The three-month-long search for nine-year-old Tori Stafford’s body in 2009 was the largest in Ontario history. When it was over, the crimes committed against the girl and the investigation and trial that followed crushed her community of Woodstock, Ontario. Now one of her killers, Terri-Lynn McClintic, who was convicted of first-degree murder in Tori’s death, has been transferred from a prison to a minimum security healing lodge with independent living, spiritual and cultural training.
How was this decision made? Why did the public find out about the move months after the fact? What happens now that the outrage over this has risen to the highest level of Canadian government? And, in the big picture, if the end goal of our correctional system is rehabilitation, does that only apply to some prisoners? Are McClintic’s crimes too horrific to atone for? Randy Richmond, a London Free Press reporter who covered Tori’s abduction and murder in 2009 and has stayed with her story for the past decade, takes us inside the decision and the fallout that is spreading quickly.