It was five years ago Tuesday, that eight-year-old Victoria ‘Tori’ Stafford disappeared outside her Woodstock school.
April 8, 2009 would be the last time Tori’s family would see her alive. It then took more than three months for investigators to discover Tori’s body in a rural area near Mount Forest.
On Easter Sunday in 2009, police arrested Terri-Lynne McClintic on a breach of probation. She would later confess to abducting Tori and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. McClintic is now serving a life sentence.
Michael Rafferty was arrested in May 2009 on charges of first-degree murder and abduction. He entered a plea of not guilty, but was convicted in 2012 of murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm in Tori’s death.
Rafferty filed an appeal in December of 2013 – a judge ordered that it reconsider his case.
Following the trial, Rodney Stafford has said he hopes something positive comes from the loss, and in fact Amber Alert criteria were changed in the wake of Tori's death and OxyContin -- the drug of choice for McClintic and Rafferty -- is no longer produced.
Visiting Tori's grave Tuesday Rodney says "It's not right, it's not fair...a very big sense of loss. It's an emotional rollercoaster, one thing could be enough to set you off for the day. There's a lot of hate because I shouldn't have to be here."
He adds that more needs to be done to deter the type of crime that ended Tori's life, including bringing back capital punishment for child killers.
With files from The Canadian Press
