Police arrest 21-year-old man for the murder of Tess Richey

A 21-year-old man has been arrested and charged with second degree murder in connection with the death of a Toronto woman whose body was found a few days after she went missing in Toronto’s gay village.

Kalen Schlatter, who police believe strangled Richey to death, appeared in court on Monday and was remanded in custody, Det. Sgt. Graham Gibson said in a news conference. The two met the night of Richey’s death, Gibson said.

Police said they had been aware of Schlatter, who does contract work on the exteriors of properties, “for some time.”

Tess Richey disappeared in November and was found four days later, just steps from her last known location. Her death was initially ruled the result of “misadventure.”

Police have been accused of bungling their investigation into the disappearance of Richey, which came just as the community was already on edge about a number of gay men who had gone missing from The Village, as well as a trans woman named Alloura Wells. Police had dismissed theories that a serial killer was behind the disappearances, only to confirm weeks later that a man named Bruce McArthur had been charged with the murders of five men, four of whom were from the area.

It wasn’t the police who found Richey, but her mother, who had flown in from North Bay to search for the 22-year-old. In a postmortem on Dec. 1, police determined that the cause of her death was neck compression, prompting homicide detectives to take over the case.

Following widespread criticism for how the case was handled in its initial stages, the Toronto Police’s professional standards unit has launched a probe into how officers handled the case.

In a Facebook post, Richey’s sister Varina said the family found out about the arrest on Sunday night.

“We knew they were onto the suspect as we had been strongly advised that postering was not necessary many weeks ago as well as other information that led to us repeatedly stating that we were happy with the progress of the investigation,” she wrote.

“We obviously have a long road ahead of us and in the interest of not doing anything to prejudice any stage of the judicial process we don’t have anything to say or any information we wish to share with anyone,” she added.

In early December, police said Richey had been at Crews and Tangos, a drag bar in The Village until about 1:45 a.m., at which point she went to a hot dog cart at Church and Wellesley with a friend. Police believed that Richey and her friend met the man they believed to be the suspect at the hot dog cart.

The group separated, and Richey and Schlatter walked to a stairwell in an alley by a building undergoing renovations, as seen in surveillance video from the area.

“We believe that they were together, alone, in that area, and they were together for some time,” Gibson said. “By the time he left, Tess was already unfortunately deceased.”

Schlatter was then seen walking away from the area — where Richey’s mother found her body — on his own, without Richey.