Suspect Vehicle

[maxfactor]

I've been hoping that as the leaves come off the trees and bushes perhaps someone will find the car seat.

 

[matou]

I found this article again with the following information:

Jennifer Burchat, who has a seven-year-old daughter and runs a daycare out of her home four doors down from Mr. Rafferty’s Tennyson Street home, echoed the thought many neighbours expressed: “My God, it could have been us.

“It is such a scary thought. My girl would ride her bike up past his house and back. That was her bit of freedom -- but she lost that privilege when Tori went missing. After that she couldn’t go out without an adult,” said Ms. Burchat.

About two weeks before Tori went missing, Ms. Burchat’s 10-year-old son was frightened by what he described as two men in a car outside the Rafferty home, she said.

When the police released a sketch of a woman wanted in Tori’s disappearance, her son pointed to it and said that was the man who scared him. Because he thought it was a man and police were looking for a woman, she did not think too much about it, she said.

It is a decision she now regrets. She now wonders if it was Mr. Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, the other accused in the case.

link:http://www.calgaryherald.com/Murder+accusations+rattle+Woodstock+neighbours/1613763/story.html

I wonder if the vehicle with the two men was MTR's car and whether he was one of the two men that spooked the boy. The boy recognized TLM as being one of the two "men". The neighbours would have been familiar, I believe, with MTR's vehicle, being that it was unusual. I wonder if the vehicle seen that day by the boy was another vehicle and if it was, what vehicle was it? If MTR had access to another vehicle, it would allow him to be near the school on the days preceding the abduction without being noticed because of his car. He would have been able to get close enough to the students to check them out if TLM had spoken to Tori prior to the abduction.

Q: did MTR ever have access to any other vehicles and which vehicles were these? who did they belong to? He could have had his car "in the shop" or out of commission to do certain modding jobs and asked to borrow someone else's car/truck/van.

 

[Turbododger]

I wonder if LE ever found the car seat?

You would think they would be looking and appealing for the public's help, if they didn't have it, and felt they needed more evidence.

 

[Turbododger]

I am sure Rafferty's defence lawyers will portray him as a modding guy (even if, according to some, it was shoddily and embarrasingly done), who messed around with his car all the time, so the modifications he made before and after the abduction, and prior to arrest, will be part and parcel with his normal behaviour.

The same thing goes for lending out his car. I can't quite remember if it was said that he did that or not. A big possibility in suggesting he lent his car out that fateful day.

Without an alibi, there will be a big focus on reasonable doubt for him being in the video (s), as well as the modifications that would normally be considered supsicious to a vehicle after a crime, being something that he normally did all the time, so therefore, not a suspicious action by him.

 

[antiquegirl]

I am sure Rafferty's defence lawyers will portray him as a modding guy (even if, according to some, it was shoddily and embarrasingly done), who messed around with his car all the time, so the modifications he made before and after the abduction, and prior to arrest, will be part and parcel with his normal behaviour.

The same thing goes for lending out his car. I can't quite remember if it was said that he did that or not. A big possibility in suggesting he lent his car out that fateful day.

Without an alibi, there will be a big focus on reasonable doubt for him being in the video (s), as well as the modifications that would normally be considered supsicious to a vehicle after a crime, being something that he normally did all the time, so therefore, not a suspicious action by him.

Unless the missing car seat and/or rug is found with DNA evidence on it before the trial, their absence would be circumstantial at best - especially since no one (to our knowledge) can say for sure when exactly they were actually removed.

I can't remember either if it was ever verified or denied that MR ever lent out his car. I imagine that merely suggesting so would not be sufficient for his defense - they might need witnesses to corroborate that he did. Perhaps they may use his friends' testimony that he would "give you the shirt off his back". Either way, it wouldn't be very convincing - merely planting seeds of doubt in the minds of the jury.

MOO