Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast · Ben Gibson

The Murder of Tori Stafford

·1 hr 2 min·2 clips

An eight-year-old girl disappeared walking home from school, but she appeared to trust the person with her.

Wicked and Grim opens with spring talk and easy banter. The hosts then pivot into the 2009 disappearance of eight-year-old Tori Stafford, who vanished while walking home from school in Woodstock, Ontario, and whose calm-looking movement on surveillance footage later became one of the case’s most haunting details. The tone changes quickly. Ben and Nicole map out the early investigation as a set of fragments, timelines, and small links that do not yet resolve into a full account of what happened. The story stays grounded in ordinary life. That matters, because the episode keeps returning to the contrast between a normal school-day walk, a familiar setting, and the violence that followed. The hosts keep the language plain. They spend time on how the case was initially difficult to read and how investigators had to work from pieces instead of certainty. A second thread comes into focus. Michael, who was 28 at the time, is described as having an unstable life, inconsistent work, financial strain, and a pattern of deceptive behavior in relationships that kept him under scrutiny. None of that alone settles the case. It does, however, help explain why he stayed a person of interest as more information surfaced. The turning point arrives in May 2009. After being held and questioned, Terry asks to speak again and offers a different version of what happened. The new account is disturbing. According to Terry, she and Michael talked earlier that day about kidnapping a young girl, with the idea first treated like a disturbing joke and then like a challenge. The episode does not hurry past that. It lingers on the ugliness of the choice, the instability of the people involved, and the shock of how fast a horrible idea became real. By the end, the case feels both specific and devastating. Wicked and Grim makes that devastation clear while keeping the chronology easy to follow.

As heard by us

A school walk turns into a devastating case built on trust, unraveling evidence, and a late confession.

Wicked and Grim treats the Tori Stafford case with a calm, steady hand, starting with a child walking home from school in Woodstock, Ontario and the disturbing surveillance image of her beside someone she seemed to trust.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A child's walk home, a calm camera frame, and a case that unravels fast.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast