Warning: This story contains graphic details.

“Tess got her justice,” said Tess Richey’s mother Christine Hermeston shortly after a jury found Kalen Schlatter guilty of the first-degree murder.

“We can try to heal from here and do things in Tess’s name,” she said, flashing a smile rarely seen over the past seven weeks of the harrowing trial she attended every day.

The jury’s verdict on Monday, after three days of deliberations, ends what is likely the final jury trial in the province until June amid a near-total court shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Richey, 22, was reported missing on Nov. 25, 2017 by her sister when Richey didn’t respond to texts after a night out dancing with a friend at a club in the Gay Village.

The family’s frantic search and the discovery of Richey’s body four days later at the bottom of a stairwell in a Church Street laneway, not by police but by her mother, prompted outrage over how police conduct missing persons’ investigations. Richey’s case was one of several missing persons cases linked to the Church-Wellesley area that led to the police board ordering an independent review and the creation of a Toronto Police new missing persons unit.

Two Toronto police officers face disciplinary charges for failing to properly investigate Richey’s disappearance.

Crown prosecutors argued that Schlatter strangled and sexually assaulted the 22-year-old woman, leaving her dead at the bottom of a stairwell after she refused to have sex with him. Schlatter’s semen was found on Richey’s upper left pant leg.

The defence argued another man killed Richey in the early hours of Nov. 25, 2017. It is possible, the defence argues, that the man climbed over a tall gate at the back of the laneway seconds or minutes after Schlatter left and killed Richey when she rejected his sexual advances.

Security video played at the trial showed Richey and Schlatter walking into the laneway hand-in-hand at 4:14 a.m. and Schlatter leaving alone at 5 a.m. Richey is never seen leaving the alley and no one is seen walking in.

The jury’s verdict of first-degree murder means the jury found Schlatter murdered Richey during a sexual assault. Schlatter will be sentenced Wednesday to an automatic life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

As the verdict was read, Richey’s family broke into sobs and relieved laughs. Some jurors wiped away tears. Schlatter was perfectly still and ashen-faced before he was handcuffed and taken out of the courtroom.

At the end of his usual remarks thanking the jury, Superior Court Justice Michael Dambrot specifically commended them for continuing the trial as the courts — and the country — have moved to keep only essential services going.

“You not only endured a trial that took longer than predicted but you agreed to carry on and serve in very difficult circumstances,” he said.

Outside court, Det.-Sgt. Ted Lioumanis also thanked the jury for continuing the trial to its conclusion.

“Schlatter is a predator and a murderer and I want the jury to know they made the right decision and justice was served,” he said. “We can’t bring Tess back but I hope this verdict brings (her family) some type of closure.”

Before the jury heard Schlatter himself deny killing Richey, they heard he allegedly told undercover officers he was “pissed off” when Richey didn’t want to have sex with him. The jury also heard a cellmate testify that Schlatter confessed to him he had strangled Richey with a scarf and ejaculated on her.

Schlatter denied saying he was upset when Richey said she didn’t want to have sex. He said he consensually kissed and grinded with Richey in the stairwell, during which he ejaculated in his pants, and said she was alive when he left.

He also said he never confessed to his cellmate — a self-described liar and career criminal who had acted as a jailhouse informant once before.

The testimony of the jailhouse informant has raised questions about transparency in the review process that occurs before the notoriously unreliable witnesses are permitted to testify at a trial.

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In his instructions to the jury, Dambrot warned that the informant’s evidence must be used with the “greatest caution and care” because of the dangers associated with jailhouse informant testimony.

The jury heard that the man, whose identity is under a publication ban, had testified once before at a preliminary hearing where he said a man confessed to murder while they were cellmates in the fall of 2015.

However, the jury did not hear that the man was not permitted to testify at trial in that case by the In-Custody Informer Committee — a group of three to five Crown prosecutors that reviews the evidence and meets with the trial prosecutor before deciding whether or not it is in the public interest for the informant to testify at trial.

The deliberations of the committee are privileged and will not be disclosed, according to the Crown Prosecution Manual. The reasons for their decision are not provided to defence counsel, according to defence lawyers familiar with the process.

After the jailhouse informant’s testimony at the previous case’s preliminary hearing, the accused’s lawyer Chris Murphy took the unusual step of making detailed written submissions to the committee in which he argued the man is “completely unreliable” and that him being allowed to testify poses a “serious risk that the reputation of the justice system will be severely tarnished.”

In an interview, Murphy questioned how the man could have been permitted to testify at Schlatter’s trial by the committee when he was not allowed to testify at another trial in 2017.

He said it shows the need for transparency in the decision-making process, including knowing what evidence the committee looked at to form its decision and the reasons for allowing or disallowing testimony.

“The citizens of Ontario are entitled to an explanation,” he said.

Several public inquiries into wrongful convictions in Canada have found that jailhouse informants are extremely risky witnesses, even more so in high-profile cases and where they have received benefits for giving information in a previous case. They also found that these witnesses can be convincing and persuasive liars, using information from an accused, news reports and outside sources to fabricate a confession. In Ontario last year, a jailhouse informant was found guilty of perjury for lying in a first-degree murder case about having testified previously in other serious cases, including a homicide.

“They show great ingenuity, all you gotta do is take the details of what your cellmate is telling you about the case and just add in the words, yeah I did it,” Murphy said.

The Crown Prosecution Manual notes that even if an informant does not seek or obtain consideration from the Crown, there is no guarantee they will not receive some benefit from other justice system players in ways that may not be apparent or even documented.

The informant who testified at Schlatter’s trial obtained a reduction in sentence for his testimony in the other case, and may have obtained a lower sentence on other convictions. He did seek consideration for his testimony in Schlatter’s trial and was formally denied. However, as the trial heard, he is not precluded from mentioning his co-operation to police and judges in future cases.

A jury does not give reasons for its decision so it is unclear how much of a role the man’s testimony played in the deliberations.