Awoke
15th March 2012, 05:29 PM
Disturbing story, too close to home for me. Heartbreaking.
http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20090520/450_facebook_rafferty_09052.jpg
http://nationalpostcomment.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/tori-stafford-terri-lynne-mcclintic.jpg?w=620
Accused in Stafford murder trial wanted ‘younger person,’ court told
Warning: This story contains disturbing details.
When eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford was lured from her school in Woodstock and taken to the car waiting up the street, the man accused of driving her away and subsequently raping and murdering her appeared disappointed, his murder trial was told Wednesday.
“He made comments that she wasn't young enough, that it should have been a younger person,” prosecution witness Terri-Lynne McClintic told the jury weighing the fate of her former boyfriend Michael Rafferty, charged with first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.
When the couple drove around Woodstock in the runup to Tori's abduction, Ms. McClintic recounted, it often seemed to be near schools. On one occasion in the weeks before the crime, she said, Mr. Rafferty drove her to two different houses in Woodstock occupied by single mothers and talked about how to break in and tie up the occupants.
In other evidence aired Wednesday afternoon, the jury heard of the preparations the couple made to fend off any police inquiries after Tori's death. These encompassed scripts, orchestrated by Mr. Rafferty, that described two different false scenarios, depending on the questions.
And more than once in the days before she was charged, Ms. McClintic testified, she told Mr. Rafferty that if police did swoop, she was willing to shoulder all the blame in Tori's death.
“I said I would take the fall for everything, that it was all me. He had a life, a job and he had things going for him, and I really had nothing… I said, ‘I'm just an 18-year-old junkie anyway.'” She described her own life as worthless, she told Crown attorney Kevin Gowdey, “because that's what I thought.”
Nor did Mr. Rafferty seem dismayed at the prospect of his new girlfriend being locked up for life, she testified. The prospect of “conjugal visits” even appeared to please him.
“I'll never forget what he said to me. I remember touching his face and he laughed at me and said, ‘You'll do anything for a little bit of love, eh?' ” She and Mr. Rafferty, 31, had dated for just a few weeks before Tori died, and are jointly accused of murdering the little girl.
Ms. McClintic, 21, has confessed to murder, is serving life imprisonment, and is now the key prosecution witness in the Crown's case against her ex-boyfriend, who from his prisoner's box listened intently to the day's proceedings, scribbling long notes on a yellow legal pad.
The prosecution, however, has encountered a snag.
On Tuesday, Ms. McClintic surprised and shocked the trial by testifying that it was she – not Mr. Rafferty – who killed Tori in a rural location nearly three years ago, wielding a newly purchased hammer. In her original confession, court heard, she told police Mr. Rafferty was the killer.
Asked by Mr. Gowdey Wednesday why she pleaded guilty, Ms. McClintic replied: “It was the right thing to do.”
While being detained on a relatively minor charge but before the pair were arrested, she testified, Mr. Rafferty spoke of them running away together, and that “maybe we could be like the next Bonnie and Clyde.”
An autopsy concluded that after Tori was kidnapped, she was killed by “massive” injuries to her skull, inflicted by a hammer.
She disappeared in April, 2009, but her body was not discovered until July of that year, wrapped in green garbage bags and concealed beneath rocks outside the small town of Mount Forest, 130 kilometres from her home in Woodstock.
On Wednesday, Ms. McClintic revisited some of her testimony in her narrative of Tori's abduction. The child repeatedly pleaded to be taken home, Ms. McClintic said, and promised not to tell anyone what had happened. “She said she would tell her mom that she had just been playing at her cousin's.”
More at link.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/confessing-to-tori-staffords-murder-was-right-thing-to-do-mcclintic-says/article2369017/?from=sec434
The other story I read was after signing out of hotmail. It was much more disturbing and heartbreaking with details about how little Tory pleaded to be protected from the rapist as the bitch junkie accomplice walked her to the bathroom between rapes, but I can't find the strength to seek it out and repost it.
