Drugged Up Couple Violate Her While Hammering Her Head In

Victoria Elizabeth Marie Stafford, also known as Tori, was born on July 15th, 2000, in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada, to parents Rodney Stafford and Tara McDonald. Tori had a brother named Darren and was surrounded by loving grandparents, step-grandparents, and many aunts and uncles.

Tori had big blue eyes and blonde hair. She often wore her hair in a cute pixie cut or a short bob style, pushed back with a headband or sunglasses. Her favorite TV show was Hannah Montana, and her bedroom was decorated with Disney Princesses, Bratz dolls, and High School Musical posters. Tori’s favorite color was purple, and she loved Halloween because she enjoyed dressing up. Family members described her as their “spunky little princess.”

At age 8, Tori was a student at Oliver Stephens Public School and attended Sunday school at College Avenue Church in Woodstock. Her parents were separated, and for a time, Tori and her brother were living at her grandmother Linda’s house. In early April of 2009, Tori’s mother had moved into a new house on Francis Street in Woodstock, only a block from the children’s school.

On April 7th, 2009, Tori and her brother spent the night at their mother’s new house. On Wednesday, April 8th, Tori and her brother walked to school together in the morning. Normally, Darren and Tori would also walk home together, but on this particular day, Darren needed to take a couple of other kids to their house first.

At 3:30 p.m., Tori and her classmates lined up by the southeast door of the school, preparing to leave for the day. Then, Tori remembered that she had left her butterfly earrings in the classroom, so she ran back to get them. According to her teacher, Tori ended up leaving school about 5 minutes behind her classmates.

Darren returned from dropping off the other kids, and when he didn’t see Tori, he assumed that she had just walked home alone. He got home around 3:45. Tori wasn’t there yet. Darren got on his bike and went to look for her, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. One of Tori’s friends called the house and left a message about plans that they had had that evening.

At around 4:30, Tori still was not home, so her mother Tara went to look for her on foot. Darren had since gone to a cousin’s house, and around 5:00 p.m., Tara called him to say that Tori still had not come back. Tara also called some of Tori’s friends, but no one knew where she was.

At 5:20, Tara called her mother Linda to tell her that Tori was missing, and she drove over immediately to pick up Tara, and they began driving around looking for Tori. They saw a police officer parked near the elementary school and stopped to tell him what was going on. He advised them to go to the police station, and there Linda filed the missing person’s report.

Tori was officially reported missing at 6:04 p.m., and within the hour, the Oxford Community Police Service had begun the search. Her father Rodney was informed at 6:25 p.m. that his daughter was nowhere to be found. At night, police diligently checked the area around the elementary school. Rodney called other relatives, but nobody had seen Tori. Rodney also allowed his own apartment to be searched so that he could be ruled out as a suspect.

On Thursday, hundreds of volunteers and about 40 police officers, including K9 units, scoured the area where Tori had last been seen. Police from the London, Ontario, and the Waterloo region also joined the search. At the time, police reported that they had no reason to suspect foul play, and as such, they did not put out an Amber Alert, which upset many people in the community.

Constable Lori-Anne Maitland pointed out that at the time the missing person report came in, the details did not meet the criteria for an Amber Alert. She said, “We did not have a confirmed abduction. We did not have information indicating serious bodily injury or death. We have to have descriptive information of the child and the abductor in any vehicle.” But she pointed out that just because the case did not meet the criteria for an Amber Alert doesn’t mean that their search was no less of an alert just because it wasn’t called an Amber Alert. She said, “That’s one of the things that’s been difficult for a lot of people to understand. They have this belief that there’s something we could be doing that we’re not when that’s not true.”

The search also extended to the Pittock Conservation Area on the north side of Woodstock, a place that Tori had been the weekend before skipping rocks with her brother. Friends and neighbors, many of whom had never met Tori, fanned out across the city of Woodstock to search yards and to pass out posters with Tori’s photo and description. She was described as 4’5″ and 62 lbs. She was last seen wearing a green shirt, a black velvet skirt, black and white running shoes, a black Hannah Montana jacket with a fur-lined hood, and may have been carrying a pink and purple backpack.

Tori’s mother appeared on TV to beg for help, and Tori’s grandparents offered a $10,000 reward. Rodney’s mother Doreen created a Facebook event to promote the search. It gained almost 10,000 people in just a couple of days. She said, “It’s amazing the people who offered their help for whatever they can do, and I can never never thank people enough.”

Constable Maitland noted that the Woodstock community of about 39,000 people had been integral to the search. She said, “There have been people who have been up all night handing out flyers.”

Police checked video surveillance recordings in the area, and on a school security camera, they finally found a clue. A blurry image showed Tori accompanied by a woman at 3:32 walking hand-in-hand northbound on 5th Avenue. They walked together into the Caressant Care retirement home parking lot and out of sight.

Police put out an appeal for the unknown woman to come forward, hoping she would have some information about what happened to Tori. The woman was described as being between 19 and 25 years old, white, about 5’2″ and 125 lbs with a black ponytail. She was wearing a puffy white coat and tight black jeans.

