Rafferty defence to present closing arguments today

LONDON, Ont. – The trial of a man accused in the death of Victoria Stafford will hear the defence theory today of what happened the day the eight-year-old girl was abducted and killed.

Michael Rafferty has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping in the girl’s death on April 8th, 2009.

His lawyer, Dirk Derstine, is expected to repeat in his closing arguments today a suggestion that Terri-Lynne McClintic was the “engine” behind the day’s events.

McClintic, who testified at Rafferty’s trial, has already pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

During cross-examination, Derstine suggested she abducted Tori over a drug debt, offered her sexually to Rafferty, who said no, then she brutally murdered the girl.

McClintic denied those suggestions, insisting Rafferty urged her to kidnap a young girl for him, that he raped Tori and that McClintic then snapped and killed Tori.

Until a few days before the start of Rafferty’s trial, McClintic had maintained Rafferty was the one who killed Tori, but she testified at his trial that was the killer and couldn’t accept it until recently.

Derstine opened and closed his case last Tuesday with one witness, attempting to undermine McClintic’s assertion that she plucked Tori out of the end-of-day crowd of schoolchildren at random.

A woman, whose name cannot be published, picked up her grandchildren from Oliver Stephens Public School in Woodstock, Ont., that day, and said she saw a woman matching McClintic’s description enter the school.

Later, she said, she saw the same woman walking away with Tori — an image now hauntingly familiar to anyone who saw the grainy surveillance video.

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