Girl’s killer gives horrific testimony

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This article was published 14/03/2012 (5154 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Warning: This story contains disturbing details.

LONDON, Ont. — Pent-up rage from childhood trauma caused an 18-year-old woman to smash eight-year-old Victoria Stafford’s head with a hammer, killing the girl she had kidnapped and her boyfriend had just sexually assaulted, court heard Tuesday.

The drug-addicted young couple slowly drove past a Woodstock, Ont., elementary school on April 8, 2009, when Michael Rafferty urged Terri-Lynne McClintic to kidnap a young girl for him, McClintic testified at Rafferty’s first-degree murder trial.

She snatched Tori, the only unaccompanied child outside the school, and they drove her 100 kilometres north to a rural area where Rafferty violently sexually assaulted the girl in the back seat of his car, McClintic said during her first day of testimony.

“I told her that I was sorry,” McClintic said. “She told me, ‘Just don’t let him do it again.’ “‘

Tori said she needed to use the washroom, so McClintic — who said she had wandered away from the car so she wouldn’t have to see what was going on — walked back to the car to help her. When that happened she could see blood in the snow, McClintic said.

She told Tori she was a “very strong girl,” then handed her back to Rafferty, she said.

“He picked her back up,” McClintic testified. “She still had ahold of my hand. She didn’t want to let go. She asked me to stay with her. So I got in the front seat and I tried to hold onto her hand, but I couldn’t stay because I knew what was about to happen. I couldn’t be there for that.”

McClintic walked away again and could hear Tori’s screams, she said. They prompted her to have flashbacks — to what she didn’t say.

“I went back to the vehicle and I savagely murdered that little girl,” McClintic testified.

McClintic pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in April 2010 and is serving a life sentence. Rafferty has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping. Her first day of testimony saw the main and overflow courtrooms filled to capacity as people lined up for hours to hear McClintic’s version of events.

Rafferty urged her to kidnap a “young female, because the younger they were, the easier they were to manipulate,” McClintic recalled Rafferty as saying.

As they made their way past Oliver Stephens Public School that day, Rafferty told McClintic to prove she wasn’t “all talk,” she said.

“I said, ‘Do what? You just want me to grab somebody?’ ” McClintic testified through deep breaths, long pauses and tears. “He said it would be easy. ‘(They’re) getting out of school now. All you have to do is talk about dogs or candy or something like that.’ “

Rafferty had said things in the past that had bothered her too, McClintic said Tuesday, but she ignored them because she so badly wanted to have finally found a good man.

“There’d be times that he would say things. We would be driving past schools and he would make a comment like, ‘It would be so easy to do this,’ ” McClintic told the jury.

On April 8, 2009, as school was letting out, McClintic said Rafferty parked in a retirement-home lot just down the street, and her plan was to pretend she went looking for a girl to kidnap but would come back empty-handed. But as he slowly drove past her, watching her, she decided she would find a child and walk beside them, but not go any further, she said.

Tori was supposed to walk home with her 10-year-old brother after he dropped off some younger children that day. McClintic started walking beside the girl and introduced herself as Terri-Lynne, but told the Grade 3 student she could call her “T.”

” ‘My name’s Victoria, but everybody calls me Tori,’ ” McClintic said the girl replied.

McClintic asked if Tori wanted to see a shih tzu, and having one herself, Tori agreed. As she walked back toward Rafferty’s car, Tori grabbed McClintic’s hand to cross the street, she said. She pushed Tori into the car.

They drove out of town in Rafferty’s Honda Civic, with McClintic casually chatting with Tori, learning the girl’s favourite colour was purple, Hannah Montana was her favourite television show and Halloween was her favourite holiday because she liked dressing up.

McClintic said she was unaware of Rafferty’s plans that day, until they were out of Woodstock, driving east on Highway 401.

“The only thing that was said was, ‘We can’t just keep her and we can’t take her back,’ ” McClintic quoted Rafferty saying. He also told McClintic he was going to rape Tori, she said.

They drove to a rural area, down a laneway and into a clearing, parking next to a rock pile in a field.

At one of their stops on the way, while Rafferty was out of the car, Tori asked if she could go home, McClintic said.

“I said ‘soon,’ that I would make sure she would get home, that I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her,” she said.

After he was finished raping Tori, Rafferty “tossed” Tori to the ground and that’s when McClintic said she decided something had to be done.

“All I saw was myself when I was that age, and all the anger and hate and rage that I had and blame that I had built up towards myself came boiling up out of me,” she said.

McClintic started kicking Tori, then either she or Rafferty placed a garbage bag over the girl’s head and McClintic picked up the hammer and used both ends to strike Tori’s head several times, she said.

The couple put Tori’s body in several layers of garbage bags, placed it next to the rock pile under a tree and put some of the rocks on top of her, McClintic said.

Tori’s remains were found 103 days later in the field near Mount Forest, Ont.

 

— The Canadian Press