Tess Richey was “sexually assaulted and brutally strangled to death by a man whom she’d just met,” prosecutors will argue over the next few weeks at a downtown Toronto courthouse.

Kalen Schlatter, 23, is facing a charge of first-degree murder in the case. He has pleaded not guilty.

The 22-year-old aspiring flight attendant was found dead in a stairwell near where she was last seen alive on Church St. on Nov. 25, 2017.

The jury is expected to hear evidence from the people who last saw Richey alive and undercover officers who spoke to Schlatter after his arrest while posing as his cellmates. The Crown alleges Schlatter told the officers he was upset because Richey refused to have sex with him.

The Toronto police were sharply criticized for failing to investigate Richey’s disappearance properly. This took place amid concerns that missing-persons cases linked to the Gay Village were not being taken seriously. Her case was among those which prompted the police board to commission a sweeping review of how Toronto police handle missing-persons investigations.

The Star will update this story as the trial progresses. It is set to last six to eight weeks.

Here is what has happened so far:

Jan 30: The trial began with the Crown’s opening address to the jury. Prosecutor Beverley Richards gave a detailed account of the evidence the jury is expected to hear, which includes surveillance video the Crown said will show Schlatter and Richey walking towards the stairwell where her body was found, and Schlatter walking away alone 45 minutes later. Richey’s body was found four days later. The Crown said Schlatter’s semen was found on the outside of Richey’s pants. The trial also heard from police witnesses who took the jury through photos of the various locations around Church Street, including the stairwell.

Jan 31: Rachel Richey, Tess Richey’s older sister, gave emotional testimony about the last time she saw her sister alive — Nov. 24, 2017 — and the frantic search that began the next day. Their mother, Christine Hermeston, drove down from North Bay to help in the search. Four days later, Hermeston and her friend were searching the area around Church Street where Richey was last seen alive.

Hermeston’s friend Ann Brazeau testified, through tears: “I just saw her lying there and I went into complete shock. Horror. Disbelief. I couldn’t process or make sense of what I was seeing …. I was terrified.”

The trial also heard from Kabous Abadi, a hot dog vendor who said two women and a man came by his stand on Church Street in the early hours of Nov. 25, 2017. The man paid. He recognized the women when police came by with photos.

Feb 3: Uber driver Marlon Allamby testified that he responded to a request for an UberPool from Tess Richey’s account at 4:02 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2017, on Church Street. She never showed up. The jury also heard more testimony about the discovery of Tess Richey’s body in the external stairwell of a house under renovation at 582 Church St. around 3 p.m. on Nov. 28, 2017.

Const. Robert Chevalier, a neighbourhood police officer based in the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood, said he joined the investigation after seeing a flyer about Richey at the 519 Community Centre that morning. He said missing people in the area were a concern, and noted that at the time serial killer Bruce McArthur had not yet been caught.

Chevalier said he met Richey’s mother and friend in the afternoon. They asked him to check out the address of a nearby house. Shortly after he got there, he heard a scream. He went into the alleyway and saw the stairwell, obscured from the main street by a gravel pile. He saw a dead body in the stairwell, with a pink handbag next to her.

Court ended at around 2:30 p.m. because a juror injured herself in a fall over the lunch break. The rest of Chevalier’s testimony was postponed to the next day.

Feb 4: In one of the most difficult moments of the trial so far, the jury was shown photographs of Richey’s body as it was found at the bottom of a stairwell leading down to the basement door of a house under renovation on Church Street. Richey’s family left the courtroom while the photographs were shown in court.

The trial also heard from Ryley Simard who had gone out drinking and dancing with Richey at the Crews and Tangos bar on Church Street the night she was killed. Simard, who was one of the last people to see her friend alive, testified that she and Richey were asked to leave the bar at around 2 a.m., both very drunk. They walked along Church Street, stopped at a hot dog stand, and then stopped outside at a house on Dundonald Street where Richey had a conversation with a woman. While the hot dog vendor testified Schlatter was with the two women at the hot dog stand, Simard did not mention it in her testimony. She did testify that she kissed Schlatter goodbye on the lips before she went home around 4 a.m., leaving Richey and Schlatter in the Church Street area.

Feb. 5: On the night Kalen Schlatter was arrested, Feb. 4, 2018, he was put in the police station holding cells with two undercover officers posing as two men arrested for possessing stolen property. One of the undercover officers began his testimony Wednesday from behind a screen meant to conceal his identity from the public. He is known as Undercover Officer 1.

Schlatter told the officers he’d been arrested for Richey’s murder and claimed they’d met at the Crews and Tangos bar where they kissed and danced, the officer testified. He said that after her friend went home, he led Richey into the alley and then stairwell to “hook up” but was “pissed off” when she refused to have sex with him. He claimed she wanted to stay in the stairwell and he asked her if he should stay. She said no and he left her there alive, the officer said Schlatter told him.

