True Crime Campfire - Ambition: The Crimes of Dellen Millard

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.” Most of us want to aim high in our lives, chase our sparkliest dreams. Today’s story focuses on a man who had big ambitions—and unlike most of us, he was born into the kind of wealth that could have opened just about any door in the world for him. From the time he could talk, his parents made sure he knew he was their little golden princeling, a chosen one entitled to take the world by storm—shoot through life like a comet. He could have become anything he wanted. But what he wanted to be was a killer. Join us for the story of one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers, Dellen Millard, and his partner in crime Mark Smich.Sources:Anne Brocklehurst, Deadly AmbitionCBC's "The Fifth Estate," episode "The Murders of Dellen Millard"Dr. Joni Johnston, Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-equation/201901/the-case-serial-killer-dellen-millard#:~:text=Dellen%20was%20an%20only%20child,of%20roofs%20at%20pool%20parties. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42375159 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5194930/dellen-millard-murder-laura-babcock-tim-bosma-mark-smich-christina-noudga-letters/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4480285/decision-trial-dellen-millard-father/https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/parole-revoked-for-man-who-sold-guns-to-triple-killer-dellen-millard https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/dellen-millard-2https://www.truecrimeedition.com/post/dellen-millard https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-dellen-millard-1.4988378#:~:text=Millard%20was%20found%20guilty%20in,able%20to%20apply%20for%20parole. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/11/18/the-israeli-army-vet-who-escaped-tim-bosmas-fate.html?rf https://globalnews.ca/news/560553/tim-bosma-a-timeline-of-the-police-investigation/ https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/06/17/man-who-went-for-test-drive-before-tim-bosma-considers-himself-lucky.html https://annrbrocklehurst.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/my-sweet-serial-killer-wrote-dellen-millards-girlfriend/ https://annrbrocklehurst.wordpress.com/2016/11/23/farewell-christina-noudga-whos-taken-a-plea-deal-will-work-for-human-rights/ Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Marcus Aurelius once wrote, A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. Most of us want to aim high in our lives. chase our sparkliest dreams. Today's story focuses on a man who had big ambitions,

and unlike most of us, he was born into the kind of wealth that could have opened just about any door in the world for him. From the time he could talk, his parents made sure he knew he was their little golden princeling, a chosen one entitled to take the world by storm, shoot through life like a comet. He could have become anything he wanted, but what he wanted was to be a killer. Join us for the story of one of Canada's most notorious serial killers. This is Ambition, the crimes of Dellen Millard. So, Campers, for this one, we're in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 6, 2013. 32-year-old Tim Bosma had just tucked his toddler daughter into bed,

and he and his wife, Charlene, were waiting around for a couple guys who'd contacted them about a Craigslist-type ad they'd placed about selling their Dodge Ram truck. The guys were supposed to be there at 7 p.m. to test drive the truck. Now, it was 9, and there was no sign of them. Annoying and kind of rude, but Tim and Charlene really wanted to unload this truck. They loved it, but it was costing him a lot of money, and they wanted to have another baby soon. They were going to need all the extra cash they could get. Finally, a little after nine, the two guys showed up.

Just came strolling up on foot, which was a little strange and a little uneasy. But Tim and Charlene really just wanted to get that test drive over with so they could get on with their nightly routine. The guys seemed friendly enough, easygoing, but because it was getting so late and the sun was going down, Tim took Charlene aside and asked her, do you think I should go with him on the test drive? Later, Charlene would remember this moment on the Canadian TV show The Fifth Estate, and even years later, you can hear the pain in her voice. I told him, yes, she said, because we wanted the truck to come back. The worst case scenario she could think of was that the two men might take off with the truck

and never bring it back. Anything worse than that didn't even cross their minds. So Charlene told Tim, yeah, go ahead, go with him. When Tim wasn't back an hour later, Charlene started to worry. She called his cell, but it went straight to voicemail. She knew it couldn't be out of juice. She'd seen him charge it when he got home from work earlier. Alarm bells were clanging in her head, and she didn't wait.

She called the Hamilton police and reported Tim missing. The responding officers were concerned pretty much right away, given Charlene's story about the two strangers Tim had driven off with. And by the next morning, when Tim still hadn't come home or called, the story hit the news all over Canada, and what would soon come to be called the Basma Army started assembling, starting with Tim's closest buds and soon growing to hundreds of volunteers, all searching for this husband and father and friend. Tim was, as you can probably tell, a much-loved guy.

He was a contractor. He drove a pickup truck and loved road trips and country music. He was fun to be around, and he adored Charlene and their little girl. The story seemed to hit people hard right from day one. Maybe because Tim seemed like kind of an everyman, the kind of guy who could be your brother, or your best friend or your next-door neighbor. And because his beautiful wife was so obviously gutted by his disappearance. She did a heartbreaking press conference where she begged who ever had Tim to let him come home to her and their baby daughter. It was just a truck, she said,

almost as if she couldn't believe she was having to say something so obvious. It was just a stupid truck. As Charlene made her public plea to Tim's abductors, the Hamilton police were working on two big things at once. For one, they were putting together a timeline of what had happened to Tim on the night he went missing, using security footage they gathered from cameras all over town. As they viewed the videos, something stood out to them right away. A dark SUV that started following Tim's truck not long after it pulled out of the Basma's driveway.

