafferty.

But she complicated its task considerably by offering two different accounts of how the child was killed.

Days after she and Mr. Rafferty were jointly charged with murder, in May, 2009, Ms. McClintic told police that it was Mr. Rafferty who struck Tori with the hammer, bought just a couple of hours at a Guelph Home Depot.

And earlier in the trial the jury saw video clips from that police interview, in which a distraught Ms. McClintic described how Mr. Rafferty raped, kicked, stomped and finally beat the little girl to death, after covering her head with one of the garbage bags.

But in her trial evidence, Ms. McClintic testified that in fact it was she who wielded the murder weapon, in a sudden fit of blind, pent-up rage, triggered by the savage sexual assault she had just witnessed.

The bulk of her police statement, however, remains true, she told the trial: The abduction, the rape, the journey to Mount Forest and the post-murder efforts to dispose of evidence.

In other evidence Tuesday, the trial heard from OPP Det. Sgt. Dave Vittie, who described how he and colleagues pieced together the other movements of the two accused in Guelph that same day.

Bank records showed Mr. Rafferty making a series of transactions, while video footage from the Home Depot in Guelph showed Ms. McClintic buying the garbage bags and the orange-handled Wavex hammer and then placing the items in the trunk of Mr. Rafferty’s car, which then drove away.

Her last school picture

[Jezreel]

There was only about 45 minutes of testimony today and court resume on Friday. We should be hearing about the forensic evidence next, how Tori's blood was found on the back door of Rafferty's car, how Tori and Rafftery's blood was found mixed together on his gym bag. I think the next chapter also covers the autopsy results and at some point the jurors trip to Mt Forest where Tori was found.

LONDON, ONT. — The shoes that Terri-Lynne McClintic says she wore when Tori Stafford was killed were the focus today at the first-degree murder trial of McClintic’s former boyfriend.

McClintic testified earlier at Michael Rafferty’s trial that after Tori was killed north of Guelph, Ont., he instructed her to throw her shoes out the car window on a sideroad.

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

A woman who lives in the area testified today that in about early April 2009 — the month Tori was killed — she was taking a walk on Sideroad 6 near her home north of Guelph and found a pair of white basketball shoes with blue trim and a single shoe.

Lillian Metcalfe says she threw the single shoe out and took the pair of shoes home and washed them, intending to donate them to Goodwill. On May 30 she gave them to police while they were canvassing the area and McClintic later identified them as hers.

The jury saw the blue and white Shaq basketball shoes as they were entered as an exhibit at the trial today.

Metcalfe also said there was a car’s back seat in the same area of the side road for a while. She mentioned it to police since she had heard they were searching for Rafferty’s back seat, but by May 30 it was no longer there. She then told the officer about the shoes and he asked her to describe them, Metcalfe said.

“I said, ‘Well, I think I can do one better than that,’” Metcalfe testified Wednesday. “’I have the shoes in the house. Would you like to see them?”

Tori’s remains were found partially clothed in a field near Mount Forest, further north of Guelph, more than 100 days after she went missing April 8, 2009.

McClintic testified that after Tori was killed Rafferty went to great lengths to cover up their crime, including hiding Tori’s body under a rock pile, reversing over tire tracks to make them less distinguishable, providing McClintic with a change of clothes, discarding the clothes they were wearing as well as the murder weapon and throwing out the shoes.

“He turned his lights off and pulled onto the sideroad,” McClintic testified earlier about their actions following the murder. “He said, ‘We need to get rid of our shoes, so I believe I tossed my pair of shoes out the car window. He gave me a pair of shoes to wear and he put on a different pair of shoes as well then we drove off.”

Rafferty then drove to a car wash in Cambridge, Ont., where they hosed down the car and shampooed the interior, McClintic testified.


http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/articl...shoes?bn=1


This was in the globe and Mail article:

In the prisoner’s box, Mr. Rafferty appeared bored, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed during most of the testimony.

I guess the testimony was boring him today - jerk!

[Kip]

“He turned his lights off and pulled onto the sideroad,” McClintic testified earlier about their actions following the murder. “He said, ‘We need to get rid of our shoes, so I believe I tossed my pair of shoes out the car window. He gave me a pair of shoes to wear and he put on a different pair of shoes as well then we drove off.”