“Mr. Schlatter said he was drunk and something could have happened, but he doesn’t remember and he doesn’t think he’s capable of doing it,” the officer recalled.

Court ended at 1 p.m., with the officer’s examination-in-chief set to continue the next day.

Feb. 6: The testimony of the undercover officer concluded just after 11 a.m. The jury was then dismissed for the day for reasons of ensuring a fair trial “through no fault of counsel for the defence or counsel for the Crown.” Superior Court Justice Michael Dambrot apologized to the jury for the inconvenience. The cross-examination of the officer by the defence is expected to start Friday morning.

Feb 7: One of Schlatter’s defence lawyers, Lydia Riva, argued the undercover officer’s memory and notes of the conversation with Schlatter in the cells was unreliable, cannot be trusted and that he omitted key context. The conversation was videotaped, but not audio-recorded. Riva suggested there were important discrepancies between the memories of the two undercover officers. The second officer has not yet testified. She also suggested that Schlatter bragged about his sexual exploits with women, because he is bisexual and was afraid of how he might be treated in jail if that were known.

Feb 10: For the morning, the jury watched hours of soundless video clips of Schlatter in a small holding cell, with an undercover officer in a cell on either side. He can be seen speaking, though it is impossible to know what he is saying. The jury has heard that the police did not get a judicial authorization for an audio recording of the conversation between Schlatter and two undercover officers. But the jury has not heard why.

Feb 11: One of the undercover officers’ handlers, who supervised the undercover operation, testified that there was an “officer protection kit” in the cell with the first undercover officer. The device allowed the handlers to listen to the conversation solely for officer safety, which in this case meant possible medical issues or distress, he said. He said he did not listen to the content of the conversation, only for any indication or signal of a problem from the officers. He said he did not take notes of the conversation as that would not be allowed.

The jury also heard from the second undercover officer, who gave a much less detailed account of the conversation than the first. He corroborated some of the account given by the other officer but defence lawyer Lydia Riva pointed out some differences and omissions. The second officer could not recall if Schlatter said he was “pissed off” or upset that he could not have sex with Tess Richey. Riva also seized on the differences in words. The second officer said Schlatter said he was “acting” emotional when shown photos of Richey’s body by the police, while the first said he said he “pretended” to be emotional.

Feb 12: The jury began viewing surveillance videos seized from the Crews and Tangos bar showing the movements of both Schlatter and Richey from the night of Nov 24, 2017. The jury also saw the security video that the Crown says shows Richey and Schlatter walking towards the stairwell where Richey’s body was later found, and Schlatter walking out alone 45 minutes later.

Feb 13, 14 and 17: The trial did not sit. Feb. 17 was Family Day and court was closed.

Feb 18: The jury continued watching security videos from Crews and Tangos. They watched Richey and Simard dancing under strobe lights in the crowded bar. The two women occasionally crossed paths with Schlatter, who was also at the bar, but they don’t appear to notice each other at all.

Feb: 19: In the morning, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy of Richey’s body testified. Dr. Kona Williams concluded Richey had been strangled to death, possibly with a soft cloth ligature, a forearm pressed against her neck or in a chokehold. The time of Richey’s death is consistent with when she is last seen alive on the security videos with Schlatter, around 4 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2017 but Williams could not pinpoint an exact time and said it could have been later.

In the afternoon, the jury resumed watching security footage. They saw Richey and Simard leave Crews and Tangos at around 2:18 a.m. and linger on the sidewalk for some minutes before they started walking north on Church St. Schlatter is also standing on the sidewalk outside the bar. Simard goes up to Schlatter and they speak briefly – the Crown has said this was Schlatter offering a light for her cigarette but Simard did not recall the interaction when she testified. Schlatter could also be seen slowly moving north on Church St., the same direction as Richey and Simard.

Feb 20: The jury saw the last security footage of Richey alive. At about 4:15 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2017, Schlatter and Richey walked hand-in-hand into the alley off Church Street where her body was found days later at the bottom of a stairwell leading to the basement of a house under renovation. Schlatter leaves the alley alone about 45 minutes later. The detective who reviewed the footage from cameras all around the area, including motion-activated cameras with a view of the fence at the back of the house, said he didn’t see Richey leave or anyone else go in or out of the area for the next two hours.

Feb 21: During cross-examination the defence drew the jury’s attention to another man seen in a pink hat in the videos. The defence has suggested they will argue it is possible another person was responsible for killing Richey after getting to the alley and stairwell by climbing over a fence at the back.

