• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Browne useless again: Tori Stafford

Questioninggeller

Illuminator
Joined
May 11, 2002
Messages
3,048
Tori Stafford, an eight-year-old girl went missing last month. Her mother turned to Sylvia Browne for help. The following articles document the event:

$50,000 reward offered to find missing Ont. girl
Canwest News Service
April 28, 2009

TORONTO — Police in Woodstock, Ont., said Tuesday night that authorities are offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who abducted Victoria "Tori" Stafford, who has been missing for two weeks.

The eight-year-old girl has not been seen since April 8 when she went missing while walking home after school. Video surveillance cameras caught her on school property with a woman in her 20s in a ponytail and wearing a white jacket.

The announcement follows news earlier Tuesday from Tori's mother who said she was driven to Toronto in a limousine where she met with a stranger in a hotel room who offered to help with reward money for the safe return of her daughter.

Tara McDonald said she assumed the person who knocked on her back door last Thursday, and told her there was a limo waiting to take her to Toronto, worked for Sylvia Browne, a psychic with the Montel Williams talk show.

McDonald, who had recently contacted Browne, said she instead was taken to meet with a mystery benefactor who offered to provide money for ransom demands — if any were made.
...
Source: Canwest News Service

'You are willing at this point to do absolutely anything,' mother says
Globe and Mail
Christie Blatchford
April 30, 2009

Victoria (Tori) Stafford's beleaguered mother yesterday defended the mystery benefactor she allegedly met at a Toronto airport hotel last week, the psychics she's consulted and the "psychic detective" she plans to meet.

"If people were in our shoes, they would do absolutely anything too," Tara McDonald told the reporters who for weeks now have gathered at the doorstep of her small house for a daily briefing. "Whether it was getting on an airplane and flying to wherever, whether it was listening to crazy things like psychics the way we are.

"You are willing at this point to do absolutely anything."

The 30-year-old mother was yet again answering questions about the wealthy anonymous person she says had her picked up in this small Southwestern Ontario city last Thursday, driven in a limousine to the airport Sheraton, and offered whatever sum of money it takes to get her eight-year-old daughter back. Three times yesterday, she said Woodstock Community Police have checked out the phone numbers the benefactor gave her and "confirmed that it was a legitimate offer" and so, standing behind her on the front stoop, did her brother John, who with Ms. McDonald's boyfriend, James Goris, and her best friend Sara accompanied her on the limo trip.
...
She was hoping, she said, to make contact with television psychic Sylvia Browne, whose office had returned a message she left; she has been on three Internet chat rooms with psychics, and takes comfort from the fact that "every single psychic I've talked to has said they don't feel there's been any harm done" to her daughter, and was hoping to contact the "psychic detective" who had left his business card, with that very title on it, under her front door.
...

Source: Globe and Mail

So there is a $50,000 award, the mother contacted Browne's office, and as of May 15th Tori Stafford is still missing. Why hasn't Browne helped find out what happened?

Maybe Stafford is just another family name on Sylvia Browne's list of people that Browne didn't help.
 
Never mind the odds that Browne might actually come forward and volunteer her services.

One can only imagine the desperation this mother must feel. On the bright side, at least the psychics haven't filled her head with needless cruel images of her daughter suffering. Makes one wonder, though, if their optimistic cold reading is just based on the fact that the abductor may have been a woman.
 
I don't see a direct SB link (yet anyway)...other then if the Mothers claim (of attempted contact is true) why SB has not replied is a valid question.

I can only imagine the desperation...but pining hopes on Internet chat "psychics" and hoped contact with SB - so very sad.
 
It wouldn't be the first time Allison Dubois claimed to be involved with a case and it turned out untrue. Remember the case with the U.S. Marshalls?

According to the article, Dubois got involved while doing a promotional in Canada and now this story surfaces while she's again touring Canada. Oh yeah, she wants to include this story with her next book too.

Questions for the "reporter":

How about the names of law enforcement involved? How about some proof? How about reporting what Dubois says before Tori's murder hit the newspapers. This is very poor journalism and reads like a commerical for nonsense. The "journalist" didn't even get comments from law enforcement!

Even if you accept Allison's claims, she didn't contribute anything to the case. The police found Tori's body, collected evidence, and so on without any psychic "help".

The article first appeared in the Toronto Sun, where the journalist works, and was picked by other outlets.

Medium depicted Tori's fate to cops
By RITA DeMONTIS ( rita.demontis@sunmedia.ca )
QMI Agency
May 16, 2010

...
Allison Dubois, the inspiration for the award-winning Medium TV series — came face to face with the image of Tori Stafford, the Woodstock girl who had gone missing and was at the centre of an intense police search.

Everyone in the southwestern Ontario town was hoping the eight-year-old who disappeared three weeks earlier on April 8, 2009 was still alive.

But Tori communicated another story for the medium, that she was dead, the victim of a sex crime, DuBois told QMI Agency.

Her body was eventually discovered almost three months later in a field, just as DuBois told the police on a late spring day.

It was a bizarre case of life imitating art.
...
But astonishingly, it all took place during DuBois’ first visit to Canada last year, to give a lecture in London, Ont. — and an accidental meeting with one of the police officers involved in the case on the flight to Ontario.
...
Dubois recalled she described the terrain where they would find the girl’s body and that two people were involved, including a woman who had been used as the lure.
...
“I told him there was no chance of saving her any longer, but the work was now to find who had done this to her.”
...
At first DuBois politely declined, but within moments of arriving in London, everywhere she turned the little face of Tori Stafford looked down at her.

Woodstock wasn’t too far from London, DeBois discovered, so with friends in tow, they drove her out to the last place Tori had been seen, walking away, hand in hand, with a woman.
...
DuBois wrote up her notes and gave them to the police. Today, she has has no idea how the case is going or about the publication ban on details before the courts.

