Woman who orchestrated Rengel killing granted day parole for six months
KITCHENER, ONT. — A young woman who sexually blackmailed her boyfriend into killing a 14-year-old girl she saw as a rival 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. — where she has been serving a sentence after being convicted of first-degree murder for orchestrating the killing of Stefanie Rengel in 2008.
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. She told the panel Tuesday she now feels “horrible” for her actions.
“I never want to be that person again. I don’t want to harm anybody else,” she said. “I take full responsibility for Stefanie’s death.”
The parole board panel noted that Todorovic had several chances to call off the plot, including a phone call with Bagshaw minutes before the attack.
Rengel’s mother, Patricia Hung, wept as the panel announced its decision. She said after the hearing that the outcome was disappointing, noting that Todorovic appeared largely emotionless even in expressing remorse.
“I felt it was a bit scripted,” Hung said, adding Todorovic has yet to apologize.
In a victim impact statement read during the hearing, Hung said although her family may appear on the surface to have survived a “terrible tragedy” and come out stronger, they will never fully recover from the brutal murder.
“Once she murdered my daughter, something inside me broke,” Hung said.
Todorovic was convicted in 2009 for masterminding the murder of Rengel, a girl she had never met but who became the focus of her jealousy.
Rengel had briefly dated Bagshaw years earlier and Todorovic threatened to break up with him or withhold sex unless he killed his former flame. He eventually carried out her command, stabbing Rengel six times and leaving her to die in a snowbank outside her Toronto house on Jan. 1, 2008.
In 2009, Todorovic was sentenced as an adult to life in prison with no chance of parole for seven years, the maximum adult sentence for someone her age. She challenged the ruling, but it was upheld on appeal.