Dark Ambition

by Ann Brocklehurst

  Although the age difference between Millard and his new friends was just four to five years, it was significant in that, when the friendships began, Millard was legally an adult with no real job or responsibilities while the friends were still in high school. What’s more, when the friends turned eighteen, Millard invited them to move in with him and live in the basement, which was not a separate apartment but part of the house he shared with his father. After Millard’s arrest, everyone involved in this strange arrangement was understandably reluctant to talk about it. But what is known is that Millard’s buddies came from middle-class, mostly two-parent families who were ready and willing to support their sons. They had little to no contact with Wayne Millard, who was something of a recluse.

  As for why Wayne allowed his home to be turned into what Millard’s former friend described as a “frat house” or “drug-filled shithole,” that will likely remain a mystery. Wayne is not alive to explain, and when he was, he kept to himself. Acquaintances and colleagues invariably described him as private. Dellen’s father was also an alcoholic with no close friends of his own, which may explain why he was reluctant to stop his son from socializing. “Wayne just shuffled off to the bedroom, locked the door, and never said ‘Get out of my house,’ ” said Dellen’s old friend. When he had finally had enough of the freeloaders occupying his home, Wayne resorted to passive-aggressive tactics like making sure the fridge wasn’t too well stocked. Eventually, word got out to the unwanted guests’ parents that Wayne had had enough and wasn’t willing to tolerate the strange situation any longer.

  As a result, Dellen came up with a new plan. He would move his friends into his rental property in the west end of Toronto. He offered them cheap rent, and soon the gang was installed in the six-unit Tudoresque building on Riverside Drive, where they proceeded to annoy the neighbours. That situation continued until 2010, when Dellen became seriously involved with a new girlfriend and went to live with her in Oakville. It was only after they broke up in 2011 that he returned once again to his father’s house and resumed his practice of moving his friends, including Mark Smich, into the basement.

  During the summer of 2012, when Michalski was spending several months working in Winnipeg, he announced on Facebook his plans to return to Toronto for a long weekend. “I MISS YOU FELLAS!” he wrote. “BED DECISIONS ARE BACK!” The message tagged various basement dwellers, past and present, including Steven Kenny, Mike Ciufo, Robert Bochenek, and “Mark S.,” who, like his friend Dellen, didn’t use his real name on Facebook. They would all be fighting it out for beds in the Millard party pad.

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  NO ONE IN MILLARD’S circle of Toronto friends has ever spoken on the record about him or his lifestyle. Once it became known that he was involved in the Bosma murder, his buddies unfriended him on Facebook, deleted ill-advised Twitter accounts, and took down photos featuring Dellen Millard. The only named friend to talk to the press was Benoît Ménardo, whom Millard had met through his cousins who lived in France. Millard travelled to Europe almost every summer and stayed with his mother’s younger brother, Robert Burns, his wife, Rhonda, and their six children. His cousins introduced him to their friends, who, like his buddies in Toronto, were all several years younger. Ménardo was a Facebook friend of Millard who, because he lived in France, hadn’t heard about the murder. Facebook photos showed Ménardo and the Burns cousins on a trip to Canada, where Millard took his guests skydiving, helicoptering, and partying. Videos also show them in Croatia, renting a boat to tour caves and grottoes and swimming in an area where it is explicitly prohibited. Millard is the leader, telling the crew what to do. Ménardo said it was not unusual for Millard to pay for everyone’s dinner and buy them lavish gifts like Jet Skis. He had no idea what Millard did for a living.

  A post-arrest storyline developed for former friends: Yes, I used to know him, or, Yes, my son lived at his house, but that was a long time ago and the boys haven’t seen him in ages. People said they stopped hanging around with him once things started to get strange. They didn’t know anything about what happened afterwards. They had gotten out long before the bad stuff started. And, no, they never liked Mark Smich.