Following the little caravan of two using the surveillance footage from various local businesses, the investigators watched the truck and the SUV travel to Waterloo Airport and pull up to one of the big aircraft hangers there. At some point along the way, out of the side of cameras, Tim Bosma's truck had had a trailer hitched up to it, towing some kind of big heavy equipment. They couldn't tell what it was. They couldn't see everything that was happening.

It was night. The security footage wasn't the best. And there were areas that weren't covered. But they saw enough to make them very concerned for Tim Bosma. At one point, they watched as two men walked into the hangar on foot. and Tim didn't seem to be one of them. Where was he? A little later, off in the distance,

they could see what looked like a huge flame leaping up from that piece of equipment Tim's truck had been towing earlier. The flame burned all night long. Now, in addition to collecting and viewing all the surveillance, which took a while, as you can imagine, the investigators were also following up on a tip that came in as soon as the story

of Tim Bosma's disappearance hit the news. The tipster's name, was Igor Tuminenko. He said that he'd been trying to sell his own Dodge Ram pickup truck. He'd placed an ad online, and just two days before Tim Bosma went missing, he'd gotten a call from a guy who said he and his buddy wanted to come test drive the truck. His story was eerily similar to Charlene Bosmas. Two guys showed up on foot. They were quite a bit late, which pissed Igor off because he had plans that day, and these rude dwebes were going to make him late for them. He remembered that the taller guy introduced himself as Evan and was carrying what Igor called a man bag,

sort of a cross between an Indiana Jones satchel type thing and a smaller bag, like the one Zach Galaphanacus had in the hangover. Igor also remembered that Evan had a tattoo on his wrist. It said ambition. He said he needed the truck to tow race cars. They all got into the truck for the test drive. Now, there's something you've got to understand about Igor too much. Menenko. He's enormous, as the name would suggest, honestly.

Yeah, I know, right. Tall and built. And unless you crave danger, he doesn't look like somebody you'd want to mess with. He was also in the Israeli army earlier in his life. And as they drove around with Evan at the wheel and his so far quiet buddy in the back, Igor told them about it. This perked up the guy in the back seat. What did you do in the Israeli army? he wanted to know. Igor turned around and looked him in the eye. You don't want to know, he said. Now, if I had been in the truck with him, I'd probably have rolled my eyes at this, but it got a big reaction out of Evan and his little buddy. Evan whipped around and shot his friend a significant glance, TM, so fast that Igor was afraid he was going to run the truck off

the road. It was like some kind of unspoken message passed between them. After that, the whole vibe inside the truck changed. Evan sped up the truck so fast that Igor was starting to get really nervous. But after a while, Evan drove them all back to Igor's house and that was that. He didn't make an offer on the truck. Igor thought it was a kind of a weird encounter, but until Tim Bosma went missing, he didn't think much more about it. Now, he was starting to think he'd made a lucky escape. Possibly because all of his talk about being a highly trained soldier. And when he showed the police the phone number that Evan had used to contact him about the truck, their heart rate sped up. It was the same number that had reached out to Tim Bosma. Right around the time they were figuring this

out, they were also putting together all that surveillance footage and watching that eerie little scene Katie described to you earlier, the big flame off in the distance, burning all through the night. And they quickly learned who owned the aircraft hangar where Tim Bosma's truck had pulled in that night. It belonged to Millard Air Incorporated, a company that provided aircraft maintenance and servicing. The company had started out as an airline and then shifted to maintenance. The owner, Wayne Millard had died in December of 2012, and after that, detectives learned, his 28-year-old son had taken over, Dellen Millard. Huh. Well, this was an interesting development. The Mallards were a prominent wealthy family in the aviation business since the early 60s, and Dellen

was the only child. Born in 1985, Dellen had the best of everything from his very first breath. His parents sent him to private school and took him on luxury vacations and basically just treated him like a little golden princeling. As psychologist and friend of the show, Dr. Joney Johnston wrote in psychology today, Dellen's folks lavished him with attention and praise, ticking all three of the boxes on the how to raise a narcissist checklist. One, teach them there's nobody on God's Green Earth more special than they are. Two, teach them the rules don't apply to them. Let them get away with asshole behavior because of their extra special specialness.