She suffered terribly. Pray for her family please. I don't follow the news, so I am just finding out about this now, even though it happened in 2009.
http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20090520/450_facebook_rafferty_09052.jpg
http://nationalpostcomment.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/tori-stafford-terri-lynne-mcclintic.jpg?w=620
Accused in Stafford murder trial wanted ‘younger person,’ court told
Warning: This story contains disturbing details.
When eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford was lured from her school in Woodstock and taken to the car waiting up the street, the man accused of driving her away and subsequently raping and murdering her appeared disappointed, his murder trial was told Wednesday.
“He made comments that she wasn't young enough, that it should have been a younger person,” prosecution witness Terri-Lynne McClintic told the jury weighing the fate of her former boyfriend Michael Rafferty, charged with first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.
When the couple drove around Woodstock in the runup to Tori's abduction, Ms. McClintic recounted, it often seemed to be near schools. On one occasion in the weeks before the crime, she said, Mr. Rafferty drove her to two different houses in Woodstock occupied by single mothers and talked about how to break in and tie up the occupants.
In other evidence aired Wednesday afternoon, the jury heard of the preparations the couple made to fend off any police inquiries after Tori's death. These encompassed scripts, orchestrated by Mr. Rafferty, that described two different false scenarios, depending on the questions.
And more than once in the days before she was charged, Ms. McClintic testified, she told Mr. Rafferty that if police did swoop, she was willing to shoulder all the blame in Tori's death.
“I said I would take the fall for everything, that it was all me. He had a life, a job and he had things going for him, and I really had nothing… I said, ‘I'm just an 18-year-old junkie anyway.'” She described her own life as worthless, she told Crown attorney Kevin Gowdey, “because that's what I thought.”
Nor did Mr. Rafferty seem dismayed at the prospect of his new girlfriend being locked up for life, she testified. The prospect of “conjugal visits” even appeared to please him.
“I'll never forget what he said to me. I remember touching his face and he laughed at me and said, ‘You'll do anything for a little bit of love, eh?' ” She and Mr. Rafferty, 31, had dated for just a few weeks before Tori died, and are jointly accused of murdering the little girl.
Ms. McClintic, 21, has confessed to murder, is serving life imprisonment, and is now the key prosecution witness in the Crown's case against her ex-boyfriend, who from his prisoner's box listened intently to the day's proceedings, scribbling long notes on a yellow legal pad.
The prosecution, however, has encountered a snag.
On Tuesday, Ms. McClintic surprised and shocked the trial by testifying that it was she – not Mr. Rafferty – who killed Tori in a rural location nearly three years ago, wielding a newly purchased hammer. In her original confession, court heard, she told police Mr. Rafferty was the killer.
Asked by Mr. Gowdey Wednesday why she pleaded guilty, Ms. McClintic replied: “It was the right thing to do.”
While being detained on a relatively minor charge but before the pair were arrested, she testified, Mr. Rafferty spoke of them running away together, and that “maybe we could be like the next Bonnie and Clyde.”
An autopsy concluded that after Tori was kidnapped, she was killed by “massive” injuries to her skull, inflicted by a hammer.
She disappeared in April, 2009, but her body was not discovered until July of that year, wrapped in green garbage bags and concealed beneath rocks outside the small town of Mount Forest, 130 kilometres from her home in Woodstock.
On Wednesday, Ms. McClintic revisited some of her testimony in her narrative of Tori's abduction. The child repeatedly pleaded to be taken home, Ms. McClintic said, and promised not to tell anyone what had happened. “She said she would tell her mom that she had just been playing at her cousin's.”
More at link.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/confessing-to-tori-staffords-murder-was-right-thing-to-do-mcclintic-says/article2369017/?from=sec434
The other story I read was after signing out of hotmail. It was much more disturbing and heartbreaking with details about how little Tory pleaded to be protected from the rapist as the bitch junkie accomplice walked her to the bathroom between rapes, but I can't find the strength to seek it out and repost it.
She suffered terribly. Pray for her family please. I don't follow the news, so I am just finding out about this now, even though it happened in 2009.