They've got extra shoes with them? That sounds well planned and not some spur-of-the-moment "I dare you to abduct someone."

Regarding the white shoes found by the side of the road - if TLM had done the kiling, I'm surprised they didn't have blood on them, even if they had covered Tori with a trash bag.

As to Rafferty being bored, that ought to make a good impression with the jury. /sarc I hope he's enjoying feeling bored; in prison, there won't be much time for boredom as he'll constantly be looking over his shoulder for another inmate coming at him.

[Jezreel]

We should hear more about the forensics of the shoes later on.... I wonder why they didn't ask her what condition the shoes were in when she found them, was there blood on them etc. Also I wonder about he single shoes she found, could this have been Rafftery's?

Apparently Rafftery kept spare clothing and shoes in his gym bag in the car, me I just have one pair of shoes, towel, and my stinky gym clothes, weird that he had two of everything.

I hope another inmate comes at him and inflicts on him what he did on Tori :(

I also hope they have forensic evidence to back up the sexual assault by him.

[Jezreel]

This beautiful innocent little girl, went from this.......

To this......

Officers salute as the remains are driven away in a hearse


Although there has been no evidence present yet beside the testimony of TLM that Rafferty sexually assaulted Tori, she was found with only her Hannah Montana t-shirt on and absolutely nothing else :(

[Jezreel]

This I think will be another emotinally charged chapter - The Mount Forest death scene... R.I.P Tori darling

LondonFP - The first-degree murder trial of Michael Rafferty is set to begin Friday exploring the emotionally charged scene where Victoria 'Tori' Stafford's body was found, and where the Crown alleges she was raped and murdered.

Taking the stand in what the Crown calls the Mount Forest chapter will be accomplished police officer, OPP Det. Sgt Jim Smyth. After two months of intense police searches, Smyth found Tori's body July 19, 2009 off a rural road near the town.

He's also the officer who pulled a confession out of Terri-Lynne McClintic, who pleaded guilty to murder in Tori's death and pointed the finger at her boyfriend, Rafferty.

Smyth may be best known as the interrogator who led Russell Williams to confess during a 10 hour interview to the murders of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd and 86 other charges. Williams was given two life sentences for murder in 2010.

Jurors were warned at the beginning of the trial they'd be making what might be an emotionally difficult visit to the remote country lane near Mount Forest where Tori's body was found - I cannot imagine being on this jury and having to visit the scene, I'm sure it is going to be very overwhelming for them all. I haven't heard of jury's going out to visit places very often, I wonder if Rafferty will be attending, I highly doubt it, but would have been interesting to see his reaction.

[Kip]

This I think will be another emotinally charged chapter - The Mount Forest death scene... R.I.P Tori darling

Jurors were warned at the beginning of the trial they'd be making what might be an emotionally difficult visit to the remote country lane near Mount Forest where Tori's body was found -

I cannot imagine being on this jury and having to visit the scene, I'm sure it is going to be very overwhelming for them all. I haven't heard of jury's going out to visit places very often, I wonder if Rafferty will be attending, I highly doubt it, but would have been interesting to see his reaction.

I'm a pretty strong person; I'm usually the one who takes charge in emergencies, etc. But if I were on that jury, I'd be hoping they'd have some chairs available near the murder site. I feel so emotionally drained just reading some of this...I agree with you it would be very overwhelming.

I'm ambivalent about Rafferty attending. I agree it would be interesting to see his reaction; but on the other hand, I don't want his presence to defile that spot any more than it already has.

[Jezreel]

I am surprised, Rafferty is going to be going to the crime scene also, not sure what to make of it.....

LondonFP - The jury in the first-degree murder trial of Michael Rafferty will visit Monday the remote country spot where the body of eight-year-old Victoria 'Tori' Stafford was found.

The small clearing among the trees and fields off Conc. Rd. 6 N south of Mount Forest is also the place, the Crown claims, where the Woodstock girl was raped and killed.

Rafferty, 31, will also be visiting the scene, as will his lawyer, Crown attorneys, Justice Thomas Heeney and other court officials.

Heeney told jurors Friday how to approach what they see.