And three, send the message that the world just doesn't understand them. Now, I know the teachers out there know these parents. I once had the dad of one of my high school students back in the early Cretaceous period when I taught high school try to sell me on the idea that his little sweet piece. just misunderstood the assignment when he printed out somebody else's entire paper from the internet, put his name on it, and turned it in as his final exam. Poor little misunderstood muffin. Yeah, that level of self-absorption is so bizarre to me. Like, not only is your kid a cheater, but he's a bad one. If you're going to defend him, make sure he's at least

not printing out Wikipedia articles and pretending he wrote it with the citation number still next to some of the phrases. I say, oh, was that bad, too. Yeah. So, anyway, do all that, and you'll end up raising an entitled asshole who wants followers, not friends, and has never developed any coping mechanisms for being told no or coming in last place. That campers is our boy Delan Millard.

And he looks exactly like you think he does, too, little smug-faced shitlings. Some people have resting bitch face. Delin Millard has resting smug-asshole face. And Dellen was a bit of an adrenaline seeker. He'd gotten his name in the papers when he was 14 for being the youngest person ever to make solo flights in both a helicopter and a plane on the same day. He was into off-roading, skydiving, even jumping off the roof at pool parties. By the time he reached his 20s, he was into pretty much the whole catalog of drugs, from weed and mushrooms to cocaine and steroids. And he'd dropped out of school to party full time.

His need for thrills may have been the main driver behind what happened next, rather than a desire for cash, but he started going on what he and his dipshit friends called missions, meaning crimes, everything from selling drugs and bootleg cigarettes to robbery, and making homemade porn at his family's airplane hangar. But that was real sexy, no hotter setting than an industrial aircraft's maintenance concern. Oh my God. Delon had a partner in crime for his missions, a beavis to his butthead, if you will. A dumberer to his dumber. Yeah. This was a 20-something petty criminal and wannabe Eminem named Mark Smitch. As you'll see if you watch the episode of The Fifth Estate about his case, when he wasn't toying for Delin Millard, Mark kept himself busy making gory rap videos for songs with lyrics like,

get slapped with my gun hand motherfucker leave you dead with some contraband motherfucker man that is such a reach hold on hold on hold on did he just rhyme motherfucker with motherfucker with motherfucker and even better

gun hand with contraband it's like who has a reach bless your heart and my 380 is no stranger when I'm angered, you're in danger. But my personal favorite is this one. I swear

to God, I'm not making this up. Blues clues. Tell the cops anything then you die on the news. Peace, bitch. You're deceased, kid. Like, how dare you? Bring blues clues into this, you monster. Also,

bitch does not rhyme with kid. Kid, no. And like, what was the, okay, okay, so yeah, clues, news, fair, okay, whatever. Yeah, that one worked. The rhyming dictionary came in clutch. But peace, bitch, your deceased, kid. You're deceased, kid.

Oh, it's so wrong. It's just so bad. It's bad. I think it's safe to say that using a children's beloved television character in your rap kind of steals away the street cat, crad. like chinky winky the telotubby workout or you'll end up schlubby i actually think i actually think that rhyming structure works better than anything he just wrote and i came up with it he would aspire to lyrics like that yeah i i came up with it like less than half a second so unlike his buddy

delin cut price vanilla ice grew up in a middle class family and he pretty much worshipped the ground Dellen walked on from the minute he laid eyes on him. According to a mutual friend, by the way, the feeling was definitely not mutual, at least not at first. Dellen pretty much treated Mark like an errand boy. But Mark was useful, I guess. On their, quote, criminal missions, they like to steal heavy equipment, like construction equipment and stuff like that, motorcycles and jet skis, too.

They'd bring the stuff back to the aircraft hangar, and more often than not, they'd just destroy it. They made videos of themselves wailing on these big things with sledgehammers. Jesus, Murphy, like a couple overgrown bratty kids kicking their toys around. Uh, yeah, that's exactly what it was. I mean, Dellen didn't need the money. He was in it for the adrenaline rush. And surprise, surprised, he liked weapons too.

He had guns of all shapes and sizes, including, I swear to God, a rocket launcher. What the fuck you is? was planning on doing with that? I'm glad we never got the chance to find out. Yeah, especially since one of his former friends has gone on record saying she thought he had a god complex. God complex plus rocket launcher probably equals unpleasantness. Yeah. He didn't need to do crimes. He had plenty of money already, or at least plenty of daddy's money, which seemed to flow pretty freely. Wayne Millard hoped Dellen would grow up at some point and take over the family business. And in the last few years, before his death, I guess he was kind of marking time, waiting for that to happen.

Dellen's family wealth had allowed him to buy a $1.2 million house in a Tobacoke, a 100-acre farm and air worth almost a mill, a $600,000 condo in Toronto, and a $2 million rental property. So it's no surprise he had an entourage. Delin threw elaborate parties where he paid for the booze and the drugs and the food and everybody got to swim in his pool. He was living like a rock star, you know, minus any actual talent or positive contribution to the world. Right. But of course, if you're a reasonably inoffensive looking guy with shit piles of money in a pool, you're going to have people flocking around you.

And in violation of all natural human dignity and common sense, Dellen didn't seem to have any trouble attracting the ladies. I know, I know. He talked to a good game. Most of them took a while to figure out what a loser he was under the rich guy veneer. And in 2012, he met a truly beautiful young woman named Laura Babcock. Laura met Dellen Millar on a night out with friends at a Toronto bar. She had a ton of friends.

