Eight-year-old's slaying in jurors' hands

Warning: Graphic details from this court case may disturb some readers.

LONDON, Ont. -- The fate of Michael Rafferty, accused of abducting eight-year-old Victoria Stafford for his sexual gratification before brutally killing her and hiding her body under a pile of rocks, is now in the hands of a jury.

After listening to at times graphic and disturbing evidence from 62 witnesses over two months, nine women and three men are now deciding whether Rafferty, 31, is guilty of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.

The jurors retired Thursday night and were to resume their deliberations this morning.

The trial was long and the instructions from Superior Court Judge Thomas Heeney were complex. Jurors saw 190 exhibits and heard varied evidence from dozens of experts, police officers and other witnesses, but Rafferty's ex-girlfriend Terri-Lynne McClintic ties it all together.

McClintic is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty two years ago to first-degree murder in Tori's death. Over six days in March, she told court a horrifying story of a drug-addled couple abducting a young girl at random for the man's sexual pleasure, then killing her with inconceivable brutality.

McClintic claimed Rafferty was directing her every step of the way, ordering her to snatch a young girl for him, making her buy a hammer and garbage bags, then getting her to help him clean up at the murder scene.

Certainly he was in control, the Crown suggested, alleging that in McClintic, he had finally found the perfect partner to do his perverse bidding. McClintic -- no stranger to violence, with several assault convictions under her belt before 18 and a propensity to write out gruesome torture fantasies -- was used by Rafferty as a violent pawn, the Crown alleged.

From the time she confessed on May 19, 2009, until January of this year, McClintic maintained it had been Rafferty who killed Tori by repeatedly striking her in the head with a hammer.

But a few days before Rafferty's pretrial, McClintic changed her story, testifying that after witnessing the rape, pent-up rage from her own childhood traumas caused her to snap, grabbing the hammer and killing the girl.

Gowdey was skeptical about the new version of events. Why, he wondered, would a fit of such unbridled homicidal rage include taking the time to tie a garbage bag over the victim's head before delivering the fatal blows?

The scenarios Heeney described, which will direct the jury's deliberations, turn on whether the jurors think Rafferty or McClintic killed Tori.

If they think Rafferty killed Tori himself and that it was planned and deliberate, or that he killed her and the killing was part of the same series of events as a kidnapping or sexual assault, he is guilty of first-degree murder, Heeney said.

If they believe Rafferty intended to help or encourage McClintic to kill Tori knowing she was going to commit a planned and deliberate murder, they should find him guilty of first-degree murder, Heeney said.

If, on the other hand, the jury believes Rafferty caused Tori's death, but it wasn't planned and deliberate or part of a kidnapping or sexual assault, they should find him guilty of second-degree murder, Heeney said.

A second-degree murder conviction would also be in order if jurors believe McClintic killed Tori, and Rafferty meant to help or encourage her, but didn't know the murder was planned.

If the jury believes McClintic killed Tori and that Rafferty intentionally helped or encouraged her to commit an "objectively dangerous" act, but didn't know she was going to kill Tori, he would be guilty of manslaughter, Heeney told the jury.

Rafferty's lawyer Dirk Derstine placed his client at the scene, but portrayed him as an innocent dupe.

Derstine urged the jury to use extreme caution when considering McClintic's evidence -- in fact, he suggested, they should reject all of it, except for her claim to be the killer. She has proven herself time and time again to be an accomplished liar, he said.

The bloodthirsty young woman sought out Tori, to whom she had some peripheral connections, did not tell Rafferty the girl in his car was kidnapped, had him drive to a remote location and told him to walk away, Derstine suggested. There was no sexual assault, Rafferty maintains.

When Rafferty came back he was horrified to find McClintic had murdered Tori, but helped her conceal the body in garbage bags and under rocks, Derstine said.

Whichever version of McClintic's story the jury believes, the only significant difference between the two is who used the hammer, the Crown noted.

Perhaps the shakiest area is the allegation of a sexual assault. McClintic described for the court in terrible detail what she says she witnessed. By the time Tori's remains were found more than three months later, they were so decomposed that there was no way to tell if there was any evidence of rape.

But, the Crown stressed, the girl was naked from the waist down. She had been wearing only a Hannah Montana T-shirt when her body was covered with garbage bags and placed under an evergreen tree with heavy rocks placed on top.

The injuries to her torso were consistent with kicking and stomping, as McClintic described, and the damage to her skull was consistent with repeated hammer blows, a pathologist said.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 11, 2012 A16