On Sunday, Tori’s family handed out purple ribbons downtown as a public show of support. A candlelit vigil was held for Tori at 8:00 p.m. in downtown Woodstock, attended by hundreds of people. Tori’s mother Tara spoke to the crowd, saying, “Nobody can begin to imagine what our family has been going through. I know in my heart that she’s okay, that we’re going to find her. It’s just a matter of time.”

Tori had been missing for 4 days, a huge search had been underway, and the police had received over 260 tips, but there was still no sign of Tori. Her father Rodney said that the video surveillance gave him some sense of relief since Tori wasn’t struggling in the video. He also said that he didn’t think the woman was a family member and that no one had any clue who she was. He said, “You cannot take two steps without seeing Tori’s face on posters stuck on a wall or glued to a window. It’s all over newspapers, TV, and radio, but there is still no clue as to where she is. My little girl is out there somewhere and she will be home soon, that is my belief.”

He said that the Easter holiday made Tori’s disappearance even more unbearable because he couldn’t just walk in, hug both of his kids, and say, “Look, the Easter Bunny came.” He did say that he had a bunch of gifts from the Easter Bunny ready to give Tori whenever she returned.

Constable Maitland also remained optimistic. She said, “Looking at the video, it’s easy for me to say that Tori is not resisting. That means she knows her, and it makes me hopeful that she is well. Sometimes people take kids because they love them.”

Although Tori’s apparent willingness to walk away with the woman in the video looked like a good sign, it was also suspicious. Constable Maitland confirmed that all of Tori’s family members were being examined closely and no one had been ruled out as a suspect. However, she did acknowledge that the case was highly unusual. If they didn’t have the video surveillance, they would have zero clues.

Still, the lack of evidence of foul play kept her hopeful that Tori would be found alive and well, saying, “If we found her jacket in a creek, I would think the worst, but we haven’t.”

Police continued to search with dogs and boats, and the fire department searched Brick Pond in the East End of Woodstock while officers combed the shores of the Thames River on the other side of town. Even a behavioral sciences unit from the Ontario Provincial Police was called in to examine the surveillance video to try to ascertain what kind of person this mysterious woman was. They were also able to release enhanced imagery from the surveillance video, which they hoped would help spark recognition with the public.

On Tuesday, the ground search for Tori was officially called off, a move that was deeply criticized by many, even though a door-to-door search of Tori’s neighborhood continued. Students at Tori’s elementary school returned to class after nearly a week of no school. The police were also criticized because a public alert about Tori’s disappearance hadn’t gone out to the press until about 12 hours after she was reported missing.

Constable Maitland continued to say that they remained positive about the outcome, saying that they hadn’t found or heard anything yet that made her believe that it was actually a worst-case scenario.

Rumors flew around town as no new clues were uncovered, and everyone had different theories about Tori’s disappearance. One of the earliest potential suspects was Tori’s own mother, 33-year-old Tara. At the time of Tori’s disappearance, Tara was unemployed, was addicted to OxyContin, and had drug connections through her boyfriend, James Goris. She eventually confessed to the police that she was high on drugs during the time when Tori had gone missing.

Police also wondered why it took Tara so long to report Tori’s disappearance to authorities. She said she thought Tori was just lost and didn’t want to alarm anyone. Still, her behavior seemed odd to the police, and they interviewed her five different times, including one time where she stormed out while taking a polygraph test.

She continued to deny having anything to do with her daughter’s disappearance, but during the lie detector test, she suggested that maybe it had something to do with a drug deal gone wrong. Her boyfriend James had ripped off a local drug dealer for $600 by giving him only $11 in cash along with a stack of coupons and an envelope in exchange for 40 pills.

Despite what she confessed to the police, when she spoke to the news, Tara denied having used any drugs since smoking weed in high school. She also publicly denied rumors that Tori had been snatched to pay off a $3,000 drug debt.

Additionally, Tori’s grandmother Linda reported that Tara had specifically told her not to bother picking up Tori on the day of her disappearance. Tara claimed that this change in schedule was because she didn’t trust her own mother anymore and even hinted that maybe Linda herself was involved in Tori’s kidnapping somehow. Meanwhile, Linda had already pointed the finger in the other direction. She and another friend told investigators that it was Tara in the surveillance video with Tori.

This prompted police to seize all of Tara’s white coats and vests as potential evidence at the same time police were looking into her as a potential suspect. Tara quickly became the public face of the entire investigation into her daughter’s disappearance. Now, each day that Tori was gone, Tara would come out of her home dressed up and made up for a daily news conference where she would beg for her daughter’s return, and she referred to her as “Princess Chub Chubs.”

However, she never openly cried during these conferences, which some of her closest friends thought was strange. One friend even said that Tara invited her over for a slumber party in the days after Tori’s disappearance. The woman told police, “Because Tara is always very expressive and emotional, I would expect something like her daughter Tori going missing to kill her. Instead of Tara being emotional, she is laughing and showing nothing.”

Police even went as far as to have two undercover operations targeting Tara, with two female officers becoming friends with Tara to see if she would confide in them, but she never did.

