Police 'hopeful' child remains found are Tori's
MOUNT FOREST, Ont. — Police investigators believe the human remains of a child found Sunday in a rural area northwest of Guelph are those of an eight-year-old Woodstock, Ont., girl who has been missing for more than three months.
"We are hopeful that those are in fact the remains of Victoria Stafford," said Oxford community police chief Rod Freeman Monday. "The reason for that is that we want to be able to bring her home, bring her back to the City of Woodstock and back to her family."
The remains were found by a lone police investigator searching for the little girl Sunday afternoon on private property in a rural field about 500 metres off Concession No. 6, just east of Mount Forest, Ont.
The bones were found in a "very well secluded," heavily bushed area across from a little grey house surrounded by lush green farmland.
Farmers use the unserviced access road where the remains were found as a shortcut between main roads.
More than two dozen investigators remained at and around the scene Monday, conducting a search within a five-kilometre radius.
A hearse arrived just before noon Monday to transport the remains to the Centre for Forensic Sciences in Toronto for identification through dental records.
Officers saluted the hearse as it travelled along a rural road en route to Toronto.
Freeman said that the findings were "consistent" with how remains would appear if they were left out in the elements for "quite some time, quite a number of weeks."
No timeline has been given on when the identification will be made official and the whole process may take weeks.
He attributed the discovery to dedicated police work.
"The intensity of the investigation hasn't been diminished at all," said Freeman. "The officers assigned to this investigation have been putting forth, devoting an absolutely remarkable effort, 24 hours a day in an effort to bring this to a conclusion."
Two people — Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, and Michael Rafferty, 28 — have been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death.
Both lived just blocks away from the girl's family in Woodstock, Ont., about 150 kilometres west of Toronto.
The blond-haired girl was last seen on a surveillance tape, willingly walking after school with an unknown woman on April 8.
According to court documents, it is believed the Grade 3 student was killed the same day she disappeared.
The search for the little girl's body began May 20, after the suspects were arrested and charged.
Woodstock Mayor Michael Harding said Monday the positive identification of these remains will provide closure for his city.
"I think we have all been waiting for the return of this little girl into the arms of her parents, although in tragic circumstances," he said. "The town is here to support this family and it will provide some measures of closure for the community. I don't know whether we will ever be able to move on."
Harding said he does not plan on speaking to the family about this latest development.
"No, I have not spoke to the family, nor do I contemplate doing so," Harding said. "What the family does not need is a politician on the other end of the phone. My role is to speak for the community as a whole and I'll leave the family to speak for themselves."
The Stafford family was expected to hold a news conference at 2 p.m. Monday in a local park in Woodstock.
Harding said this "random" act has changed the community forever.
"I think time is a great healer but I don't think it can permanently heal what has happened to this particular family," Harding said. "We have claimed Tori as one of our own in the community. We're looking at our kids a little differently than in the past and we can't predict what the long term impact of this will be. But Woodstock remains a safe place for our children. It is not our expectation that this will be a regular occurrence."
Last month, hundreds of people attended a memorial held in Woodstock in June in the girl's memory.
The high-profile case also drew international headlines when it was featured on the U.S. TV show America's Most Wanted.
From the start, the girl's mother, Tara McDonald held daily news conferences outside her home pleading with the kidnappers to return her baby daughter. At times, these media briefings grew tense when the relationship between McDonald and her ex-husband Rodney Stafford were recorded arguing in front of the cameras.
This case also brought heavy criticism onto Ontario's Amber Alert process which was not used in the Stafford case.
The Amber Alert system lets the public know about abducted children who are in imminent danger. At the time of Tori's disappearance, police said the case didn't fit the criteria for an Amber Alert and it was never activated.
Approximately 80 Ontario Provincial Police officers from several detachments and 25 Oxford Community police officers have been working on the case since the young girl's disappearance.
Mount Forest is about 132 kilometres north of Woodstock.
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