LONDON, Ont. — A week before he was arrested and charged with killing eight-year-old Victoria Stafford, Michael Rafferty seemed at ease — laughing, goofing off and happy to be visiting his then-girlfriend Terri-Lynne McClintic in jail, his high-profile murder trial heard Wednesday.
McClintic, 21, is now serving a life sentence for the girl's 2009 murder.
Rafferty, 31, is on trial on charges of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.
Stafford was last seen outside her school around 3:30 p.m. on April 8, 2009 in Woodstock, Ont., just west of Toronto. Her decomposing remains were found on July 19, 2009 more than two hours away in a field near Mount Forest, Ont.
The defence has suggested that Rafferty had been a mere "horrified" bystander in the kidnapping, which they propose was motivated by a drug debt.
His lawyer, Dirk Derstine, said his client vehemently denies raping the young girl, and had walked away from the car when McClintic killed her in the rural clearing with a hammer she had bought an hour earlier. He suggests that Rafferty may have helped McClintic conceal and bury the body under a rock pile because he was in shock over the events.
But a video presented to jurors Wednesday shows Rafferty visiting McClintic at a detention centre weeks after the girl's death — smiling, laughing and even caressing her.
Kerri-Lee Cushing-Mitchener, a staff member at the Genest Detention Centre for Youth in London, Ont., testified that the videos were taken during two occasions when Rafferty visited McClintic on May 8, 2009 and May 12, 2009.
At the time, McClintic had been in custody at the centre on an unrelated matter since April 12, 2009 — four days after Stafford disappeared.
In the May 8 video, which contains no audio, a smiling, clean-cut Rafferty is seen parking his dark 2003 Honda Civic — the same vehicle believed to have been used in the kidnapping — outside the youth centre.
Dressed in sandals, light khakis and a blue polo shirt, he is seen waiting in the visitor area when McClintic bounces in, apparently happy to see him.
Throughout the 10-minute clip, an excerpt of the hour-long visit, the two are sitting across from each other and can be seen grinning, laughing and holding hands.
At one point, Rafferty is seen caressing McClintic's face and brushes away her dark brown hair.
McClintic described this encounter in court last month, saying Rafferty told her: "You'll do anything for a bit of love, eh?" She said she told him then that she would take the "fall" for everything.
Four days later on May 12, Rafferty is seen on video back at the youth centre again. Upon seeing each other, Rafferty and McClintic share a long embrace. Once again, they are laughing throughout most of the video and hold each other on a number of occasions for several minutes.
On May 19, 2009, McClintic confessed her role in Stafford's disappearance and death and fingered Rafferty as a co-accused.
Cushing-Mitchener said Rafferty had been specially approved to visit and call McClintic while she was at Genest. The reason was that McClintic's mother, Carol, had been gravely ill and, as her boyfriend, Rafferty was acting as a liaison for news about her family.
Jurors also heard that Rafferty also had been permitted to visit McClintic during an appearance at the Woodstock courthouse.
Earlier in the day, Ontario Provincial Police Det. Sgt. Gordon Johnson told the court that he had been able to pinpoint numerous phone calls and text messages between McClintic and Rafferty following Stafford's murder.
Voluminous phone records show that beginning on April 10, 2009, Rafferty would text and call a cellphone belonging to McClintic's mother up to 20 times a day.
McClintic has testified she often used her mother's prepaid cellphone.
Following her arrest, Rafferty continued to dial this number and also regularly called the youth centre where McClintic was being held. One such phone call lasted 23 minutes.
From April 8, 2009 to the day he was arrested on May 19, 2009, Rafferty used his BlackBerry an average of 142 times a day to send text messages, phone calls and surf the Internet, testified Johnson.
Court has learned Rafferty was dating at least 15 women, including McClintic, that spring.
On the day Stafford was abducted, Rafferty had sent multiple texts to a number of women, including an escort-girlfriend, who provided him with nearly $17,000 over a six-month period.
For someone who was known to always be on his phone, Johnson testified Rafferty's records showed three blackout periods that day from 2:54 p.m. to 4:18 p.m., 5:50 p.m. to 7:46 p.m. and 8:07 p.m. to 8:41 p.m.
Cell tower data also showed that Rafferty's cellphone had travelled from Woodstock to Guelph, Ont., to the Mount Forest area that evening — the same route McClintic had described to police, he said.
The Crown was expected to call the last witness in its case Thursday. The trial began on March 6.
Linnguyen@Postmedia.com
