The problems began in early 2012, even before Millardair was operative, when the cost of hangar construction went far beyond Wayne’s original assessment. The budget overrun left inadequate funds to purchase tooling and equipment, build offices inside the hangar, and hire the trained technicians required to secure regulatory approval. Sharif made Wayne Millard a proposal: Sharif could line up outside investors who would take a minority stake but still leave control of the business with the Millard family. Wayne turned him down.
“He advised me that this whole exercise was to provide Dell a secure future and provide him with a sustainable environment that he could grow within as a person and to learn the business,” Sharif recalls. Wayne was adamant that he could secure the necessary funding through local banks. To help him out, Barnes polished the business plan while Sharif provided financial forecasting that took into account all the variables faced by a start-up MRO. “Dell went out locally and hired an accountant to assist Wayne with the books and to help him with the banks. Wayne was eventually successful in bringing a large sum to the table from one of the local banks. It provided more than enough funding to do what we needed to do,” says Sharif.
The stalled operation was back in action. Barnes focussed on hiring the necessary staff for certification as well as acquiring tooling and equipment within Canada, while Sharif looked for bargains in the United States. By attending the auctions of defunct aviation companies, they managed to save hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment. New employees were trained on the specific aircraft types they expected to service. But as all this was going on—and Sharif emphasizes that it was hard work—the accountant Dellen had hired kept expressing his doubts about the viability of the business. Sharif attributes his skepticism to the fact that he had no aviation industry experience and was used to working for commodity-driven businesses. He didn’t understand that Millardair was in a service industry, where success depended on establishing relationships with airlines and aviation leasing companies. While Sharif acknowledges that the aircraft maintenance business is a competitive field, he was convinced Millardair had what it needed to make a go of it.
Unfortunately, along with the accountant, Dellen was putting up obstacles. According to Sharif, he was the only member of the team not to complete his assignment, which was to finish construction of the offices and clean up the hangar. “It was still full of Dell’s toys—cars, hot rods, Jeeps, Jet Skis, airplanes,” says Sharif. “There were also piles of junk from their old facility at Pearson strewn about the hangar.” The law required potential customers to audit the Millardair facility and team to ensure they met minimum requirements, but the messy hangar made visits impossible.
Dellen also made modifications to the building without consulting anyone, using a cutting torch, for example, to remove structural components. “At every turn, he cut corners to save money without any experience or knowledge of the regulations involved, both from a safety standpoint and a regulatory standpoint,” says Sharif. He maintains that it was only thanks to Barnes that Millardair gained the regulatory approval needed for the start-up of operations in November 2012.
Although nothing was guaranteed, Sharif says the team was finally starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. He had secured a commitment from one of Millardair’s competitors to handle their overflow work and share revenues. And Barnes had a smaller Canadian airline ready to visit the facility. He and Sharif were also working on securing business from a large leasing company that had more than forty-five aircraft available for 2013 and 2014. “Wayne was very comfortable with the direction we were headed,” says Sharif. A meeting was called at the Maple Gate house to go over what remained to be done before the first aircraft arrived for servicing.
When Sharif arrived at the Millard home, Dellen and the accountant began questioning him about why there were no contracts in place for the remainder of 2012 and all the way out to mid-2013. “Again, I explained to them that, legally, we could not secure contracts until we were certified by the Canadian regulatory authority and, realistically, we would not get a contracted commitment until the hangar was completed and cleared of all the crap laying inside. It seemed at the time that I was speaking to the wall.”
The next day Sharif visited the hangar to assess the state of readiness. “I was sorely disappointed with what I saw,” he recalls. “We were not close to being ready to present our facility to anyone. All of the items that Dell was responsible for were either not even touched or were behind schedule.” When Dellen finally showed up around noon, as Sharif says was his habit, the two had a tense conversation in the middle of the hangar. To defuse the situation, Dellen invited Sharif to dinner that night.
