‘Taunter’ Guilty Of Raping, Killing Teenage Girl

A 32-year-old printer who admitted making a series of taunting phone calls to police was convicted Thursday of raping and killing a teenage girl.

Terry Driver, the son of a policeman, also was found guilty of attempted murder in the baseball bat beating of the victim’s best friend.

Judge Wally Oppal of the British Columbia Supreme Court heard the case without a jury and issued his verdict a week after closing arguments.

The verdict of first-degree murder carries an automatic life term with no possibility of parole for 25 years.

Driver was convicted of killing of Tanya Smith in October 1995 and trying to kill her friend, Misty Cockerill. Both were 16 at the time.

Abbotsford, a community of 100,000 people about 45 miles east of Vancouver, became a place of fear after the attack because of the repeated taunting phones calls made to police. The caller laughingly spoke of Smith’s killing and dared police to catch him.

During the trial, Driver said he raped an unconscious Smith after finding her and Cockerill while out in his vehicle listening to a police scanner. He denied committing the murder, saying he saw a man fleeing from the scene as he drove by.

Driver said he then made the taunting calls to police and wrote a note promising further attacks. He also stole Smith’s headstone, defaced it and dumped it in the parking lot of a radio station.

The following fields overflowed: DATELINE = NEW WESTMINSTER, BRITISH COLUMBIA