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Eight-year-old Victoria "Tori" Stafford was abducted in Woodstock on April 8, 2009, and murdered.Dave Chidley/The Canadian Press

Warning: This story contains graphic details

When eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford was kidnapped outside her Woodstock, Ont., school three years ago, the statistical chances of finding her safe were nearly zero, the murder trial of Michael Rafferty was told.



In other testimony Wednesday that went to the heart of the investigation, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Tori reiterated that he had no way of knowing who inflicted the grievous wounds that killed the little girl.



The search for Tori after she vanished in April, 2009 was the biggest seen in Ontario, and probably Canada, Ontario Provincial Police search-and-rescue team leader Sergeant James Stirling told the jury. Hundreds of officers from numerous police departments joined the OPP-led effort; 5,858 different assignments were handed out, drawing on the 5,532 tips that poured in; nearly 14,000 individuals who might be of help were identified.



Along with the huge concern, there was criticism of the Woodstock police for not swiftly issuing an Amber Alert – a code indicating that a missing child probably has been kidnapped. Yet, it might have made little difference. An international study of 735 similar cases – children kidnapped by strangers – found that just 2 per cent ended with the child being found alive, Sgt. Stirling told the trial.



Regardless of circumstances, he said, all searches for missing people have the same point of departure: the last known sighting.



"We don't look for the person, we look for the clues that are left behind," he testified – sightings, footprints, camera footage and anything else of value.



Mr. Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and abduction.



Two years ago, his co-accused and former girlfriend, Terri-Lynne McClintic, now 21, confessed to Tori's murder, and is serving life imprisonment in a federal women's prison in Kitchener, Ont. Since her conviction, however, Ms. McClintic has altered her accounts of events, and now insists that she, not Mr. Rafferty, wielded the hammer that killed Tori.



But earlier Wednesday, the jury heard Dr. Michael Pollanen, who examined Tori's decomposed body, tell Mr. Rafferty's lawyer, Dirk Derstine, not only that he could not ascertain whether she had been sexually assaulted, but that there was also no way of knowing who inflicted the fatal blows.



In all, six witnesses testified. One was OPP Staff Sergeant Walter Lima, who described how Mr. Rafferty was arrested without incident in Woodstock six weeks after Tori vanished. (Ms. McClintic was already in custody, arrested for breaching an unrelated court order.)



The jury also watched a slide show illustrating the police search of the rundown Woodstock house Ms. McClintic shared with her mother. The contents included a "Missing" picture of Tori crumpled in a garbage bin; prescription receipts for the drug OxyContin; correspondence and iPod tunes filled with threats and images of torture.



As Staff Sgt. Stirling described the huge search for Tori, he seemed to capture Mr. Rafferty's attention. He leaned forward in his prisoner's box to look at the many maps, photos and diagrams – a departure from his indifferent demeanour a day earlier when the jury was hearing about the horrific injuries Tori suffered.



A landfill site in Salford, just outside Woodstock, was of major interest during the first phase of the search, Staff Sgt. Stirling testified. For days, police and heavy machinery scoured the dump, and roughly 830 tonnes of garbage were examined. So, too, were many ponds and waterways, deploying divers, with no result.



After Ms. McClintic confessed, however, and provided many details about Tori's kidnapping and death, the search became far more specific.



Of greatest interest were the claw hammer used to murder the child and the rear seat of Mr. Rafferty's Honda Civic, on which she was transported to her death. Neither has been found.



On foot, in all-terrain vehicles and by helicopter, police and canine units were seeking items the couple discarded as they drove away from the crime scene, and trying to identify various landmarks Ms. McClintic described.



Tori's body was located in July, 2009, in a secluded patch of woods a few kilometres south of the town of Mount Forest. The cause of death was "blunt force impact" to the skull, Dr. Pollanen's postmortem concluded.



The trial resumes Thursday.

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