Jurors face tangled web in Michael Rafferty deliberations

Tori Stafford was a winsome eight-year-old blonde with an engaging smile. Her life wasn't idyllic - her parents had broken up and her mother used drugs, but friends described her as inquisitive and helpful, with an impish sense of humour.

When she vanished from outside her school on the afternoon of April 8, 2009, her parents and the leafy old southwestern Ontario Loyalist town of Woodstock descended into a nightmare that hopefully ends when a nine-woman, three-man jury decides whether Michael Rafferty is guilty of murder.

[ Related: A study in time: the Tori Stafford investigation evolved slowly, deliberately ]

The intense 40-day police investigation into Tori's death hinged at first on one tenuous clue. A woman in a puffy white jacket was seen on a security camera video walking away with Tori, who appeared to go willingly, holding her hand.

That fuzzy image eventually led detectives to Terri-Lynne McClintic, a young drug addict with a violent streak who'd met Tori's mother Tara McDonald twice when McDonald bought OxyContin from McClintic's mother.

McClintic, who has already been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty in 2010 to first-degree murder, told her interrogators a horrific story.

The young woman, now 21, said she lured Tori to Rafferty's waiting car. Her boyfriend, 10 years older, had a fantasy of abducting and raping an underage girl, McClintic said.

After stopping to buy a hammer and garbage bags, they drove to a secluded farmer's field outside Woodstock.

McClintic claimed she got out of the car while Rafferty sexually assaulted Tori in the back seat of his Honda Civic. The little girl pleaded for help, she said. but McClintic only told her to be brave.

She said she stood outside the car as Rafferty wielded the hammer she bought to smash Tori's skull while her head was wrapped in a garbage bag. Then she helped him hide the body under a pile or rocks.

But McClintic changed her story before the case went to court. It was she who'd killed Tori but claimed she was in Rafferty's thrall. He directed her actions, ordering her to abduct the girl, buy the murder weapon and garbage bags and help clean up the crime scene, according to The Canadian Press.

[ Related: In story of Tori Stafford tragedy, characters a study in contrasts ]

The killing, she said, was triggered by her witnessing the rape and by rage over her own troubled childhood as the adopted daughter of a drug-addicted stripper.

Rafferty's lawyer jumped on the flip-flop, and Rafferty insisted he had nothing to do with the killing.

In the interrogation video shown at the trial, Rafferty claimed he was not a murderer.

There was evidence he'd been living off the income of another girlfriend who worked as an escort.

A search of his computer also revealed Internet searches about raping young girls, as well as a movie about a child abduction and rape, among other things.

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The trial judge ruled the computer evidence inadmissible because police should have obtained a separate warrant to search the device, it was reported after the jury was sequestered for its deliberations.

[ Related: What the jury didn't hear: shocking details about Michael Rafferty's character ]

Other evidence from Rafferty's former girlfriends about his fondness for choking them during sex was never submitted. Evidence from a woman who alleged Rafferty drugged, choked and anally raped her after they met on dating web site was never heard.

That, plus evidence of Rafferty's creepy interest in his girlfriends' children, was considered "bad character" evidence that is generally inadmissible in a trial.

Rafferty himself conceded he's no choirboy but he's not a killer.

"Just because I'm sleazy doesn't make me what I'm being accused of," he told his police interrogators.

Rafferty did not testify in his own defence.

But in the end it may not matter who struck the fatal blows that smashed Tori's head.

Summing up the often graphic evidence in the two-month trial, the Crown told the jury McClintic and Rafferty are equally guilty under the law because they acted together.

But Ontario Superior Court Judge Thomas Heeney gave jurors a number of options.

If they believe Rafferty killed Tori after kidnapping or sexually assaulting her, he would be guilty of first-degree murder. The same verdict applies if McClintic killed her but jurors conclude Rafferty intended to help or encourage her to commit a planned and deliberate murder.

But they could find Rafferty guilty of second-degree murder if they believe the killing by either of the two was not planned. Heeney also left room for a finding of manslaughter if jurors decided McClintic killed Tori and Rafferty didn't know she was going to do it.

And Rafferty could walk free if the jury believes he had nothing to do with McClintic killing Tori or if he did something that helped McClintic without knowing she intended to kill the little girl.