Killer seeks control, gets parole
KITCHENER— She lied three times — like the cock crowed.
One: Claiming there was no booty sex for a job well done after her boyfriend, at her bully bidding, stabbed 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel on New Year’s Day 2008, which had been included in the agreed statement of facts at his trial.
Two: That she’d met Stefanie once before deciding the teenager — a rival in her own mind but nowhere else — had to be killed. They’d never met, as was made clear at trial.
Three: She’s over her body image anxiety. Hefty at age 26, prison-fat, certainly weighing more than she had when convicted of first-degree murder. “I don’t struggle with bulimia anymore. I do occasionally binge eat.” Of her dimensions, “I’ve accepted it. I felt that I had to look a certain way to be wanted and have a boyfriend.”
A boyfriend she blackmailed into murder with the threat of withholding sex.
The inconsistencies from Melissa Todorovic at the parole hearing, so obvious to Rengel’s family, seemed to fly right over the heads of officials doing the questioning and the character boosting.
After deliberating for only 15 minutes, the two-member panel granted Todorovic full-day parole for the next six months. Meaning the felon can move immediately into a Brampton halfway house.
Todorovic was tried as a young offender but sentenced as an adult in 2009 — a life sentence with no parole eligibility for seven years. There’s no statutory release date for lifers.
But she took her time, doing time, in large part because Todorovic waited for her automatic appeal to be heard. That appeal was dismissed in 2014.
At the parole hearing Tuesday morning, in a little girl voice that could barely be heard despite repeated urgings to speak louder — that too was a form of exerting control over proceedings by a young woman who had been in complete control of the ghastly crime
committed — Todorovic assured the panel that she is a radically different person now. That she’s discovered empathy and insight and temper management.
“I never want to be that person again. I don’t want to harm anybody. I wish I could take it back. I take full responsibility for Stefanie’s death. It was nobody’s fault but my own. If it wasn’t for me, Stefanie would still be alive.
“I realize the impact I’ve had on the family. They can never get Stefanie back. “I feel horrible.” Yet there was no direct apology to the victim’s parents, grandparents and siblings. There never has been.
“I felt it was a bit scripted,” Stefanie’s mom, Patricia Hung, said afterwards. “She said she’d met Stefanie once. She denied having sex” with David Bagshaw, the besotted co-accused, likewise convicted of firstdegree murder (he pleaded guilty) and sentenced to life. “I don’t know why she’d do that.
“It’s disconcerting when she said today that she couldn’t show any empathy for us at trial because she wasn’t responsible. And yet lots of people felt empathy for us who weren’t even related to the case. That’s a red flag to me.”
Taking full responsibility? “It didn’t sound genuine,” said Hung, mother of six, mother of a slain child, her eldest, and an ex-cop. Her husband, Stefanie Rengel’s stepfather, is a veteran cop. Stefanie’s dad, Adolfo Rengel, and his wife are both court officers.
Todorovic didn’t turn around once to look at the family, nor her own parents and younger brother; she was already seated facing the other way every time observers entered the hearing room at Grand Valley Institution.
“The only time she showed any emotion was when they asked if she was still concerned about her body weight,” continued Hung. “That’s the only time she got upset. So it’s still all about her.”
Adolfo Rengel: “I believe she’s very smart and she knew she had to say what she did, to get out.”
A chilling flat effect, what Todorovic had evinced throughout her trial eight years ago, crying only at the end, upon conviction, after the trial judge had described her as the “puppet-master” of the crime. Those tears had been for her- self alone.
The felon has been enjoying unescorted day passes for the past year, sometimes for 72 hours at a time. Previous to that, she had been granted escorted passes, allowing her to work at an animal rescue shelter, for instance, though having to return to Grand Valley every night. She’s had two six-month work releases and 74 escorted temporary absences. (Work releases are at the discretion of the warden, not the parole board.) Her parole officer spoke brightly of Todorovic’s good conduct behind bars and encouraging likelihood of rehabilitation.
But that’s the thing about sociopaths. They are cunning. They can pretend to act “normally” by mimicking. They are convincing. And they don’t really feel a damn thing. They have no empathy but can wear the mask.
Let’s go back to the crime and the trial, the first of its kind, really, where social media — literally, thousands of texts — were submitted by the Crown as evidence.
“I want her dead daviddd … we’ve been through this… “No sex till then lol… “Ur getting blocked until u kill her…
“I’m still waiting for her to die… “Is she dead yet?” And for what was this murder orchestrated, Stefanie lured out of her Scarborough home, stabbed half a dozen times by Bagshaw, left to bleed out in a snow bank?
Because Todorovic, not yet 16 years old herself, hated Stefanie, who’d dated Bagshaw briefly much earlier and remained a good friend to the youth. For that, Stefanie had to be butchered. When Bagshaw complained that he didn’t have a mask to wear during the killing, Todorovic snapped: “Cut f------ leotards.”
Afterward, she made Bagshaw recount the murder to her in detail.
At trial, psychiatrists for both the prosecution and the defence were stumped by Todorovic. Each expert agreed she was a “unique” offender who displayed anti-social tendencies in her intimate relationships but otherwise functioned normally. Everyone was struck by her lack of remorse.
“My thinking back then was that, if she wasn’t in the picture, I would have David all to myself,” Todorovic said Tuesday.
“I needed him.”
To show how evolved she’s become since then, Todorovic Tuesday told the panel again that she had received a letter from Bagshaw prior to her hearing last year. “My anxiety went through the roof. I was angry. I was frustrated. I didn’t know why he would be writing me.”
Oh, but she did the correct thing — told her case management team about it, requested from prison officials that no further communication from Bagshaw ever be permitted.
What she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, expand on was why Bagshaw had killed for her following months of badgering.
“I know if it wasn’t for me, David wouldn’t have killed Stefanie. He did it because I told him to.”
But added: “I didn’t think he would.”
Todorovic showed no outward indication of being moved by the wrenching victim impact statement Hung delivered.
“It is true that the passing of time changes grief, but it does not eradicate it. No matter what happy family event is taking place, there is always a deep and abiding sadness that one of us is missing, one who belongs with us and has been cheated of all that is joyous in life. Some days this grief is muted in the background. Others, it returns with a word or touch or fragrance, sharp and agonizing. With it, the injustice and deep anger return, along with the infuriating helpless knowledge that it simply cannot be fixed — ever. “Once she murdered my daughter, something inside me broke.”
From Adolfo Rengel, although he didn’t read his victim impact statement aloud: “This woman, after 10 years since she killed Stefanie, has shown no remorse or accepted any responsibility for her part in this awful, senseless murder. Melissa Todorovic is a very smart woman, and obviously extremely good at manipulating for her advantage.”
The family knew it, in their bones, that Todorovic would be granted day parole. They asked for and received restrictions to keep Todorovic a kilometre away from their homes. She must continue with counselling and report any intimate relationships.
“You didn’t do so well today,” lead panel member Bruce Malcolm told Todorovic.
Yet they sprung her.