Dark Ambition

by Ann Brocklehurst

  —

  AS THE LAST OF the letters are read into the court record on her third day of testimony, Noudga remains as unpleasant and unforthcoming as ever. When Leitch asks her a few final questions, she is still making faces and being rude. She does, however, seem to relish the chance to deliver a line straight out of the movies when asked if she sees Dellen Millard in the courtroom. “Right over there,” she says as she points across the room. Then, at Leitch’s request, she does the same for Mark Smich—all with a big smile.

  Out of necessity, Millard’s lead lawyer, Ravin Pillay, is relatively kind in his cross-examination of Christina Noudga, who can still inflict more damage on his client, should she choose to do so.

  “You are facing very serious charges,” he begins.

  “Alas, I am.”

  “Your world has been torn apart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Life as you’ve known it has ceased to exist. Fair?”

  “Yes.”

  “All your plans for the future have been put aside?”

  “Yes.”

  “You live under constant scrutiny of the media?”

  “Yes.”

  “You and your family have experienced significant hardship?”

  “Yes.”

  “You appear to be very composed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you’re scared, aren’t you?”

  “Terrified.”

  “Your primary focus is on your case?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not here to help Mr. Millard?”

  “No.”

  Pillay suggests that Noudga knew from Millard’s letters that he was in a steady emotional decline. “You could tell the isolation was getting to him. He was losing hope. He was desperate, depressed?”

  “He didn’t come off as depressed, but, yeah, being in jail, you get depressed,” says Noudga, who does not have fond memories of her four months behind bars before she made bail in August 2014.

  Pillay says she knew the things Millard was asking her to do were “stupid, foolish, wrong,” which was why she never acted on them.

  “No, I just filled him with more love and support,” Noudga replies. She says she told Millard, “You’re not, like, alone in here. Don’t worry about it. Everything will be fine.”

  Pillay suggests that she didn’t answer when Millard asked if he could rely on her testimony, she didn’t go on Facebook to look for pictures of Smich, and she never had any contact with Michalski.

  Noudga agrees.

  Pillay says she kept the letters for their sentimental value and didn’t destroy them because she never intended to act on what they proposed.

  “Yeah,” she agrees.

  “You never thought they would be introduced at trial.”

  “I’m a little surprised they are, actually.”

  Pillay gets as tough as he’s going to get with Noudga when he asks her how someone who fancies herself a science geek, as he puts it, could have accepted Millard’s explanation that the Eliminator would be used to burn metal.

  “I used the term burning improperly,” she says, and clarifies that she meant melting. It’s possible, she agrees with Pillay, that she doesn’t remember very well at all the conversation she had with Millard about why he acquired an incinerator.

  —

  ONE OF THE FIRST questions Thomas Dungey asks Noudga is when she stopped loving Millard.

  “When he got me arrested,” she says. She describes her current feelings toward her ex-boyfriend as “contempt and a bit of loathing.”

  “I’ve been humiliated in public and by the courts for two years, so I don’t necessarily like him,” she says.

  “Of course, your trial’s coming up,” says Dungey, referring to her November 2016 court date. “If Mr. Millard was to testify he told you everything, if he said you knew there was a truck in the trailer, that would hurt you?”

  Yes, she says, but then he would be lying under oath.

  Dungey wonders about what he calls Noudga’s selective memory, and she explains that it’s not that she forgets things, more that she just didn’t ask questions she knew Millard wouldn’t answer.

  “He didn’t tell you about what criminal activity he had done?”

  “No, he never told me.”

  “Did he tell you he stole a Bobcat?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever tell you he was on an illegal mission with Andrew Michalski?”

  “No.”

  Nor, according to Noudga, did Millard mention theft missions with Hagerman or Smich.

  “You would have parties at Maple Gate. You’d be there with Michalski, Marlena, Hagerman,” says Dungey. “And never did it ever come up about illegal missions?”

  “No.”

  “Never?”

