As soon as the judge left the courtroom, and as Dellen Millard and Mark Smich sat in the prisoner’s box with the knowledge they’ll be spending at least the next 45 years in prison for murdering Tim Bosma and Laura Babcock, the public gallery broke out into rapturous applause.

That applause continued as a shackled Millard and Smich were led out by court officers and taken back to prison, joining a small number of offenders serving life sentences for multiple counts of first-degree murder with consecutive 25-year periods of parole ineligibility.

“We can be assured that these horrible specimens of humanity will not come outside of a prison for decades to come,” Laura Babcock’s father, Clayton, told reporters on Monday, accompanied by other members of the Babcock family.

“We must admit that it was satisfying to see the two cuffed and shuffling off to the prison shuttle, to a life that to most of us would be unbearable.”

Millard, 32, and Smich, 30, were already serving automatic life sentences with no parole eligibility for 25 years for the 2013 first-degree murder of Bosma of Ancaster, Ont. Late last year, a Toronto jury convicted the pair for the first-degree murder of Babcock.

Crown attorney Jill Cameron had urged Superior Court Justice Michael Code earlier this month to make the 25-year parole ineligibility period for Babcock’s murder consecutive to the ineligibility period for Bosma’s murder. The federal government added the option of consecutive ineligibility periods to the Criminal Code in 2011.





With Code’s ruling, the earliest date on which Millard will be eligible for parole is May 10, 2063, when he’ll be 77 years old; for Smich, it will be May 22, 2063, when he’s 75.

“I am satisfied that the two murders of Laura Babcock and Tim Bosma are sufficiently separate and distinct to justify consecutive sentences,” Code said in his ruling, which took him about two hours to read. “Indeed, this is an easy and overwhelmingly justified determination, in my view.”

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The jury — some of whom were in court Monday — had also made a unanimous recommendation that Millard receive consecutive parole ineligibility periods; five jurors recommended the same for Smich, while the other seven made no recommendation.

Babcock, 23, went missing in the summer of 2012. Her body was never found. Given the jury’s verdict, Code said it is a finding of fact that Millard formed a motive in April 2012 to murder Babcock because she was “causing difficulties” in Millard’s relationship with Christina Noudga.

“However, there was a further and more complex motive that was operating at the same time, namely, Millard and Smich had entered into a broad conspiracy that involved guns, various crimes, and killing.”

The judge said the two motives became intertwined, and that both Millard and Smich were involved in the early planning of the murders. By the time of the final contact between Millard and Babcock, in July 2012, he had already purchased a .32 calibre gun.

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The judge said Babcock was “infatuated” with Millard and readily agreed to meet with him in early July when he asked her, and that the evidence “compellingly proves” she was murdered at his Etobicoke home while both he and Smich were present.

The pair incinerated her remains in the same machine, known as the Eliminator, they would use to incinerate Tim Bosma’s body 10 months later. Bosma, a stranger to Millard and Smich, was shot and killed in his truck, which he was looking to sell, and which the killers were looking to steal.

“They involved two different victims who had no connection to each other,” Code said of the murders. “They involved different means, methods and opportunities, as one victim was a former lover who was lured to the scene of the crime at a time of need and infatuation, and the other involved a private vendor of a truck who was lured to the scene of the crime by a potential offer to purchase his Dodge 3500 truck.”

Defence lawyers had argued earlier this month that consecutive periods of parole ineligibility would be unduly harsh.

But Code found there were a number of factors that justified life with no chance of parole for 50 years, including: the seriousness of the offence and the extended period of time over which Millard and Smich planned Babcock’s murder, and then Bosma’s murder.

“This repetition of two planned and deliberate murders also arguably requires separate punishment in order to deter potential serial murderers who are thinking about going on to commit a second murder, after having successfully completed a first murder,” Code said. Other aggravating factors included the incineration of Babcock’s remains and the high degree of moral blameworthiness of both offenders.

“Millard unsuccessfully attempted to prove . . . that there is a good side to his personality and that his eventual reform and rehabilitation should be encouraged by imposing a concurrent sentence,” Code said.

“In my view, Millard is skillful and clever in deploying pro-social behaviour when it is to his advantage. The overwhelming weight of evidence, from his text messages and from his criminal conduct, is that he is profoundly amoral and dangerous.”

Smich, Code said, was “enthusiastically” involved in Babcock’s murder.

Millard still faces a third murder trial, this time for allegedly killing his father, Wayne. The trial is set to begin in April in Toronto.

“Good luck to you in the penitentiary,” Code told the pair Monday after reading his ruling. “I mean that sincerely. Look after yourselves.”

With files from Betsy Powell

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