Dellen Millard facing 3rd murder trial — this time for his own father's death

For the third time in just under three years, convicted killer Dellen Millard is staring down yet another first-degree murder trial. 

This time, it's for alleged patricide. After juries found him guilty of the deaths of Hamilton's Tim Bosma and Toronto's Laura Babcock, Millard will now stand trial for the death of his father, Wayne, in Superior Court in Toronto starting Thursday.

The Crown contends that his father's death was actually staged to look like a suicide.

• Wayward Son: The story of the Tim Bosma murder
• Dellen Millard to be tried by judge alone for father's alleged murder

Millard, 32, has pleaded not guilty. The trial is being heard in front of a judge alone.

The 71-year-old elder Millard — a pilot who ran the family's aviation business MillardAir — was found dead in bed at his home at 5 Maple Gate Court in Etobicoke on Nov. 29, 2012. He had suffered a single gunshot wound through his eye.

According to court documents, the coroner found a .32-calibre Smith & Wesson revolver next to his bed. It was loaded, with a single round discharged.

Millard, the documents say, was the one who found his father's body. By Dec. 1, 2012, the coroner had concluded the death was a suicide, and police closed their investigation.

But by the spring of 2013, Millard was under investigation for the Bosma and Babcock murders, so police decided to reopen the case.

Crown says Millard's DNA was on gun that killed his father

The Crown contends that further investigation revealed Millard's DNA was on the grip of the gun that killed his father. It also says text messages and cell tower records show Millard was the one who bought the gun on July 2, 2012.

The Crown also says Millard told police he was at the Oakville, Ont., home of Mark Smich the night his father died — the same man who was found guilty alongside Millard in the murders of Bosma and Babcock. Smich is not charged in this case.

Smich's then-girlfriend Marlena Meneses (who also testified at the Bosma and Babcock trials) says she was also at Smich's house the night Wayne Millard died, according to court documents.

The Crown plans to bring forth evidence that says Meneses remembers Dellen Millard "left the house under peculiar circumstances for several hours" on the night his father died.

The Crown also says cellphone records show that after calling a cab on the evening of Nov. 28, 2012, Millard's cellphone could be seen pinging off cell towers leaving Smich's home and heading to the Maple Gate residence.

None of these allegations have been proven in court.

Millard, Smich serving consecutive life sentences

Millard is no stranger to the inside of a courtroom by now. The Bosma trial lasted almost five months in Hamilton back in 2016, while the trial for Babcock's murder ran for nearly two months in Toronto at the end of last year.

A jury found Millard and Smich had killed Bosma, a 32-year-old father and husband from the Ancaster area of Hamilton, while on a test drive of his pickup truck in May 2013, before burning his body in an animal incinerator.

Millard and Smich's apparent motive to murder Babcock in the summer of 2012 was a love triangle between Millard, Babcock and Millard's then-girlfriend, Christina Noudga, court has heard.

Babcock too, the Crown contended, was burned in the same animal incinerator as Bosma — though no remains were ever found.

Millard and Smich are both serving two consecutive life sentences for those murders, with no chance of parole until 2063. Both men have filed appeals.

Millard represented himself during the Babcock trial. This time, he will be represented by lawyer Ravin Pillay, who acted as the head of his defence team for the Bosma trial.

Assistant Crown attorneys Jill Cameron and Ken Lockhart are again prosecuting the case, after successfully securing convictions for Babcock's murder.

Judge-alone trial ensures Millard gets fair trial

Justice Maureen Forestell will preside over the trial, which is scheduled to last about a month.

Given the extensive media coverage of his previous convictions, Millard had requested a judge-alone trial, which was granted.

"In light of the notoriety from other trials and the difficulty getting a jury, this will ensure he gets a fair trial," Justice John McMahon, the case management judge, said in a court hearing earlier this year.

The case promises to shed more light on Millard's family life and his relationship with his father.

Before he died, Wayne Millard was in the process of establishing MillardAir MRO, based at the international airport in Waterloo, Ont. The elder Millard's plan was to shift the business into a fixed based operation (FBO) — essentially, a hotel for airplanes.

With Wayne in his early 70s, there was talk that Dellen could later take over the business.

Within days of Wayne's passing, most of the company's employees were laid off and Dellen cancelled the company's Transport Canada certification, which was necessary for the business to operate at the airport.

Dellen actually wrote Wayne's obituary, saying his father's hope was for a time when "cooperation would be the norm and competition was only friendly."

"He was a good man in a careless world," Dellen wrote.

"He was my father."

adam.carter@cbc.ca