WOODSTOCK -- Two days after Tori Stafford was abducted, Jessica McDonald and Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, were among those handing out leaflets with the missing eight-year-old's photo.
Ms. McDonald had begun to become suspicious about Ms. McClintic's behaviour. She watched security video released by police, and believed Ms. McClintic "looked just like" the then-unidentified woman in a white puffy jacket. Ms. McClintic cut her hair in the days after Tori's abduction, saying that she had gotten gum caught in it.
Ms. McDonald asked Ms. McClintic's mother whether she had a white puffy coat like the one seen in the video.
"Her mom said, 'Oh ya she does, but she just got rid of it,' " Ms. McDonald recalled.
Ms. McClintic was visiting one day when police knocked on Ms. McDonald's door. A friend, Craig Racine, was there too, and was shocked when Ms. McClintic ran to the bathroom to hide from the officers. It all culminated in Ms. McDonald coming forward to the police on April 12, just after Ms. McClintic was arrested for breaching her parole.
"Her behaviour was just so suspicious," Mr. Racine said.
"We were hoping to God [Tori] was alive, racing against time to do what we could to get her home," Ms. McDonald added.
After that, Ms. McDonald began taping her conversations with Ms. McClintic's mother, Carol, who had noticed that her daughter had discarded all the clothes she had worn on April 8, the day Tori disappeared. The younger Ms. McClintic said she spent the day driving to and from London to run some errands.
Yesterday, Ms. McClintic appeared in court, charged with abducting young Tori, and helping her co-accused, Michael Rafferty, escape police. The news stunned childhood friends.
"I broke down in tears. I hadn't heard from her in so long. She just had great potential, but she just couldn't get over the bad shit that happened to her," said friend Nikeeta Tabobondung, 18, who knew Ms. McClintic in school and played hockey with her.
Reached at a home in Woodstock, a woman who identified herself as Ms. McClintic's grandmother sobbed as she said she was estranged from the woman's mother, Carol, and her grandchildren.
"[Carol] was a stripper and she knew the wrong people and she wasn't treating Terri-Lynne right," the woman said. "It's breaking my heart."
The young Ms. McClintic's online Facebook profile suggested an infatuation with a violent lifestyle. She aspired to be a member of the notorious Crips street gang, taking photos of herself glaring at a camera with a bandana tied over her mouth. She took several online tests: "What drug are you?" (her result was methamphetamine); "How evil are you" (pretty much evil); "What kind of guy would you fall for?" (the bad boy); and "What crime are you?" (murder).
Friends said Ms. McClintic was adopted as an infant, had brushes with the law, spent time in the Parry Sound and North Bay areas, before returning recently to live with her mother, Carol McClintic, in Woodstock. Friends called her mother "crazy Carol."
"She was moved around quite a bit, and that really messed with her. Everywhere, everyone screwed her over. The system really failed her," said another friend, 17, who asked her name not be used.
"To have a life like that, you'll never be normal, never be the little girl she was supposed to be."
