8 Year Old Victoria “Tori” Stafford Missing Since 4/8/09 in Ontario, Canada

[Northern Rose]

Lonely, isolated place where Tori Stafford killed gets visit from jurors

http://www.570news.com/news/national/article/347317--jurors-in-rafferty-trial-to-visit-scene-where-tori-stafford-s-remains-were-found

[MuffyBee]

Thank you for the articles Northern Rose.  I'm hoping and praying for justice for Tori.

[Northern Rose]

Stafford body too badly decomposed to determine sex assault, jury told

Warning: This story contains graphic details

Ghastly images of a child’s severely decomposed body were shown to the jury at the Victoria (Tori) Stafford murder trial Tuesday morning, but the man accused of killing the eight-year-old Woodstock girl appeared unmoved.

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Ahead of time, Judge Thomas Heeney warned the jurors the pictures might be deeply unsettling. “This will be the worst that you will see so you need to steel yourselves,” he said. “It is not easy to sit through this.”

Dr. Pollanen, too, cautioned that “these photos, even for a pathologist, can be confronting,”

A hush gripped the big courtroom as the nightmarish images were flashed on to monitor screens and Dr. Pollanen outlined the complex autopsy procedures.

Michael Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and abduction.

But if he was upset at Tuesday’s evidence, he gave no sign of it.

Wearing a purple shirt and a grey-and-purple tie – Tori’s favourite colour, routinely displayed by her family members – he sat in the prisoner’s box with his eyes closed, as though asleep.

His wearing of purple caused a small stir in the courtroom.

“It was planned,” one disgusted spectator said after the trial adjourned for lunch.

Tori had been dead for more than three months when her body was discovered in woods by a farmer’s field in Wellington County, north of Guelph.

The cause of death was “blunt force impact” on her skull, the trial has been told.

Wrapped in green garbage bags and lying in the foetal position, her remains were so badly decomposed that dental records were used to identify her.

And for the same reason it was not possible to state whether she had been sexually assaulted, Dr. Pollanen told the trial.

She was clad only in a Hannah Montana T-shirt, he testified.

Also in the garbage bags were the butterfly earrings she was wearing when she was abducted, together with a piece of a hair barrette and two plastic bottle caps.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/stafford-body-too-badly-decomposed-to-determine-sex-assault-jury-told/article2390767/

[Northern Rose]

Christie Blatchford: Pathologist paints a terrifying picture
 Science provides script of child's dying moments, court is told

Science would save them, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Pollanen, told the jurors, and he was both right and wrong.

Pollanen was testifying Tuesday as an expert witness at the Ontario Superior Court trial of Michael Rafferty, who is pleading not guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault and first-degree murder in the April 8, 2009, death of the little Woodstock, Ont., girl named Victoria (Tori) Stafford.

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By either account, whether she was doing the killing or Rafferty, the essential elements of the child's death were the same: The eight-year-old died after allegedly being raped by Rafferty. She was, McClintic told Judge Thomas Heeney and the jurors, first kicked and stomped and then struck in the head with a hammer which she had bought, just an hour or two before, ostensibly at Rafferty's direction

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What follows is some of what the science had to say.

First, the little girl's body was so badly decomposed that there was no evidence of sexual interference because the area was essentially obliterated and her body was partially skeletonized.

She was identified by dental records. She died in the fetal position. Her liver was lacerated.

No fewer than 16 of her ribs were fractured, sometimes in multiple places.

These two injuries were probably related, because the job of the rib cage is to protect the organs of the chest and the liver is just below that on the right. The injuries likely were caused by strong blunt force trauma spread over a broad area or a single, massive, compressive force.

Since the little girl's body was found under some huge rocks, one directly on the chest, Pollanen had to try to learn if the injuries were caused before death, or after it, by the rocks. He got lucky: his microscopic examination revealed liver microemboli in Tori's lung - tiny fragments of liver tissue wildly out of place. They got there because the little girl was alive when she received broad, blunt impacts such as punches or kicks.

That trauma to the liver, in time, would have been fatal in and of itself.

Her scalp, brain and most of her face were gone.