"What you see. . . is not evidence," he said. "However, you may find you are better able to understand the evidence given to you in court."

Rafferty has pleaded not guilty to murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm in the April 8, 2009 disappearance of Tori.

She was last seen in a surveillance video with a woman later identified as Terri-Lynne McClintic, now 21. McClintic later confessed to a role in the abduction and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2010.

McClintic described to police a country lane off a rural road that dipped over a culvert, then rose. Near the crest of that laneway, Tori was assaulted and killed, and her body dumped under a pine tree at the end of a pile of rocks, McClintic said.

On Monday, jurors will be given a guide book to the scene and have been told to walk through the area in silence, without talking to each other.

The guidebook provides eight spots, lettered A through G, for the jurors to visit.

The tour begins at a laneway across the road from a house that McClintic described as sitting at an angle to the road.

Jurors will then head up the laneway past a culvert to the crest of the hill, where flags with the appropriate letters will guide them to look back at the house, the rock pile, silos that McClintic identified, and the spot under the tree where Tori's body was found.

Police were to have swept and secured the site by Monday morning.

I went to court for a while on Friday, before they broke for lunch, they were showing slides of the crime scene area from all different angles (see link) Rafferty looked very uncomfortable in the prisoner box, constantly shifting, whether it be removing his glasses, putting them back on, hand up around his collar - like he was loosening his tie, you could see him swallowing, like he was swallowing rocks, his eyes would flit from the witness stand, to the evidence screen in front of him, to his defense team and around, he still kept his mouth straight, but you could see his recognition of the photos in his eyes, you could see there was emotion there, not sure what kind though, they were red and he was rubbing them a lot each time he took of his glasses, he wasn't crying but he may have been showing some sadness. I read tweets that afternoon when they showed pictures of the scene after they removed the rocks (one over 100lbs) and the garbage bags with Tor's remains inside were seen, Rafferty was looking up at the ceiling.....
It will be interesting I am sure for the jurors to see his reactions at the crime scene itself.

Sorry Kip, I guess he will be at that scene once again.

This is the guide book for the jurors:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...73076.html

Mount Forest scene evidence photos:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...73121.html

[Jezreel]

The jury were allotted approx. 2 ¹⁄₂ hrs to tour the crime scene, they were done and back on the bus in under 30 mins..... that tells me they saw all they needed to see. The crown has been said that you don;t realize just how secluded the area is unless you have been there, some of the reporters stated today that the crown was right. Looking at the pictures of the crime scene, the drawing that TLM did and the description she gave of the area, there is no denying she was telling the truth. Question: If you believe the defense theory about how they just pulled into there so TLM could talk to Tori as she was scared of Rafferty and he walked away as told to by TLM and came back and was horrified to find Tori dead, how could TLM have taken in so much of the surrounding area?? To me I actually believe her when she said she was standing in the fields while Rafferty was back at the car with Tori.

Media confirmed that Rafferty was indeed there as was his lawyer Dirk Derstine, but the cops apparently 'hid' him. I wonder if he was just kept in a vehicle while the jurors wondered around?

Here are some pics media posted on twitter:

AM980.ca ‏ @AM980_Court Close
A view of the lane way from the road. http://yfrog.com/nzv94ofj


AM980.ca ‏ @AM980_Court Close
The area Tori's body was found in.


AM980.ca ‏ @AM980_Court Close
McClintic said Rafferty parked his car in this area. The rock pile is in the background


AM980.ca ‏ @AM980_Court Close
The fence McClintic described in court. She walked to this area during the sex assault, she says

[Jezreel]

Canada.com - MOUNT FOREST, Ont. — 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 Det.-Sgt. 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, 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 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 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 sombre 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 Rafferty.

But what has remained consistent throughout is her allegation that the kidnapping was 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 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 — 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 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 Rafferty's insistence, at a Home Depot in Guelph, Ont.

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 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.

