Cheers after killers get 50 years before parole

Dellen Millard, Mark Smich get life sentences for killing Laura Babcock added to sentence for killing Tim Bosma

TORONTO — A packed Toronto courtroom erupted into cheers and a standing ovation after the judge announced two men convicted of murdering a young woman would not be eligible for parole for 50 years. Dellen Millard is “profoundly amoral and dangerous” while his partner in crime, Mark Smich, “enthusiastically” participated in the murder of Laura Babcock, 23, whose body was never found, Justice Michael Code said Monday. Millard, 32, of Toronto, and Smich, 30, of Oakville, were convicted in December of murdering the Toronto woman in the summer of 2012 and burning her body in an animal incinerator. “Justice has been served to the murderers of our cherished daughter, Laura,” Clayton Babcock, the victim’s father, told reporters outside court. “Somehow life in prison seems lenient when Laura didn’t even get to see her 24th birthday.” Millard and Smich had previously been convicted in the murder of Tim Bosma, a 32-year-old Ancaster father who went missing in May 2013 after going on a test drive with two men interested in buying his pickup truck. That trial in 2016 heard the pair burned Bosma’s body in an animal incinerator called the Eliminator that belonged to Millard. “This repetition of two planned and deliberate murders also arguably requires separate punishment to deter potential serial murderers who are thinking of going on to commit a second murder after successfully committing a first murder,” Code told the hearing Monday as he ordered the life sentences in the two murder cases be served consecutively. “Millard unsuccessfully attempted to prove that there is a good side to his personality,” Code said. “In my view, Millard is skilful and clever in delivering prosocial behaviour when it is to his advantage. The overwhelming weight of evidence from text messages to his criminal behaviour is that he is profoundly amoral and dangerous.” Smich, the judge said, was just as culpable. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 25 years. The Babcock trial heard the young woman struggled with mental health and drug use, and was working as an escort in the months leading up to her disappearance in July 2012. The trial heard Millard and Smich burned Babcock’s body in The Eliminator at Millard’s hangar at the Region of Waterloo International Airport. The eyes of both Millard and Smich welled up as they were handcuffed and led out of court.