Feb. 24: Cross-examination on the video evidence ended and the jury heard testimony from a police officer who executed a search warrant on Schlatter’s home. Photos of Schlatter’s bedroom, which showed board games and video games, were used by undercover officers to find common ground with Schlatter while they posed as recently arrested men in holding cells next to Schlatter. The jury has heard Schlatter opened up after one of the undercover officers mentioned the card game Magic: The Gathering.

Feb 25: The Crown introduced several text message conversations taken from Schlatter’s phone after it was seized by police upon his arrest on Feb. 4, 2018. The messages included flirtatious and sexual conversations with women in the days and months after Richey was last seen alive. The jury has heard two undercover officers testify that Schlatter boasted extensively about his sexual exploits with women. The defence has suggested he was bragging out of fear of what would happen to him in jail if it were known he is bisexual.

In one text, from 9:46 p.m. on Nov 26, 2017 — almost two days after Schlatter and Richey were captured on video walking into the alley — he told one woman: “This weekend has been the worst for me and I’ve been so stressed out.”

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Feb 26: The trial did not sit because the judge had to deal with an emergency.

Feb 27: Undercover Officer 1 was recalled and further questioned by the defence. Using the faint audio from the booking room video, the defence suggested the officer was the one who prompted conversation with Schlatter. The officer said it was Schlatter who prompted the conversation and said he could not make out what was being said between him and Schlatter in the background audio.

The jury also heard evidence from a toxicologist about the amount of alcohol Tess Richey had in her system at the time of her death — at most 206 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood.

A forensic biologist testified about the DNA evidence obtained from Richey’s clothes. Semen on her pants and saliva on her bra were found to match Schlatter’s DNA.

Feb 28: The testimony of the forensic biologist concluded and court broke around 11 a.m.

Mar. 2: The trial did not sit.

Mar. 3: In testimony that at times appeared straight out of “The Wire,” a combative life-long criminal and self-professed liar who once shared a jail cell with Schlatter testified that Schlatter confessed to strangling Tess Richey with a scarf and ejaculating on her body after she refused to have sex with him. Schlatter said he was “too worked up” to stop, the jailhouse informant who can only be described as E.S., told the jury. While E.S. said he was only testifying for “the dead girl and her family” and that he was not receiving any consideration from the Crown for his own pending charges, the defence suggested he had manufactured the confession in order to help himself in the future.

Mar. 4: E.S., who became increasingly hostile and insulting towards Schlatter’s defence lawyer during cross-examination, concluded his testimony. The jury then heard evidence about Schlatter’s cellphone records.

Mar. 5: The jury heard from a correctional officer at the Toronto South Detention Centre, who testified about the period of time E.S. and Schlatter were in custody together. The jury also heard from Det. Ted Lioumanis, the officer-in-charge of the case. He said that on Dec. 10, 2017, the police released images of a man from an ATM security video. Kalen Schlatter called in to the police station and said he was the person in the photos. However, when at the station he did not admit to being the person in the photos. Police obtained his DNA off a water bottle Schlatter had drunk from and discarded.

Mar. 6: Lioumanis concluded his testimony and the jury then heard from Det. Sgt. Graham Gibson who testified about how police came to arrest Schlatter. Police had been working on getting a judicial authorization to record the undercover operation in the cells, however it was not completed when Schlatter was arrested. Gibson said the decision to arrest Schlatter was a matter of public safety. “It was a stranger-on-stranger homicide,” he said. “I couldn’t guarantee eyes on him all the time.” He also said he did not want to arrest Schlatter at his home because of the potential for a volatile and dangerous situation. Schlatter was arrested on Feb. 4, 2018 after watching the Superbowl at a movie theatre with his family.

The Crown closed their case at the end of Gibson’s testimony.

Mar. 9: Kalen Schlatter testified in his defence.

Mar. 10: Schlatter was cross-examined.

Mar. 11: Trial did not sit.

Mar. 12: The defence called to the stand a man they claim was responsible for Richey’s murder.

Mar. 13: The man was cross-examined by the Crown. The defence closed its case.

Mar. 16: The jury is given the option of whether they wish to continue the trial, as the COVID-19 pandemic shuts down all other trials. They decide to proceed. The defence makes closing arguments.

Mar. 17: The Crown made closing arguments.

Mar. 18 and 19: The jury did not sit. The lawyers and the judge discussed the legal instructions that would be given to the jury.

Mar. 20: The judge charged the jury. Deliberations began at 4 p.m. and the jury ended their day at 7 p.m.

Mar. 21: The jury deliberated from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Mar. 22: The jury deliberated from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Mar. 23: The jury returned with a verdict at shortly before 6 p.m. They found Schlatter guilty of first-degree murder. He will face a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

With files from the Canadian Press