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After Tori Stafford's death, Michael Rafferty turned to promiscuity ...

After Tori Stafford's death, Michael Rafferty turned to promiscuity ...

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<strong>After</strong> <strong>Tori</strong> Stafford’s <strong>death</strong>, <strong>Michael</strong> <strong>Rafferty</strong> <strong>turned</strong> <strong>to</strong> <strong>promiscuity</strong>: Christ... http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/18/christie-blatchford-after-t...<br />

Christie Blatchford: <strong>Tori</strong> Stafford jury hears of <strong>Michael</strong> <strong>Rafferty</strong>’s democratic appetite for the opposite sex<br />

<strong>Tori</strong> Stafford’s DNA almost certainly on <strong>Rafferty</strong>’s car, but no scientific way <strong>to</strong> prove how it got there: expert<br />

By Mr. Derstine’s scenario, Mr. <strong>Rafferty</strong> was a poor sap who “thought nothing of it” when Ms. McClintic arrived at his waiting vehicle<br />

with the blonde eight-year-old in <strong>to</strong>w, nobly refused her alleged proffered gift of the child sexually, left the area at Ms. McClintic’s<br />

direction and re<strong>turned</strong> <strong>to</strong> find the little girl dead.<br />

But if he was as appalled and shocked as Mr. Derstine suggested, Mr. <strong>Rafferty</strong> certainly had an<br />

odd way of showing it.<br />

Promiscuous already in the spring of 2009 – he was involved with no fewer than 11 women at<br />

that time – seven of those relationships started after the little girl’s <strong>death</strong>, when it appears he<br />

embarked on a whirlwind of activity on the Plenty of Fish dating website, contacting multiple<br />

women simultaneously starting on April 9.<br />

For days now, the court has seen a parade of these women – as young as 23, as old as 50; many<br />

with long dark hair and glasses; some buxom and plump, some slim; some professional women,<br />

some stay-at-home mothers – <strong>to</strong> the witness stand.<br />

Tuesday came another one, 29-year-old Jessica Meloche.<br />

She met Mr. <strong>Rafferty</strong> on Plenty of Fish on April 12 (four days after his purported moment of<br />

horror), and soon he was spending most weekends at her place. It was he, she said, who proposed<br />

they see one another exclusively, and she agreed, unaware that he was also seeing another<br />

woman, Sarah Hodge, almost every day about that time, making connections and having coffee<br />

dates with other women, and, in his fashion, wining and dining a lucky few.<br />

‘I wear my heart<br />

on my sleve and<br />

sometimes that<br />

can be my<br />

downfall’ —<br />

<strong>Michael</strong> <strong>Rafferty</strong><br />

on his Facebook<br />

page<br />

Most of the women seem <strong>to</strong> have been wowed by him, and <strong>to</strong> have found him <strong>to</strong> be all that he said he was, for instance, on his<br />

Facebook profile.<br />

There, he demonstrated himself <strong>to</strong> be a thoroughly modern fellow – illiterate, vacuous and narcissistic – even if he used enough<br />

capital letters and LOLs (short for laugh out loud) and OMGs (short for omigod) <strong>to</strong> have passed for one of his younger paramours.<br />

<strong>Michael</strong> <strong>Rafferty</strong>'s Facebook page<br />

Court handout<br />

“I love camping and value friends more than life it’s self, lol,” he wrote there. “If<br />

that means anything.”<br />

Under “interests,” he blathered on at misspelled length. “And culture <strong>to</strong> the max<br />

with me,” he wrote. “I want <strong>to</strong> learn as much as I can all the time about other<br />

people and there culture.” He claimed <strong>to</strong> love Grey’s Ana<strong>to</strong>my, CSI and Survivor,<br />

as well as several cooking shows, fitting for a fellow who claimed <strong>to</strong> have a<br />

“master’s” in culinary arts (he also <strong>to</strong>ld various women he had a kinesiology<br />

degree, taught ballroom dancing, and <strong>to</strong> have had his own contracting company).<br />

In the “About me” section, which he watched with some evident fondness as it<br />

was flashed on courtroom moni<strong>to</strong>rs on Wednesday, Mr. <strong>Rafferty</strong> wrote, “I am<br />

slowly becoming somebody. I’m complex and have lotsa layers…. I have many<br />

accomplishments in my life and for those I am greatfull for haveing the chance <strong>to</strong><br />

do.”<br />

About 10 o’clock on the morning that <strong>Tori</strong> Stafford was taken and killed – her DNA later found in Mr. <strong>Rafferty</strong>’s car – he changed his<br />

status on his Facebook wall <strong>to</strong> read, “Everything good is coming my way.”<br />

The temptation is <strong>to</strong> imagine those words as creepy or foreshadowing or somehow telling, but it’s<br />

a much safer bet that this was just another inane spewing from a fellow who counted among his<br />

favourite books self-help bibles.<br />

Much more revealing, much more difficult <strong>to</strong> explain, was Mr. <strong>Rafferty</strong>’s rabbit-like behaviour<br />

after he purportedly got the shock of his life on April 8.<br />

As he confessed in the “About me” Facebook section, “I wear my heart on my sleve and<br />

sometimes that can be my downfall.”<br />

No dear: That wasn’t your heart on your sleeve, or rather sleve: It was a picture of your<br />

exceptionally busy penis.<br />

Well, everyone does react differently <strong>to</strong> being horrified.<br />

‘I am slowly<br />

becoming<br />

somebody. I’m<br />

complex and have<br />

lotsa layers…’<br />

2 of 3 4/19/2012 9:01 AM

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