Misconduct charges withdrawn against officers in Tess Richey case

Seven years after Tess Richey’s mother found her body near an address where two Toronto police constables had been called days earlier, misconduct charges against the officers have been withdrawn. 

At a police tribunal hearing Monday, prosecutor Mattison Chinneck, representing the Toronto Police Service, said the charges against Const. Alan McCullough and Const. Michael Jones were withdrawn in favour of “a restorative approach via discipline at the unit level.” 

A police investigation alleged the officers didn’t search thoroughly enough for the homicide victim when she was missing. They were charged with neglect of duty in 2018.

McCullough and Jones have agreed to accept responsibility for their conduct, Chinneck said. They will contribute to improving police service training on missing persons by speaking to recruits about their experience and lessons that can be learned from the case, he added. 

“They do so in the spirit of better preparing the officers of the future and of the organization as a whole,” Chinneck said.

Both officers will also be docked 40 days pay, the prosecutor said. 

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.

McCullough and 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.

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.

“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.

Chinneck said at the hearing he had consulted with Richey’s family and that one member was present at the tribunal. 

In a statement Monday afternoon, Richey’s sister, Rachel, said the family was “happy” with the resolution and the officers’ planned participation in training future recruits.

By withdrawing charges, “we can avoid further legal proceedings which provides us with some relief,” the statement said. 

No finding of professional misconduct: defence lawyer 

With the settlement, “there’s no finding of professional misconduct,” said Lawrence Gridin, defence lawyer for McCullough, at the hearing. 

Gridin said the incident happened due to systemic failures in the way Toronto police handled missing persons cases in 2017, referring to a review into the force’s handling of missing persons’ cases. 

The review, released in April 2021 by former judge Gloria Epstein, found “serious flaws” and “systemic discrimination” with the force’s handling of numerous disappearances. 

“The Toronto Police Service has made enormous improvements to their processes and training since then to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again,” Gridin said. 

However, in June, Toronto police said 71 of the 151 recommendations Epstein made in her report have not been fully implemented — three years after the review was released. 

Jones’ defence lawyer, Joanne Mulcahy, said Richey’s case had been a significant learning experience for her client. 

“There is not a day that goes by that he does not think of Tess Richey or the family,” Mulcahy said.

Richey’s body found at construction site

According to the notice of hearing, the officers 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. 

Schlatter appealed his conviction but the appeal was dismissed in January.