Here is what the jurors were asked to observe while there:

LondonFP - Here's what jurors were asked to observe, and what reporters could observe on their own later:

Yellow lettered markers in various places that matched letters in a guidebook with instructions.
At site A, jurors were asked to look across the road at a house. The house is a nice bungalow with an arched doorway that sits at an angle to the road.
At site B, halfway to the top of the laneway, jurors were asked to notice a creek and look up the laneway to a bend. The creek does indeed run through several metal tubes, or culverts.
At spot C, the bend at the top of the laneway, jurors were asked to look north to the rock pile and east for a fence if possible. The fence and rock pile were visible, the rock pile close.
At site D, the rock pile itself, jurors were told to look back toward the house. To reporters, it was clear the house could not be seen from the rock pile.
Site E marked an area near a fence east of the rock pile. Jurors were asked to look back northwest to the rock pile. The rock pile was visible, and it took this reporter 45 steps to walk the distance from fence to rock pile.
The next two sites were not marked in reality, but only in the guidebook. To the north from the fence, jurors were told to look for silos, marked as F in their books. Those silos could be discerned, but not at a glance, through far away tree branches.
To the southwest, they were to look for more silos. Several silos rose above the treeline, easily spotted.

Finally, at site H, jurors were told to look to the north of the rock pile. When OPP Det. Staff Sgt. Jim Smyth found Tori's body July 19, 2009, he had to push lower branches aside and move one rock to make sure of his find. On Monday, the lower branches and rocks were removed so jurors could get a clear view of where Tori's body was left.


Here is a video of the media as they visit the site of where Tori's remains are found showing the areas the jurors were asked to look:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012...visit.html

Testimony will continue today with Dr. Michael Pollanen, Chief of the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service, expected to take the stand to discuss the autopsy results.

[Jezreel]

LONDON, Ont. - 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 favourite colour.

http://www.globalnews.ca/sports/canada/i...story.html






A little piece of mind is one thing the pathologist said that even though the remains were too badly decomposed to show sexual assault there was no discernible rectal injury.

[Jezreel]

National Post: - As the third anniversary of Victoria (Tori) Stafford’s slaying approaches, one of the few enduring comforts from that time is how the little girl’s disappearance galvanized police across Ontario.

At the trial of Michael Rafferty, which regularly careens from horrific evidence to the routine and back again, jurors got another reminder Wednesday of the simple power of a child.

The 31-year-old Mr. Rafferty is pleading not guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and first-degree murder in Tori’s death. His ex-girlfriend Terri-Lynne McClintic, almost two years ago pleaded guilty to the latter charge and is serving a life sentence.

Tori was already missing nine days when the Emergency Response Team of the Ontario Provincial Police was first called in; this was shortly after the OPP joined the Woodstock force in the effort to locate the little girl.

The odds were very much against Tori being found alive.

As OPP Sergeant Jamie Stirling, a veteran ERT member and team leader, told Ontario Superior Court Judge Thomas Heeney and the jurors — and here Sgt. Stirling was referring to an international study of stranger abductions — in only 2% of 735 cases in the study were such stolen children found alive.

This didn’t slow the ERT search — or the larger joint task force of regular OPP and Woodstock officers — one iota.

In fact, Sgt. Stirling said, the search for Tori was easily “the largest in OPP history and probably in our nation.”

The next biggest was the so-called Bandidos investigation (into the homicides of eight members of the biker gang), which saw 1,751 assignments and involved 1,757 names (mostly of officers, but also witnesses and suspects, etc).

In the search for Tori, OPP officers got 5,557 assignments and 13,899 names were involved.

Tori’s disappearance became a murder investigation on May 19, when McClintic made her first tearful confession — the officers of this elite, highly trained unit performed some of the least glamourous imaginable tasks.

A search always begins with what the ERT calls PLS, or Point Last Seen, in the eight-year-old’s case from near Oliver Stephens Public School in Woodstock, where she was in Grade 3.

In the early days, before the McClintic confession changed everything, the ERT members looked to Woodstock itself, wading in waist-deep swampy water on the edge of town until they finally had to call in OPP divers.

(As the search widened, over six days in late May, these 11 divers searched 11 different waterways in southwestern Ontario. The numbers from that study on stranger abductions show that 14% of the time, victims are found in water.)

The next big task on the ERT list was the Salford landfill, Woodstock’s local one.

They began on April 20 and searched there until May 7, with 14 members there every day, painstakingly poring through garbage with rakes and shovels, then being decontaminated by two additional members.

Every day, the ERT went through 20-25 truckloads’ worth of refuse.

