It’s the day that changed a family’s life forever. On April 8, 2009, eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford disappeared while walking home from school in Woodstock. The abduction garnered national media coverage, led to the largest search in the OPP’s history and sparked an Internet frenzy focused as much on the girl’s family and life, as her disappearance. The hopes of thousands were crushed with the arrest in May of two people for the girl’s murder. Tori’s body was found in a remote woods near Mount Forest, Ont., in July.
As the fifth anniversary of Tori’s death nears, Free Press reporter Randy Richmond talked to family members about their lives, hopes and memories.
TIMELINE
April 8, 2009:
Morning: Victoria (Tori) Stafford is taken to school by grandmother Linda Winters. Tori borrows a pair of butterfly earrings from her mother. In the lineup for the bell at the end of the day, Tori asks if she can go back in the classroom to get the earrings. She returns after the bell rings and the other children have left.
3:32 p.m.
Tori is seen on a nearby high school surveillance camera walking up Fyfe Ave. with a woman later identified as Terri-Lynne McClintic. With the promise of seeing a puppy, McClintic leads Tori to a Honda Civic parked in nearby nursing home. She pushes Tori into the back seat and gets in. Michael Rafferty drives the car to Hwy. 401 and toward Guelph. Tori cowers on the floor for most of the drive, covered in Rafferty’s jacket.
3:55 p.m.
A friend calls Tori at home and leaves a voicemail about a plan to watch a movie at Tori’s house together. When Tori’s brother Daryn gets home from school, his mother tells him Tori hasn’t come home.
5 p.m. (approx)
Rafferty drives to a Home Depot in Guelph, where McClintic buys a claw hammer and garbage bags.
5:20 p.m. to 6:04 p.m.:
Family members begin looking for Tori.
6:04 p.m.
Winters reports to police Tori is missing. Police begin searching the school and neighbourhood.
Before dusk:
Tori is sexually assaulted and killed in a farmer’s field near Mount Forest. Her body is put into two garbage bags and hidden under a pile of rocks.
8 p.m.
McClintic and Rafferty drive to Cambridge where they wash his car, throw out old clothing and the hammer, and change into new clothes. They’re back in Woodstock by midnight.
THE KILLERS
Terri-Lynne McClintic: Pleaded guilty April 30, 2010, to first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Michael Rafferty: Found guilty May 11, 2012, of first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm. Appealing conviction.
A FEW MEMORIES
Tara McDonald, mother:
The day Tori was born, the moment my family was complete. It was the most important moment of my life. Watching the bond between them from Day 1 was just so beautiful to watch!”
Rodney Stafford, father:
The love she showed for her brother. Every time I would pick the kids up, Victoria would scream ‘Daddy’ and coming running for hugs. The last weekend (before the kidnapping) I watched as she skipped a rock at Pittock Lake with Daryn and my father.”
Doreen Graichen, grandmother:
I took the girls (her granddaughters) to the ballet for Christmas to see The Nutcracker. I think Tori must have been about five at the time. I will never forget the magic of that night and how the girls sat silent and eyes frozen watching every move on the stage. Somewhere through the ballet, Tori slipped off her seat and began kneeling on the carpet in front of her with her little arms wrapped around the railing, never taking her eyes off the stage. That evening was priceless to me.”
James Goris, stepfather:
The day Tori got her new dress I bought for her stuck in the spokes of her bicycle. She shouted for help but insisted I rescue the dress, too. She didn’t care about her scraped knee, the dress was more important.”
A MOTHER’S STORY
How many times a day do you check the time?
Every time Tara McDonald does that on April 8, she will think of what was happening at that exact time five years ago.
Her eight-year-old daughter Tori walking out of school, meeting a woman on the street, being pushed into a car and driven out of town. McDonald starting to wonder why her daughter isn’t home yet, calling the houses of friends, driving around the neighbourhood.
Each April 8 is the same.
“You’ll just look at the clock to see what time it is and you will think, ‘Oh, this is what time this was happening,’ ” McDonald says.
“And when the day passes, you’re like, ‘Whew, I made it past one more year. I survived one more year.’ ”
As the fifth anniversary of the day her daughter was kidnapped comes closer, McDonald calls what she’s doing as more survival than living.
“I miss her more than I think about what happened to her. That’s the only way to survive it. Otherwise you’re going to lose your marbles.”
She acknowledges, though, she’s getting slowly better. For the first three April 8ths, she spent the day in bed. She’s given up drugs, no longer lives in the fishbowl of Woodstock and remains in a steady relationship with boyfriend James Goris.
McDonald also has a couple of projects on the go, including one that might surprise a few people: regaining certification as a doula — an assistant to pregnant women.
Watching the births of children after losing your own might sound like punishment. McDonald disagrees.
“Birth is amazing. It’s incredible and I think it will help a lot. Being there and seeing new life coming into the world will give me purpose.”
McDonald also is writing a book about her daughter’s short life and ending, the police investigation and trials through the eyes of a mother who at one time was a suspect in Tori’s disappearance.
She wants people to really know her daughter, and what was lost. She wants parents to know how the horror can happen to anyone.
In a sad irony, her book will replace the journal she began writing for Tori many years ago, one of those pretty notebooks that provide ideas and blank spaces for moms to fill in for their daughter’s wedding day.
