Michael Rafferty is transported from the courthouse in the back of police cruiser in London, Ont., on March, 14, 2012. Mr. Rafferty is facing charges in the death of Victoria (Tori) Stafford.DAVE CHIDLEY/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Warning: This story contains graphic details.
A police search of the tidy, three-level duplex shared by Michael Rafferty and his mother in Woodstock yielded numerous items linking Mr. Rafferty to the murder of Tori Stafford and to the woman jointly charged in Tori's death, a jury heard on Thursday.
They included a "missing" poster of the eight-year-old girl identical to one found in the home of Terri-Lynne McClintic, who has confessed to murdering Tori. Also found was a peacoat alleged to have been used to conceal Tori on the back seat of Mr. Rafferty's Honda Civic after she was kidnapped.
The Honda, too, was closely examined, Mr. Rafferty's trial heard.
The evidence came from Ontario Provincial Police Constable Gary Scoyne, the lead identification officer in the Stafford investigation.
Mr. Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and abduction.
In April, 2010, Ms. McClintic, now 21, was convicted of murdering Tori and is serving a life sentence in a federal women's prison.
On Thursday, the jury had its first glimpse of Mr. Rafferty's Tennyson Street home, which was in marked contrast to the rundown house two or three kilometres away Ms. McClintic had shared with her mother.
Inside and out, the grey-and-white frame duplex on a quiet street with a big grassy yard at the back was neat as a pin.
Four cats also lived in the house, and three of them appeared in the police slide show that accompanied Constable Scoyne's testimony.
The two homes were searched shortly after the two accused were arrested in May, 2009, six weeks after Tori's death.
And one item that immediately drew police attention at the Rafferty home was an orange-handled claw hammer found in a closet that was very similar to the one believed to have been used to beat the little girl to death in a secluded patch of woods northeast of Woodstock.
That hammer was not the murder weapon – which has never been located – Constable Scoyne told prosecutor Michael Carnegie.
With the "missing" posters and the peacoat, police found a Wal-Mart receipt for hair dye that matched a box of hair dye discovered in the McClintic house.
There was also a blue folding knife similar to one that Ms. McClintic had said was in the Honda when Tori was abducted outside her school.
There was also a scribbled note that referred to "Carol" – the name of Ms. McClintic's mother.
A Sony digital memory card was found too, containing pictures of Ms. McClintic mugging for the camera in a Woodstock motel.
All those items were on the main floor.
Upstairs were three bedrooms, one converted into an office, and in Mr. Rafferty's small, blue-walled bedroom was a prescription bottle of oxycodone pills in his name and three empty unlabelled pill bottles.
During cross-examination by Mr. Rafferty's lawyer, Dirk Derstine, the courtroom boomed to the sound of some death-rap music found on Ms. McClintic's iPod.
Devoted entirely to violence, torture and murder, the songs were by Necro, a Brooklyn rapper of whom Ms. McClintic has admitted being a big fan at the time of Tori's death.
Almost all the lyrics are unprintable, but a sample from a song entitled The Most Sadistic reads: "Walk, walk or get stabbed with a fork, I'll be remembered after I'm dismembered."
Since her initial confession to police, Ms. McClintic has radically altered her accounts of events in one key regard.
She now insists that she – not Mr. Rafferty – wielded the hammer that killed Tori.
Mr. Derstine had the music played in court, as he has done before, in an attempt to reinforce his contention that Ms. McClintic did not just kill Tori, she orchestrated the entire crime.
The jury later heard Constable Scoyne describe the contents of Mr. Rafferty's Honda Civic. Items included a laptop computer, a BlackBerry, clothing, shoes, a gym bag, another hammer, sanding disks, condoms and $935 in cash.
When the trial resumes next week, scientists from Toronto's Centre of Forensic Sciences will tell the jury what they learned from examining those items.
As well, the trial heard that while Mr. Rafferty was in a police cell in Woodstock after his arrest, he asked two undercover police officers if they had any OxyContin. He told them he had a serious drug habit and that if he could not get some of the pills, "it was going to be a hard few days."