No good deed going unpunished, they had to return in late May, specifically to look for the back seat of Mr. Rafferty’s Honda Civic, which by then detectives had discovered was missing. The ERT found several discarded back seats, as it turned out, but not the right one.

After McClintic’s confession, and the details she provided detectives about where she believed she and Mr. Rafferty had gone with Tori that day, the search moved to a great swath of the southern part of Ontario north of Guelph.

The PLS became a Home Depot in the north end of that city, where McClintic bought a hammer and garbage bags (and where store cameras caught her doing so, and caught Mr. Rafferty getting cash out of a nearby ATM minutes before).

ERT members travelled by foot, by chopper and car and ATV, searching in no fewer than six Ontario counties, looking for evidence McClintic said she and Mr. Rafferty had tossed. As Sgt. Stirling said, the abduction study showed that in more than half the cases, the body was found within a mile of discarded evidence.

They were looking for Tori, of course, but also for clothes and shoes worn by McClintic and Mr. Rafferty, for the murder weapon (that hammer) and the garbage bags, for the Home Depot bag.

Always, too, they were looking for the scene as McClintic had described it — a country lane, noticeable because it was across from a neat house set on an angle to a main road, that crossed a stream and led to a rock pile near a stand of pine trees.

By all-terrain vehicles, 12 officers from the ERT searched 70 different rock piles — and these were only the ones that at least superficially fit the criteria — and travelled up and down country roads and into farmers’ fields.

Many times, OPP cadaver dogs were along for the rock pile searches.

Between May 27 and June 3, ERT members walked 51 kilometres along the shoulder of the busy multi-lane 401 Highway, westbound lanes only, looking for bits of the bloodstained foam rear seat McClintic said she had, at Mr. Rafferty’s instruction, cut out and which had been thrown from the window as they headed back to Woodstock.

The chances were minuscule the ERT would find anything so light as foam so late in the game, but they looked anyway.

The helicopter search went over four days in May, two of them with McClintic in the chopper.

On July 19, OPP Detective-Staff Sergeant Jim Smyth, the interrogator to whom McClintic confessed, was on his way back to Woodstock from OPP headquarters in Orillia.

Police had just learned that Mr. Rafferty’s cellphone had pinged off a tower near Mount Forest, just a little north of where the ERT search had stopped. The ERT was to meet the next day, but Det.-Staff Sgt. Smyth wasn’t going to be able to make the meeting, so on a whim, he detoured off to Mount Forest to scope out what would be the new search area.

It was he who found Tori Stafford’s remains, just 6.8 kilometres north of where the ERT had stopped.

As Sgt. Stirling was testifying, on the monitors throughout the courtroom were shown the mapped GPS results of the ERT searches — blue lines for underwater and chopper searches; orange or red lines for the areas officers walked or covered by car and ATV; green squares for the rockpiles.

Helped by members of nearby forces, the ERT members travelled more than 18,000 kilometres. As Sgt. Stirling put it once, they went one and a half times around the moon, as magical and lovely as the little girl herself.



Trial evidence released yesterday:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...94746.html

[koko]

thanks for keeping us up to date on the case/trial Jezreel. sad, awful shit.
i hate the fact that people (using the term loosely) do such terrible things, and to a child none the less.


fuck.

[Jezreel]

thanks for keeping us up to date on the case/trial Jezreel. sad, awful shit.
i hate the fact that people (using the term loosely) do such terrible things, and to a child none the less.


fuck.

Your welcome Koko, I don't get it, never will people are seriously fucked up.

[Jezreel]

Have been away so unable to update.

Thursday the crown showed pictures from Flattery's home (he lived with momma) and his car (OMG wait until you see his car, what a shitbox)

Here are links to the evidence released:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...99891.html

His car:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...99961.html

LondonFreePress: Michael Rafferty lived in a tidy, ordinary house, but drove an odd-looking car.

Terri-Lynne McClintic told a story of how her ordinary-on-the-surface boyfriend kidnapped Victoria Stafford, raped her in that car, then tried to make everything look ordinary again.

Police trying to prove McClintic’s version of events found several items of interest in his ordinary-looking house and unusual-looking car, a jury heard.

