LONDON, Ont. - The shoes that Terri-Lynne McClintic says she wore when Victoria Stafford was killed were the focus Wednesday at the first-degree murder trial of McClintic's former boyfriend.
McClintic testified earlier at Michael Rafferty's trial that after Tori was killed north of Guelph, Ont., he instructed her to throw her shoes out the car window on a sideroad.
Rafferty, 31, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.
A woman who lives in the area testified today that in about early April 2009 -- the month Tori was killed -- she was taking a walk on Sideroad 6 near her home north of Guelph and found a pair of white basketball shoes with blue trim and a single shoe.
Lillian Metcalfe says she threw the single shoe out and took the pair of shoes home and washed them, intending to donate them to Goodwill. On May 30 she gave them to police while they were canvassing the area and McClintic later identified them as hers.
The jury saw the blue and white Shaq basketball shoes as they were entered as an exhibit at the trial.
Metcalfe also said there was a car's back seat in the same area of the side road for a while. She mentioned it to police since she had heard they were searching for Rafferty's back seat, but by May 30 it was no longer there. She then told the officer about the shoes and he asked her to describe them, Metcalfe said.
"I said, 'Well, I think I can do one better than that,"' Metcalfe testified Wednesday. "'I have the shoes in the house. Would you like to see them?"
Tori's remains were found partially clothed in a field near Mount Forest, further north of Guelph, more than 100 days after she went missing April 8, 2009.
McClintic testified that after Tori was killed Rafferty went to great lengths to cover up their crime, including hiding Tori's body under a rock pile, reversing over tire tracks to make them less distinguishable, providing McClintic with a change of clothes, discarding the clothes they were wearing as well as the murder weapon and throwing out the shoes.
"He turned his lights off and pulled onto the sideroad," McClintic testified earlier about their actions following the murder. "He said, 'We need to get rid of our shoes, so I believe I tossed my pair of shoes out the car window. He gave me a pair of shoes to wear and he put on a different pair of shoes as well then we drove off."
Rafferty then drove to a car wash in Cambridge, Ont., where they hosed down the car and shampooed the interior, McClintic testified.
McClintic is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty two years ago to first-degree murder. The trial heard from her as the central witness in the case over two weeks, with questioning largely focusing on inconsistencies in her story.
When she first confessed and when she later pleaded guilty, she said it was Rafferty who killed Tori using the hammer. But she testified at Rafferty's trial that it was she who wielded the hammer.
The Crown alleges Rafferty and McClintic abducted Tori outside her elementary school and drove her to a rural area more than 100 kilometres north, where she was raped and violently killed.
The trial is not sitting Thursday, but resumes Friday with what the Crown says will be "quite a full day."