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.
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,” Todorovic said quietly. “I wish I could take everything back. I take full responsibility for Stefanie’s death ... if it wasn’t for me, Stefanie would be alive.”
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.