BOSMA CASE: Man who sold gun to Ancaster man’s killer pleads guilty to firearms trafficking in Toronto court
‘Guilty. Guilty. Guilty,’ wannabe rapper, now polite and humble, tells court in a soft voice
This is the man who sold the gun to Tim Bosma’s killers.
Matthew Ward-Jackson, in all his tattooed glory, sits with a hang-dog expression in the prisoner’s box of a downtown Toronto courtroom. He has no friends or family here, just a handful of journalists watching him closely. But only because he has a deadly link to Tim.
Ward-Jackson — or Iisho as he was known during Tim’s murder trial last year — is pleading guilty to three counts of firearms trafficking. I can’t tell you anything about two of those counts because they are shrouded by publication bans. I can tell you that, through an agreed statement of f acts, Ward-Jackson admits to selling the Walther PPK pistol to Dellen Millard, which Ward-Jackson says was used to murder Tim.
Ward-Jackson is a wannabe rapper who used the name Big Iisho in a low-brow video he made. It is mostly himself stuffing money into the cleavage of scantily clad women or spraying Champagne over their bodies.
The 30-year-old from Etobicoke is hard to miss. His scalp, f ace, throat and hands are entirely covered in ink.
All those markings make him appear almost clownish in the courtroom. And he has lost his gangsta swagger.
In f act, Ward-Jackson is polite and humble. He is all “Yes, your honour” and “Thank you, your honour.” He pleads quietly to his charges: “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.”
When Justice Jane Kelly asks if the account presented in the agreed statement of f acts is true, he answers: “Sadly, yes, your honour.”
Tim, 32, took Millard and his pal Mark Smich for a test drive of the truck he was selling on May 6, 2013. Soon after they drove away from Tim’s Ancaster home, where he lived with his wife and baby girl, Millard and Smich shot him dead. Then they cremated his body in an animal incinerator called The Eliminator.
In June 2016, a Hamilton j ury found Millard and Smich guilty of first-degree murder.
In the courtroom for Ward-Jackson’s plea is Toronto homicide Det. Sgt. Mike Carbone. He is the case manager on two other homicides connected to all of this.
Millard and Smich are both to stand trial, accused of first-degree murder of Laura Babcock, who once was intimately involved with Millard. Her body has never been found.
Millard will also be tried over the first-degree murder of his f ather, Wayne Millard. Wayne’s death was originally ruled a suicide. He was shot through an eye.
Ward-Jackson says he did not know what Millard intended to use the Walther PPK 9-mm handgun for. But texts introduced during Tim’s trial and again in court Thursday, show Millard told Iisho he was planning to use it to commit a crime and that Ward-Jackson could make it untraceable.
“btw is it clean or dirty?” Millard texted to Ward-Jackson on Feb. 10, 2012, the night the gun deal went through.
“Clean,” answered Ward-Jackson. And then, “Bring her back safe plz.”
“by the time I let her go, she’ll be a dirty girl,” said Millard.
“That’s finne lol,” answered Ward-Jackson. “I can change her print.” The gun cost Millard $2,200. Assistant Crown Jill Cameron is asking for a total jail sentence of nine years, minus 1.5 days for each day Ward-Jackson has been in custody since his 2014 arrest.
Ward-Jackson’s lawyer, Kim Schofield, wants five years with “enhanced” credit for her client’s stay in the “harsh conditions” of the Toronto South Detention Centre.
Ward-Jackson will be back in court Aug. 2 to set a date for his sentencing hearing.
“Thank you for your time, ma’am,” he says as he is cuffed and taken away.
Later in the day, in the same University Avenue courthouse, Millard makes an appearance. Again, due to publication bans, I can’t tell you what that was about.
But I can tell you the 31-year-old has aged drastically i n the year since he was convicted of Tim’s murder.
He hunches over in the prisoner’s box, tucking his shaggy, greasy hair behind his ears. His pallor is a mottled grey and he has gained weight. He has a scruffy beard.
Gone is the bravado he had during the trial. Though he looks carefully at journalists he knows in the courtroom, he does not wave or smile the way he once routinely did.
He has gone from smug to sombre.