  “If it did, I wasn’t there,” Noudga says. “I would have been like, What the fuck?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, Why would you do that when you can just buy it?”

  “So, nowhere along the lines did he ever tell you he was going to steal a truck?”

  “No.”

  “Did Andrew mention it?”

  “Andrew and I were not that close.”

  “So he kept you completely isolated from that aspect of his personality?”

  “I’m kind of glad he did.”

  “It’s kind of like we’re dealing with a whole other personality.”

  “I’d say more secrets,” says Noudga. “If he was in criminal activity, he did this to protect me.”

  “That’s your defence in your case: it’s that he didn’t tell you anything?”

  “Well, I didn’t know anything.”

  Dungey asks Noudga to read some notes she made to herself under the heading “Brilliant Ideas.” She had written that if she ever dated another criminal, she should blackmail him.

  It was “because I had dated Dellen, who had a criminal life,” she explains, adding that she has a bad and inappropriate sense of humour. She tells Dungey that those notes have nothing to do with the case. “You’re misreading it. This was written in a way for me to profit off men’s criminal activity for blackmail.” It was simply planning for the future.

  Dungey asks why she played along with Millard and his letters for so many months.

  “I maintained this idea he was innocent. Maybe he had some role to play in it, but I didn’t believe in him being a murderer.”

  “He’s charged with murder and telling you he wants you to tamper with Crown witnesses.”

  Noudga tells Dungey what she told Leitch: that she avoided answering Millard’s questions. “I didn’t want to make him feel like I wasn’t supporting him. That’s how I did it,” she says.

  “At this point, do you not say, How can this guy be innocent?”

  “Sometimes people can’t get out of certain situations, and I thought he was trying to get out of the situation….I thought, Maybe no one’s going to believe the truth, so he has to come up with a story.”

  “It gets worse as it goes along,” says Dungey about the letters.

  “I think he was just getting more anxious because I had not responded.”

  Noudga traces many of her current problems to legal advice she claims she was given after Millard’s arrest. “I got advice, and I’m sorry that I followed it,” she says.

  Justice Goodman tells her that it was her “constitutional right” and she doesn’t have to be sorry she spoke with a lawyer. The details cannot be revealed due to solicitor–client privilege.

  Noudga says her friends and family were unfairly harassed by police and media because she was advised not to make a statement.

  Dungey points out that talking to people is how the police conduct investigations and that it doesn’t constitute harassment. He finds her whole attitude puzzling, he says, including the fact that when Tim Bosma was missing and Millard’s trailer was in Madeleine Burns’s driveway, neither Noudga nor Burns called the police.

  Noudga m
akes a face as if to suggest Dungey is as crazy as Leitch.

  “You wouldn’t assume there might be evidence?” he asks.

  “It was a possibility we didn’t explore,” she says. “We didn’t explore where the person might be.” As always, Noudga fails to say Tim Bosma’s name. “I don’t know why we didn’t call the police then. We waited for legal counsel…and then called it in.”

  When Dungey asks why she wiped down the locks on the trailer, Noudga replies, “I wasn’t tampering with possible evidence. I was just removing my involvement.” Lawyer and witness go round in circles about whether fingerprints constitute evidence, provoking laughter in the courtroom and consternation from the judge.

  As his cross-examination ends, a somewhat exasperated Dungey displays one final letter from Millard on the screen. It was written in January 2014. “You are a truly special woman,” Millard signs off. “I believe we deserve each other. I deserve you, and you deserve me.”

  “The last line in the letter,” says Dungey. “ ‘I deserve you and you deserve me.’ That’s what he wrote to you?”

  “Yes,” says Noudga.

  “Thank you,” he says. “No further questions.”

  It takes a while for it to register with Noudga what’s just happened. While Dungey didn’t succeed in rattling Noudga as he did Shane Schlatman and Matt Hagerman, his last question was what CBC News later referred to “a mic drop moment.”

  FOURTEEN

  CUTTHROAT

  After Christina Noudga’s five days of testimony wrapped up on May 4, the court did not sit on Friday, May 6, the third anniversary of Tim Bosma’s death. This was a happenstance of scheduling as opposed to a planned day of remembrance. Then on Monday, May 9, the prosecution made it official: after more than three months of trial, it was closing its case. The time had finally come for the defending lawyers Ravin Pillay and Thomas Dungey to let it be known if they would be calling evidence and witnesses, including the accused.

  The most common reason given for not calling evidence is simply that the accused does not believe the prosecution has proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Another reason, although defence lawyers hate to admit it, is that calling evidence might only make the situation worse.

  At the Bosma trial, since it is Dellen Millard who is listed first on the indictment, it is Pillay who must make his intentions known first. “The defence elects to call no evidence,” he tells the court.

  In her front-row seat, Sharlene Bosma seems pleased with the news that Millard won’t testify, that the trial finally appears to be winding down.

  The judge asks Dungey for his client’s decision. He responds that he would like a few minutes to talk to Smich. Although Dungey has known for a couple of days that Millard would likely elect not to testify, nothing is final until it is announced in court. Justice Goodman orders a brief recess. Some fifteen minutes later, when everyone is back in their seats, Goodman says, “I’m putting Mr. Smich at this time to his election.”

  “Mr. Smich will be calling evidence,” says Dungey, who then asks for two extra days to prepare.

  Unlike the prosecution, the defence has no obligation to make its witnesses known in advance. But there has been much speculation that Smich himself will take the stand, partly based on his brand-new haircut.

  Two days later, on Wednesday, May 11, Dungey makes a brief opening address to the jury. He reminds them that the presumption of innocence follows an accused individual at all times, that the onus is on the Crown to prove guilt, and that his client has no obligation to testify to prove his innocence; Mark Smich does so by his own choice. “We believe that you, the jurors, should have the full picture, the absolute full picture,” Dungey says. “He is going to tell you what he did and what happened on May 6 and 7.”

  Smich, who is dressed in a red checked shirt and ivory chinos, gets up from the table where he normally sits and walks to the witness box. He is not wearing his usual shackles, since that might prejudice the jury. He swears on the Bible to tell the truth.

  Dungey asks Smich how old he was when Tim Bosma was murdered.

  “I believe twenty-four,” says Smich, who was in fact twenty-five and is now twenty-eight. His birthday is in August.

  “Tell us about your mother,” says Dungey

  “My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. It might have been a year or two prior. I was taking care of her. She needed someone there. My sisters were busy at that time with their own lives, so I decided to go and do that.” His mother is sixty-eight now and retired from the aerospace company where she worked for decades.

  Smich says his father wasn’t much of a presence in his life after his parents divorced when he was about two years old. Along with his two older sisters, he also has a half-sister from his father’s remarriage. “My family means the world to me,” says Smich. “We were very close.”

  At the time of his arrest, Smich had only a Grade 10 education, but he completed his high school diploma while in custody at the Toronto East Detention Centre. The document is shown to the court. One of his teachers has written a letter describing Smich as “a dedicated, capable and engaged participant.” Smich says he wants to continue his studies.

  Jail has also been good for his health. He has given up drinking and drugs. He works out regularly.

  Dungey skips as quickly as he can past his client’s patchy employment record, about which Smich can recall few details. Basically, apart from a short stint washing dishes and cleaning at Woodie Wood Chuck’s, a knockoff of Chuck E. Cheese’s, he’s never had a proper job. He handed out pamphlets for a friend who owned a Croissant Tree franchise in Mississauga and went canvassing door to door for the Heart & Stroke Foundation as part of his compulsory community service in high school. After his mother moved to Oakville, Smich says, “I did more under-the-table cash jobs, if you want to call it that.”

  He worked briefly at a local motorcycle shop doing renovations and painting, but mostly he earned money dealing drugs, which is how he met Dellen Millard. He puts the year they met at 2008, though a former friend of Millard remembers the connection dating back to 2006. Somebody gave Millard Smich’s number, and Millard made the occasional drug purchase. Then the two fell out of touch.

  A couple of years later, they renewed their acquaintance. Millard would drive Smich, who didn’t have a licence, to pick up drugs. They introduced each other to their different circles of friends, and Millard would invite Smich to play video games. Smich estimates that they started getting closer in 2011. “We had similar things we liked to do,” he says. “We both liked to smoke weed and hang out.”

  Not long after, the thieving “missions” began. The two friends spotted a big enclosed trailer that said “Corvette” on the side and saw that its hitch was facing the road. “We didn’t know what was inside,” says Smich, “just hitched it up and drove off. I believe we took it to Maple Gate.” Inside, they found Corvette rims. On another occasion, Millard and Smich stole trees from a plant nursery, throwing them over the fence onto an open trailer.

  “Were you compensated, paid?” asks Dungey.

  “Yes. I wouldn’t be able to recollect exactly, at this time, the amount, but there would have been cash involved.”

  Their missions ranged from spur-of-the-moment capers to well-planned activities. Once, when Smich and Millard were at the Wingporium restaurant eating chicken wings, Millard spotted a concrete-floor polisher in the back of a truck. “After we were done eating and having a beer, he said, ‘We’re going to take it.’…We kind of pulled it from one vehicle to another, right in the middle of a busy parking lot.” Smich chuckles at the memory.

  A more elaborate heist involved the theft of a wood chipper from a city equipment storage lot in Oakville. Millard and Smich “scoped out” the grounds in advance, looking for cameras and other security obstacles. “We had bolt cutters, chopped the lock, hooked up the wood chipper to the Yukon, and drove off,” says Smich. Millard used licence plate covers installed by Shane Schlatman to en
sure that his plates couldn’t be seen. The thieves brought gloves, paint, and a change of clothes. They sanded off the Town of Oakville logo and spray-painted over it.

  “Did [Millard] have a purpose for stealing these things, a need?” asks Dungey.

  “Nothing that he would really tell me. He wanted it, and that’s it.”

  Smich says he never kept any of the stolen goods, but he was paid for helping steal them. The numerous trailers they took ended up at the hangar or Millard’s Riverside Drive property.

  “What other jobs did you do for Dellen?” Dungey asks.

  “Legal jobs?”

  “Yes.”

  Smich says he worked on various Millard properties, painting, renovating, and digging ditches, among other things. When he and Marlena Meneses lived in Millard’s basement, she would also help with painting and would keep the place clean. Sometimes, Millard paid Smich cash, at other times it was food, marijuana, or a new pair of shoes. By 2012, their relationship had intensified to the point that Smich was building a room for himself in the basement at Riverside Drive. The plan was that he would live there and share kitchen facilities with Millard, whose apartment would be directly above.

  “I felt like he was a brother to me, family,” says Smich. “I invited him over for Christmas dinner with my own family.” Christina Noudga attended as well. It was December 2012, less than one month after the death of Wayne Millard.

  Despite their shared fondness for marijuana and other recreational drugs, Millard wanted Smich to quit drinking and smoking cigarettes. He gave him medical advice about what to do for his chronically dislocating shoulder. He also promised to build his friend a recording studio to further his rap ambitions. At first, the studio was supposed to be in the garage at Riverside, then Millard decided to locate it at the farm. The excavator was supposed to be used in its construction, but it got stuck in the swamp. “I was kind of pissed off it didn’t happen,” says Smich, “but what can you do, right?”

  Dungey asks how much Millard knew about Smich’s criminal record, which stretches back to 2003, when Smich was sixteen and convicted of breaking and entering and theft. In 2004, there was another theft conviction and a failure to comply with parole conditions. Smich says Millard was aware only of the more recent drug charges and an impaired driving infraction from 2009, as well as the graffiti incident in 2012.