Gut feeling led to discovery of Tori’s body

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This article was published 31/03/2012 (5123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LONDON, Ont. — A veteran police detective working on a hunch led investigators to the remains of schoolgirl Victoria (Tori) Stafford more than three months after her disappearance, the murder trial of Michael Rafferty heard Friday.

Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm in the Grade 3 student’s death.

On July 19, 2009, more than three months after hundreds of police officers were assigned to the case in the province’s largest investigation to date, Ontario Provincial Police Det.-Staff Sgt. Jim Smyth was driving to Woodstock when he decided to take a detour and go through Mount Forest, Ont.

Days earlier, police had received information about a nearby cellphone tower that indicated Rafferty had used his phone in the area on April 8, 2009 — the day eight-year-old Tori, was abducted.

It was the first major clue investigators had in attempting to locate the girl since Rafferty was charged in the murder along with his ex-girlfriend, Terri-Lynne McClintic, on May 19, 2009.

Two years ago, McClintic pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence.

As Smyth was driving along 6th Concession in Arthur Township, he had the intention of scoping out the area before search teams were called in, he testified. That was when he noticed a house that looked like one McClintic had described in her confession to him.

“I took a good look at the house and quite frankly, was struck by similarities,” he testified Friday.

Smyth drove up an unpaved lane by the house and found an area with evergreen trees and a large 12- to 15-metre rock pile — exactly how McClintic had described the scene in police interviews and in drawings supplied to investigators.

By that point, McClintic had fully co-operated with police and had gone on numerous drive-alongs, including in a helicopter, to help police locate the girl’s body.

He told the court that as he walked up to the rock pile, he noticed “a slight odour, which I believed to be decomposition.”

That was when he spotted a green garbage bag. “I touched it with my finger. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t a rock. It was soft,” said Smyth after a long pause.

“I knew that we had finally found Victoria Stafford.”

He told the court it took a minute for it to “sink in” that he had found the child’s remains.

The next day, he accompanied Tori’s body when it was removed.

A coroner in Toronto officially identified the girl through dental records and concluded she had died by “blunt-force trauma to the head,” Smyth said.

Smyth told the court the last official role he played in the investigation was on July 31, 2009 — when he attended the girl’s funeral.

During his testimony, Smyth took a number of long pauses to compose himself before answering Crown Attorney Michael Carnegie’s questions.

On Friday, the 12-person jury also was shown a series of graphic crime-scene photographs.

The majority of the photos depicted a green garbage bag where the child had been buried underneath a number of rocks.

OPP identification Const. Gary Scoyne testified some of the rocks found on top of the body weighed as much as 29 kilograms. Other rocks used to hide the bags were as heavy as 50 kilograms.

Audible gasps could be heard in the courtroom as the jury was shown close-ups of the garbage bags, which were stained and ripped.

Earlier, Ontario Superior Justice Thomas Heeney reminded jurors they were welcome to ask for a break if they needed it.

“I simply ask you to do your best, to establish an attitude, a sort of clinical detachment, an analytic view of things,” he said in his address.

“Step back. You might find it easier to cope. I know it’s easier said than done, but I simply ask you to do your best.”

Earlier this month, McClintic, 21, testified she had lured the girl with the promise of meeting a puppy and then shoved the child into Rafferty’s car.

She admitted to being the woman in the white puffy jacket caught in a highly publicized surveillance video with the blond-haired girl — the last images of Stafford alive.

McClintic told the court the couple drove with the little girl to Mount Forest, stopping three times at a Tim Hortons for tea, a friend’s house for drugs and a Home Depot so she could buy tools that would be used for the slaying.

She alleges that once parked, Rafferty raped the girl, which McClintic said sent her into a murderous rage, due to her own childhood molestation. It was this rage that made her strike the girl multiple times with a hammer, she told the court during emotional testimony.

The girl’s body was put in garbage bags and carried to a nearby rock pile, she said.

The testimony contradicted what she had told the police until January of this year — that it was Rafferty who wielded the hammer.

McClintic explained she had first lied to police because she could not accept she had done something so horrific.

 

— Postmedia News