But, working with forensic anthropologist Dr. Kathy Gruspier, who put Tori's skull back together à la humpty dumpty, Pollanen learned the bones of her face were markedly fractured (cheekbones and nose) and that her reconstituted skull was a patchwork of linear and depressed fractures.

Pollanen said there were at least four separate areas of damage, meaning at least four separate blows.

By using a three-dimensional model, made of dental stone, he was able to show the jurors how the claw end of a hammer (it was like the one McClintic bought that day, but he could say only that a hammer, not this specific brand, was the weapon) fit into two of the wounds.

Tori suffered penetrating skull damage. She would have been bleeding from the head wounds, the broken nose. She would have suffered traumatic brain damage and intercranial bleeding.

She also would have been bleeding internally from the torn liver, which probably contributed to her death.

"Despite all that," Pollanen said, "death will not be immediate." She may have been choking on her own blood, consistent with McClintic's testimony that she heard gurgling from the little girl.

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http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Christie+Blatchford+Pathologist+paints+terrifying+picture/6407900/story.html

[Northern Rose]

Pathologist faces cross-examination

Ontario's chief forensic pathologist will face cross-examination from defence counsel Wednesday in the first-degree murder trial of Michael Rafferty.

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http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffertytrial/2012/04/04/19591776.html

[Northern Rose]

Rafferty jury show graphic autopsy photos

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The fragments of the life she loved: two butterfly earrings borrowed from her mother, a piece of a hair barrette and a Hannah Montana shirt adorned with sparkles and the hopeful words, "A Girl can Dream."

The violent death of dreams: Four punctures with radiating fractures to the top of the skull, three possibly from the claw end of a hammer and one from the blunt end. Fractures to the facial bones. Sixteen ribs with multiple fractures. Underneath the ribs, a five-centimetre long, one-centimetre deep gash on the liver.

And all of it, from the size of the shirt to the model of her skull, held easily in one hand by a pathologist, signs of her youth.

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http://www.parisstaronline.com/2012/04/04/rafferty-jury-show-graphic-autopsy-photos

[Northern Rose]

Stafford's parents leave courtroom, cry, after photos of Tori's remains showed at Rafferty trial

http://www.680news.com/news/national/article/347935--stafford-s-parents-leave-courtroom-cry-after-photos-of-tori-s-remains-showed-at-rafferty-trial

[Northern Rose]

Tori Stafford trial: Search was largest in OPP history, officer testifies

LONDON, ONT. — The search for Tori Stafford was the largest in the history of Ontario and perhaps even the country, the provincial police’s chief of search and rescue team told a jury today.

More than 13,900 people were involved in the search and they covered more than 18,000 kilometres from April 18 to mid-July, said Det-Sgt. Jamie Stirling, the OPP’s Emergency and Rescue Coordinator.

“They went one-and-a-half-times around the moon,” said Stirling. “Definitely the largest seen in the history.” The circumference of the moon is 10,800 km, he pointed out to the jury

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http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1156481--tori-stafford-trial-search-was-largest-in-opp-history-officer-testifies

[Northern Rose]

 
Can't tell who dealt Tori's fatal blows: Expert
 
 
 LONDON, Ont. — Medical evidence can’t determine who inflicted the blows that killed eight-year-old Tori Stafford, the forensic pathologist told court Wednesday.

Dr. Michael Pollanen, chief forensic pathologist for Ontario, also testified her remains were so decomposed no evidence of sexual assault was found.

He agreed with defence lawyer Dirk Derstine that Tori had suffered a savage and ongoing attack.

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http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/ToriStafford/2012/04/04/19593046.html

[cookie]

Horrible. I can not read anymore of what this little girl suffered. Would some kind monkey let me know on another thread when this trial is over and what the sentence will be...I won't be back here again...too hard to read and think of her suffering.
Thanks

[Northern Rose]

Tori Stafford trial: Court to hear what police found in Michael Rafferty’s home

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Court heard Wednesday about the unprecedented scale of the ground, air and water search for Tori after she went missing on April 8, 2009.

