Toronto police have upgraded the charge against a man accused of killing 22-year-old Tess Richey from second-degree murder to first-degree murder. Richey’s body was discovered by her mother on Nov. 29, in an alleyway outside an under-construction building in Toronto’s Gay Village. She was reported missing four days earlier, last seen in the Church and Wellesley St. area. She was killed by neck compression, according to a post-mortem examination. Kalen Schlatter, 21, was arrested Feb. 4 and originally charged with second-degree murder. Police, at the time, believed that the pair hadn’t known each other before that night, and said the killing could fairly be called a “crime of opportunity.” The new charge, of first-degree murder, means police believe the killing was both planned and deliberate. “A murder is planned if it was conceived of and thought out before it was carried out. A murder is deliberate if the acts involved were intended and purposeful,” criminal lawyer Daniel Brown explained to the Star.Brown has no involvement in this case.“The plan to kill need not be elaborate or complicated and the deliberation need not be lengthy. All that matters is that some form of planning to kill the person occurred at some point and that the accused person deliberately carried out the plan successfully,” he said. In some rare cases, he added, a murder that wasn’t planned or deliberate could be elevated from second-degree to first-degree murder if it happens while the accused committed “one of a few enumerated crimes,” including hijacking, sexual assault or forcible confinement.Either police had evidence that now suggested the murder was planned and deliberate, or that one of the other specific crimes was occurring at the same time. Police have said the pair were together “for some time” before Tess was killed, but have not elaborated on what they believe happened. The information is cons ...
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