She intends on following up with it, and including it in her next book.

On Monday, DuBois is coming back to Canada for a second visit for her “Family Connections” two-hour event designed to help participants obtain a better understanding of life after death. ...
Full: QMI Agency
 
Last edited:
It is terrible reporting, QG. Do you know if Browne ever did make a statement about the case?

This is the part that gets me:

“It was amazing — Tori had been missing about three weeks, and I was standing, facing her school, noticing things like the senior’s building next to the school and it was at that moment ... that I told the police officer she had met someone whom she had met before, through her mother, and that she had been lured to her death.”

A guilt trip for an anguished mother.

Grrr....

I can't help but wonder if that poor mother has changed her mind about psychics by now.
 
I never saw any claim from Browne about being involved other than "[Browne's] office had returned a message she left". What the message said is unknown and what involvement, if any, is unknown.

If Browne can find missing people and the mother called Browne's office, why didn't Browne do a reading? I think we all know the answer to that question.
 
Last edited:
If Browne can find missing people and the mother called Browne's office, why didn't Browne do a reading? I think we all know the answer to that question.

I would like to believe that after Shawn and Opal cases were publicly exposed by our own RSL that she developed a conscience - But somehow I doubt that.
 
I am posting part of this article for those unfamiliar with the case. There is more on the Murder of Victoria "Tori" Stafford wikipedia article.

Tori Stafford's mother knew 1 of 2 suspects
CBC News
May 20, 2009

As police searched for Victoria Stafford's body Wednesday near Guelph, Ont., they said one of two suspects arrested in her killing is a young woman who was known to the girl's mother.

Residents in the quiet southwestern Ontario city of Woodstock were shocked Wednesday morning at the news that a local man and woman had been charged in the abduction and killing of eight-year-old Victoria, known as Tori, who was last seen leaving her school with a woman in early April.

On Wednesday morning, Michael Thomas C.S. Rafferty, 29, and Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, made brief appearances in the Oxford County Court House, where they were formally charged.

Rafferty is charged with abduction and first-degree murder. McClintic is charged with abducting the child. She is also charged with assisting Rafferty in escaping the area and being an accessory to murder after the fact.

The two were taken into custody on Tuesday night.

At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, OPP Det.-Insp. William Renton said he believed at least one of the accused knew Tara McDonald, Victoria's mother.

"I believe McClintic may be familiar with Tara McDonald," Renton said. "I believe they're familiar with one another."

The news conference was stopped abruptly after Renton made the statement, leaving questions about the nature of the relationship unanswered.

Victoria's father, Rodney Stafford, speaking to reporters later Wednesday, said he thinks McClintic's mother was looking to breed her dog with Victoria's mother's dog. However, he said he could not be sure.
...
News of Victoria's death came six weeks after the girl was abducted as she left Oliver Stephens Public School.
...
Full: CBC News
 
Last edited:
Thanks, QG. I see now. So Dubois, a year later, is repeating information already known but claiming a year later to have said it 3 weeks after Tori was kidnapped, and since no law enforcement was interviewed for the article, we have only Dubois' word on it.
 
Thanks, QG. I see now. So Dubois, a year later, is repeating information already known but claiming a year later to have said it 3 weeks after Tori was kidnapped, and since no law enforcement was interviewed for the article, we have only Dubois' word on it.

Yep. Unbelievable how Allison gets away with this. I hope the law enforcement agency releases a statement.
 
Last edited:
Ya right, the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) won't be bothered because they do not work with "psychics".
 
Thanks, QG. I see now. So Dubois, a year later, is repeating information already known but claiming a year later to have said it 3 weeks after Tori was kidnapped, and since no law enforcement was interviewed for the article, we have only Dubois' word on it.
She may have done, but the information she says she gave (ie: there was a woman involved in the abduction) was released by the police two weeks after the child disappeared - ie a week before Dubois said the exact same thing. As I wrote, Allison Dubois reads newspaper, tells police.
 
Browne gets lots of calls to do similar things. She can't answer them all. Please note I do not care for Browne's books. She just does not appeal to me. And yes, many times an abductor IS known to the child. Such a statement does not imply the mom should feel guilty!
 
Browne gets lots of calls to do similar things. She can't answer them all. Please note I do not care for Browne's books. She just does not appeal to me. And yes, many times an abductor IS known to the child. Such a statement does not imply the mom should feel guilty!

Hi PsychicW - yes, I know quite a bit about Browne, having even been a minister for her, sorry to say.

In this case, Dubois appears to have pulled that from the actual known events. If that hadn't been the case, then a psychic making up a story that a missing child went along with the perpetrator because she knew him/her through the mother is just another example of needless cruelty. It doesn't matter how common it is. To make that up under these circumstances is mean.

Psychics do harm. They concoct stories of what has happened to missing and murdered children which later turn out to have been false when police and investigators finally figure out what really happened, but in the meantime there are some parents who believe the horrible imaginings of the psychic, and they suffer. It is the height of cruelty.

For information on this, I recommend Kelly Jolkowski's series on psychics and missing children http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2006/03/30606-pmp-introduction-to-psychics-and.html

And if you haven't already seen it: http://www.stopsylvia.com/articles/montel_opal.shtml
 
Browne gets lots of calls to do similar things. She can't answer them all. Please note I do not care for Browne's books. She just does not appeal to me. And yes, many times an abductor IS known to the child. Such a statement does not imply the mom should feel guilty!

Browne's office took the time to return the phone call and Browne has time to give readings on her current tour. While Browne can't answer millions of calls (note her business manager Linda Rossi says 50% of her business has dried up), surely Browne can do a 20 minute reading when life or death is involved.
 

Back
Top Bottom