Hearings into alleged police misconduct in Tess Richey case begin

Seven years after Tess Richey's mother found her body near an area Toronto police officers had been at days earlier, the two constables involved will face a police tribunal for misconduct charges.

Richey's body was found on Nov. 29, 2017, four days after the 22-year-old vanished during a night out dancing in downtown Toronto. In 2020, Kalen Schlatter was convicted of first-degree murder in her death. Schlatter was 21 at the time of the murder.

Const. Alan McCullough and Const. Micheal Jones had been called to a location 40 metres away from the stairwell where Richey's body was lying on Nov. 26. Tribunal documents don't say who called the officers to the area, only that it was in relation to a missing person.

But Richey's body was only found days later by her mother and Ann Brazeau, a nurse she enlisted to help with the search.

A police investigation into McCullough and Jones's conduct alleges they didn't search thoroughly enough for the homicide victim. The tribunal is a quasi-judicial forum where police investigate allegations of serious breaches of their code of conduct and the Police Services Act.

"You did not search the adjoining property or immediate area thoroughly," reads a notice of hearing issued in 2018 when the officers were charged.

"You did not conduct a canvass of neighbours. You failed to notify a supervisory officer of all of the particulars."

Richey's case drew widespread attention when her mother travelled from North Bay, Ont., to Toronto to search for her, and police were heavily criticized for their failure to find her body. After a string of disappearances in the city's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, in 2017 police acknowledged their relationship with the area was strained.

According to the notice of hearing, the officers charged with misconduct received a radio call on the afternoon of Nov. 26, the day after Richey was last seen, to check an address in relation to the case. They found out the spot was the "last known location" she had been seen but did not locate her body.

Three days later, Richey's body was found in an outdoor stairwell outside a building under renovation on Church Street. Initially, police did not suspect foul play in her death, but an autopsy revealed she was strangled to death.

The Crown alleged Schlatter sexually assaulted and then killed Richey in the stairwell after she refused to have sex with him. Schlatter was at the same drag bar as Richey the night of her disappearance, but they did not interact until after they were out on the street early in the morning.

During his trial, it was revealed that during his detention, Schlatter told details of what happened that night to his cellmate, identified as E.S. under a publication ban.

"He was sexually aroused, he wanted to keep going, she wanted to stop," E.S. said Schlatter told him. "He tied a scarf around her neck. She was on the ground and it excited him. He was past the point of no control."

E.S. said Schlatter told him that when he removed the scarf, Richey was dead. He was handed an automatic sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.