The police had received hundreds of tips about the disappearance of Tori, and one of these tips came from Tara herself. Apparently, some people she knew told her that the woman in the surveillance video looked like an acquaintance of hers, 18-year-old Terri-Lynne McClintic. Tara admitted to the police that she had been to Terri-Lynne’s house twice before, once to buy more OxyContin from Terri-Lynne’s mother, and again to talk about the possibility of breeding their dogs. These meetings happened a few months earlier in January and February of 2009.

Police arrested Terri-Lynne on an unrelated outstanding warrant for a minor offense and held her in custody. She denied being the woman in that video footage.

On April 15th, Tori’s story was featured by America’s Most Wanted on their website, which brought international attention to the case. By this time, nearly 1,000 tips had come into the police, and both parents revealed to the press they had taken lie detector tests to rule them out as suspects.

Several of Tori’s extended family attended a car wash and barbecue fundraiser, which was raising money to go into a trust for Tori and her brother Darren. Organizers said the money was to help pay for the counseling that Tori and Darren would both need once she returned.

Finally, after almost 2 weeks since her disappearance, Tori’s case was officially classified as an abduction, not just a missing person’s case. Detective Inspector William Renton announced the news when the Ontario Provincial Police took over the investigation. On April 17th, the police released a composite sketch of the woman in the surveillance footage. Tori’s father Rodney said he recognized the woman in the sketch but wasn’t sure who she was, while Tara said she didn’t recognize her at all.

On May 4th, 2009, police released additional surveillance footage that showed a dark-colored station wagon in the area at the time of Tori’s disappearance.

Tori’s mother Tara and her father Rodney continued to hold almost daily news conferences in front of Tara’s home. On May 11th, Tara failed to show up, leaving Rodney alone at the podium. He received a text from her saying that she couldn’t make it. She later said she just didn’t have the strength to come out.

A couple of days later, Tara read aloud a letter that she wrote to her missing daughter, which said: “I know, baby, that no matter where you are, no matter how far, that you feel my love, my sorrow, my strength, and above all else, you feel how very much my heart is aching without you. Stay strong, princess, and don’t doubt for a second that we are coming for you and you will once again be safe.”

On May 12th, Terri-Lynne was interviewed again by the police while in a detention center on an unrelated charge. This time, she told them about her movements on April 8th, which included visiting an employment center, walking across the street from Tori’s school but not near it, then going to do a pickup of OxyContin. Three days after this interview, Terri-Lynne agreed to make a formal statement to the police.

The same day, police also interviewed a second suspect, Terri-Lynne’s new boyfriend, 28-year-old Michael Rafferty. Michael denied being in a relationship with her, saying that they were just friends. He also denied having any information about Tori’s disappearance other than what he had learned from the news.

Meanwhile, Tori’s parents made a spectacle of themselves by publicly fighting at their news conference. On May 15th, Rodney accused Tara of displaying a lack of emotion over Tori’s disappearance, while she said that he was able to cry for the cameras because he feels guilty for being an absentee father.

Tara then went on to share details about her past addiction to drugs, saying she used OxyContin two to three times a week but had started going to a methadone clinic two years prior because she wanted to gain control of her life. She reiterated that the rumors saying that her daughter’s abduction was related to a drug debt were completely unfounded.

On May 18th, a parade was held in Woodstock to honor Tori on a day named Victoria Day. Friends and family members marched to show support for the missing girl.

Terri-Lynne underwent a polygraph test on May 19th at the Woodstock Police Station. During the test, she confessed to being the woman in the surveillance video. She also confessed to the investigators that she had helped abduct Tori and that her boyfriend Michael had sexually assaulted Tori and then murdered her.

Terri-Lynne was informed that she was going to be charged with the abduction and accessory to homicide. Her boyfriend Michael was arrested later that night, though he continued to deny involvement in Tori’s disappearance. They made their first court appearance on May 20th and both were charged with abduction. Michael was also charged with first-degree homicide, and Terri-Lynne was charged with knowingly aiding and enabling Michael.

In a chilling update, the police began asking the public for help locating the back seat to Michael’s Honda Civic, which was missing from his car and was now being considered a potential crime scene.

Michael Thomas Christopher Steven Rafferty, age 28, had grown up in the Toronto area. Not much is known about his early life, but in middle school, he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in the country. In his 20s, he lived in Guelph, Ontario, working for a meat processing plant and for a landscaping company.

Michael was using drugs heavily by 2009. After his arrest, he told an undercover police officer he was taking either 5 80mg Oxys or 11 to 12 40mg pills a day. If he had Percocets, he said he was taking 20 to 30 a day.

A lot more is known about Terri-Lynne’s life because the authorities had been involved with her from a very young age. She was born in 1990 in the town of Woodstock. Her mother was a stripper who handed Terri-Lynne over to a friend and fellow stripper named Carol McClintic. Carol essentially became Terri-Lynne’s mother. The two of them moved all over Ontario with Terri-Lynne still being a child.

According to Carol, Terri-Lynne had been sexually assaulted by someone when she was about four or five years old, which Carol put a stop to as soon as she found out. Their frequent moves meant that she had to change schools often. Terri-Lynne was bullied because her mother was a stripper and her attendance in school was spotty.