  This is a version of events designed to shine the most flattering light possible on those recounting it. The less flattering version is that drugs were in plentiful supply in the Millard basement from the moment he started moving his friends in. The neighbours had complained for years about activities at the Maple Gate house. And the police were called to Riverside Drive when Millard and some of his friends were found in the basement tampering with a tenant’s car’s engine in the middle of the night. There had always been something off about the whole setup, but it wasn’t in the interest of those who were benefiting from it to see it.

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  AFTER SMICH’S ARREST, THE Hamilton Police kept their comments very brief. In a news conference live-streamed to tens of thousands of viewers, Superintendent Dan Kinsella told reporters that investigators were still looking for at least one more suspect but that there was no further danger to the public. Suspect number three, he said, was believed to have driven the vehicle—now identified as Dellen Millard’s dark-blue GMC Yukon—that followed Tim Bosma’s black Dodge Ram as it left his house for the test drive.

  The next day, Thursday, May 23, Mark Smich was charged at the John Sopinka Courthouse with first-degree murder. He appeared to have a cut on his face and wore a baggy brown T-shirt and jeans. According to the reporters present, his hands were jammed in his pockets and he had to be asked twice to state his name. Smich’s lawyer, Thomas Dungey, declined to talk to the press other than to say his client was pleading not guilty and that a vigorous defence was planned. Dungey’s style was a study in contrasts to that of Deepak Paradkar, Millard’s lawyer at the time.

  While Paradkar had stood on the courthouse steps happily taking questions from the press, Dungey exited as discreetly as possible by the back door. He waved away the reporters and camera crews chasing after him. And he didn’t return journalists’ emails or phone calls, although sometimes his co-counsel, Jennifer Trehearne, would reply politely that they had no comment to make.

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  GIVEN THE OVERWHELMING AMOUNT of evidence in the early days of the Tim Bosma murder investigation, it was not hard to predict that the only viable defence strategy would be for the two accused to blame each other. In the weeks after Millard’s arrest, his legal team spread the word to favoured journalists that Millard was known for picking up strays, to use their phrase. According to his supporters he was just a generous rich guy always willing to help out less fortunate friends. It was the petty criminal Mark Smich who had dragged him into this tragedy. Not surprisingly, Smich’s circle rejected this narrative, claiming their guy was the lovable stoner drug dealer corrupted by his psychopathic rich friend. Millard, the master manipulator who Mark nicknamed Dellen the Felon, had taken him on a test drive he could never have imagined.

  In lawyer circles, this blame-the-co-accused strategy is known as a cutthroat defence, so called because, except on the very rare occasions when it works, the defendants end up slicing each other’s throats while the prosecution gets to watch. Almost the only way a cutthroat strategy can succeed is if one of the defendants manages to convince the jury of his innocence, which invariably means taking the stand. That’s why, from the first day of this trial right up until the prosecution rests its case, the question of whether Millard and Smich will testify hangs over the courtroom. Among many of the detectives, lawyers, and journalists in attendance, the feeling is that Millard the narcissist won’t be able to resist, and that Smich will be forced to follow suit. The defence doesn’t have to make its intentions known until the Crown has finished presenting its evidence.

  Putting the defendant in the witness box is a risky proposition at the best of times, given that it subjects the accused to cross-examination and possible self-incrimination. In a cutthroat defence scenario, the stakes are even higher because the accused will not be cross-exa
mined by just the prosecutor but by his co-accused’s lawyer as well. On the other hand, given the strength of the case against Millard and Smich, an argument can be made that neither of them has anything to lose by taking the stand.

  Millard is also known to be persuasive. During the lead-up to the trial, he met with at least two experienced and respected journalists, both of whom emerged from their interviews wondering if maybe he wasn’t just a guy who happened to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even the police have described Millard as a “good talker.” And despite his tendency to do weird things, such as wave at a homicide detective on the witness stand, on other occasions, he makes a show of respecting courthouse etiquette. He bows deeply as the jury enters and leaves the room, going well beyond the perfunctory bob performed by officers of the court.

