Slain woman's family critical of Toronto cops and media
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BY PJ WILSON
NORTH BAY — The sister of a woman found murdered in Toronto is critical of the initial police search effort and of how the victim has been portrayed in some of the city’s media.
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If police had responded quicker to a missing person’s report she filed Nov. 23, Rachel Richey now wonders if her younger sibling might still be alive.
Instead, it was the slain woman’s mother and a friend, who travelled from North Bay to Toronto to search for their missing loved one, who found her body in a stairwell at an abandoned building less than 20 metres from where she disappeared.
“She was found two houses away from her last known location,” Rachel Richey said Saturday. “They would have found her Sunday night if they had done a search. Maybe she would have been alive.”
“Maybe millions of people walked by there,” she said, adding she walked by the spot a couple of times while posting flyers for her missing sister.
Rachel Richey also angrily disputes a Toronto media report indicating police investigators learned her sister had been an escort in the city for a couple of years.
“There was never any reason for her to do that,” she said. “Tess was the baby of the family. She was spoiled rotten. Every one of us would have given her money if she had asked for it. She would have asked if she needed it.”
“We are a very close family,” Rachel Richey said, pointing out everyone had been trying to contact Tess in the hours after she went missing.
“That was before we knew anything was wrong,” she said. “That was normal for us.”
Quoting a source, the Toronto media report said investigators are exploring the possibility Tess Richey advertised her services on multiple adult sites and also worked part-time as a waitress at a popular downtown strip club.
But Rachel Richey said her sister only used a dating website and quit the strip club after her second week of work.
Rachel Richey described her sister as a hard worker who “juggled” two part-time jobs after graduating from Seneca College’s flight services program earlier this year. Prior to that, she worked as assistant manager at the Day’s Inn in North Bay.
She also said her sibling completed the college program in April, graduated in July and started applying for positions with airlines as well as a front desk position at a Toronto hotel.
When those attempts bore no fruit, Tess Richey purchased the computer program Rosetta Stone to learn Italian, her sister said.
“She was on websites looking for au pair positions in Italy,” Rachel Richey said. “She wanted to travel. It was just something…she was transitioning. She felt ready to do it. She was working toward that goal.”
Her baby sister, she said, was “a funny girl, very clever and witty. She was very sweet. Very caring and giving.”
If she had any failings, Rachel Richey said, it was that “she was probably too kind, too trusting.”
“Perhaps that’s why this happened,” she speculated.
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