When she was about seven, Children’s Aid began to take an interest in her. Around the time she was 8 years old, she began using drugs. She started with weed and then moved onto harder substances. As a child, she put a dog in a microwave and turned it on, leaving it in there until it screamed. At the time she blamed its injuries on a fight with another dog but later confessed the story to her godmother, one of the only positive people in her life.

Around age 10 was the first time she got in trouble with the police when she stole some toys from a store. At age 11, she reported that Carol had been physically and verbally abusing her for the past two years. The following year, Carol was seen publicly intoxicated chasing Terri-Lynne down the street. Terri-Lynne was eventually placed in two different foster homes.

Then, as a teenager, she was in detention homes. She was in and out of youth detention numerous times for fighting and was convicted of assault at least six times, including a stabbing attack. While in the detention centers, Terri-Lynne worked on creating a gangster image for herself, forcing other inmates to give her their medication and writing increasingly disturbing letters about torture fantasies. She wrote letters and diary entries in which she threatened those who had done her wrong, ranting about slaughtering someone and ripping out each bone.

In 2006, when Terri-Lynne was 16, she got in a fight with Carol after being asked to move out. She punched Carol so badly that she almost went blind in one eye. Despite this, the two moved into a dilapidated house in Woodstock in 2008. Terri-Lynne didn’t have any friends in the area, but she got to know the drug dealers in town. Terri-Lynne regularly abused OxyContin, took antidepressants, popped ecstasy pills, and smoked weed.

Terri-Lynne and Michael met each other in February of 2009. They struck up a conversation while waiting for pizza at the New Orleans Pizza outlet in Woodstock. He called her a cute number and offered to give her a ride home. They sat and chatted in her driveway for a while, then instead of going inside, she went for a drive with him. They talked about OxyContin and then eventually became intimate in the car.

According to Terri-Lynne during this encounter, he climbed on top of her and started to choke her. After their liaison, she returned home with cold pizza and Michael’s phone number written on the box. She didn’t even know his last name.

Now, over the next few weeks, Michael would show up at her house regularly and she’d give him drugs. They’d also go to movies together, sometimes being physically intimate in the theater or spending the night at a hotel. According to Terri-Lynne, she was in love. She remembered he always said the right things compared to most men who have been part of my life, it felt pretty good.

It eventually came out that Terri-Lynne was not the first woman that Michael had choked during intimacy. Twelve other women came forward and reported that he had choked them. Some had consented, some had not. One had even signed a note consenting to being choked until she passed out. Another reported that she had been drugged, choked, and then sexually assaulted. Some of the women he dated later testified that he displayed disconcerting behavior towards their children.

In the months leading up to Tori’s abduction, Michael was involved with one woman after another. He lived with one such woman for a few months, and they shared a computer. The records on the computer showed that she researched things like veterinary school or downloaded movies, while his profile was used to view large amounts of inappropriate images of children. After they broke up, computer records showed that he searched for massage parlors and adult escorts.

He also took to social media and dating websites, creating profile after profile where he portrayed himself as a nice guy who valued friendship more than anything. He dated several women at once, including one woman who thought that they were exclusive. She began helping him out financially by working as an escort and then giving him the money that she made. He took more than $16,000 in about 6 months and apparently used this money to take other women on dates and to treat them and himself to new clothes.

Michael’s computer records also revealed that he had searched for things like necrophilia and adult videos featuring urination and epilepsy. Investigators also found that he had viewed or downloaded a substantial amount of videos with children, and the majority of the file names suggested a focus on searches for things like real underage sexual assault. Pictures and nude preteens were entered onto his computer in the weeks leading up to Tori’s abduction.

Terri-Lynne said that there were things about Michael she chose to ignore because she was finally glad to have found a good man, but also admitted that he didn’t really hide his proclivities either. She said they would drive past schools and he’d talk about how easy it would be to snatch a child. He would park outside houses and describe the layout of the house to her, saying he knew a lot of single moms and it would be so easy to tie someone up and take them.

With Terri-Lynne’s confession, police now knew for certain that their search had gone from a missing person’s case to a recovery mission to find Tori’s remains. On June 6th, 2009, a memorial was held for Tori at a church in Woodstock. About 800 people gathered to remember the little girl. Mother Tara told the crowd that she would give her own life just to hear her daughter’s sweet little voice again. She said, “Tori had such an amazing personality, so full of love, happiness, and a passion for life that I’ve never seen and I doubt I’ll ever see again. Her positive attitude just radiated from her and was contagious to anyone that came into contact with her.”

Tori’s father, several of her aunts, and her 11-year-old brother also spoke as they remembered their spunky little princess, as they called her. Her brother began to cry shortly after he started speaking, so Tara stepped in to read his statement for him, which said: “I miss seeing you every night. I miss you laying in bed until we had to leave for school. I miss hugging you, miss brushing my teeth with you. I miss kissing you good night. I miss walking to school with you. I miss arguing with you. And finally, I miss holding you. All I can do is think about you and think that I’m your brother, which means that I’m supposed to protect you, but I guess that I didn’t.”

After her initial confession on May 19th, 2009, Terri-Lynne was kept at the police station for the next few days while she helped direct investigators to where they might find Tori’s body. This included taking Terri-Lynne out in a car to try to retrace her and Michael’s actions on April 8th, and they even took her up in a helicopter to try to locate the scene of the crime. She directed them to an area of Highway 6 and Sideroad 6 near the town of Guelph, Ontario.

She also drew some rough but detailed maps to direct them to the exact place where Tori had been killed. She remembered details such as the location being near a property with a dirt road, that it was across from a bungalow house set at an odd angle from the road. She also described there being a broken-down fence, a culvert, two kinds of trees, a rising curve in a path, and a large rock pile.

After weeks of searching the area on foot and by helicopter, searchers finally had success. On July 19th, Detective Staff Sergeant Smith of the Ontario Provincial Police was searching a field near the town of Mount Forest. He had learned that Michael’s cell phone had pinged in the region on the night Tori went missing, so he decided to take a look in that area.

The ping location was about 2 hours from London in an isolated spot south of Mount Forest, much further north from Guelph than searchers had previously been searching. While there, he saw a house that was nearly identical to the one described by Terri-Lynne, so he drove down the dirt path across from it. He eventually came upon a pile of rocks like Terri-Lynne had described, and there was when he noticed the unmistakable smell of human decomposition. He removed one rock from the pile, saw trash bags, and knew that he had finally found Tori.

He immediately backtracked out of the area to preserve the crime scene. The Stafford homicide investigation team, assisted by the OPP forensic identification unit, soon converged to secure the scene and remove the body. Wrapped in trash bags, Tori’s body was taken to Toronto the next day for a postmortem examination and identification.

Dental records were used to confirm her ID, and the preliminary examinations indicated that she had died of blunt force trauma to the head. Dr. Michael Pollanen, the Chief Forensic Pathologist for Ontario, performed the autopsy. Tori’s body had been found unclothed from the waist down, wearing only her Hannah Montana T-shirt and the butterfly earrings she had borrowed from her mother.

Her lower half was severely decomposed, which made it impossible for Dr. Pollanen to determine for certain whether she had been sexually assaulted, though Terri-Lynne’s testimony made that near certain. The autopsy did reveal that 16 of her 24 ribs were fractured, suggesting that Tori’s chest had sustained a strong force, possibly by kicking or stomping.

An examination of the lung tissue showed evidence of liver damage, which must have occurred while Tori was still alive and not from the rocks that had been later piled onto her torso. The liver damage and internal bleeding likely contributed to Tori’s death, according to Dr. Pollanen. However, she also had at least four hammer blows to the head which penetrated the skull and was ultimately what killed her.

After the autopsy, Tori’s remains were returned to her family, who planned a private funeral to remember and bury their little girl.

Terri-Lynne initially confessed to the police on May 19th that she had helped to kidnap Tori and that Michael had been the one to kill her, but on May 28th, her charges were changed to first-degree homicide and unlawful confinement, suggesting deeper involvement on her part. However, a publication ban initially prevented the media from reporting why this change occurred.

It wasn’t until December 9th, 2010, the ban was lifted by court order. The public then learned that Terri-Lynne had been scheduled for a court appearance on April 30th, 2010, almost exactly a year after Tori’s death. There she took a plea agreement and pled guilty to first-degree homicide and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. She was held at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario.

Lawyers agreed to change the location for Michael’s trial from Woodstock to London because concerns were raised that he would not get a fair trial in the city where Tori had lived and been abducted from. On March 5th, 2012, Michael’s trial began for the kidnapping, sexual assault, and first-degree murder of Tori. Terri-Lynne was the key witness, and her testimony during the trial paints a detailed story of what actually happened to Tori on that terrible day of April 8th, 2009.

After waking up on April 8th, Terri-Lynne had smoked some weed, went to a church to get a food voucher, bought some groceries, went home, and then shot up some leftover OxyContin. She went to an appointment at the employment center in the afternoon, and then Michael showed up unexpectedly at her house.

After weeks of discussions between Terri-Lynne and Michael about his kidnapping fantasies, he urged her to abduct a young female because to him the younger they were, the easier they were to manipulate. As they drove by the Oliver Stephens Public School, he wanted her to prove that she wasn’t all talk and just do it. Terri-Lynne testified, “I said do what? You want me to just grab somebody? 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.”

Later, as school was letting out, Terri-Lynne said Michael parked his Honda Civic in a retirement home lot just down the street. She claimed that her plan was to pretend that she was looking for a girl to kidnap but would come back empty-handed. However, he slowly drove past her, watching her, so she decided that she would find a child and walk beside her, but not going any further than that.

As we mentioned earlier, Tori was supposed to walk home with her brother but had doubled back to retrieve her butterfly earrings. She was walking alone when Terri-Lynne fell into step beside her. Terri-Lynne introduced herself but told Tori she could call her “T”. Tori replied, “My name’s Victoria, but everyone calls me Tori.”

Terri-Lynne asked if she wanted to see a Shih Tzu puppy, and since Tori had a Shih Tzu at home, she said all right. Terri-Lynne walked her back towards Michael’s car, grabbing her hand as they crossed the street. She pushed Tori into the car while Michael yelled at her to hurry up. When Tori was lying on the back seat floor, Terri-Lynne covered her with Michael’s black pea coat.

They drove out of town while Terri-Lynne chatted casually with Tori. She learned that Tori’s favorite color was purple, that Hannah Montana was her favorite show, that Halloween was her favorite holiday. Terri-Lynne testified that she didn’t know what Michael’s plans were until they were driving east on Highway 401 out of Woodstock. She remembered the only thing that was said was, “We can’t just keep her and we can’t take her back.”

Terri-Lynne said that Michael told her that he was going to sexually assault Tori. Michael turned on the radio to see if there were any news reports about a missing girl from Woodstock. He didn’t hear any, so he stopped at a Tim Hortons in Guelph, Ontario, leaving Terri-Lynne and Tori alone in the car. She testified that afterwards he drove to a house in Guelph to buy Percocets and he came out carrying a sandwich bag full of them.

While Michael was out of the car, Tori asked if she could go home. Terri-Lynne replied, “I said soon, that I would make sure she would get home, that I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.” However, Terri-Lynne had to know that those words were a cruel lie.

The next place they visited was a Home Depot, where Michael gave her cash to buy some garbage bags and a claw hammer. Tori begged her not to leave her alone with Michael, but Terri-Lynne promised that she would be quick.

After that, they drove to a rural area. Michael began to touch himself while driving before turning the car down a dirt roadway and into a clearing, parking next to a rock pile in a field. He then climbed into the back seat and began to sexually assault Tori while the girl pled with Terri-Lynne not to leave her. According to Terri-Lynne, she walked away from the car. She could see Tori on Michael’s lap in the back seat of his car. She could also see that they were both unclothed from the waist down.

Terri-Lynne said she wandered away from the car so she wouldn’t have to see what was happening. She stood by a fence and gazed out across the peaceful farmland at silos in the distance while Michael brutally assaulted poor Tori. When Tori whimpered that she needed to go to the bathroom, Terri-Lynne said she walked back to the car to help her. She said, “I told her I was sorry. She told me, ‘Just don’t let him do it again.'”

Terri-Lynne could see blood in the snow outside the car. She then told Tori she was a very strong girl and then handed her back to Michael. Terri-Lynne said he picked her back up. “She still had a hold 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 on to her hand, but I couldn’t stay because I knew it was about to happen. I couldn’t be there for that.”

Terri-Lynne said that she walked away again and could hear Tori’s screams, which caused her to have flashbacks. Terri-Lynne said that after he was finished, Michael tossed Tori to the ground, and that’s when she decided something had to be done. She said, “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.”

In her original confession, Terri-Lynne had claimed that Michael had been the one to kill Tori, but now her story changed. After that hate came boiling up out of her, Terri-Lynne began kicking Tori while she was on the ground. Then either she or Michael put a garbage bag over her head. Terri-Lynne picked up the hammer and used both ends to hit Tori’s head several times. Tori did not move, but Terri-Lynne said she could hear a gurgling noise. Terri-Lynne testified, “I savagely murdered that little girl.”

The couple put Tori’s body in several layers of garbage bags. She was still only wearing her Hannah Montana shirt which read “A Girl Can Dream”. They then placed her body next to the rock pile under a tree and put some of the rocks on top of her. Michael had not put his pants back on yet, and he used water bottles from his car to wash Tori’s blood off of himself. Terri-Lynne said he used her jacket to wipe himself off because he didn’t want to ruin his shirt.

Terri-Lynne was very shaky when they got back in the car and Michael asked if she was all right. She said she only grunted in response and he replied, “Yeah, I’m all right too, considering.” The two made an effort to cover up their tire tracks and then they left.

Michael told Terri-Lynne they had to get rid of their shoes, so she threw hers out of the car window. The shoes were later found by a passerby and given to police. Terri-Lynne also cut pieces out of the back seat of the car and threw those out the window as well. They stopped at a car wash to clean and shampoo the car.

After Tori’s death, Michael and Terri-Lynne’s relationship only seemed to grow stronger. Before they had been casual, not even calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend. Afterwards, they were in constant communication. Even after Terri-Lynne was arrested on an unrelated matter 4 days after they killed Tori, she would call him often from the detention center. She even put him on her approved visitor list, calling him her boyfriend.

He went to visit her there two times, where he greeted her with lingering hugs. They laughed and joked, and he flexed his biceps for her. Terri-Lynne testified that on one of the visits he asked what would happen if police figure out it’s you on the surveillance video leading Tori away from school. She testified, “I said that I would take the fall for everything. I would say it was all me. He had more to lose than I did. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s okay. It’s okay, I’m just an 18-year-old junkie anyways.'”

The last time Michael visited Terri-Lynne at the detention center, Terri-Lynne said Michael told her something she will never forget. She said she touched his face, and then he looked up and almost like laughed at me and said, “You’ll do anything for a little bit of love, eh?”

That was on May 12th, 2009, which was also the first day the police interviewed Terri-Lynne. He cut off communication with her a few days later when the police interviewed him for the first time. It’s possible that this communication break was what caused Terri-Lynne to suddenly change her mind about confessing their involvement to the police.

