Tim Bosma lived in Ancaster, part of Hamilton, Ontario, and had a pickup truck for sale. On the evening of May 6, 2013, two men came to his house to test-drive it. He went along for the drive. He never came home. The men were Dellen Millard, 27, of Toronto, and his friend Mark Smich, of Oakville. A jury would later find that they had planned from the start to take the truck and kill its owner.
The Bosma case led investigators to two earlier deaths. One was Laura Babcock, a young Toronto woman who had been missing for almost a year. The other was Millard's own father.
Millard was the only child of Wayne Millard, a wealthy aviation executive, and was heir to the family aviation business. He lived in his father's home in Etobicoke in Toronto, and owned a farm on Roseville Road in North Dumfries Township and a hangar at the Region of Waterloo International Airport. In 2012 he bought a livestock incinerator. Smich was a close friend.
Laura Babcock was 23. Her parents, Clayton and Linda Babcock, live in Toronto's west end. The trial heard that in 2012 she was struggling with her mental health and with drug use, had moved out of her parents' home and was living transiently, and in the months before she vanished was working as an escort. She had been in a relationship with Millard, who also had a girlfriend, and the two women were in conflict. Before she disappeared, Millard texted his girlfriend that he would hurt Babcock and remove her from their lives.
In early July 2012 Babcock and Millard called or texted each other more than 100 times over three days. On July 3 he picked her up at a subway station and took her to his house. Phone records placed Babcock, Millard and Smich near the house that night, when her last outgoing call went to her own voicemail. She was not seen again. The Crown's case, which the jury accepted, was that the two men killed her and burned her body in the incinerator, known as "The Eliminator," at Millard's airport hangar. Evidence at trial included rap lyrics Smich wrote and performed about a woman's burned body. Her remains have never been found. Her father said she "didn't even get to see her 24th birthday."
Wayne Millard, 71, was found dead in his bed at his home at 5 Maple Gate Court in Etobicoke on November 29, 2012. His death was first ruled a suicide. Dellen Millard was living in the house. The account he later gave police of where he had been that night was found at trial to be false.
Tim Bosma was 32, a husband and father; his parents are Hank and Mary Bosma. The judge at his killers' trial called him an "innocent, decent, hardworking family man." The Crown argued that he was shot soon after he left home with the two men, that they stripped his truck and hid the gun, and that his body was burned in the incinerator. Millard was arrested that month and charged with first-degree murder, and Smich was charged with him.
The Bosma trial ran for four and a half months in Hamilton in 2016, with 92 witnesses. Each man blamed the other. Smich testified that Millard fired the gun and that he had only helped cover it up out of fear of his friend's "lunatic" behavior. Millard presented no defense; his lawyer suggested in cross-examination that Smich was the shooter. On June 17, 2016, the jury found both men guilty of first-degree murder, which meant it found the killing planned and deliberate. Justice Andrew Goodman called what happened to Bosma "incomprehensible and unimaginable" and imposed the mandatory life sentence with no parole for 25 years. "I'm always going to mourn what we're never going to have, what were never going to share together," Sharlene Bosma said.
On April 10, 2014, while awaiting that trial, Millard had been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Laura Babcock and his father, and Smich was charged in Babcock's death. The Babcock trial took place in Toronto in 2017, with Millard acting as his own lawyer. In December 2017 the jury convicted both men of first-degree murder. In February 2018 Justice Michael Code called Millard "profoundly amoral and dangerous" and found Smich "enthusiastic" in taking part. He ordered both men's life sentences to run consecutively to the Bosma sentences, for 50 years without parole. Prosecutor Jill Cameron said the pair had killed "for the thrill they needed." "Justice has been served to the murderers of our cherished daughter Laura," Clayton Babcock said.
The case of Wayne Millard was tried in Toronto in 2018. The trial judge found that Dellen Millard had bought the handgun found with his father in July 2012, that his DNA but not his father's was on it, that he was near the house in the period when his father died, and that he had constructed a false alibi. In September 2018 she convicted him of first-degree murder. In December 2018 he was sentenced to life, with another 25 years of parole ineligibility added to the 50 he already faced, for 75 years in all.
In 2022 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in another case that stacking parole ineligibility periods for multiple murders was unconstitutional. On March 17, 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed Millard's appeal of his conviction for his father's murder. "This court sees no errors in the reasons of the trial judge," Justice Eileen Gillese said. The court upheld the life sentence but struck the stacked parole order, so that Millard can apply for parole after 25 years. "We have no hope," Linda Babcock said.
On June 14, 2023, the same court dismissed both men's appeals in the Bosma case, calling the trial "hard-fought, lengthy, and contentious" but fair. Millard, representing himself, had argued he was cast as the "perfect villain." The next day it upheld both men's convictions for Babcock's murder. "Nothing really changes," Linda Babcock said. "She's still gone every day." Smich's lawyer said leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was likely to be sought.
Smich, of Oakville, was convicted with Millard of the murders of Tim Bosma and Laura Babcock and is serving two life sentences. He was not charged in Wayne Millard's death. In May 2021 he was moved from Millhaven Institution, a maximum-security prison near Kingston, to the medium-security Beaver Creek Institution in Gravenhurst. The Babcock and Bosma families protested, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he was "totally disgusted."
Because Laura Babcock's body was never found, the coroner could not issue a death certificate. Her family spent about 18 months fighting for one; the effort began when a voter registration card arrived in her name after the verdict. Ontario amended its Vital Statistics Act so that courts can declare dead a person who disappeared in circumstances of peril. The change, known as Laura's Law, took effect in December 2019, and Premier Ford delivered the certificate to her parents. Linda Babcock said it meant her daughter's killers could no longer say they had been jailed for killing someone who was not legally dead.
As of October 2026, Millard is serving three life sentences. With the stacked periods removed, the earliest he could apply for parole is about 2038, 25 years after his arrest for the Bosma murder.