Tori's killers in rare class of murderers

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Michael Rafferty (CP)

WARNING: Graphic details in this story may disturb some readers.

LONDON, Ont. -- Michael Rafferty had apparently for years harboured pedophilic interests and a propensity for sexual violence.

Terri-Lynne McClintic had for years harboured fantasies of torturing innocent victims and cultivated the ability to suppress any emotion that wasn't anger.

They came together in a chance encounter on Feb. 4, 2009, at a pizza shop in Woodstock, Ont., and two months later they teamed up to abduct, sexually assault and murder eight-year-old Victoria Stafford.

No one knows what would have happened if Rafferty and McClintic had never met, but as suggested by a police officer who interrogated Rafferty, tragedy struck when each of their particular brands of depravity collided.

"What's happened here is because of who's meshed together," Ontario Provincial Police Det. Const. Gord Johnson told Rafferty after his arrest. "The two of you are not a good mix."

Only two living people know for sure who actually wielded the hammer that killed Tori Stafford, but with guilty verdicts Friday night for Rafferty on first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping, a jury signalled it believed the two worked together to bring about the girl's death.

It places them in a rare class of murderers with Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka: couples who kill.

On the surface there are some similarities between Rafferty and McClintic and the sadistic plots of Canada's most notorious killer couple -- the pair worked in tandem to commit unspeakable crimes, but they pointed the finger at each other for being the actual killer, young female victims were sexually violated before they were brutally killed, and court proceedings were subject to controversial publication bans.

Stephen Williams, author of two books on the Bernardo-Homolka murders, has researched the rare breed of couples who kill together. The dynamics of the couples' relationships are quite different, but what Williams sees as all killer couples having in common is that their motives defy explanation. Who knows what it is about two particular loathsome people that leads to tragedy when they unite, he said.

"The whole is greater than the sum of the parts," Williams said in an interview. "It's the psychiatric theory folie a deux (a shared psychiatric disorder), but... there's all kinds of people that have bizarre tendencies that hook up and get together but they don't go out and rape and murder girls."

Rafferty and McClintic's brief but twisted pairing began in that pizza shop, when he called her a "pretty little number," according to McClintic. Then they had sex in his car.

Rafferty climbed on top of McClintic and began to choke her, she reported. McClintic returned home not long after, with cold pizza and "Mike's" number written in the box.

Eighteen-year-old McClintic wasn't the first young woman Rafferty choked during sex. In all, 12 other women reported being choked by him. Some consented, others didn't. One woman signed a note consenting to "sexual choking and passing out," while another alleged he drugged, choked and raped her.

Little is known about Rafferty's background. He grew up in communities in the Toronto area, but for an unknown reason was sent to live with an aunt and an uncle in the country during middle school.

Rafferty lived in Guelph, Ont., for a few years while in his 20's, working for a short time at a meat processing plant and for a few seasons at a landscaping company. He told some women he had degrees in kinesiology and culinary arts, but it's not clear if that was true.

Painkillers were a big part of Rafferty's life by 2009. He told an undercover police officer he was taking either five 80-milligram "Oxys" or 11 to 12 40-milligram pills a day. If he had Percocet, he said he was taking 20 to 30 a day.

Other than drugs, the prevailing themes in Rafferty's life were women.

Some women Rafferty dated reported his "disconcerting" behaviour toward their children. In January 2009 a woman Rafferty met online alleged in a police report that he drugged, choked and raped her, but he was not charged.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 14, 2012 A9