She was an absolute joy to the people who loved her. On the fifth estate, one person described her as full of whimsy. And even from the few little video clips I've seen of her, I can see it. Big sweet smile, bright eyes, lots of laughter. She's so pretty, too. She looked like Liv Tyler. Oh my God, that's who she looks like, yes. Oh, yeah, big time. Lored had an ordinary happy childhood, gone to university to study art and theater.

She had dreams of becoming an actress, and she definitely had the spark for it. People noticed her everywhere she went. Dylan Millard noticed her, and he struck up a conversation, and things progressed from there. But it wasn't super serious. They dated for a month or so, and then just kind of stayed. friendly after that. But Dellen's affluent party lifestyle had made an impression on Laura. I mean, how could it not?

She was only 21 years old. What girl that age wouldn't be impressed with the kind of money he threw around? And I mean, he was a bad boy ATM, which a lot of us tend to like at that age in spite of our better judgment. Fight that shit, ladies. Fight it with all you've got. It's all fun in games with a bad boy until your rent is due and he's spending on a motorcycle that doesn't work.

Yeah, or until he tells you that like, you know, doing the fucking dishes would interfere with his mystique or something like that. It'll rip the don'll ruin his leather jacket. Exactly. So, Dellen kind of stuck in Laura's mind, like a smug-faced little burr, even as she moved on and dated other guys. One of those was a dude named Sean Lerner. As reporter Anne Brocklehurst told the Fifth Estate, Sean was pretty much the anti-Dellon Millard.

He was the kind of guy you can take home to mom, and he adored Laura. During the year and a half they were together, he doted on her. And when the romantic relationship ended, they stayed friends, so much so that he even threw her a 22nd birthday party. Even invited Dellen, because he knew Laura considered him a friend. And Sean's friendship was a good thing for Laura, because it was at this point when her life started to kind of go off the rails. She struggled with her mental health, pretty severe anxiety and depression.

Sometimes she ended up without a permanent place to live, crashing on friends' couches or in motels. She did manage to make some money for a little while working as an escort in Toronto, but she wanted to find a job where she'd get to use her university degree. She wasn't having an easy time of it, and it wasn't all money and mental health related. For months now, she'd been in a drawn-out feud with Dellen and his new girlfriend, Christina Nugge. They'd all been sending shitty texts back and forth to each other, like, remember the 22nd birthday party we told you about when Sean threw for her and invited Dellen? Well, Dellen had brought Christina with him that, night, and a year later, on Laura's 23rd birthday, as she was in the midst of all this struggle

I've just described, Christina sent her a text. Happy birthday, it said, a year ago today, I slept with Dellen. And sadly, instead of ignoring it or responding with, oh, my condolences, I hope you're doing better now. Laura took the bait and texted back. That's fine. I slept with him a few weeks ago. Yeah, Dellen had stayed in an on-again, off-again, friends with benefits situation with Laura after they stopped formally seeing each other, and apparently Ms. Christina wasn't too pleased about it. Records show over a hundred calls and texts between Laura and Dellen during the late spring, early summer of 2012. Christina was furious, and Dellen was getting more and more pissed off about the effect this was having on his relationship, for which of course

he blamed Laura, not himself and his utter lack of self-control, God forbid. When Sean found out Laura was struggling, he did what he could to help. He looked around for an affordable hotel that would let her bring her little doggo along. He gave her an iPad. He brought her groceries, took her out for meals, and he was always there for her as a sounding board when she needed it. I suspect it was a nice contrast to the shitty attitude she was getting from Dellen. At one point that summer of 2012, he texted her, you are harmful to me. Please don't try to contact me. And, unbeknownst to Laura, the next day he texted his girlfriend, Christina. First, I am going to hurt her, he wrote, talking about Laura, of course.

Then I will make her leave. I will remove her from our lives. Heard her. How? Delon didn't say, but Laura and Delon didn't cut off communication after that text. In fact, on July 3rd, 2012, Laura texted or spoke on the phone with him eight times. They arranged to meet up at the Kipling subway station in Toronto. At a little after 7 p.m. that evening, Delin Millard texted his buddy-slash partner-in-crime Mark Smitch. I'm on a mission, he wrote, back in one hour. Records would later show that the last call ever made from Laura's phone was at 703 to Dellen's phone. After that, it went dark.

But cell tower data showed her at the Kipling station and then traveling towards Delin's house. After that, the phone never made another call. It continued to receive them for months, but it never dialed out or sent any texts again, despite the fact that Laura was always on her phone. and Laura herself was never seen or heard from again. Within a few days, her friend Sean Lerner was worried enough to get in touch with the police, and what did they do? Hop to it, of course, called out the cavalry,

mobilized their resources, and reassured the people who loved Laura that they were going to do everything they could do to find her. I'm just kidding. They did exactly what true crime veterans are already expecting them to do. As soon as they found out, Laura had worked as an escort, and had mental health issues, they labeled her high risk and told Sean she'd probably turn up in a few weeks, probably on a bender or something. You know, pardon me, but I would think if somebody was at high risk, as you say, you'd want to go out of your way to help him. But that's just me, I guess. I'm not the Toronto police.