As part of the trial, jurors were brought to the location where Tori had been killed. This was to help the jurors appreciate the evidence being presented and also to show just how accurate Terri-Lynne’s testimony had been. She was undoubtedly a violent and irredeemably damaged person and had just confessed to being the one who dealt the fatal blow that killed Tori. However, this crime scene visit showed that she remembered the killing ground with remarkable accuracy and appeared to have genuinely wanted to help the police find the little girl’s body.

Just about the only features that Terri-Lynne didn’t describe to police were the decorative bridge, a small windmill, and a strange statue of a farm worker sitting by a pond. Otherwise, she described the features perfectly, including the fence and the silos in the distance that she gazed at while Michael sexually assaulted an 8-year-old girl.

Terri-Lynne’s testimony took up most of Michael’s trial, which included 60 other witnesses and almost 200 exhibits. Other evidence included blood matching Tori’s DNA found in the back of Michael’s car and blonde hair similar to Tori’s being found on Michael’s pea coat which was confiscated from his apartment.

Several pieces of evidence were not allowed to be presented to the jury. This included a laptop which showed that he had searched for underage sexual assault images and torture videos.

When the state pathologist testified about the autopsy he performed, he told the jury, “While you might recognize some of the body, you might not recognize all of it.” Images of Tori’s body were so disturbing that some of the jurors wept and Tori’s father Rodney had to run out of the courtroom during the trial. Members of Tori’s family often wore purple to court as a way to honor their little girl.

Michael’s defense lawyer, Dirk Derstine, took just one day to present evidence. The defense claimed that Michael had simply been a horrified spectator to Tori’s abduction by Terri-Lynne, that she had been kidnapped over a drug debt. They also claimed that Terri-Lynne offered Tori to him as a gift, which he turned down, and that she had killed the girl unbeknownst to him.

After a 2 and 1/2 month-long trial, the jury found Michael guilty of all charges on May 11th, 2012. Four days later, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. He also received 10 years each for kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm to be served concurrently with the life sentence for first-degree homicide.

During the sentencing, Tori’s brother Darren read a victim impact statement which said: “My baby sister was taken from me and that’s not something I can go buy in a store and replace. No hugs, no see you later, no goodbyes. Just a part of my heart ripped out. My sister was the only person I had to talk to. Someone that felt what I felt, cried when I cried, laughed when I laughed, and now I feel alone. Like the world is playing a sick trick on me, but it’s not, this is my reality. And where fun times are just old memories. No more ‘I love you’ is just an empty spot in my heart.”

Tori’s father stood outside the courthouse holding a picture of his little girl. He said, “We got it, we got justice. It was all for this little girl right here, and not just for Tori but for every little child in Canada who doesn’t deserve what happened to her.”

Michael did not testify in his own defense but did speak during his sentencing hearing. He said he was sorry for Tori’s death, but did not agree with his conviction. He said, “I am guilty of many crimes and there are a lot of things I am very, very ashamed of. But these three counts I still stand firmly behind ‘not guilty’.” He did admit he was “very definitely part of why Tori is not here today” and offered to tell her mother Tara all the pieces of the puzzle in private.

Despite these words, he wore a new purple shirt and a striped purple tie to the courtroom. An absolute slap in the face of Tori’s family, who would always use the color purple to honor her.

Michael appealed his sentence on July 26th, 2012, filing the appeal papers from Kingston Penitentiary. After some convoluted extensions and postponements, Michael had his appeal hearing at the Ontario Court of Appeals in Toronto. His appeal was quickly dismissed that same day.

We wish we could say that that was the end of Michael, but unfortunately he remained in the news in 2018. He was moved from a high-security prison to the medium-security La Macaza Institution in Quebec against the public protest and outcry from Tori’s family. A family member also came forward and claimed that Michael extorted tens of thousands of dollars from his own mother before she died in 2018.

If that’s not bad enough, let’s go back for a moment and revisit Terri-Lynne. Yes, she did help police find Tori’s body and seemed to take responsibility for her actions by pleading guilty. However, before you think that she became a changed person, we should add that in 2012, Terri-Lynne was convicted for assaulting another inmate while in prison. She confronted the other inmate over a rumor and then attacked her. Terri-Lynne wrote about the incident in a letter in which she described the other inmate being curled in the fetal position on the floor after several blows to the head while Terri-Lynne repeatedly kicked her. She wrote that she was trying to get some shots through her arms. “Finally I brought my foot up, tried stomping on her face a couple times.”

Despite this continuing pattern of violence, in 2018 Terri-Lynne was transferred to a lower security facility. She was moved from the Grand Valley Institution for Women near Kitchener to the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge for Aboriginal Women on Nekaneet First Nation in southern Saskatchewan. She was granted the move after self-identifying as an Indigenous person.

This healing lodge, run by the Correctional Services of Canada, had guards and cameras but no fence. Instead, it’s nestled into a forest and was intended to help rehabilitate offenders through things like education, art, and horse therapy. Naturally, this change was widely controversial, both with the general public and with members of the First Nations.