They met several hours later at a steakhouse near Pearson Airport. As Sharif tells it, their business discussions were relaxed and normal, with Dellen asking why the family should continue to invest in the facility. Sharif explained yet again why the future was bright and how Dellen needed to do his part. After Dellen expressed concern that the family coffers were running low and said he was reluctant to keep pouring good money after bad, Sharif warned that if he cut and ran now, he would be lucky to get twenty cents for every dollar invested. He emphasized that the real value of the business lay in the coveted Transport Canada operational certification it had just received, the high-quality team it had assembled, and the potential customers being lined up.
“We parted pleasantly and nothing further was said between us until his father’s death,” says Sharif. “Two days after I returned home from Toronto, I called Wayne, and he and I spent a lengthy time on the phone going over Dell’s and my conversation, going over everything that I was working on from a business standpoint. And again, I reiterated the fact that they needed to finish the hangar and the work would come. I would say that he gave me a vote of confidence and that he was very comfortable with the opportunities ahead.”
Less than two weeks later, Wayne was dead. Everyone on the Millardair team was told he died of a brain aneurysm. Dellen took over as CEO. With the exception of Dellen’s personal mechanic, Shane Schlatman, all the employees were laid off. Within days, the transportation department certification that had been so hard to obtain was cancelled. Sharif thought maybe the pressure had got to Wayne. There had been rumblings that he might have started drinking again. It wasn’t until the Tim Bosma murder made headlines that Sharif learned the truth: Wayne Millard had died of a gunshot to the left eye and the police had just reopened the file on his death, which had originally been ruled a suicide. “My immediate reaction was that Wayne’s death was not a suicide,” says Sharif. “He had more reasons to live than to die.”
EIGHT
THE NEW CEO
Wayne Millard’s body was discovered at his home on the evening of Thursday, November 29, 2012. The following Monday, Dellen texted Mark Smich, “Tomorrow I start firing people.”
“Tru. Well im still online. Mite run one last game,” his friend replied. “Whats the deal for tomoro? U busy i guess.”
“Yea organizing a funeral & the layoff of 15 employees & renegotiating deals with banks is a few days work. A lot’s happening fast. I’m getting sick too. yea at millardair, I’m sending everyone accept Shane home. noone knows yet.”
Shane would become an employee of Millard Properties, another family company. His first assignment for the new CEO was to change the locks at the hangar. “tomorrow morning John [Barnes] & his associates lose access to the hangar,” Dellen texted. “SPECIAL PROJECT: Either after hours tonight or early tomorrow morning Discreetly change the lock on the hangar entrance. I’ll want 3 keys. 1 for me, 1 for you, 1 spare to be kept in the key cabinet.”
As soon as that was done, Shane got back to work on Dellen’s cars with no further distractions. “Suzuki done. Seat back in Caddy and working. Olds is lock able again. Working on Vette now,” he reported in a text on the one-week anniversary of Wayne’s death. “I am very happy working for you.”
—
ON TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2013
, the day after Tim Bosma’s murder, Arthur Jennings stopped by his daughter’s house to see his grandkids before going to work. He was having coffee when he noticed his son-in-law Shane Schlatman’s strange reaction to a text. It was from Dellen Millard, telling Shane not to come to work, which was very unusual. “He was expected to be at work no matter what,” Jennings later tells the court. “I was led to believe Dellen trusted Shane so much he wanted him there all the time. He could live there if he wanted. The look on Shane’s face was pretty shocked, surprised.”
Jennings had also been working at Millardair, on an unpaid internship arranged by Shane. It was the final requirement to get his certificate in supply-chain management, which he had gone back to school to study in late middle age. The school was supposed to have arranged a placement for Jennings, but it failed to come through, leaving him to get his own gig. The Millardair internship, which had begun in February, was essentially a scam where Jennings put in the hours required by the school while everybody ignored the fact that at Millardair there was no supply chain to manage.
After Jennings left his daughter and son-in-law’s house, he found the same text from Millard on his phone, which he had not yet checked that morning: “Airport politics no one goes to the hangar today, not even just to grab something.” It had been sent at 5:55 A.M.