Well, no, Whitney, you're not. They've got donuts to eat and missing and murdered indigenous women to ignore. Like, the docket's full. Sean, poor guy, tried and tried to get them to listen. As did the other people in Laura's life who loved her, and there were plenty of those. But it was no dice. They just couldn't seem to get the cops interested enough to really do anything. So Sean took it upon himself to do the detective work, and right away, he found some potentially useful info, namely that Laura's last eight phone calls were to Delin Millard.

Now, remember this, Camper's, because it's going to be very important. In the summer of 2012, Sean Lerner handed the Toronto Police. police the name of Delan Millard. In connection with a missing woman, he told them, you should look into this guy. They were feuding around the time she went missing. What did the police do? Fuck all, nothing. Yep. And while they were doing nothing to find Laura Babcock, Dellen and his little buddy, Mark Smitch, were hard at work on a little list of projects Dellen wanted to do. They'd done some of it shortly before Laura's disappearance, actually. Like, In May of 2012, Delon ordered one of the Millard Air mechanics to build a homemade incinerator out of oil drums,

which the guy must have just been super thrilled about, this highly skilled aircraft mechanic. I know, right. But the handmade incinerator didn't work the way Delin wanted it to, so he ordered one online, a big, hulking piece of industrial equipment with the Eliminator spray painted and red on one side. It's intended for the cremation of small animals. Yeah, that's really kind of a grandiose name for a thing that's designed to incinerate squirrels, but okay. It sounds like they're compensating for something. So they bought themselves a cremation machine.

That's a red flag. And if the police had bothered, looking into Delin at this point, they might have found another one that on July 2nd, the day before, the day before, Laura disappeared. He bought a 32 caliber handgun from a notorious gun dealer in Toronto. Yeah, this was a guy who, based on the pictures I've seen of him, looks like a card. I'm sure there are some stories about this dude. On July 4th, the day after Laura met Dellen at the Kipling station, the iPad, Sean had given her, mysteriously showed up connected to Dellen's home computer. He renamed it Mark's iPad and gave it to his buddy.

Huh. Aw, isn't that nice of him? That same day, July 4th, a strange photograph was saved on Dellen's iPhone. It's just a picture of a rolled-up blue tarp, taped up securely so it can't unroll. Dellen's golden retriever dog is sitting next to it. Even knowing nothing about a missing woman, I think the picture would strike most people as unsettling. It's the shape of the tarp and the size. Investigation would later reveal, of course, that Laura's body was rolled up in it.

On July 5th, the incinerator arrived at the aircraft hangar. Dellen must have tested it out over the next few weeks because on July 23, He texted Mark Smitch. Barbecue has run its warm-up. It's ready for meat. Later that same day, Dellen's Google history registered a search for, what temperature is cremation

done at? Dellen's phone also took a picture of Mark at the hangar that day, standing outside, holding the kind of rake you use on ashes in an industrial incinerator, and smiling like the fucking cat who ate the canary. Lastly, late

that night, Dellen's phone shot a short video. At first, it's hard to tell what it is. It's dark, you can't really see much of anything, but then you start to notice the sparks, little sparkling embers flying up into the sky and then winking out, like red fireflies. They were burning something in the incinerator. The something was Laura Babcock. Now, we told you about Mark's aspirations to be a gangster rapper, right? Well, apparently he didn't have aspirations to hold on to his freedom because the next day, after they disposed of Laura's body, Mark was seized by a stroke of creativity. He wrote a rap about the murder and recorded it on his brand new iPad. Previously, Laura Babcock's iPad. Here's just a charming

little snippet of the rap. The bitch started off all skin and bones. Now the bitch lay on some ash and stone. Last time I saw her, she was outside the home, and if you go swim and you can find her phone. And if you think, wow, Whitney's really bad at rapping. That was embarrassing. Let me assure you, that performance was actually pretty dead accurate. If anything, a little bit better than Marks. I think so, too. You know, Marks Mitch posted this rap online. And both he and Dellen told a bunch of their potato had friends about the murder. And nobody took them seriously, which I can kind of understand, I mean, they're both so ridiculous. Mark Smitch, especially. Everybody they told was just like, yeah, yeah, you know, that's just Mark. Meanwhile, the Toronto PD continued to tell Laura's

friends and family that they were sure she'd turn up eventually. Good job, guys. Way to serve and protect. A year passed. Still, there was no formal investigation into the disappearance of Laura Babcock. Dellen was still partying his ass off, going on criminal missions with Mark, and pretty much run in his little corner of Millard Air into the ground. Watching that episode of the Fifth Estate, you can tell how the Millard Air employees felt about Delin. They don't say it, but contempt just oozes out of every sentence. These were hardworking, highly skilled aircraft mechanics.

