LONDON, Ont. - Michael Rafferty's defence lawyer spent Monday chipping away at the Crown's case, discrediting their key witness and portraying the suspect as a clueless participant to a murderous plot.
Dirk Derstine took a clear aim at Terri-Lynne McClintic's credibility as a witness during closing arguments Monday, telling jurors to consider the young woman's consistently violent behaviour, her varying accounts of the facts as well as her own admission that sometimes she convinces herself of a fictionalized truth in order to protect herself from reality.
He instructed the jury to carefully weigh the evidence as they deliberate a verdict in the murder trial of eight-year-old Victoria "Tori" Stafford in the days to come.
"What you have to decide, and only decide, is if crown proved their theory beyond reasonable doubt," Derstine said in his final remarks. "The time for considering the horror of Tori's death must come at a different time but for now you must be impartial."
The defence's theory is this: McClintic, a violent young woman with a record of assaulting others and a journal filled with cruel and sadistic thoughts, targeted Tori in a horrific scheme. Rafferty, McClintic's boyfriend at the time, was unaware of McClintic's plan to murder the child. Derstine also asserted that McClintic lied and mislead police into thinking Rafferty played a major role in the child's death.
"Rafferty did not have any knowledge that Stafford was going to be killed," Derstine said after going through all the evidence. He told jurors that in fact it was McClintic who was the "engine" behind the turn of events on April 8, 2009, the day Tori was kidnapped and murdered.
McClintic has already pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was the key witness in the case against Rafferty, who stands co-accused in the murder, kidnapping and sexual assault of Tori.
Rafferty has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
A jury only has to conclude that Rafferty knew exactly what he was participating in in order to be found guilty.
The case against McClintic
Derstine wasted no time painting McClintic as a calculating liar, pointing out the markedly different testimony she provided to police from the moment she was first placed into custody, about a month after Tori's disappearance.
The woman confessed to luring the little girl from school and into a car where Rafferty was waiting. When she was initially questioned by police, she told investigators in detail how Rafferty had sexually assaulted Tori and murdered her by hitting her with a hammer that he had made McClintic purchase at a local Home Depot just hours before. However, when she took the stand during the trial earlier this year she changed her story, telling court that it was in fact her who delivered the fatal blows.
"She willfully, carefully mislead officers in the course of this case," Derstine told a packed courtroom that overflowed into a second spectator area. "She has an uncanny ability to come up with tiny little details to support her story. Those same nuggets of truth are in fact not the truth at all, just careful fiction."
Derstine blasted the notion that McClintic was sympathetic to Tori's plight, the way she had suggested on the stand. He pointed to the number of times McClintic could have freed the girl or called for help. At one point, he said, McClintic was alone with the girl in the parking lot of a crowded Tim Horton's but did nothing except ask Rafferty to buy her a tea.
The lawyer also pointed out the "shocking coincidence" of McClintic picking Tori as her victim, a child she said was just a random target outside a Woodstock, Ont. elementary school that fateful day in April.
The defence attorney suggested McClintic must have known who Tori was as she often walked by the child's home on her way to her aunt's house. McClintic was also familiar with Tori's mother as the two were involved in the occasional drug deal.
"What a shocking coincidence that it is this girl of all girls that she would pick on that fateful day," Derstine said.
He also pointed to the testimony of two witnesses as evidence that McClintic and Tori knew each other well enough for the child to be comfortable enough to go along with her after school.
The women both testified that they saw Tori chatting away happily as McClintic walked ahead with a stern look on her face, paying little attention to the child. One of the women said they saw McClintic walk into the school before she later spotted her with Tori, furthering the defence's argument that the child was specifically targeted by her kidnapper.
McClintic had testified that Tori was the first child she happened to see outside the school and that the two walked away happily after she asked the little girl if she'd like to see her dog.
"Who does a child follow unquestioningly?" Derstine asked the jury. "The answer is a person that they know. Maybe a person that they trust, but definitely a person that they know."
He also asked the jury to carefully consider the witness's account that McClintic walked into the school.
"You only go into a school if you know someone in the school," he said. "If you find that she went into the school, it is profoundly contrary to everything that she has said."
Derstine also spent quite a bit of time Monday afternoon pointing out McClintic's violent behaviour and thought pattern which she clearly spelled out in numerous journal entries, letters and choice of music.
The written entries seemed to even disgust Rafferty who kept his brows furrowed in a grimace while Derstine read out one entry after another.
Rafferty's defence
The suspect remained expressionless however for the majority of the closing arguments, even as Derstine went over Rafferty's actions, asking jurors to question whether he knew what McClintic had planned.
He explained Rafferty's Facebook status the morning Tori went missing, in which he wrote "Everything good is coming my way," as a "peripheral piece of circumstantial evidence."
Rafferty may have been referring to something else, he said.
Derstine asked jurors to consider Rafferty's behaviour in the hours after Tori was kidnapped. He wondered why the accused didn't take any measures to avoid the public despite the fact that there was a kidnapped child in his backseat. He told jurors that Rafferty had parked in the middle of a crowded Home Depot parking lot where people continuously walked by his car while McClintic was inside buying "murder tools."
He pointed out that Rafferty was in possession of a knife at the time and wouldn't have needed to buy a hammer at Home Depot to kill Tori.
Rafferty's mom speaks out
The defence's closing remarks to the jury were well-received by Rafferty's mother Deborah Murphy who spoke to reporters for the first time Monday outside the London, Ont. courthouse.
"My son is innocent and this could happen to any man that's walking around right now," she said. "Terri-Lynne McClintic has wrecked our lives and I just hope that justice is served and that he's free."
Murphy says she has been in contact with her son.
"His story will come out," she said. (The defence) was right on."
However, Tori's father, Rodney Stafford, told reporters despite the defence's closing remarks to the jury, he's confident the Crown has proven their case. The Crown will address the jury with their closing arguments on Tuesday.
"I think (the defence) is trying to beat around the bush with the evidence that the Crown presented," he told reporters during the morning recess.
"I think Tori is going to see justice," he said.
Stafford said he was "still struggling" with the idea that his daughter could have been targeted.
"I don't know, I still haven't seen all the answers to the questions I've had from the beginning," he said.
Stafford said regardless of what verdict the jury will eventually render, his family will have to deal with Tori's death for the rest of their lives.
"This doesn't end for us at the end of this week, we will live through this for the rest of our lives," he said. "Victoria's gone and we have to keep moving forward."
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