Also drawing their attention were several items missing from that car.

Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm in the April 8, 2009, disappearance of Victoria, called Tori by family.

McClintic, 21, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in April 2010 and is serving a life sentence for murder.

Tori was eight when she disappeared while walking home from school in Woodstock. Her body was found July 19, 2009, near Mount Forest, badly beaten and left in garbage bags under a pile of rocks.

McClintic confessed to her role in the crime May 19, 2009, implicated Rafferty and caused his arrest the same day. She has testified against Rafferty, although in doing so she placed her violent life under a microscope.

Rafferty’s everyday life remained hidden until Thursday, when jurors got a look inside his mother’s Woodstock house, where he lived, through 70 photographs taken by police.

Surrounded by a large yard, the house sits at the edge of a pleasant cul-de-sac in Woodstock.

Inside, Rafferty’s mother made it the kind of home where the runner on a sidetable in the kitchen perfectly matches the cloth on the main dining table.

In that sidetable, however, police found a copy of the missing poster for Victoria Stafford. They also found a piece of paper listing several pieces of furniture under the title “Things 4 Carol.” Carol is the name of McClintic’s mother.

In the front hall foyer was found a camera card with three photos of McClintic on it. In a police interview, Rafferty denied knowing much about McClintic.

In the front hall closet, police found a black pea coat. McClintic says Rafferty made her hide Tori under a black pea coat in the backseat as they drove out of Woodstock.

In a drawer under the gleaming kitchen counter, police found a Walmart receipt for the same hair dye found in McClintic’s bedroom. McClintic testified Rafferty wanted her to change her hair colour after Tori’s death.

In Rafferty’s bedroom, police found some Nestle Pure Lite water bottles. McClintic testified Rafferty washed himself off with water from bottles in his car.

On a toolbox on the stairs, police found a bladeless blue knife. McClintic testified Rafferty raped Tori in the backseat of his car. On the drive home he told her to use his blue knife to cut out a bit of the seat they couldn’t properly clean, she said.

The entire seat was missing from the car by the time police photographed it, the jury saw in a second slideshow of photographs that detailed the search of the Honda. Also missing was the window crank from the rear passenger side. The car boasted a patchwork black paint job over the original blue exterior, and what appeared to be the remnants of a white paint job inside the car.

“The paint job was unusual,” testified OPP Const. Gary Scoyne, the lead identification officer on the case, who has become noted at the trial for offering both detail and understatement.

Inside the car, police found parts of sanding disks with white on them. They also found a Much Dance CD. McClintic testified they played that CD while driving Tori to her death.

Police also found a GoodLife Fitness bag. According to McClintic, Rafferty brought a change of clothing in that bag. She testified Rafferty brought her a pair of white shorts with green stripes or green with white stripes. In the bag inside the car, police found a pair of white shorts with green stripes.

Police also found a piece of paper with Bell Canada’s return policy printed on one side and a phone number on the other. In its opening argument, the Crown suggested Rafferty tried to get rid of his phone after police first interviewed him four days before his arrest.

Inside the glove box of the car was $935 and inside a driver’s side compartment, several condoms.

Before leaving for the day, jurors were given a court admission, an agreed statement of facts that must be considered the truth.

The admission involved what Rafferty said to two undercover police officers placed in police cells with him and taken with him to the Oxford County courthouse May 20, 2009.

Rafferty asked one of the officers for drugs and said he uses “Oxys,” five 80-mg pills or 11 to 12 40-mg pills a day. If he can’t get Oxycontin, he takes 20 to 25 Perocets a day.

Rafferty said several times he wanted some Oxy and added, “It’s going to be a hard few days.”

He’s been in custody since.

[Jezreel]

So sweet, had to post:

WOODSTOCK - More than 300 purple helium balloons and handmade purple butterflies greeted Woodstonians Sunday morning, April 8 in memory of Victoria “Tori” Stafford.

The gesture was carried out by 21-year-old Celina Horvath and her friend Kaitlin Bodden, who spent months collecting supplies and organizing the tribute. The pair went out in the early hours of Sunday morning to decorate Southside Park, the Pittock Conservation Area, Dundas Street, Sobey's Plaza, Oliver Stephens Public School and the cemetery where Tori is buried.