Today the Crown says they will hear about the search warrant executed at Rafferty’s house, where he lived with his mother.

The jury was shown photos Wednesday that police took while searching the home of Terri-Lynne McClintic, Rafferty’s ex-girlfriend who has already pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

McClintic’s home, where she lived with her mother, was cluttered, in a state of disrepair and had prescription receipts for OxyContin scattered throughout

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/1156910--tori-stafford-trial-court-to-hear-what-police-found-in-michael-rafferty-s-home

[Desdemona]

Thank you and bless you for posting the trial coverage, Northern Rose.

Such a horrific awful thing to happen to such a sweet and adorable little girl.  Incomprehensible.

[Sister]

Thank you and bless you for posting the trial coverage, Northern Rose.

Such a horrific awful thing to happen to such a sweet and adorable little girl.  Incomprehensible.

[texasmom]

Thank you and bless you for posting the trial coverage, Northern Rose.

Such a horrific awful thing to happen to such a sweet and adorable little girl.  Incomprehensible.

 

[Kat_Gram]

I  can only read so much about this one. I have a real time twitter account at work from the trial ( some days I don't read it ) and the reporters say it's too graphic for them to post. 
.......
I was so worried that Rafferty will be found not guilty on some of these charges that I have actually made myself sick.
I think for me, the Anthony trial has changed the way I percieve the law, trials and justice.
I think this trial is going until sometime in June.
 

[Amys Sister]

The savagery of the attack is evil beyond description. 

Then the monster comes to court wearing Tori's favorite color?  What was his attorney thinking?

It's hard to imagine this kind of evil is among us.

[Northern Rose]

Thank you and bless you for posting the trial coverage, Northern Rose.

Such a horrific awful thing to happen to such a sweet and adorable little girl.  Incomprehensible.

You are welcome Desi.  Miss reading your posts 

[Northern Rose]

Easter third anniversary of Tori Stafford's murder

T
he death of his daughter and the season of rebirth provide a poignant mixture Sunday for Rodney Stafford.

“Easter was very big. She was a kid and it involved free candy,” Stafford said with a chuckle remembering his daughter, Victoria.

Easter Sunday this year falls on April 8, a date Rodney Stafford and the rest of Victoria’s family will always remember.

On April 8 three years ago, the eight-year-old Woodstock girl disappeared while walking home from school. One person pleaded guilty to her murder. The second is on trial in London now, and it’s only a matter of calendar luck that evidence of the crime will not spill out in a courtroom on such a hard day for family.

Three years later, it gets no easier marking Easter without her.

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http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2012/04/06/19603151.html

[Northern Rose]

Terri-Lynne McClintic charged with assault

A woman serving a life sentence in the abduction and murder of Tori Stafford has been charged with assaulting another inmate, media reports suggest.

According to several published reports, Terri-Lynne McClintic got into an altercation with Amy McIntyre at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener on January 30 and was charged with assault in early February.

She'll appear in a Kitchener courtroom via video link on April 26 to answer to the charge.

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http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120406/120406_McClintic_Charge/20120406/?hub=CP24Home

[Northern Rose]

Blatchford: Hair dye purchase raises questions about Rafferty's `bystander' plea


LONDON, Ont. - Three days after Victoria (Tori) Stafford was abducted and killed, Michael Rafferty, or ``Mychol'' as he sometimes signed his name, bought blond hair dye which ended up in Terri-Lynne McClintic's bedroom closet.

The two were involved in the spring of 2009.

Now 21, McClintic almost two years ago pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the little girl's death, while Rafferty is now on trial here for murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm.

The hair dye link between the two - painstakingly proved by police and prosecutors down to affidavits obtained from the manufacturer and retailer - is significant for a couple of reasons.

First, it corroborates what McClintic told Ontario Superior Court Judge Thomas Heeney and the jurors when she testified.

She said that though she had cut her hair after the killing, it wasn't enough of an appearance change for Rafferty, and that he left the hair dye for her near a telephone pole by her house and told her to get it.

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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Blatchford+Hair+purchase+raises+questions+about+Rafferty+bystander+plea/6418882/story.html