They knew they had an important job, and they took it seriously, and they saw Delin Millard for exactly what he was, a spoiled brat who couldn't give less of a shit about anybody but himself, and without the sense the Good Lord gave a duck. And they could tell he was using the hangar to house a bunch of obviously stolen shit. Yeah. A friend of the show, Ben, is an aircraft mechanic.

And he told me once that the first thing they tell you when you go to mechanic school is like, if you fuck up, someone dies. So I can just imagine. And they're like a bunch of serious, serious people. So I can't imagine these dudes like hanging around, these people hanging around and being, like watching this idiot, like cosplay a gangster. Yeah. By all means hand this business to this chode, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Dellen's father, Wayne, had been hoping Dellen would take over the family business when he retired. But Dellen and Mark Smitch were just using the Millard Air Hanger as a playhouse and a gigantic storage space for all their toys, both bought and stolen. This is what can happen when you spoil their kids, y'all. Anybody thinking back to our Trouble O7 episode, by the way? Those two twat bags who stole $50 million and used it to play spy at a tiny little small-town air.

report, Millard and Smitch were giving him a run for their money. Around this time, the Millard Air employee started noticing that the tension was really ratcheting up between Dellen and his dad. Wayne Millard was finally getting fed up with his useless little turdlet of a son, and at some point in the fall of 2013, he gave little man an ultimatum. Shape up and start running this business appropriately or you're cut off. No more of Daddy's money. According to the employees, it sounded like he really meant it,

and Dellen seemed very concerned. He didn't want to run an airplane maintenance business. He wanted to be a criminal mastermind. He bought an incinerator. He was making plans. And then, on November 29, 2012, Wayne Millard was found dead in his bed, shot once through the left eye.

The bullet had lodged in his brain, killing him instantly. When the police brought Dellen in for a routine questioning, as they do anytime someone dies of a gunshot wound, he told them he'd been worried about his dad for a while now. He's an alcoholic, he said. He's been depressed. Dellen waxed quite eloquently about the whole situation, seeming every inch the grieving son. He carried some great sadness with him throughout his life, I never knew, he told the detectives, shaking his head with sad, Sad regret. He never wanted to share that with me. Oh, honey, that's probably because he knew you were a psychopath.

I'm sure y'all are already saying, okay, so clearly he killed his dad, right? And yeah, yes, of course he did. But because the police didn't yet have Dellen on their radar, despite having his name pressed directly into their hot little hands presumably covered in donut glaze months earlier by Laura Babcock's friend Sean they didn't see any reason to investigate further they quickly ruled out Wayne's death of suicide which by the way I watched this interrogation and this motherfucker one of the detectives goes so when's the last time you saw your dad and Dellen goes well in bed and the detective corrects him well yeah the detective corrects him and says, once the last time you saw him alive, and Dellen goes, I don't know. So like, that's some very clear, at least to me, leakage. Yeah. Yeah. And the detective just lets it slide right

by and then say, wait, what do you mean? Unbelievable. The last time you saw him alive, right? Because we're on the same page here. It was a suicide. Oh, my God. It just, I'm unbelievable. I'm going to have a rage stroke before the end of this episode. But, whew. Yeah. Man, they, they screwed the pooch so hard on this case. It's just, it's bananas. Wayne's body was cremated, and life went on. No more conflict for Dellen. Isn't that nice? No more threats of getting the money pipeline cut off if he didn't straighten up.

I guess Mom was cool with him running the family business into the ground. I don't know. Apparently, she still thinks he was framed for all of this, for God's sake. Oh, and by the way, one of the first things Dellen did after his dad's death was to fire all the Millard Air employees and shut down the hangar. Real nice, you absolute little streak of shit. He was handsomely featured in Daddy's Will, of course, to the tune of millions of dollars. So I guess he didn't feel like he needed to pretend to run the business anymore. Time to focus full-time on crime.

Which is, again, a better rap line than anything Smitch ever wrote. But I digress. I'm sorry. It's not crime. It's his missions. Right. It seems like he saw himself as some kind of kingpin in the making, like a Moriarty type. Scarface. Yeah.

As disorganized as it had all been so far, which is just pathetic. Yeah. So Dellen now had two bodies in his wake, and I'm not making an assumption about his dad. We'll give you more details about this murder in a bit. And checks notes. Yep. Zero consequences. And into this horrifying state of affairs just months later came poor Tim Bowers.

Bosma, loving husband and father and country music fan who decided he wanted to sell his truck and placed an ad online. And that takes us back to the start of the episode, with Tim missing, his wife Charlene in a panic, and investigators gathering evidence that very quickly led them to one Mr. Dellen Millard. Remember that piece of heavy equipment, that surveillance footage showed Tim's truck towing toward the Millard Air property? And remember that big whoosh of flame that shot up from it later that night and then burned all night long? Yeah, another body destroyed in Dellen's Eliminator machine. Of course, the cops didn't know that just yet.