“So many lives (were affected) that day,” said Horvath on Facebook. “I felt (decorating the town would) celebrate (Tori's) life.”

Woodstock Sentinel Review


From FB



Also:

The Toronto Star:
was three years ago Sunday that 8-year-old Victoria “Tori” Stafford vanished outside her school in Woodstock and in the midst of the trial of the man accused in her death, her family spent a quiet day marking the grim anniversary.

Her father, Rodney Stafford, and his family paid a visit to Tori’s grave, as they have been most days throughout the trial of Michael Rafferty in London, Ont.

April 8, 2009, was the day Tori never returned home from school and never would again. It’s tough to recall that day and the agonizing months that followed, before her remains were discovered that July, but at the same time each April 8 is just another day without her.

“Yes, it’s an anniversary, but I don’t want to keep reliving that day,” Rodney Stafford said. “There’s a deeper loss because she’s gone, but at the same time there’s more positive out there.”

Since Tori disappeared, community support for the family has been overwhelming, Stafford said. On Easter Sunday in 2009 a candlelight vigil for Tori, then missing four days, was organized and well over 1,000 people from Woodstock and beyond flooded a parking lot in town to pray for the girl’s safe return.

That same day, court has heard, Terri-Lynne McClintic was arrested on a breach of probation. She later confessed to abducting Tori and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

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

The Staffords have attended every day of the trial, though they say it’s difficult to listen to the allegations against Rafferty. The support of people across the country is one thing that keeps them going, they say.

They attended a charity race Friday in London, and were quite affected by a girl who wore a T-shirt in memory of Tori. She placed first in the 12 and under category, Stafford said.

“It was a tear-jerker, knowing the reason she was doing it,” Stafford said. “It’s proving that the story is affecting everyone, even kids.”

Well-wishers ask what they can do to honour Tori’s memory, and for now Stafford just hopes everyone can spend time with family, as he will.

“It’s Easter weekend,” he said. “Enjoy it. Grab your kids close.”

[Jezreel]

Court was cancelled yesterday as the defence lawyer Dirk Dirstine was ill with the flu. it is set to resume today and this is one of the days many have been waiting for, forensic experts are set to testify on DNA and other evidence found. Int he opening statements the crown said that Tori's blood was found on the back door of Rafferty's car, also a mixture of Tori's and Rafferty found on his gym bag, I am hoping for some concrete evidence showing he was definitely involved and not the innocent dupe the defense eluded to.

Also will be interesting to see what was found on his coat, look at the markings..... this is the coat that was supposedly covering Tori while she was told to hide on the floor in the back of the car.

[Jezreel]

Not all forensics were covered today, we found out there were two blonde hairs with roots on Rafferty's coat and were sent for testing but didn't hear the results of that testing yet or anything else that might have been found on it judging by the marks on it. Tori's blood was found on the back passenger door moulding, there was another DNA profile with it but not enough for it to create a profile. They said it was tested for sperm also but I'm not sure I they got to those results or it couldn't be determined. Other blood spots were found on the back of the front seats and also Rafferty's speem on the front passenger seat with TLM's blood mixed with it - she did say they had sex in his at the first night they met, wonder why her blood was there though? Also in a seam on raffertys gym bag blood was found, it contained 3 DNA profiles, Tori's, Rafferty's and the third could not be determined. Forensic testimony will continue Thursday so hopefully some things will get cleared up and should find out about the coat. Oh also the tiny piece of fabric found in the floor of the car was determine to be from his missing car seat, DNA could not be pulled from it though (TLM testified that rafferty instructed her to cut out portions of the back seat, which she did and threw out the window) and also saliva wa found on in the back on the back rest portion of the seat.
So far it seems evidence and forensics are backing up TLM's claims. I wonder how the defence will spin this, rafferty can't be the innocent dupe they claim if his blood also was mixed with Tori's, why would he be bleeding I he had 'walked away' from the car???

[Kip]

[snipped] I wonder how the defence will spin this, rafferty can't be the innocent dupe they claim if his blood also was mixed with Tori's, why would he be bleeding I he had 'walked away' from the car???

Good point. I'm sure the defense will concoct some story to explain it all away - but I'm hopeful the jury will see through it.