“I was so proud when I bought it. I thought, ‘This is so beautiful.’ ”
McDonald gets angry looking at the journal now, flipping through the final pages that are waiting for messages about her daughter’s first dates, proms and boyfriends.
“Look at how it tapers off to nothing.”
For a time the most famous, or infamous, mother in Canada, McDonald has always responded to challenges with a mixture of humour and toughness.
“Everybody tells me how strong I am. I don’t see myself like that at all. If people knew what I was like behind closed doors, strong is the last word they would use.”
Her son Daryn is living with family in Woodstock, an arrangement made a couple of years ago, but the pair remain close.
“I try not to put this on Daryn . . . but he’s a huge reason I’m still alive,” McDonald says.
With Michael Rafferty appealing his conviction for murdering Tori, McDonald knows she has a struggle ahead.
She says, however, that when the court proceedings are done, she will take Rafferty up on his surprising courtroom request the pair have a private conversation some day.
“He had some reason he called me out in the courtroom that day and I need to know what it is. Who knows.”
But if Rafferty or co-killer Terri-Lynne McClintic are expecting forgiveness, they’ve got the wrong person.
“People keep asking us if we’re ever going to be able to forgive them because we’re not going to move on until they’re forgiven. I just can’t see it happening. Ever. How do you forgive two people who destroyed your life on a whim?”
A FATHER’S STORY
On a break at one job site last year, Rodney Stafford stared at the ground where a tattered garbage bag rustled. Behind him, a crew smashed landscaping rocks with hammers.
“It sent me into a frenzy.”
Yet he has one word when he’s asked what he’ll be doing on the fifth anniversary of his daughter’s kidnapping, brutal death by hammer and disposal of her body in a garbage bag.
“Work.”
Stafford was already struggling when his daughter Tori was kidnapped April 8, 2009. He was trying to get his high school education and re-establish consistent relations with his two young children.
Five years later, a full-time job and a more stable family life with a new son and established partner are signs of recovery.
Justice is another matter.
“Since (Michael) Rafferty’s trial, every time he comes back to court I get more and more enraged. We are all forced to relive the horrific events from that day,” he says.
“Now that I’m working 40 hours a week, paying into the system, I’m finding it a little bit harder to do so knowing that I’m keeping this idiot alive and helping him get through his schooling and whatever.”
The man he’s referring to is, of course, Michael Rafferty, the man convicted of killing his daughter Tori and in the midst of appealing his conviction.
The pain never goes away. A song on the radio can trigger despair and a call to his counsellor.
“Walking down the street seeing any Honda Civic just turns my stomach,” Stafford says. That’s the model of car Rafferty drove to kidnap Tori.
“Then you see the guys with the hammers breaking rocks. Seeing normal people with hammers shouldn’t affect you.”
As April 8 approaches, Stafford admits to a tumble of mixed emotions. What happens if Rafferty gets a new trial?
“I think it should happen again because what the sick bastard is really about Canadians need to know. There are still people naive about this kind of situation, that it will never happen to them.”
Like other family members, Stafford struggles as well with how much of his daughter he wants to share with strangers.
The disappearance, search, arrests and trials made national headlines and twice Stafford rode through Canada raising money for ChildFind.
“I want her name to travel as long as I’m alive. As long as I’m alive I’m going to put it out there. She should never be forgotten. She should never be tucked away,” Stafford says.
At the same time, however, he’s dreading being asked about his daughter at work April 8.
Every good memory of Tori can raise a bad memory.
Stafford is proud and honoured the Grade 8 pupils at Oliver Stephens elementary school want to honour Tori — who would have graduated with them — at their ceremony this spring.
“They want to send her through with the graduating class. I want to be there,” he says, hesitating for a moment. “But she’s not going to be there.”
A GRANDMOTHER’S STORY
Not too long ago, Doreen Graichen went through her home and took down most of the purple ribbons and mementoes of her granddaughter that people had given her.
Some of the dozens of mementoes she had to throw away; others are tucked away in boxes.
She calls it a “cleansing.”
“God bless the people who have been there supporting us the whole time, years worth of time,” she says
“I think it’s just time that we let her rest. It doesn’t mean that we will ever forget her. But when I think of Tori, I want to think of the good times.”
Despite her best efforts, Graichen knows that won’t be possible Tuesday, the fifth anniversary of Tori’s death.
“I know that I will relive every moment of that afternoon. I’ll never forget any of it . . . the horrors of that day.”
She and Rodney and his son Daryn drove through Woodstock for hours that night, looking at parks and bikepaths where Tori might be playing.
Her voice still breaks when she recalls Daryn saying late that night nobody had better be doing anything bad to Tori or abusing her.
She provided the only answer she could. Let’s not think that.
“The next week was just zombie land. We didn’t know what to do, what to think, nothing. The whole thing was just horrible.”
The week turned into months that turned into years that have damaged her family, with some members estranged from others, she says.
“It has changed everyone I know that was close to Tori,” Graichen says.
“I’ve gone from anger and hatred to grieving and acceptance. The only thing I worry about, and it’s premature I know, is the appeal. If by some freak of nature, he’s granted another trial, I hope it takes many many years and I hope I’m not around anymore because I can’t live you through that.”
In the meantime, she will work to keep her home and her mind clean with only the good memories of Tori.
“Happy memories are a safe place for her to exist.”
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