  On the downside, Millard has transformed into a jailbird after almost three years in custody. He is a far cry from the handsome, wealthy playboy described by the media after his arrest. He has lost so much weight in jail that his cheeks are sunken and there are dark circles under his eyes. His trial wardrobe is a rotation of mostly unironed shirts—plaid, striped, and plain—paired with jeans. There is no sign of the Armani or Alexander McQueen suits he once said, or perhaps joked, he might wear to court. His one big concession to the jury was cutting off the rat’s tail braid he wore right up to trial. It was one of a variety of jailhouse styles—ranging from long beard to Fu Manchu moustache—that he had sported since his arrest.

  Smich, in contrast, has had a makeover of a completely different kind. The once scrawny druggie has buffed up and grown out his unflattering buzz cut. His dark hair is now short, neatly parted, and gelled down. His court wardrobe consists mainly of crisp collared shirts under a selection of V-neck sweaters in charcoal grey, cobalt blue, and baby blue. In an article on the oft-overlooked co-accused of Dellen Millard, the National Post described Smich’s look as “choirboy chic.” He almost always sits ramrod straight with his eyes fixed in front of him, doing his best to ignore the long withering looks Millard frequently gives him.

  Like the Bosmas, Millard and Smich were allowed to request reserved seats for their family and friends, but only Millard took up the offer and was assigned a bench to be shared with Ravin Pillay’s law students. Throughout the trial, he smiles and nods at a middle-aged blond woman who frequently occupies one of his seats and often reads from a religious book during courtroom breaks. She told reporters early on that she did not wish to reveal her identity, but she was not, as many onlookers speculated, Millard’s mother. The whereabouts of Madeleine Burns remains a mystery throughout the trial.

  In March, however, Smich’s mother and his older sister, Andrea, appear in the gallery. Smich did not request reserved seats for them, and so they line up outside the courtroom with the members of the public, who pack the largest room in the courthouse almost every day and sometimes get sent to a special overflow room with a video feed. Smich often turns and smiles at his mother and sister as they enter and leave. After photographers try to take their pictures outside the courthouse, his sister is no longer seen, but Mary Smich—a well-groomed, white-haired woman—continues to attend regularly. No one approaches her.

  SIX

  CAUGHT ON CAMERA

  At about the same time Tim Bosma left his house with the two strangers, his neighbour Rick Bullmann was out walking his dog. Bullmann knows the time was between 9:15 and 9:30 P.M., because he is a man of routine who puts his kids to bed at 8:30 and then takes his dog out at 9:00. They usually walk along the fields atop Book Road, which intersects with Trinity Road, where the Bosmas lived some four hundred metres to the south. Bullmann had never actually met his neighbours, but he knew of them.

  On the night in question, he noticed a dark-coloured pickup truck pull out of the entrance to a nearby field owned by his father. The field is rented to a farmer to store bales of hay, but in the past there had been problems with people dumping garbage there, including a truckload of drywall. It’s also a spot where a car will sometimes pull over so that the driver can make a quick phone call.

  Bullmann didn’t find anything unexpected about the situation that night until a second vehicle drove out right after the truck—almost “simultaneously,” as he describes it. He remembers the second vehicle as being bigger than a car but not as big as a truck, possibly an SUV. He watched it follow the truck, heading west on Book Road in the direction of Brantford for about five hundred yards until he lost sight of it. The next day, when members of the Bosma search party delivered flyers to his house, Bullmann thought, “Someone needs to know about this.” He called the police, who arrived with sniffer dogs and combed the field but didn’t find anything.

  At the same time they were searching the Bullmann field, police were also checking in with local businesses that might have video surveillance. Just north of the Bullmann and Bosma residences on Trinity Road, video surveillance signs were posted at the Ancaster Fairgrounds, but when Detective Constable Barry Stoltz talked to the manager, he learned that there was, in fact, no video footage to be had. He tried Super Sucker, a hydro-excavation company located just across the road from the fairgrounds. Earlier that day, James Stieva, the marketing director, had talked to a group of people in the parking lot who informed him that they were looking for a missing person and possibly his phone. Stieva invited them to look around and mentioned that the company had video surveillance.