[Jezreel]

London Free Press - Nothing about the killing of Victoria 'Tori' Stafford, or the arrest of a girlfriend involved in that killing, altered Michael Rafferty's habit of asking woman after woman out on dates.

Nothing changed his tales of being a dance instructor and/or contractor, so busy at work he was always texting people on his cellphone.

To many of the women, he was suitable material for a boyfriend, despite driving a messy car.

Yet, in his conversations with those women, and in what they saw of his car, the Crown prosecuting Rafferty for the murder of the eight-year-old girl found plenty for a jury to consider Thursday.

"We did talk one time about abducting kids and how they take the kids and make them be like their own," ex-girlfriend Sarah Hodge, 31, testified, elaborating a few seconds later, "how people take their kids and abduct them and they just grow up thinking that they're their real parents."

Rafferty was obsessed with the Stafford case, testified Hodge, who said she started dating him April 14, 2009, six days after Tori disappeared while walking home from her Woodstock school.

"He was constantly checking the news for it. If it was on TV, he would turn on the TV and watch it. Or, if I had the newspaper, he would pull it out and read about that."

Rafferty confided "he knew all the inside information," she added.

To Hodge and other women, Rafferty spoke about how he was helping a female friend in a detention centre.

Because of her, he'd been questioned about Tori's disappearance.

"He seemed sort of upset by that and I thought that was justifiable," testified another ex-girlfriend.

Sitting in a detention centre at the time was Terri-Lynne McClintic, who later confessed to her role in the abduction and killing of Tori. She's testified she was Rafferty's girlfriend in the spring of 2009, and if so, she had plenty of company.

Counting the women Rafferty told police he was involved with at the time, plus four who've testified this week, the Woodstock man dated at least seven women in the months before his arrest May 19, 2009.

Rafferty has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm in Tori's disappearance.

McClintic pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received a life sentence in April 2010.

Her testimony has formed the basis of the Crown's version of the events that led to Tori's body being found July 19, 2009 near Mount Forest.

McClintic has testified Rafferty kept Tori hidden in the back seat of his car while driving from Woodstock April 8, 2009, and raped her in the backseat before she was killed.

The extent of the Crown's interest in Rafferty's dating life is unclear, but there's no mistaking the point in questions about his car seat.

One woman who dated Rafferty up to April 1, 2009, testified Wednesday his 2003 Honda Civic had a back seat bench.

Two who dated him after April 8, 2009, and one who was just a friend, testified Thursday there was no back seat bench in the car.

Four neighbours of Rafferty testified, as well, Thursday a backseat of a car was left outside for Woodstock's annual spring cleanup around April 15, 2009.

But under cross-examination by Rafferty's defence lawyer, Dirk Derstine, neighbour Mike Griswold testified he saw Rafferty remove the car seat March 25, 2009, and place it in a shed, in order to install car speakers.

Derstine spent little time questioning Rafferty's former girlfriends about their view of his client But he took most of the morning questioning Centre of Forensic Sciences biologist Jennifer McLean about the limitations of DNA evidence.

On Wednesday, McLean testified DNA evidence put Tori in Rafferty's car.

You can't tell us . . . whether or not, in fact, they (Rafferty and Tori) were in the car together at the same time?" Derstine asked.

" . . . if I find DNA from two individuals on one item, it doesn't necessarily mean it was deposited at the same time," McLean agreed.

"For all your skill and science, you cannot say how it is that various different DNA deposits came to be deposited in a different area?" Derstine also asked.

"That is correct," she said.

McLean elaborated on the DNA found from blood on a gym bag found in Rafferty's car. That DNA came from at least three people, with Rafferty one contributor and Tori a second.

But there's no way of knowing for sure if blood was the source for all the DNA found, or how many individuals were the source of the blood, McLean said.

The trial is to continue Friday, with the Crown examining Rafferty's comments to friends about Tori's disappearance.


Here is the evidence photos released:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffe...23401.html

The hairs found on the coat could not be identified :(
Derstine listed other scenarios of how DNA could be transferred to the same spot at different times, obviously trying to create doubt, I wonder what the probability of any of those actually happening? Doesn't cause enough doubt in my mind that's for sure.