But once they got hold of all that surveillance footage, plus the info from Igor to Menenko, the guy who made a lucky escape from Dellen and Mark two days before Tim Bosma went missing, it wasn't hard for them to get an arrest warrant. Not for murder. Not yet, because Tim's body still hadn't been found, but for theft over $5,000 and forcible confinement. When they put the habeas gravis on, Dellen,

five days after that ill-fated test drive, he still had Tim's truck keys in his pocket. Which just Jesus, take the wheel. Idiot. And there was that ambition tattoo on his arm, just like Igor described.

For Charlene Bosma, this was a momentary ray of hope. Maybe Millard had Tim tied up somewhere. Maybe now that he was caught, he'd tell where. Tim could come home. Charlene had conversations with Tim's dad about what kind of mental and physical shape he might be in when they got him back.

Would he be hungry, dehydrated, beaten up, traumatized? They started thinking through the logistics of how to manage everything if Tim had to be in the hospital for a week or two. But the hope didn't last long. Soon after Dellen's arrest, the police searched his mom's house and found Tim's truck hidden inside a trailer registered to Millard Air. And inside the truck, they found ominous signs. A shell casing, gunshot residue.

Delin's fingerprints. And when they spray luminal, the cab lit up like neon. Mark and Delon had tried to clean up all the blood, but surprise, surprise, they hadn't done a very good job. Tim never made it out of that truck alive. Later, they found evidence of charred human remains inside Delin's incinerator. All that was left of a well-loved man. At trial, the love story between Delin Millard and Mark Smitch finally came to a sad end, as they each tried to blame the other for Tim's murder. Mark claimed he wasn't even in the truck when the shooting

happened. He was following the truck in an SUV when Dellen shot the guy. Dellen's story was that they were all in the truck together, with Dellen driving, Tim and the passenger seat and Mark in the back. At some point, he said, Mark pulled out a gun and told Tim they were going to steal his truck. And when Tim tried to grab the gun, it accidentally went off. The Crown Prosecutor's take was basically, look, y'all were both there, y'all both planned this, y'all are both guilty as hot buttered shit. Except he probably said it way more Canadian than that. They couldn't prove for sure which of these two numnuts shot Tim Bosma, but it didn't matter for their purposes. They both planned the murder. They were both there when it happened. They were

both equally guilty in the eyes of the law. And the jury agreed. They found them both guilty of first-degree murder. Both were sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 25 years. Outside the courtroom, Tim's widow Charlene said, For three years, we have been in and out of this courthouse, forced to look at and breathe in the same space with the utter depths of depravity in our society. They would never have to him back, but at least they knew that these two wouldn't hurt anybody else again, at least not for a long time. 25 years minimum is a pretty stiff sentence for Canada. Yeah, but the Crown wasn't done with them yet, not even close. While Millard and Smitch were still in jail waiting trial for the Bosma case, prosecuted.

in Toronto had charged them both with the first-degree murder of Laura Babcock. Now that the Basma trial was done, it was time for round two. There was plenty of evidence, circumstantial but strong. We've been over most of it already. The eight phone calls from Laura to Dellen on the day she went missing. Dellen's creepy texts, the one to his girlfriend saying he was going to hurt Laura and remove her from their lives, and the one to Mark Smitch. I'm going on a mission back in one hour.

The cell phone data, putting the two of them together at Kipling Station, then at Dellen's house, the chilling picture of the rolled up blue tarp in Dellen's driveway, the video of sparks rising into the sky. Laura's iPad and Mark Smitch's possession, as well as the red backpack that still had her handwritten name on it. And then, of course, there were the witnesses who'd heard Mark and Dellen brag about Laura's murder. For God's sake, Smitch wrote a rap song about it and posted it online. Dellen had opted not to take the stand on his first murder trial, and maybe he regretted that, because for a second, he decided to represent himself. Yeah, a fucking course he did, as if we needed any more evidence that he's a narcissist to the core of his charred, desiccated little soul.

This meant, of course, he got to cross-examine witnesses, including Laura's father Clayton. His questioning of this poor dad, who had been suffering for five years without his beloved daughter, tells us most of what we need to know about him. To the complete horror of almost everybody watching, Dellen fired off a barrage of incredibly personal, hurtful questions about Laura's mental health struggles, her sexual history, whether Clayton felt he'd been a good father to her. It was disgusting. People were actually gasping at some of the questions.

and I'm sure it made the jury want to put him through a wood chipper. Yep, and the fact that he didn't realize that is very telling to me. Writer Anne Brocklehurst, who actually wrote a book about this case, thinks it's proof of his psychopathy, his total lack of empathy for other human beings. It's possible Dylan thought he was going to have an ace in the hole at this second trial. See, while the Tim Bosma trial was going on and Dylan was sitting in jail, he'd been in constant contact with his ever-loyal girlfriend Christina. In fact, he wrote her 65 letters, and some of them were doozies.

