Warning: This story contains graphic content.

Kalen Schlatter is a “predator” who “stalked and isolated a young woman because he was determined to have sex with her,” a Crown prosecutor told a Toronto jury Tuesday in a courthouse now otherwise shut down for 11 weeks to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

“Kalen Schlatter sexually assaulted and strangled to death Tess Richey because he wanted sex,” prosecutor Bev Richards said.

“Tess Richey was murdered because she said no.”

Schlatter, 23, has pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder of 22-year-old Richey on Nov. 25, 2017. He testified last week that she initiated a kiss with him and led him into the laneway between two houses on Church Street, north of Dundonald Street, where they consensually “made out” in a stairwell after she told him she couldn’t have sex because she was on her period. Security videos show them going into the laneway holding hands at 4:14 a.m. and Schlatter leaving alone at 5 a.m. No one else is seen entering the alley, and Richey’s body was found at the bottom of the stairwell.

Schlatter testified that Richey was alive and on her phone when he left her. In closing arguments Monday, his defence said another man climbed over a fence into the backyard of one of the houses and then over a tall wooden gate to reach the laneway seconds or minutes after Schlatter left.

That other man had a “fantasy” that Richey wanted to have sex with him after she briefly spoke to him while on the street, the defence said, and when she rejected him, he killed her

On Tuesday, the Crown described Schlatter’s account as “preposterous” and said the suggestion that another man could have vaulted two six-foot fences in the dark without being heard or detected by cameras was “ridiculous.”

Richey did not want to have sex with Schlatter — the security videos from that night show no affection between them — and she made three attempts to go home, the Crown said.

Richey appeared to move to get a cab twice after leaving the Crews and Tangos bar with her friend Ryley Simard, Richards said.

After Simard left around 4 a.m., Richey’s Uber records show she ordered an Uberpool home at 4:02 a.m. At the same time, Richey is seen on security video walking to the corner of Church and Dundonald streets alone, with Schlatter trailing behind her. She then sat at the corner, near where the Uber would have picked her up.

Schlatter claimed he followed Richey because she seemed upset and that she wanted him to stay and discuss her recent breakup. He said she asked to kiss him. They stood up, kissed, and she led him to the laneway, he said.

The Crown said the video actually shows Schlatter approaching Richey and waving his arm as if to say goodbye. She suggested this is because Richey told him she was going home. But Schlatter was not prepared to give up and saw this as his last chance to have sex that night, she said.

“Richey has no interest whatsoever in Kalen Schlatter. Indeed, she has the opposite interest,” Richards said. “She wants to leave him, she wants to go home.”

Richards said we will never know why Richey walked up the street into the laneway with Schlatter. Perhaps he told her it was a shortcut to the spot on Dundonald where her Uber would pick her up — but that doesn’t matter, she said, because Richey clearly wanted to go home and she did not suddenly decide to have sex with Schlatter in a stairwell.

Richey constantly used her phone, according to her cell records and her sister’s testimony, but the records show she did not answer two calls at 4:15 a.m. and 4:16 a.m., minutes after she entered the laneway with Schlatter instead of going to her Uber.

“The assault had already begun,” Richards said. There is no indication that Richey made any calls or texts after 5 a.m. when Schlatter claims he leaves her alive and on her phone, Richards said.

“Tess Richey’s cellphone is silent because Tess has been silenced,” she said.

Richards said Schlatter’s predatory behaviour can be seen on security footage outside Crews and Tangos after the bar closed. The video shows him trying to pursue two women, and in one instance a male friend of one of the women appears to step between them, Richards said.

She said this is similar to an account of his approach to picking up women, which two undercover officers said they heard after they were placed next to him in police holding cells soon after his arrest.

Richards suggested that Schlatter lied to the officers that he had been making out with Richey in the club because he wanted to bolster the impression that they had a consensual sexual encounter. But he did not know then that the police would find security footage that showed they had never interacted in the club.

Richards said the jury could rely on the evidence of the undercover officers even though their operation was not audio-recorded because police ran out of time to get a warrant before Schlatter was arrested. Much of the testimony was corroborated by Schlatter himself, she said.

She acknowledged the testimony of a former cellmate, who said Schlatter confessed to strangling Richey with a scarf and “jerking off” on her body, should be approached with caution.

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“The Crown cannot choose its witnesses,” she said. “And (he) is a particularly unsavoury witness.”

However, she told the jury, the witness has not and will not receive any consideration for his testimony.

The defence has argued there are many ways the man could benefit from his co-operation, including in the form of preferential treatment from police, judges, and jail staff that doesn’t involve explicit Crown intervention.

“Schlatter is inclined to talk and talk a lot to those he is in custody with,” Richards said.

She told the jury that the informant gave police information they did not already know, such as that Schlatter took a cab, then an Uber home. He said Schlatter told him police did not seize the green jacket he was wearing that night because it was in a laundry hamper, which the Crown said is corroborated by photos of a green piece of clothing in a hamper in the basement of Schlatter’s home. Schlatter denied this and said he told his cellmate the jacket was hanging in his closet.

Richards also said it would make sense that Schlatter would seek help in creating an alibi with his cellmate, a career criminal with a long history of lying and cheating.

Notably, the cellmate testified that Schlatter suggested an “alternate suspect theory” involving someone coming over the back fence, Richards said.

Richards rejected the possibility that the man seen wandering around in the Church-Wellesley area that night after Richey said something to him could have been the killer.

The man came forward to police in early December after he read that Richey’s death was being investigated as an accident because he thought he’d seen something suspicious that night, she said. It was his information about seeing Richey at the hot dog stand with two people that gave police grounds for a warrant to seize security footage and got them to interview the owner of the hot dog stand, she said.

He “was trying to help police not hide his crime,” Richards said. “Those are not the actions of the killer.”

He also had no visible injuries from a struggle and his DNA was not found on Richey’s clothing or body, Richards said.

Richards said Richey had bruising on her wrists and hands and a significant injury on her forehead. These are injuries consistent with a struggle and being restrained, she said.

If Tess Richey does not want to do something, she won’t do it, Richards said Richey’s sister testified.

“Schlatter sexually assaulted Tess Richey and brutally strangled her to death because she fought back,” Richards said. “Because she tried to defend herself from a predator.”

The judge is expected to charge the jury with instructions on the law on Friday, after which they would begin deliberations.