Tori Stafford’s tragedy, 5 years later

Tuesday marks a sombre anniversary in Southwestern Ontario. It was April 8th, 2009 when eight year old Tori Stafford was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered.

“There’s a lot of mixed emotions. A lot of happy thoughts of Victoria, but as of lately a lot more anger and a lot more rage.”

Rage and anger, now that Rodney Stafford has had time to think about the crime that took his daughter. Tori Stafford was walking home from school when 18 year old Terri-Lynn McLintock led to Tori a car where Michael Rafferty was waiting inside. At around 6:30 that night, Rodney Stafford got a call.

“I heard my friend outside the door say to me it’s your ex-wife it has something to do with your daughter, Tori, and it’s my natural reaction was what now? She’s always being too loud, or screaming of she’s always getting herself into trouble uhm, but, it wasn’t the same, the temperament was totally different and I knew I had to get right over to her house.”

Rodney knew something was seriously wrong “when she told me she hadn’t come home, right in that first phone call. But I had gone through the night searching, and what not but I kinda still had it in me that the following morning she’d show up to school because she had snuck over to a friend’s house or had just made arrangements that somebody else had thought was OK.”

“Where, her Mom didn’t know and she’d be in school in the morning having to explain herself to her Mom and what not. But I called the school first thing in the morning she wasn’t in class.”

Rodney says that was followed by “a lot of fear, and a lot of hurt because it was just a lot of, you just didn’t know what was going on. Right up until we were notified about the murder two people had been arrested, even at that point I still believed she was alive.”

“Until they literally found her remains I was under the assumption she was alive. I guess they were pretty good at hiding what they did.”

Tori’s body was found on July 19th near Mount Forest. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered. An autopsy showed the cause of death to be repeated blows to the head with a hammer.

Terri-Lynn McLintic, who pleaded guilty to murder, helped police find the body.

Michael Rafferty was tried and found guilty of first degree murder. He was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 25 years – something that Rodney Stafford has a hard time coming to grips with.

“Just sitting back and realizing that five years later, my little girl is still gone. But now being a tax-paying citizen, I’m helping keep this guy alive.”

“I’d really like to see that Canadians can finally have a sense of relief knowing that they’re children are going to be safer. I’d honestly like to put a push out there for possibly brining back capital punishment for child killers and see what can be done, see if we can do something to deter these people from doing or creating these heinous acts.”

Here is the complete interview with Rodney Stafford: