Canadian True Crime - 08 The Murder of Tim Bosma - Part 2

Episode Date: June 10, 2017

[Part 2 of 6] We learn more about Dellen - a party boy rich kid who decides he wants a particular make and model of truck, and doesn’t want to pay for it. So he arranges a test drive with one he sees online. Tim Bosma, the seller of the truck, never returns from the test drive. Who is Dellen Millard? And why did he want that truck?This episode is part one in a multi-part series that covers three cases over six episodes. All episodes, in order, are:07 - The Murder of Tim Bosma08 - Dellen Millard - Part 109 - Dellen Millard - Part 219 - The Murder of Laura Babcock - Part 120 - The Murder of Laura Babcock - Part 233 - Dellen Millard and the murder of his fatherSupport my sponsors! Here's where the discount codes are:www.canadiantruecrime.ca/sponsorsLearn more:Tim’s Tribute - registered charity dedicated to providing assistance to the families of innocent victims of homicideDark Ambition: The Shocking Crime of Dellen Millard and Mark Smich by Ann BrocklehurstPodcasts to check out:The Night Time PodcastDark Topic MisconductSocial media and contact information:Facebook: www.facebook.com/canadiantruecrime/Twitter: twitter.com/CanadianTCpodInstagram: www.instagram.com/canadiantruecrimepod/Email: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/canadiantruecrimeMusic credits:We Talk of DreamsCanadian True Crime loop (track created specifically for this podcast - it starts at around 35:00) Music below is used under an Attribution License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Podcast theme music: Space Trip from www.dl-sounds.comMercury fromwww.dl-sounds.comThese tracks fromhttp://freemusicarchive.org/:Chris ZabriskieMario Bava sleeps in a little later than he expected to Chris Zabriskie - Everybody’s got problems that aren’t mine Chris Zabriskie - There’s a special place for some people Chris Zabriskie - Land on the golden gate Chris Zabriskie - Cylinders 7 Chris Zabriskie - Fly Inverted Past A Jenny Chris Zabriskie - I’m a Man who will fight for your honour Chris Zabriskie - The Life and Times of a Certain K Zabriskie, Patriarch Ketsa - Looping lifeMain information sources:Dark Ambition: The Shocking Crime of Dellen Millard and Mark Smichby Ann BrocklehurstWayne Millard’s Obituary - written by Dellen Millardhttp://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2014-2015/the-murder-of-tim-bosma-the-devil-had-a-name

This is Christy, and welcome to the Canadian True Crime podcast, episode 8, Delin Millard. Please note that this is part 2 of a series. If you haven't listened to part 1, I would encourage you to listen to that one first. It's episode 7, Tim Bosmer. This podcast contains coarse language, adult themes and content of a violent and disturbing nature. Listener discretion is advised. In the previous episode... Police announced they found Bosmer's body yesterday, a tragic end to hope filled days of searching that began when the husband and father went missing last Monday. Why he was

killed is still not clear, but police say he was targeted and was likely dead the same day he disappeared. Meanwhile, the accused, Delin Millard, was transported to this Hamilton Courthouse this morning. That's where the 27-year-old was officially charged with first-degree murder in Bosmer's death. There is a story behind this, which I can't get into. Obviously, it's more than what it appears to be. It's alleged the 27-year-old in another suspect responded to Bosmer's online car ad, and met with him at his encaster home last Monday to test drive his pickup truck. Bosmer never

returned. Delin Millard was born into wealth, his family being legendary in Canadian aviation circles. His grandparents, Carl and Della, started their own charter airline in 1956 called Millard Air. Della was the savvy businesswoman, and Carl was the guy who flew the planes. They only had one child, Wayne, who received early flight training and was flying planes by himself from a very young age. At its height, Millard Air had a fleet of 21 planes based at Toronto's main airport.

The most profitable use for flying had been in the 60s and 70s, when the company's planes delivered auto parts to and from Detroit. Millard Air also offered charter services and participated in some interesting trips, like flying the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on a tour through Canada's North, politicians out on the campaign trail, and transportation of animals. There were bottlenose dolphins in need of transport from Mexico to the Marine Wonderland Theme Park in Niagara Falls, now called Marine Land. Carl Millard also invented a way to get jittery racehorses onto the plane. Gently sloping

and closed ramps meant horses could be transported all over the country. The company also trained aspiring pilots and dabbled in scheduled passenger flights between Toronto and small towns in Ontario, which didn't really turn out to be successful. Wayne Millard met Madeleine Burns in the 70s when he was flying for Air Canada. She was a flight attendant. They got married, and on August 30, 1985, their only child was born, Dellen Millard. His grandmother, Della, had died the year before he was born, and Dellen's name was obviously a tribute to her. Like his father, Dellen was introduced to the family business from a young age, particularly the flying part. He quickly learned how to fly

planes solo. In 1996, Wayne and Madeleine divorced amicably when Dellen was 11, and he continued to be raised primarily by his father. His parents would continue to be friendly, though. By his teens, Dellen was also driving cars and trucks around the airport. A former classmate remembers that Dellen always seemed, quote, a little marginalised, a little different. He recalled Dellen roaming the school halls in grades 6 and 7 eating dog biscuits, for the sole stated reason that they taste good. The classmate says, quote, I didn't even know the guy was so wealthy. He always looked like a bit of a hillbilly. Dellen had been a skinny child, but he put on weight during his early teens, something that he was extremely

sensitive about. His friends during that period called him Dellen the Melon. He blamed his father for feeding him too much pasta. As Dellen's father Wayne followed his father Carl into the family business, the family's fleet of planes were aging and they didn't want to put in the huge investment to replace them. Even though Millard Air had previously filed for bankruptcy, the family continued to operate an aircraft servicing and maintenance facility at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. While the company appeared to retain only a fraction of its old glory, the family finances did not seem to be at risk. Dellen's life was one of affluence and privilege. He had many opportunities presented to him.

On his 14th birthday, his parents came together to stage a press event, where Dellen supposedly became the youngest pilot ever to make solo flights in both a helicopter and fixed wing plane on the same day. All three generations of Millard men were there, Carl, pushing 90 but still in good health, Wayne and Dellen, who was pictured in the media as an overweight, plane looking and awkward young teen with a puffy hairdo. In a television interview, he said, quote, it was just incredible flying alone. You look over at the seat and there's nobody there. After this media event, Dellen was able to get some respect from his peers. There must have been some discord in his house. Between the ages of 15 and 17, Dellen was taken

care of by his uncle, Robert Burns, a veterinary doctor. Dr. Burns later said he looked after Dellen for purely, quote, altruistic reasons. It turned out he wasn't overly fond of the teenager. Dellen attended the Toronto French School, an exclusive private school that cost more than $35,000 a year, who soon dropped out of that school, saying that only a few of his teachers interested him. His parents insisted he take a correspondence course through Subway Academy, an alternative school. He got his diploma to keep his parents happy, and he was out of there. Dellen tried out a number of pursuits in his late teens. There was a stint at Culinary School and a 3D games animation course at Humber College, which came

to an end after he was caught plagiarizing. He also tried out makeup artistry, special effects and tried his hand as a photographer. He staged a softcore porno shoot at the hangar using his love interest at the time as his model, Josie. She posed in a vintage DC4 plane with Millard air stamped on it. The official blurb that accompanied the photo said, quote, her first official act as captain was to make the DC4 a clothing strictly prohibited aircraft. Basically, Dellen drifted from one whim to another, looking for something to strike him as worthwhile. He tried buying houses to renovate and flip, but abandoned that when he realized he was only just breaking even. A stable for him during this period was his well documented

love of partying and love of the ladies. By this time, he had slimmed down, shot up in height, and his once chubby face was sharp. Many females found him attractive. In 2005, at age 19, he had a serious girlfriend who lived in New York City, and he briefly moved there to be with her. He didn't last long before moving back to Toronto, although the two did not officially break up. Not long after that, she leapt off her balcony to her death. The police deemed it to be suicide, but established that prior to the incident, she had a phone conversation with Dellen where she found out that he was continuing to hook up with Josie, the former girlfriend who had played the part of soft-core porn model for his photography

pursuits. And after he moved back to Toronto, Dellen had started seeing a third female, wooing her with grandiose gestures like helicopter rides, trips to see art installations, and the cheesy talk of a future together that seemed to be one of his trademark manipulation tactics. A year or two later, that relationship ended badly with both Dellen and his girlfriend accusing the other of assault. Not a lot is known about this, except that charges were laid on the woman, but not Dellen. The following year, 2006, Dellen's grandfather Carl Millard died, finally passing on his business to Dellen's father, Wayne. The company had always been Carl's baby, but he'd been reluctant to give control to his son, literally until

his death. This upset Wayne, and the two had a difficult relationship for years, at one point not even speaking for several years. Wayne didn't really have the experience or business acumen needed to run a company like that. Millard airplanes hadn't flown in more than 10 years, and almost all the company's revenues were the result of leasing a valuable hangar at Toronto Pearson Airport, the main international airport in Toronto. But Wayne wanted to attempt to ramp up the business again so that he'd be able to leave a legacy for his son Dellen, so started coming up with the basics of a plan to open an aircraft maintenance and repair operation in Waterloo, a town about an hour and 40 minutes drive southwest from

downtown Toronto. During this time, Wayne and Dellen lived in their family house in Etobicoke. In actions that would not really be expected of someone who was supposedly ramping up a business, Wayne was becoming more of a hermit as he aged, and Dellen didn't seem to have many friends of his own at this point. So that same year, when Dellen was 21, Wayne's long-term housekeeper started persuading her grandson to go over in the hopes that he would befriend Dellen. They'd known each other for years, but never actually hung out as friends. But now, the Millard House had everything that a teenage boy could want. It backed onto a golf course, it had an elevator, multiple large-screen TVs, Xboxes and a swimming

pool, just to name a few features. So it was easy for the grandson to agree. His name was Matthew Hagerman. He was still in high school, and before long, he and his friends were hanging out at the Millard House constantly. The age difference between Dellen and his new group of friends was four to five years, which meant that Dellen was legally an adult and able to buy alcohol for them all. He also had no real job or responsibilities, so was available for fun times as soon as the gang finished school. As they all started turning 18, Dellen invited them to move into the home he shared with his father and live in the basement, despite them all coming from middle-class, stable family situations. But Dellen's was basically

a party house now where people came and went, and there was always alcohol and drugs on tap. Not surprisingly, the boys didn't have any problem with this arrangement. The neighbours were not happy. The police were called out to the house several times. What about Dellen's father? Why did Wayne allow this to happen, given he was also living at the house? Well, he kept well out of their way. His acquaintances and colleagues said he was a private person, an alcoholic with no close friends of his own. In the book Dark Ambition, the shocking crime of Dellen Millard and Mark Smitch by Anne Brocklehurst, an old friend of Dellen's at the party house said that Wayne just shuffled off to the bedroom and locked the door. He

never told anyone to actually leave the house. When it seemed like he'd had enough, he'd make sure the fridge wasn't stocked with food, thereby passively encouraging the group to go elsewhere when they wanted more. Dellen Millard first met Mark Smitch in 2006. As you recall, Mark Smitch is a sketchy-looking guy who went on the test drive with Dellen and Tim Bosmer in 2013. In 2006, he played the role of weed dealer. Mark Smitch had a police record for petty crime, including possession of cocaine and magic mushrooms, failure to appear in court, breach of bail terms, driving well-impaired and graffiti offences. As we know, his father said he lived with his mother and didn't have any contact with him. Mark

Smitch didn't come from a well-known family like Dellen, so not as much information is known about them. But what we do know is that, also unlike Dellen, he had a long history of problems. Despite coming from a middle-class family, he'd been in a stream of trouble since middle school. To try and put an end to the problem, his family moved from Mississauga to Oakville, both cities on the west side of the Greater Toronto area. Mississauga is a sprawling, growing city with a diverse socioeconomic and multicultural profile, and Oakville is smaller and considered to be more affluent and desirable of an area. The move from Mississauga to Oakville was apparently in the hope of Mark sorting himself out, but it didn't exactly

work. Mark was considered the black sheep of the family. His two older sisters had established careers and stable jobs, but by contrast, when Mark was arrested at age 25, he was known primarily for getting high, drinking and dealing drugs. When he had no drug supply, he sold single cigarettes to students at the local high school. They said they found him creepy. He kept some odd jobs here and there, working at a croissant restaurant in a mall, delivering newspapers and painting for a friend's business. One of his friends offered to get him a decent paying job in construction, but Mark turned him down. Mark was an aspiring rapper. He is a sample of one of his raps.

Yes, it's like a freestyle session with no lesson, no question. I'm killing you in possessions. It's mine. I'm a killer. Check my design mountains. I climb and throw you off too. I'm not a rap connoisseur. In fact, I'm not really a fan of the genre, so I can't really tell if that's supposed to be good or not. Anyway, Mark had a girlfriend, Marlena Menesis, and they'd been together for close to a year when he was arrested. They were both high school dropouts. When Marlena had problems at home, she had moved in with Mark and his mother. We all know from the last episode that Mark looked exactly like the sketchy drug dealer

that he was. His mother's neighbors were not fond of him or his friends and weed clients who socialized outside the front of his mother's house. So how did a guy like this come to socialize with a guy like Dellen Millard? Well, it was the weed. Dellen wanted weed for his parties, and Mark was the guy who sold it to him. A former friend of Dellen's recalled that at first, Dellen couldn't stand Mark because he had the whole quote, white gangster thing going on. But Mark seemed desperate to get into Dellen's inner circle, but for the first few years, he would continue to be just the weed guy. From the last episode, you'll remember Andrew Mikowski as Dellen's roommate who had potentially

incriminating information on Dellen and was the reason why Dellen was writing those manipulative letters to his girlfriend Christine from prison. He wanted her to secretly talk to Andrew and get him to change his story. Well, Andrew met Dellen in 2007, the year after Mark's Mitch entered the scene as the weed dealer. Andrew was also one of the early gang of teens who was allowed to live in the basement of the Millard house. Andrew was pleased that Dellen would let him drive some of the cars in his collection, including his Cadillac and Camaro. When they were out at a bar or restaurant, Dellen would usually foot the bill. He paid for a couple's vacation with their girlfriends to the British Virgin Islands.

Andrew later said that being around Dellen made him feel, quote, indestructible. A peripheral member of the gang of teens would later come forward to recount her memories of that time period, giving permission only to publish her quotes under a pseudonym. She said some people in the suburb of Etobicoke where the Millard house was saw Dellen as some sort of saviour, someone who would give them an escape from their boring lives. Others saw him as a damaged rich kid trying to get back his youth. She said, quote, when you're talking to him and he's staring you straight in the eye and was pseudo charming, I think people were very comfortable with that. Above all else, people thought he was very mysterious.

She said that Dellen typically kept his party drug stash in a yellow Stanley toolbox. This toolbox will make an appearance later. In 2007, Wayne Millard appointed Dellen and his ex-wife Madeline Burns as VPs at Millard Air. Dellen took this as carte blanche to spend even larger amounts of money, which Wayne never questioned. All he expected from Dellen was that he show up at the hangar from time to time. But his expectations of his home situation were clearly a bit higher. By this point, Wayne was starting to get really annoyed with the constant parties and basement dwellers at his house and he put an end to the situation. Everyone except Dellen was out. Not wanting to lose his friends, Dellen came up with an

alternate solution and moved with his friends into his rental property in Toronto, charging them cheap rent. Again, their constant parties annoyed the neighbours, but the situation continued for quite a while. Dellen would take off for lavish vacations with his friends on a whim. He was always picking up the tab at bars and clubs for his friends. Dellen and his friends also liked to steal. The heist started off small, like stealing plants from a nursery, but as time went on, the items became bigger. A concrete floor buffer, a wood chipper, a trailer full of wheel rims, various cars and motorcycles. A friend later said that it seemed like everything was a game to Dellen. Despite being wealthy, he was so privileged

that he seemed to want to steal things just for the rush of it. And Dellen's entourage of younger, eager, stray friends were the perfect people to help him execute his plans. During this time, his relationship with Mark Smith started turning from just a drug dealer and client to a friendship. After sharing a joint one night, they began to feel a kind of kinship. The two came from very different class backgrounds, but they clicked. Like Dellen, Mark came from a family with baggage. His dad wasn't really around, and he only had a mother and two sisters, and it seemed like he wanted a male figure in his life, whether it be a father type or a brother figure. Dellen would be that figure. To Dellen, Mark

proved to be a valuable asset. He would do odd jobs at the hangar and construction work on some of Dellen's properties. Dellen never actually paid him money, but he paid in other ways, like letting Mark and his girlfriend Marlene move into the basement of the house and buying them food and clothes. Dellen even promised to build a music studio in his house so that Mark could record his debut rap album. They both came from opposite ends of the spectrum, but Mark ended up becoming Dellen's most trusted collaborator. Do you have a passion project that you're ready to take to the next level? Squarespace makes it easy for anyone to create an engaging web presence, grow a brand and sell anything

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there are so many intuitive options from embedding an audio player so listeners can stream episodes to scheduling posts to be published on a certain date, an easily moderated comment section and automatically displaying recent episodes on the homepage. Every Squarespace website and online store includes SEO tools to help you maximize your visibility in search engines, and I love the powerful insights I can get from the analytics tools, helping me better understand who's visiting the site, where they came from and how they're interacting with it. Do you have a passion project or business idea or something to sell? Go to squarespace.com slash ctc for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer

code CTC to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash ctc with offer code CTC and get your passion project off the ground today. In the meantime, the party lifestyle continued. In 2009, Dylan staged a concert at his hangar to celebrate the birthdays of Andrew Mikowski and another member of the gang. The concert spectacular included live bands and apparently cost tens of thousands of dollars. Dylan, of course, footed the bill for the whole thing himself, even though people wondered where that much money was coming from since he had no specific job. Also that year, when Dylan was 24, he began a serious relationship with Jennifer Spafford, the daughter of one of

his mother's childhood friends. She was a ballerina. They were apparently a striking couple who impressed others with their looks and outwardly happy relationship. They went on lavish trips to Europe and Asia with Dylan footing the bill. In 2010, they bought a house in Oakville for $600,000 in cash, which was registered in Jennifer's name. Let me tell you that back then that would have been quite a large house and they gutted and renovated it entirely. In 2011, at age 25, Dylan proposed to Jennifer Spafford with an expensive Tiffany engagement ring. She said yes. That same year, five years after Karl Millard died, Wayne Millard decided it was time to turn his dream into a reality and Millard Air signed a long

term lease at the Waterloo Airport and built a hangar there, taking on a substantial bank loan. It was a huge, multi-million dollar project and Wayne hadn't done anything like it before. He also decided that it was time that Dylan got an actual job and told him that much of the project would be his to manage. But Dylan also had other interests going. That year, he purchased his farm in Air, Ontario for $850,000, again paying cash for it. He purchased the 100-acre property from a couple who had owned it for 45 years. They later told the media that Dylan drove a hard bargain and said afterwards they felt a little cheated. It didn't have any buildings on it other than a rundown old barn, but Dylan had told

his real estate agent that he and his fiance Jennifer planned to build their dream home there. Dylan arranged an engagement photo shoot at his aircraft hangar at Toronto Pearson Airport before it was scheduled to get torn down. The entire stylized shoot was orchestrated by Dylan himself. The happy couple were shown in a variety of slick poses and outfits, including Dylan himself, who had several changes in clothes. In one shot, Jennifer was on point in her ballet shoes on top of a vintage jeep while a blurry Dylan looked on wearing a sort of Sherlock Holmes type get-up. While wearing another outfit, he decided his jeans didn't have that ripped-up look that he wanted, so actually grabbed a large knife and carved

them up before the photographer started snapping that scene. A few weeks later, the wedding had been called off. Jennifer had discovered that Dylan had been cheating on her with 18-year-old Christina Newtka, the girlfriend he would eventually write letters to from prison. Jennifer moved out. Side note, Jennifer and Dylan remained friendly after their breakup, and she would continue to live in one of his condos and drive a car registered in his name right up until his arrest. In fact, she and Dylan texted back and forth the week Tim Bosmer was murdered, arranging get-togethers and flirting. At the time he was arrested, Dylan Millard had a tangled web of three love interests. Christina Newtka was Dylan's official

girlfriend at the time, his ex-fiancé Jennifer was female love interest number two, and Dylan was also entangled romantically with his real estate agent who was trying to sell his condo. The month after Dylan ended his engagement with Jennifer Spafford, he drove 5,000 kilometers to Mexico's Baja, California, peninsula. He took his roommate Andrew Mikowski and Shane Schlappmann, a Millard-er employee who was hired as a mechanic. Shane Schlappmann was also the son-in-law of Arthur Jennings, the employee who called crime stoppers when he noticed Tim Bosmer's truck show up in Dylan's hangar. The goal of the trip to Mexico was to enter the Baja 500 race. Established in 1969, the world famous competition includes

more than two dozen race classics, including trucks, sedans, ATVs, motorcycles and jeeps. Participating and succeeding in the race requires both financial backing and excellent driving skills, two things Dylan clearly thought he had. Shane, the mechanic, had made $80,000 worth of modifications to one of Dylan's jeeps, even pimping out the air conditioning to make sure the vehicle was comfortable in the harsh desert sun. But alas, Dylan was not the professional race car driver he fancied himself to be. Just 25km into the gruelling 800km race, they entered some harsh terrain. The jeep hit a tree and the undercarriage of the car and transmission was severely damaged. Shane wasn't able to fix it in time for them to rejoin

the race, so this race was over. Although the Baja 500 had been an expensive venture with no payoff, Dylan was determined to come back next time even more prepared. He was obsessed with this race, he even got a desert Baja racing logo emblazoned on his left bicep and Andrew Mikulski got the same tattoo on his left shoulder. One of the ways Dylan planned on changing things up was the way they'd towed the jeep to Mexico. They'd put it on a trailer and hitched it to his red Dodge pickup. Unfortunately the Dodge was a gas guzzler and the trip had cost him close to $10,000 in fuel alone. Dylan decided that next time they made the trip, they would use a Dodge diesel truck to tow the jeep down as he thought that would save

on fuel costs. The next summer, he texted a to-do list to Mark Smitch. It literally said, quote, nab a 3500. Tim Bosmer's truck was a Dodge Ram 3500 diesel. After his split with Jennifer forced him to move out and after he got back from the Baja races, Dylan decided to return to his father's house in Etobicoke. He resumed moving his friends into the basement. This time, Mark Smitch was one of them. The two were now tight. His relationship with Christina Nudgar went from her being the other girl in his engagement to her being the main girlfriend. Christina Nudgar was from Etobicoke, where Dylan lived and was introduced to Dylan's group through Andrew Mikulski. She was 18 when she met Dylan and he was 25.

She lived with her Ukrainian immigrant parents in a modest house, so Dylan's show of wealth impressed her. A former friend said that she worshipped and constantly gushed about him. Dylan was an adrenaline junkie and he showed her a life of thrills, including going skydiving with him and his friends. But jealousy had long been an issue with the two of them. She had suspected him many times of cheating on her and although he continuously denied it, she of course was correct. Despite this, they'd stay together and were now practically living together. He trusted her. Through Christina's circle of friends, Dylan was introduced to Laura Babcock. You'll remember Laura Babcock from the previous episode.

She was the sometime love interest of Dylan's who went missing and the subject of the additional first degree murder charge that was announced for Dylan Millard and Mark Smitch. As is what seems to be a pattern with Dylan, there was an overlap between his relationship with his girlfriend Christine and his with Laura Babcock. Laura was a recent graduate of the University of Toronto, majoring in English and Drama and she came from a middle class family. She played the flute, was on the high school marching band and had a part time job at a toy store. She was described as bubbly and charming and was going out with a decent guy called Sean Lerner. But since graduating from university, Laura was unsure as to what she was going

to do with her life. She had suffered unspecified mental health problems for years and had visited many doctors looking for treatment and a diagnosis. She hadn't found anything that worked. In desperation, she began to combine her prescription meds with recreational drugs to see if that made any difference. Instead, it became a bit of a problem. Her relationship with Sean Lerner broke down although he continued to care deeply for her. Laura was now a drug addict. Her parents had asked her to move out. She moved in with a new boyfriend, a seedy guy who encouraged her to participate in shoplifting and introduced her to the sex trade as an internet escort. The relationship ended in a blaze, with him being arrested for assault, theft

and sexual assault. Laura felt that she couldn't move back home, so she couch surfed at the houses of friends and acquaintances, wearing out her welcome with increasingly erratic behaviour. It was at this time that she supposedly upset her friend Christina Nudgar by sleeping with Dylan Millard and gossiping to her friends about it. The police would later say that Laura and Dylan had a non-traditional relationship, which I believe means they were just sleeping together. All the while, her ex-boyfriend Sean Lerner continued to be concerned about her well-being. The pretty brown-haired girl next door that he'd loved had been replaced by a skinny girl with dyed blonde hair. In an effort to keep Laura safe, Sean had paid

for her to stay at a cheap hotel in the west end of Toronto, one that would accept dogs because she was never without her white Maltese, Lacey. A few days before Laura went missing, she dropped her dog off at her parents' house along with a shoebox full of cash. She also made her last phone calls to Dylan Millard, eight of them on July 2nd and 3rd 2012. These would be the last phone calls she would make. It was of course her ex-boyfriend Sean Lerner who first noticed she was missing on July 14th 2012, 10 months before Tim Bosmer's disappearance. Sean went to the police, but they told him he wasn't a family member, so he didn't have the right to file a missing person's report. Her parents successfully

filed one a few days later, but the police deemed her disappearance as a runaway situation. Sean didn't believe a word of it. He went to the police multiple times with Laura's phone bill and other information, but the Toronto police brushed him off. They said she probably just left on some kind of adventure and would eventually return. Even though her phone bill showed that the last eight calls she made before she disappeared were to Dylan Millard, Sean believed that once the police found out about Laura's drug habit, there were even more casual about her disappearance. He tried over and over again to contact them, but was met with a brick wall each time. They wouldn't even call him back. Out of frustration,

Sean decided to contact Dylan Millard himself, telling him that he had Laura's phone bill and was wondering about her last contact with him. Dylan responded immediately, suggesting that they meet as early as that afternoon. Sean wasn't able to, so they met for a coffee at a Starbucks the next day. Sean said that Dylan initially denied having spoken with Laura at all, but when he was shown the phone records, Dylan suddenly remembered that yes, he had spoken with her and it was about her wanting drugs. Sean pressed him even further, but Dylan cut the conversation short, saying he had to be somewhere else. With Laura still missing and the police not doing anything about it, Sean teamed up with Laura's parents

in efforts to find her. They created a Facebook group and posted Flyers advertising a $5,000 reward to help spread the word. At one point, there was a tip that she might have been working at a strip club in Las Vegas, but nothing ended up coming of it. Slowly, with no new information or leads, the search for Laura Babcock went nowhere. She was just missing. Dylan continued to get Mark's smidge more involved in his side activities, many of them illegal. There were times when Dylan would pay Mark in cash, like when they pulled off a successful heist. When Dylan said he wanted to purchase a gun, Mark introduced him to Matthew Ward Jackson, an alleged gun dealer and fellow aspiring rapper. The weapon Dylan bought was

a Walter PPK, the same iconic gun used by James Bond. It would be the perfect touch for the gangster image Dylan had apparently been working on. While brokering the purchase via text message with Matthew Ward Jackson in February 2012, Dylan asked him, by the way, is it clean or dirty? Clean. Bring her back safe please. By the time I let her go, she'll be a dirty girl. Before setting out on a heist, Dylan would scope out the area in advance. He would then send a text message asking his buddies to stand watch while he and Mark grabbed whatever they happened to be taking that day. Why did someone who flashed cash around, owned multiple properties and cars, and took pals on lavish vacations

have to resort to stealing? Well, there are indications that Dylan was actually cash poor. The hangar at Waterloo cost a lot of money, but the business wasn't bringing in a lot of revenue. It was supposed to be a multi-million dollar aircraft maintenance facility, but not a single plane ever got there for that purpose. Instead, the hangar mostly held Dylan Millard's toys, cars, jet skis and motorcycles. Many of them stolen. Millard Air employees had realized that the hangar had become the headquarters for Dylan's criminal activity and dodgy looking friends. But they were happy to have the job, and Dylan clearly used generosity and shallow signs of respect as motivational tactics with them.

So, as long as the employees were getting paid, they were happy to continue to be in his employ. Not surprisingly, in 2012, the development of the hangar at Waterloo had gone far beyond Wayne Millard's original assessment. There were obviously financial issues, and the tension between Dylan and his father, Wayne, was escalating. Dylan was spending too much money and not taking responsibility for the business, so his father told him he may need to cut him off. Wayne was not going to let him ruin the family business. But the business operated in a strange way, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the staff members. Dylan would buy expensive machinery only to bust them through improper use and

dump them immediately. Sometimes Wayne would have staff transporting barrels filled with oil and kerosene to Dylan's farm for storage. These things were well beyond the scope of their job descriptions, but the employees generally complied without question. James Schlatman, one of the three from the Baja Races expedition, worked at Millard Air as a mechanic, mostly tinkering on Dylan's collection of cars. Basically, if anything even remotely mechanical needed to be done, he was the guy to do it. In early 2012, Dylan asked Shane to build him an incinerator. At first, he said it was needed to burn off garbage from his properties. Dylan told his girlfriend, Christina Nudgar,

that he needed the incinerator to melt down metal from his airport business, the business that didn't have any clients and had little revenue. So, as a due to full Millard Air employee tended to do, Shane got to work and built an incinerator. But it was dangerously crude. It was essentially three 50-gallon drums welded together on top of each other and looked like a makeshift rocket. After several attempts at getting it to work properly, one of the attempts apparently almost blew up. So, Dylan gave up on that idea and decided to buy a professionally manufactured livestock incinerator. The incinerator he bought was not the sort of thing anyone would purchase on impulse. At more than three meters tall

and weighing 2,700 kilograms or nearly 6,000 pounds, it can cremate up to 225 kilograms or 496 pounds of animal carcass in just hours. This was a serious piece of equipment and its retail price was more than $15,000. But it wasn't enough for Dylan. To turn it into the machine he'd envisioned, the unit needed to be mobile on a trailer with a propane tank and a generator so it could be towed wherever it was needed. Shane got to work to modify a trailer so that the incinerator could be mobile. After Shane's modifications, the eliminator was born. And all up it ended up costing about $23,000. A representative for the company that distributes the machine in Canada said they'd never seen anyone modify

the incinerator that way before. In fact, the modifications were so outlandish that Shane was asked to send photos of it. Dylan gave Shane yet another reason why he wanted such an incinerator. He said he wanted to get into business with his uncle, Dr. Robert Burns, the vet who also looked after him when he was in his teens. The story went that Dr. Burns wanted to cut the high cost of destroying animal carcasses in Toronto and Dylan saw it as a money making opportunity. The eliminator was paid for by Millard Air and by strange coincidence, a contractor who was working at the company found out the story about the vet partnership, but also knew Dr. Robert Burns. So one day he mentioned it to Robert.

Robert was shocked. He had never once discussed the subject with Dylan. His relationship with Dylan was strange and distant, so it's not exactly something they would have discussed let alone put into action. And in fact, Robert had been using the same carcass disposal company for 26 years and was satisfied with the service. By this stage, Millard Air was at a strange standstill and hired a consultant as part of a plan to revitalise the business and take it in a new, more profitable direction. The consultant, Al Sharif, said Dylan often didn't finish his assignments and would go rogue and do his own thing like making modifications to the building without telling anyone. He had a habit of not showing up until noon and

continued to keep his personal toys at the hangar. Dylan had a plan to steal some ride on mowers, but that fell through when the ones he identified were moved just before his plan was executed. Next, he wanted to add a bobcat to his collection. In October 2012, he rallied his entourage through a series of text messages telling them they were going to be stealing a bobcat. A bunch of them were given jobs as lookouts and Dylan had his most trusted accomplice, Mark Smitch, as his right-hand guy. They grabbed the bobcat from a construction site in the dark hours of the morning and drove it to the Millard Air hangar at Waterloo Airport. Shane Schlatman, Millard Air Mechanic extraordinaire, removed the GPS from the bobcat.

The next month, on November the 29th, 2012, the body of Wayne Millard was discovered at his home. Police deemed his death a suicide. It was a shut case and Wayne was cremated without any further investigation. Wayne actually died of a gunshot to the left eye, but Dylan made valiant attempts to keep this fact hidden. Many Millard Air employees were told the cause of death was a heart attack or brain aneurysm. Millard Air consultant Al Sharif said, quote, my immediate reaction was that Wayne's death was not a suicide. He had more reasons to live than to die. One such reason was that Wayne had recently announced he was in love with a new woman and was engaged to be married. Wayne's death meant that 27-year-old Dylan

immediately took over as CEO of Millard Air. The following morning, Dylan texted Mark Smitch saying, tomorrow I start firing people. Within days of Wayne's passing, most of the company's employees were laid off and Dylan cancelled the company's Transport Canada certification which was necessary for the business to operate at Waterloo Airport. Dylan then said about writing the obituary for his father. You know how classic obituaries go. They generally start off with a long list of surviving family members. But many thought the obituary for Wayne Millard was extremely odd because the only other family member mentioned was Dylan Millard, the person who actually wrote it. There was no mention of Dylan's grandparents

Carl and Della, the ones who founded the historic Canadian aviation company which eventually got passed down to Wayne. Additionally, there was absolutely no mention of the new woman in Wayne's life who he was set to marry. Dylan's new role as CEO of Millard Air was not going smoothly. According to the company Bookkeeper at the time, Millard Air had taken out a $3.7 million loan to build the 50,000 square foot hangar at Waterloo Airport. But once it was built, the hangar never bought in any revenue for the company. After Dylan's arrest, the Bookkeeper told police, quote, if you're going by the money that's in the bank account, I'd say things are getting tight, very tight. Later on that same year

his father died, he wrote in text messages to his mother Madeline Burns that his father was, quote, hiding debts. Mom, I'm very confused. How is it that one can fly a plane but not a business? His mother's response was, quote, I think he was slowly poisoning his brain. That's how. Madeline Burns never publicly clarified that comment, but it was well known that Wayne was an alcoholic, so one could assume her comment referred to that, at least in part. With Dylan at the helm, the hangar was never actually used for aircraft business. All that ended up being stored there were his vehicles, alongside stolen property that led police to believe the hangar was housing a chop shop. In spring of the following year,

2013, Dylan sent a text message to his roommate, Andrew Mikowski, saying he needed to make $100,000 a month to get out of the hole. He also said he wasn't sure that Andrew would be, quote, up for his methods. Andrew figured that could mean anything from dealing drugs to the usual stealing type jobs. Dylan continued to send group texts, recruiting Andrew and other buddies for lookout duties while he and Mark Smith stole a trailer or construction equipment. That same spring, Dylan started ramping up his plans for his second trip to the Baja race again. But this time he was going to do it smarter. He stepped up his search for the right vehicle to tow his trailer, a Dodge Ram 3500 diesel. The timeline was set.