In page after neatly written page, Delon led her step by step through the bullshit lies he wanted her to tell to help him get out of trouble. One said, to get out of this bind, I need help. We need to get our story straight. I need to know what you're willing to do. whatever you may believe it needs to be put aside. This is what happened. And then he proceeded to spin out the whole bullshit yarn he wanted Christina to repeat to detectives,

that Laura had overdosed while using drugs with Mark Smitch, and Dellen had only known about it after the fact. By the time he got to trial, again, acting as his own attorney... Oh my God. Dellen, of course, denied all this, but the police had the letters. Dellen had told her to memorize the story and then burn them, but she didn't do it. Possibly because she just couldn't bear it apart with such precious tokens from her sweet serial killer. That's, oh yeah, that was her nickname for Dillon, apparently.

The police found it among some handwritten notes and doodles that she'd scribbled alongside his instructions for how to get him out of a murder charge. my sweet serial killer Jesus Murphy Brown She later claimed it was just a line from a Lana Del Rey song But yeah This bitch had been a Tim Bosma's trial as a witness by the way And she made a major impression on Tim's friends and family By showing absolutely no empathy whatsoever

Or even really any awareness That she was at a murder trial And not an Oscars party or some shit She sounds like Dellen's perfect match, doesn't she? Oh totally. What a little peach. Yeah Anywho, Dellen and Mollin and Mollinger

were once again convicted a first-degree murder in the death of Laura Babcock. And the sentence was the same as well. Life in prison with a minimum of 25 years. But the good thing is, the judge made it consecutive. That means that neither one of these shit bricks would see daylight again for at least 50 years. And this wasn't the last murder trial either. There was still the matter of Dellen's father, Wayne Millard. In 2010, he went on trial for that.

Now, we won't go into detail on this one. We don't have time. Suffice it to say that it was a strong. strong circumstantial case just like Laura's. Financial motive, Delin's DNA on the gun, some big fat lies he told the detectives after the murder, some ham-fisted attempts to create an alibi by leaving stuff over at Mark Smitch's house, stuff like that. He was convicted, and the judge didn't pull any punches. Saying that Delin had repeatedly committed the most serious offense known to our law with considerable planning and premeditation, she slammed him with yet another life

sentence with a 25-year minimum, bringing the grand total of our boy's minimum prison term to 75 years. This boy will most likely never set foot outside prison walls again. He and his little buddy Mark are both appealing their sentences. Hopefully, fingers crossed, that will go nowhere. As for a little Miss Christina Nugge, Dillon's main squeeze and the Mallory to his Mickey Knox, she ended up getting charged as an accessory after the fact in the murder of Tembosma and pleading it down to an obstruction of justice charge by destroying evidence. She admitted going with Dellen to hide the trailer containing Tim Bosma's truck and to move the incinerator to the field where they burned the body.

Her lawyer claimed she didn't realize there'd been any murder, and there isn't any ironclad proof that she did, but many people have their doubts about that, including me. I'm many people, but Christina's judge was sympathetic to her, saying she was a smart girl who could turn her life around, and she only ended up serving three months and one day in jail. Yeah, just let that rage wash over you. Now, she's apparently trying to rebrand herself as a human rights advocate, which is interesting, given that she allegedly has a history of making racist rants on social media, but yeah, she's young, maybe she can get her hat out of her ass, but I'll believe it when I see it.

So, as you've probably noticed, this case doesn't exactly go down in history as a shining moment for the Toronto PD. It begs the question. If Laura Babcock hadn't been working as an escort, if she hadn't had a history of mental health problems, if she hadn't had a history of homelessness, would the RCMP have taken her case seriously? And if they'd taken the case seriously, would Wayne Millard and Tim Basma still be here today? Those are fair questions, important questions, and questions I very much hope the Canadian police are thinking hard about now, because these trash bags could have and should have been stopped years earlier. And that's the truth. They can spin it however they want and they have saying that police followed standard missing persons protocols and blah, blah, blah, but that's a

cop out and it's horseshit and they fucking know it. And it's a big middle finger up at Laura and Tim's families. And just talking to the Toronto PD here, y'all have heard very similar criticisms about the Bruce MacArthur case even more recently than this, the Toronto serial killer. So I'm just begging you, fix yourselves. And when you screw up this badly, for God's sakes, just admit it. People will respect you a hundred times more. If you just say, we messed up, we're going to do better. And then do better.

It's as simple as that. All right. Before we wrap up this week's episode, Camper's, we just want to send our love to the women protesting in Iran for the right to choose what they wear and how they live their lives. You are so brave. It's humbling to watch. Our hearts are with you. Masa Amini, rest in power.

Okay, so that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And today we want to send a special shout out to friend of the show, Megan, who was kind enough to do a lot of the research on this case for us. Thank you so much, darling. We also want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Amber, Iyer, Deborah, Aaron, and Stephanie. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back.

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