Tori Stafford murder trial set to hear evidence about crime-scene area

LONDON, Ont. – The trial of a man accused of killing eight-year-old Victoria Stafford is expected to hear testimony today about happenings in the area of Mount Forest, Ont.

Tori’s remains were found partially clothed in a field near Mount Forest more than 100 days after she went missing April 8, 2009.

On Tuesday, Michael Rafferty‘s trial heard evidence and saw surveillance footage of Rafferty and then-girlfriend Terri-Lynne McClintic after they allegedly abducted Tori.

Court heard Rafferty stopped at an ex-girlfriend’s house in Guelph, Ont., to buy Percocet pills and withdrew $80 from an ATM.

McClintic then used cash to buy a hammer and garbage bags at a Home Depot.

Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.

McClintic is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty two years ago to first-degree murder.

The trial heard from her as the central witness in the case over the past two weeks, with questioning largely focusing on inconsistencies in her story.

When she first confessed and when she later pleaded guilty, she said it was Rafferty who killed Tori using the hammer. But she testified at Rafferty’s trial that it was she who wielded the hammer.

Rafferty’s ex-girlfriend Barbara Armstrong, 44, who kept him illegally supplied with Percocets, testified on Tuesday that she saw him the day Tori was killed.

She said she saw a young woman waiting in the passenger seat of Rafferty’s car as he went in to buy the addictive painkillers.

When she saw Rafferty again a few days after Tori’s disappearance, he seemed “super stressed,” Armstrong told court.

The Crown alleges Rafferty and McClintic abducted Tori outside her elementary school and drove her to a rural area more than 100 kilometres north, where she was raped and killed with a hammer.

But between the abduction in Woodstock, Ont., and the killing near Mount Forest, Rafferty and McClintic made several stops in the Guelph area, it’s alleged, including at Armstrong’s house.

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