Another Missing Child

As I took the bus to work this morning, each with a Child Missing poster taped near the doors, helicopters loomed overhead, looking for the remains of Tori Stafford, believed to have been murdered the first day of her abduction, and disposed of in a rural area of Guelph, about an hour from her home in Woodstock.

Michael Thomas Rafferty, 28, of Woodstock, Ont. and Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, were charged with the abduction and taken into custody today. Mr. Rafferty pulled his shirt over his head while he left the Woodstock courtroom today to hide his face as a crowd of gathered people shouted insults at him, and warned of what was to come.

Since Tori disappeared on April 8, she has been kept in the news by the persistence of concerned and commited parents and friends who organized candlelight vigils and news conferences to keep the issue top-of-mind and in the eyes of the media. The key to identifying the suspects was the grainy image of Tori with a woman with a puffy white jacket, taken from the adjacent school's surveillance system.

It's creepy to think of such abductions and murder taking place literally so close to home. Why is it that Southern Ontario is full of rapists and murderers like Paul Bernardo?

I've recently gone fishing at Guelph lake, near where the helicopters were searching. Only last week my friends were giving themselves chills recounting how a girl had been abducted and raped there in the 80's. Although the trails and nature are beautiful -I hike there often, the place now seems tainted. After such a long search, this story seems fated only for a tragic ending...

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