Dellen Millard: Canadian airline heir convicted of third murder

The heir to a Canadian airline empire has been convicted of murdering his father in an attempt to take control of the family fortune.

Dellen Millard, who is already serving life sentences for two other murders, “wept when he heard the judge pronounce him guilty of murdering his father Wayne Millard” in an Ontario courtroom today, the BBC reports.

The 71-year-old businessman was found dead in 2012 from what police believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His son told police that the MillardAir founder was an alcoholic who suffered from depression.

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However, today, Justice Maureen Forestell said she was “satisfied beyond reasonable doubt” that the younger Millard “killed his father by shooting him in the left eye as he slept”.

The 33-year-old has been in prison since 2016, when he and friend Mark Smich, 31, were convicted for the 2013 murder of Tim Bosma.

The two men, who had already carried out a spree of petty “thrill” crimes together prior to the killing, arranged to meet 32-year-old Bosma to test drive a pick-up truck he was selling.

Bosma was never seen again, but his truck was found three days later inside a trailer parked outside a house belonging to Millard’s mother. Remains believed to be those of Bosma were later discovered in an incinerator on a farm owned by Millard.

Millard and Smich were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole. No motive has ever been established for the killing.

As detectives continued to probe Millard’s past, they were drawn to the unsolved 2011 disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, Laura Babcock.

Millard had been involved with another woman, allegedly telling her he would “remove [Babcock] from our lives”.

In 2017, Millard and Smich were convicted of her murder. Police then reopened their investigation into death of Wayne Millard, which occurred six months after Babcock’s disappearance.

“Police realised then that his alibi did not check out, and that the gun [used to kill Millard senior] had been purchased illegally by Mr. Millard from a gun dealer months earlier,” says The Globe and Mail. His DNA was also found on the grip of the firearm.

The new murder trial, Millard’s third, was heard in front of a single judge, after “Ontario's attorney general agreed that the Toronto man's previous high-profile trials would make it difficult to find fair jurors”, says Canadian broadcaster CBC.