That was fine with Jennings. Even before he received Millard’s text, he had decided to take the day off and enjoy the beautiful spring weather with his wife. He wanted to avoid all the menial tasks that awaited him at Millardair, including mopping the entire fifty thousand square feet of hangar floor. Neither Jennings nor Schlatman ever had any idea when the boss would show up or what he might want them to do. And when Millard did arrive, he was often in the company of Mark Smich and Mark’s girlfriend, Marlena Meneses, who would both be assigned odd jobs ranging from painting to cleaning the washrooms.
On the day before Jennings and Schlatman were told to stay away, it had been business (or more accurately lack of business) as usual at Millardair, with most of the hours devoted to building and outfitting a special trailer for Millard. While Millard wasn’t there that day, he did text Schlatman to let him know that he should stick around in the evening because Andrew Michalski was coming from Toronto to pick up his car. It had been at the hangar for five or six weeks, as Michalski’s licence had been suspended. Schlatman had done an oil change and reattached a bumper. Michalski’s friend Robert Bochenek—who, like Michalski, was living at Millard’s house—drove him there. While at the hangar, Bochenek and Michalski admired a Camaro belonging to Schlatman and made a short video of him revving the engine. By about 8 P.M., all three men were on their way home in their separate vehicles.
As his father-in-law had observed, Schlatman was shocked when Millard texted everyone not to come in to work on Tuesday. He messaged back in disbelief, “Including me?”
“Yes,” wrote Millard. “Take the day off.”
“Ok. Cya tomorrow then.”
“See you Wednesday.”
“Wednesday it is,” wrote Schlatman, anxiously adding, “Did I do something?”
“Haha not at all.”
“Ok I just don’t wanna do anything to cause you any headaches.”
“You are the relief to many of my headaches.”
“Well thanks for that. I do try.”
—
SHANE SCHLATMAN, A TALL, hefty guy with a sandy goatee, tells the court that in May 2013 he had known Dellen Millard for seven years. The two had met when Schlatman was working as a mechanic on the outskirts of Toronto and Millard would bring in his Jeep Wrangler TJ for servicing. Millard wanted to learn more about cars and approached Schlatman’s boss about renting a bay at his garage. When he was turned down, Millard proposed that Schlatman, who was a talented mechanic, come and work for him at Pearson Airport on Saturdays. That was in 2010, by which time there was no longer any active aviation business at the Pearson hangar. According to Schlatman, he maintained the various Millardair and Millard family vehicles and built a kit car for Dellen. Eventually he was hired on full-time, earning $31 an hour, ten dollars more than he’d gotten at his old job. Though Wayne Millard was in charge, Schlatman reported to Dellen alone. “I always was directed by Dell,” he says. “He would tell me what work to do, and I was not to listen to anyone else.”
In 2011, as Miliardair prepared to reactivate its aviation business, the company moved into two small rented hangars at Waterloo Airport as it waited for its new headquarters to be completed. Schlatman helped out by fabricating steel doors for the hangar, which opened in March 2012, and building and installing racking. But the bulk of his time was still spent on cars and personal projects for Dellen.
Dellen remained as uninterested as ever in the business Wayne was setting up for him and instead focused his ambitions on his farm. Along with planning to build his dream home at the rural property, Millard led Schlatman to believe that he too might have a family home there one day and work nearby in a special garage. In April 2013, Madeleine Burns applied on her son’s behalf for the zoning permission required to construct a four-thousand-square-foot drive shed to house Millard’s cars, trucks, and motorcycles. Millard and Schlatman had discussed a ninety-nine-year lease that would allow Schlatman to build a house on a slice of land carved out of the property.
The homes at the farm were to be constructed by Javier Villada, a contractor who had previously worked for Wayne and Dellen at Riverside Drive, Maple Gate Court, and Pearson and Waterloo airports. Whenever there was a big job, Villada would hire his four brothers—Alvaro, Francisco, Cesar, and Roberto—as well as his brothers-in-law, to work on an hourly basis. They had recently built the washrooms and office facilities at the new Waterloo hangar. Villada was also involved with Dellen in a company called Villada Homes, which, despite its name, was owned and run by Millard, with Villada occupying nothing more than a foreman role. The only homes the two partners had ever worked on were Millard’s properties and his ex-fiancée’s house in Oakville. But Villada, a burly man of fifty, still dreamed of building a gated community country estate at the Millard farm.
