Day parole granted to woman convicted in teen’s murder

A young woman who sexually blackmailed her boyfriend into killing a 14-year-old girl she saw as a rival more than a decade ago must report any relationships she has with men while living in a halfway house, the Parole Board of Canada said Tuesday as it granted her day parole for six months.

Melissa Todorovic will face a restriction on friendships and romantic relationships with men and must immediately disclose them to her parole officer, the board said after a hearing on the 26-year-old’s case.

Todorovic’s difficulties with relationships and her struggles with jealousy were scrutinized during a hearing at the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ont. — the women’s prison where she has beens serving a sentence for orchestrating the killing of Stefanie Rengel in 2008.

Her parole officer, Angie Strome, said Todorovic would never have the opportunity to enter into a heterosexual romantic relationship while in the institution and has few options left in terms of programs at the facility.

The two-member parole panel found that while Todorovic still has work to do and should expect to continue counselling for a long time, she has made progress in understanding what led her at age 15 to order Rengel’s killing.

For years, Todorovic maintained she did not believe her then-boyfriend, David Bagshaw, would go through with the slaying.