Little Tori ‘mother hen’ of the class
Teacher tearfully recalls slain girl’s last hours at Woodstock school
LONDON, ONT.— Tori Stafford was gone in a flash.
At 3:30 p.m. on April 8, 2009, a dark car with dark tires and rims is spotted northbound on Fyfe Ave., near Oliver Stephens Public School in Woodstock. It appears to pull into a retirement home parking lot, a few metres from the school.
At 3:32 p.m., Tori is seen walking north with a woman in a puffy white jacket. The two appear to be going to the parking lot.
At 3:33 p.m., a dark car with dark tires and rims is seen fleetingly, northbound again on Fyfe.
That video evidence, captured by different surveillance cameras, puts Michael Rafferty’s car in the area of Tori’s abduction, prosecutors said in court Tuesday.
Rafferty, 31, is accused in the firstdegree murder, sexual assault and abduction of the girl.
Tori, 8, was abducted while leaving school that April day. Rafferty and Terri-lynne Mcclintic, his girlfriend at the time, were arrested a month later and charged with abduction and murder.
Tori’s body was found in July 2009 near Mount Forest, Ont. Mcclintic pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Tori’s death and was sentenced to life in prison in 2010.
In his opening statements at the trial, Crown prosecutor Kevin Gowdey said Mcclintic lured Tori from her school and took her to the nursing home parking lot, where Rafferty was waiting in his car, a dark Honda Civic. He then drove to Highway 401and on to Guelph.
The video evidence was presented Tuesday by OPP Det. Const. Robin Brocanier, who was in charge of collecting and reviewing surveillance footage from College Avenue Secondary School, near Tori’s school, and from nearby businesses.
When Tori was abducted, vehicular and pedestrian traffic was busy near the school, said Brocanier. But the actions of that one car became the “focus of interest.”
One surveillance camera showed a dark car appear to slow down near the Caressant Care Nursing Home, said Brocanier. Another camera indicated that the same car then turned into the parking lot.
“With respect to timeline and the description, I believed we were looking at the same vehicle at 3:30 p.m. and at 3:33 p.m. I believed (it was) involved in the abduction of Victoria Stafford,” he said.
Brocanier said the identification took weeks, as he described sitting for hours in an office the size of a closet analyzing video.
In fact, while Brocanier was reviewing video on May 19, 2009, that placed a dark car at a gas station not far from Tori’s school just before the abduction, he learned Mcclintic had confessed to the murder and Rafferty had been arrested. The gas station video shows a driver with a white jacket but the face is not visible. (The video had the wrong time stamp, but the gas station manager confirmed that the actual time was 3:20 p.m., just before Tori was abducted, said Brocanier.) Laura Perry testified that she saw
“She was just a lovely little girl. She was very inquisitive and always wanted to know why.” JENNIFER GRIFFIN MURREL TORI STAFFORD’S TEACHER
Tori walking with a young woman wearing a white coat that day. Perry was waiting for her two sons, also students at Oliver Stephens school, when she saw a young woman walk by with Tori. The woman, Perry said, “was walking fast, with purpose.” She told court where she was standing on Fyfe Ave. when the two walked by. Perry helped police prepare a sketch of the woman in white that was released to the public. Earlier in the morning, there were some emotional moments when Tori’s teacher took the stand and tearfully talked about Tori and her last hours at the school. “She was just a lovely little girl,” said Jennifer Griffin Murrel. “She was very inquisitive and always wanted to know why. She was very well liked by her peers and the staff and teachers.” She also called Tori, the happy-golucky girl, a “mother hen” to the younger kids in the class. Murrel said that April 8, 2009, was just a regular day for Tori: school work, lunch break, playtime with friends. Then, she was a bit naughty. “After the second recess, Tori came in and wanted to know if she could go home and get a change of clothes because she fell into a puddle,” said Murrel, with a tiny smile. It turned out that Tori and a friend had been jumping into the puddle.
Murrel told Tori she could not go home and the girl took it well. Later, Murrel said, she had a quick chat with Tori because the student was being impish with a pair of scissors. “That was just a silly moment.” As the bell rang at the end of the school day at 3:20 p.m., Murrel said Tori told her she had left her mother’s butterfly earrings in her desk and asked if she could get them.
Murrel said yes. She did not remember seeing the earrings but assumed Tori had put them in her backpack or a pocket.
Tori’s father, Rodney Stafford, his mother, Doreen Graichen, and other family members, all of them wearing purple — Tori’s favourite colour — were present in court.
Outside the courthouse, Stafford thanked Murrel effusively.
“The way she explained Victoria is the way I myself could not . . . because she saw Victoria on a daily basis whereas as I did not,” he said. “The little happy girl, mother hen. Perfect. Perfect. That’s how she was with her smaller cousins.”