Toronto cops lay charges in Richey murder case

— A 21-year-old man strangled a young woman and abandoned her body in a stairwell hours after meeting her during a night out in Toronto’s gay village, police alleged Monday as they laid a seconddegree murder charge in the case that raised further questions about the handling of missing persons investigations.

Police said it appears Tess Richey, 22, met Kalen Schlatter after going out with a friend in late November.

“We believe that they were together alone in that area, they were together for some time,” Det. Sgt. Graham Gibson said. “Mr. Schlatter left the area and that by the time he left, Tess was unfortunately already deceased.”

Schlatter, of Toronto, was arrested late Sunday near his west-end home. He appeared briefly in court on Monday and was remanded in custody.

Richey was last seen alive in the gay village in the early hours of Nov. 25. She and a friend had been at a bar and at some point met the man now suspected of killing her. Surveillance video, later made publicly available, shows her and Schlatter together, Gibson said.

Her sister reported her missing that day but it was her mother, from North Bay, Ont., who found her body several days later in a nearby stairwell at the back of an alley outside a downtown building.

“Tess was a young innocent girl,” Gibson said. “Obviously, nothing like this should ever have happened to anybody.”

Schlatter, who does construction contracting work, became a suspect early on in the investigation, the detective said, adding his homicide team and Richey’s family were on good terms and speak regularly.