In early May 2013, he and his friends started to look at online car sales ads for that particular truck. This is when the conversation happened with Andrew Mikowski, where Dylan asked him if he should steal a truck from the arsehole or the nice guy. And that's when Dylan and Mark Smith started teeing up test drives with other people who were selling Dodge Ram 3500 diesels. You remember Igor Chumineski, the large muscular guy who scared Dylan and Mark during a test drive when he referred to his time in the Israeli army, and Omar Palmili, who missed Dylan's test drive call because he fell asleep. Then there was Tim Bosma. The day of that fateful test drive, Dylan Millard met with his mother for lunch at a restaurant,

where he picked up a certified check for over $400,000. The money was to help him out of the difficulties he was having closing his condo with real estate agent Lisa Widen, the agent he was also having a casual romantic deliance with. At about 8pm, as Tim and Charlene Bosma were waiting for the potential buyers to show up for the test drive, Dylan started texting with Shane Schlappmann, bouncing off a tower near Mark Smith's house. From 8.45pm onwards, it was just Dylan and Mark's phone. At 9.05, the burner phone they had, registered to the bogus person called Lucas Bate, pinged an encastered tower when it called Tim Bosma. That was the last call that phone would ever make. At 9.20pm, as they pulled up at the Bosma

house, Mark Smith texted his girlfriend Marlena Minnesis. His phone ran out of battery after that and was off for the rest of the night. Dylan's phone remained on, and over the next few hours it received a series of chatty texts from his real estate agent. At 11.30pm that night, two hours after the test drive started, Dylan texted his girlfriend Christina saying, going to be an all-nighter. As was shown on surveillance video gathered by police, Dylan's truck, Tim Bosma's truck and the Eliminator eventually made their way back to the Millard air hangar at Waterloo. In the early hours of the next morning, as the body of Tim Bosma was being incinerated, Dylan chatted with his real estate agent Lisa

about their pets, as if nothing had happened. We're going to leave it there for this episode. Thanks for listening. I've covered Dylan Millard's story up until the murder of Tim Bosma. Next episode will be the conclusion of this story, and we're going to cover what Dylan and Mark Smith did in the days between Tim Bosma's death and their separate arrests, how they scrambled to cover up what they'd done, and persuaded those around them to assist. And of course, we'll cover what happened in the trial for the murder of Tim Bosma, and give you the latest on the trials for the murders of Laura Babcock and Wayne Millard. The next episode is scheduled for release on June the 28th. I know

that seems like a long time away, so thanks for your patience. If you did want this episode at least a couple of days sooner, I've just set up a Patreon account where you can sign up to get an early ad-free release of this episode and all my future episodes. To find out more, visit www.patreon.com forward slash Canadian True Crime. Absolutely no pressure whatsoever, it's just great to have you as a listener. A huge thank you again to Jordan Bonaparte from The Nighttime Podcast for reprising his role as Dylan Millard. If you haven't checked it out yet, The Nighttime Podcast covers Canadian True Crime, Mysteries and the Paranormal, mainly concentrating on Atlantic Canada. I've really enjoyed the recent series about Kayla Reed,

a 20-year-old girl from Newfoundland who vanished, but was found two weeks later living as part of a spiritual cult in Costa Rica. The story was really fascinating. And joining Jordan this episode, playing the brief role of the dodgy gun dealer, is Jack Luna from Dark Topic. Dark Topic is another podcast from Canada that covers, well, Dark Topics, including True Crime. Jack Luna is another amazing storyteller and the episodes are littered with raw, witty and sarcastic observations, alongside super-interesting anecdotes from his own life. A huge standout for me was the episode on Dr. Kevorkian, who was best known for publicly advocating for a terminal patient's right to die via doctor-assisted suicide. I keep thinking that if Hunter S.

Thompson decided to do a podcast, Dark Topic would come very close to what that podcast would sound like. I'm a huge fan. And my last recommendation is Misconduct, another quality True Crime show hosted by my US friends Eileen and Colleen. Here's their trailer. So by now you know it's time for the review shoutouts. But I have to be honest and say it's time to wave my white flag and surrender. I just can't be reading them out anymore. Please know that it's not because I don't read and appreciate every single review that I get, whether it be on iTunes or the Facebook page. But I'm just getting too many now. It's such an amazing problem to have and I'm so grateful. But let's face it,

ain't nobody got time to hear me butcher over a hundred names at the end of each episode. It's also taking me quite a chunk of time to gather all the names from the various iTunes country pages as well as the Facebook page. I could select a few to read out, but honestly, I wouldn't really know how to pick. So cutting these reads out will free up a little more time for me which will allow me to concentrate on getting more content out to you. I really hope you understand. So if you've left a review, sent me an email, message, commented on my post, or recommended this podcast to others. Thank you so much. You guys really are the best. I'll be back soon with another Canadian true crime story. See you soon.

Bye.