Terri-Lynne’s half-brother, with whom she shared a mother, came forward and said she is no more Indigenous than I am green from the planet Mars, and that she was manipulating the system. Another family member said that no one knew who Terri-Lynne’s father was, meaning she couldn’t claim Indigenous heritage through her father’s side.

Mr. Speaker, McClintic admitted to kidnapping 8-year-old Tori so she could be raped, tortured, murdered, and buried in a field. There isn’t a more disgusting crime a person can commit. The Liberals are now defending her transfer from a prison in Ontario straight to the Okimaw Healing Lodge in my riding. This is a facility that doesn’t even have a fence around it. It’s not intended for child murderers. As a matter of fact, there are often children in the facility. The Prime Minister has the power to reverse this decision today. Will he do that? Honorable Prime Minister: Mr. Speaker, I’m going to keep this as simple as I possibly can for everyone because there’s a lot of rhetoric, there’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of… a lot of politics in this question. The individual in question was transferred to a medium-security facility in 2014 under the Conservative government. She is currently in what is classified as a medium-security facility. The Conservatives are playing politics in an extremely troubling way. Tori’s father Rodney Stafford led a protest on Parliament Hill to express outrage that his daughter’s killer was moved to a cushier living situation. Eventually, Terri-Lynne was transferred back out of the healing lodge into a medium-security facility in Edmonton, Alberta. This move was allegedly part of a change in policy rather than anyone admitting that it was a mistake to move a violent child murderer to a low-security healing lodge.

Shortly after the move, Terri-Lynne filed paperwork to seek compensation for what she called a “loss of residual liberty” as a consequence of being transferred from the lodge. Her application, which was later withdrawn, claimed that her move out of the healing lodge was unreasonable and procedurally unfair, and therefore unlawful.

Although Terri-Lynne was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years, she may actually be able to apply for parole as early as this year, 2024, under a now-defunct statute called the Faint Hope Clause. This clause was intended to encourage offenders to be rehabilitated and allowed them to apply for reduced sentences. That clause is no longer in effect, but since it was in place when Terri-Lynne was sentenced, she may still apply. It will require petitioning a judge and then having a jury decide whether she should be paroled or not. It is unlikely, but it is still a chance.

Many memorials have occurred in the years since Tori’s death. In 2015, friends and family gathered for the 6-year anniversary of her disappearance. Attendees carried purple balloons and wore purple T-shirts. Some had purple hair, purple rain boots, and even a purple hijab. There were also several members of the Iron Sirens, an all-female motorcycle club that started an annual memorial ride in Tori’s honor, their motorcycles decked out in purple. One member said, “Being a club of women, we are all mothers or sisters or aunts, so it really hits home when a child is lost this way.”

Tori’s father and brother also hosted a yearly bike ride fundraiser to raise awareness and raised over $60,000 to give to Child Find Ontario, a non-profit that helped families with missing children.

On the 5-year anniversary of Tori’s disappearance, family members were interviewed about how they’ve been surviving since their little girl was taken away from them. Her mother Tara said that every April 8th is the same. She said, “Just look at the clock to see what time it is, and you will think, ‘Oh, this is what time this was happening.’ When the day passes, you’re like, ‘I made it past one more year. I survived one more year.'”

Tara had since given up drugs and had begun writing a book about her daughter. She also earned her certificate to be a doula so that way she could help bring babies into the world. That had stolen her own from her.

Tori’s father Rodney said that everyday sights could trigger his despair. He said, “Walking down the street, seeing any Honda Civic just turns my stomach. Then you see the guys with the hammers breaking rocks. See, normal people with hammers shouldn’t affect you.”

Despite how difficult it is to be reminded of what happened to his daughter, he’s still keeping her memory alive. He said, “I want her name to travel as long as I’m alive. As long as I’m alive, I’m going to put it out there. She should never be forgotten. She should never be tucked away.”

Tori’s grandmother Doreen described how she had only recently gone through her home and took down most of the purple ribbons and other mementos of Tori that people had given to her. Some of these she had to throw away, others she kept in boxes, but she called the step a cleansing. She said, “I think it’s just time that we let her rest. It doesn’t mean that we will ever forget her. When I think of Tori, I want to think of the good times.”

One of those good times she wanted to remember was a special memory with Tori and her other granddaughters. She said, “I took the girls to the ballet for Christmas to see The Nutcracker. I think Tori must have been about 5 at the time. I will never forget the magic of that night and how the girls sat silent and eyes frozen watching every move on the stage. Somewhere through the ballet, Tori slipped off her seat and began kneeling on the carpet in front of her with her little arms wrapped around the railing, never taking her eyes off the stage. That evening was priceless to me.”

Tori is buried at the Oxford Memorial Park Cemetery in Woodstock. Her heart-shaped headstone is guarded by a beautiful carved angel and reads:

Victoria (Tori) Elizabeth Marie Stafford God’s gift to us July 15th, 2000 Beloved daughter of Tara and Rodney Sister and best friend of Darren

Significantly, the stone does not list the date that she died, only her birth. It features a picture of Tori as well as an engraved image of a tiara. Along the bottom are the words, “Our princess on earth, our angel in heaven.”