2009
- April 8 – Tori is reported missing after she didn’t arrive home after school.
- April 9 – Police release a surveillance video of Tori walking away hand-in-hand outside her school with an unknown woman in a white jacket.
- April 10 – Police begin a ground search in Woodstock for the missing girl.
- May 20 – Police arrest Michael Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic. Rafferty, then 28, is charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping. McClintic, then 18, is charged with kidnapping and being accessory to murder after the fact.
- May 28 – McClintic is charged with first-degree murder.
- July 20 – Police find human remains in a rural area near Mount Forest, Ont., north of Guelph.
- July 21 – Police confirm the remains are those of Tori Stafford.
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- 2010
- April 30 – McClintic pleads guilty to first-degree murder in a Woodstock courtroom. She apologizes to the family and is sentenced to life in prison without a chance for parole for 25 years. Her plea is put under a strict publication ban.
- May 20 – Ontario Superior Court Justice Dougald McDermid extends the temporary publication ban over concerns lifting it would result in a “miscarriage of justice.” In editorials and in court, media companies say the sweeping ban is too far-reaching,
- August 8 – Tori’s father, Rodney Stafford, and brother Daryn complete a 3,500 kilometre charity bike ride from Woodstock to Edmonton in her honour.
- December 9 – The publication ban is partially lifted after the Supreme Court refuses to hear an application to extend it. It’s revealed that McClintic pleaded guilty months earlier.
- 2011
- February 7 – Lawyers for the Crown and defence agree to a change of venue for Rafferty’s trial over concerns he would not get a fair trial in the hometown he shared with Stafford.
- March 4 – Ontario Superior Justice Thomas Heeney chooses London, Ont., as the city to hold Rafferty’s trial.
- September 27 – Tori’s mother, Tara McDonald, is arrested along with her partner, James Goris and another man on charges of crack cocaine, marijuana and stolen property possession.
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- 2012
- January 17 – Pre-trial motions begin in Rafferty’s trial. All motions are put under an automatic publication ban.
- February 17 – Heeney rules that Rafferty will sit in the prisoner’s dock throughout the trial due to security issues; that the jury will visit the scene where Stafford’s remains were found; and on rules governing media coverage of the trial.
- February 27 – Jury selection begins. The weeklong process will screen more than 1,000 people for the 12-person jury.
- March 5 – Eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford died of repeated blows to the head with a hammer, lead prosecutor Kevin Gowdey told the jury.
- March 7 – Stafford’s mother Tara McDonald, 33, testified that she had gone to the house of Rafferty’s ex-girlfriend, Terri-Lynne McClintic, on two occasions in early January or February 2009.
- March 13 – McClintic, the young woman who lured eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford away from her school, was also the one who delivered the hammer blows that killed her, an Ontario court heard on March 13.
- March 14 – Days after the Stafford murder, McClintic promised Rafferty that if they were caught she would save him by admitting to killing the Ontario schoolgirl alone.
- March 16 – McClintic, who was convicted in the death of Victoria (Tori) Stafford, lied to police when she told them Rafferty killed the Ontario schoolgirl because she wanted to stop him from harming other children, she told an Ontario court.
- March 23 – Rafferty’s defence team argues their client was merely a ‘horrified’ passenger in Tori Staffford slaying.
- March 27 – Just days after Stafford’s disappearance, Rafferty told a former girlfriend he had plans to help search for the missing girl, court was told.
- March 30 – Police Det.-Staff Sgt. Jim Smyth describes for the court how he discovered Stafford’s remains.
- April 2 – Jurors visit the site near Mount Forest, Ont., where Stafford’s remains were found.
- April 11 – Two minuscule bloodstains found in the car and on a gym bag of a man charged with killing Stafford contain DNA that can be matched with near certainty to the Ontario schoolgirl, court heard.
- April 19 – Rafferty was widely known as someone who was always on his cellphone but on the day Stafford went missing, records show several gaps in his BlackBerry usage, his first-degree murder trial heard Thursday.
- April 26 – Crown rests its case.
- April 30 – Lawyers representing Rafferty opened and closed the accused’s defence by calling only one witness: a woman who picked up her grandchildren at the elementary school on the day the eight-year-old girl disappeared three years ago.
- May 7 – Deborah Murphy, the mother of Michael Rafferty, says justice will only be served when her son gets to walk out of his high-profile trial a free man.
- May 10 — The jury begins its deliberations
- May 11 — The jury finds Rafferty guilty on all charges
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