He even allowed his pay to be cut to $22 per hour from $27, a pittance in real estate–crazy, renovation-mad Toronto. Villada, who by all accounts is a good contractor, should have easily been able to find work elsewhere, but he stuck it out with Dellen. Over the years, his relationship with the Millards had evolved into something almost feudal in nature. He not only did work for the family, but also lived in one of the Riverside Drive apartments and made himself available around the clock, seven days a week. After he borrowed $9,000 from Dellen to return home to Colombia for a family visit, the two argued about how much had been worked off and paid back. As if that were not enough, Villada had an arrangement to lease Millard’s gas- guzzling red Dodge Ram from him for $450 per month. Yet even for this substantial fee, he would get last-minute requests from Millard to use the pickup.
One of these came on Saturday, May 4, 2013. “I believe Dellen called me to ask me to switch cars,” Villada tells the court. The exchange was made at five or six in the evening in front of the Sears store at Sherway Gardens mall in the west end of Toronto. Millard took the red truck and gave Villada his Yukon to keep for at least a week. But then, later that night, Millard changed his mind. He and his girlfriend, Christina Noudga, showed up at Riverside Drive with a white van owned by Millardair. They left the van with Villada and took back the Yukon.
While he was at Riverside that night, Millard asked to see an apartment Villada was custom renovating for him, which included extra-high kitchen counters for his comfort. The next day, Sunday, Millard texted Villada requesting that he check inside the white van for an item Millard had forgotten. On Monday, Millard gave Villada $900 in back pay while he was working at widening the driveway at Maple Gate. Then on Tuesday, Villada received the same text sent to Schlatman and Jennings, warning him to stay away from the hangar where he had not been in weeks.
—
WHEN JENNINGS RET
URNED TO work on Wednesday, May 8, he brought coffee and doughnuts for himself and Shane. They chatted briefly and put their lunch boxes away. As he crossed the hangar floor, Jennings was stunned to see the truck he had seen on TV the evening before. It was sitting in the middle of the hangar on a green tarp. As a truck aficionado, Jennings immediately recognized the chrome and steel running boards from the news report about Tim Bosma’s disappearance. “My exact words to myself were, ‘Oh my God, could that be the truck?’ ” he tells the court. “Except for the back bench seat, everything else was out of it,” including the licence plates. There were some spray-paint cans on the tarp.
Because the truck made him “uncomfortable,” Jennings stayed away from it. He didn’t discuss it with Schlatman, who seemed unperturbed. Schlatman was preparing the vehicle to be painted red at a body shop north of Toronto. Millard had told the shop’s owner, Tony Diciano, that it was a rush job. He wanted it done by Friday, but despite the fact that Millard and his family were long-time customers, Diciano said he would need the weekend. At Millard’s request, Schlatman was stripping away the truck’s emblems, lights, and any other bits and pieces that would get in the way of painting.
Sometime around midday, Spencer Hussey stopped by the hangar. He was a baby-faced young aviation enthusiast who, before Wayne’s death, had been employed at the short-lived Millardair MRO. After he was laid off, he picked up some part-time work fixing cars and doing other odd jobs at the hangar and the farm. Working for $12.50 an hour was Hussey’s way of keeping in Dellen’s good graces. He didn’t even complain when Millard made him drive all the way to Toronto to pick up his paycheques. Like Javier Villada, Hussey was counting on Millard’s help to make his dreams come true. He had a plan to turn the hangar into an FBO, or fixed base of operations—a hotel for planes, as the hangar crew described it. While this was not as specialized or interesting a business as the MRO, or airplane garage, in which Wayne Millard had invested millions, it was better than nothing.
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