  Although he wasn’t normally in charge of the security system, in the absence of the employee who was, Stieva obtained the password and viewed the feeds, which came from four motionsensitive cameras. By the time Constable Stoltz showed up, Stieva was able to sit him down at a computer to see video from the night before. Stoltz spotted what he believed to be a black pickup truck heading northbound closely followed by a second vehicle. The time-stamp on the computer said 18:20, but Stieva told Stoltz the system was out by three hours. The truck and the vehicle following it would have passed by at 21:20—that is, 9:20 P.M.

  Police also obtained video from Bobcat of Brantford, which was on Oak Park Road, some two hundred metres south of where Tim Bosma’s cell phone had been found on the property of Kemira Water Solutions, a chemical company on the outskirts of Brantford. A contractor spotted the phone, which was covered in dirt and bird droppings, while mowing the lawn. He turned it in to Liz Rozwell, a manager, who cleaned it up and then, since she wasn’t familiar with Samsung phones, asked a colleague to help her plug it in and turn it on. “There was a whole bunch of dinging,” Rozwell tells the court, describing the sound of texts and emails downloading.

  Rozwell and her colleague didn’t read the texts but went instead into the contacts and called the number labelled as “home.” It was the Thursday after Bosma disappeared, and one of his sisters answered the phone. She told Rozwell not to touch anything and to call 911. Shortly after, detectives Greg Rodzoniak and Randy Kovacsik arrived. They interviewed the contractor and Rozwell, marked where the phone had been found, did a preliminary check, on foot, of Oak Park Road, and viewed Kemira’s security video. It showed neither passing traffic nor the phone getting tossed. Later that day, a special search team scoured the area without much more luck. Nor did the phone yield any physical evidence due to its recent cleaning.

  Only the Bobcat video offered clues as to what might have happened that night in Brantford. The video was introduced in court and explained by Michael Plaxton, a forensic video analyst with the Hamilton Police. Before moving into this new and growing field, Plaxton spent twenty-five years as a photographer with the Canadian military, which is somewhat surprising, given his grey hippie ponytail and funky retro wardrobe. He is an articulate, unflappable, and tech-savvy expert witness, called upon to interpret some very grainy videos taken in the dark.

  When Plaxton first viewed the Bobcat of Brantford video, he discounted the vehicles he now believes were the Bosma truck and Millard’s Yukon. He was looking for northbound traffic on Oak Park Road, passing in front of Kemira, where th
e cell phone had been found, and those two vehicles were travelling south. What’s more, neither one had overhead cab or running lights like the Dodge Ram. But after the two vehicles pulled over at the Bobcat dealership, stopping there for some minutes, they turned around and headed north. This time, the lead vehicle had its overhead lights switched on and there was reflection from the wheels or rims, indicating they might be chrome. The headlights on the second vehicle were at the same level as the truck’s tail lights, suggesting to Plaxton that it wasn’t a car. “Just the proximity led me to believe it might have some significance,” he tells the court.

  Having decided these could indeed be the vehicles he wanted, Plaxton conducted a test. He drove from Super Sucker, where its video showed the black pickup passing at 9:20, to Bobcat, where it arrived at 9:39. Plaxton made the trip in twenty minutes, confirming that the time frame made sense.

  Bobcat of Brantford had a camera that recorded audio as well as video. But it was located near an HVAC unit on the side of the building, which meant there was lots of noise and distortion on the feed. Plaxton tried to clean it up, attenuating some of the higher and lower frequencies so that he could isolate two loud booming sounds that can be heard just as the pickup and second vehicle enter the camera’s range. He didn’t succeed and was unable to identify the booms or their source.

  Once the vehicles were pulled over and stopped for ten minutes, Plaxton saw what he described as “a lot of small lights, possibly a cigarette.” As the video—which looks like a fluorescent Impressionist painting—is played and replayed in court, Plaxton points out to the jury some lights that caught his attention. “It all indicated to me some sort of activity occurring,” although it was hard to figure out what, he says. No human forms are visible in the video.