Millard said dad a failure, created money troubles, trial hears

TORONTO — Days before an aviation executive was found dead in his bed — a bullet lodged in his brain — his son called him a failure and blamed him for the financial woes the family-owned business was facing, a murder trial in Toronto heard Tuesday.

Dellen Millard, 32, a twice convicted murderer who is serving two consecutive life sentences, is accused of killing his father, Wayne Millard, on Nov. 29, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty to firstdegree murder in his father’s death, which was initially ruled a suicide.

A retired forensic detective showed court scores of text messages Millard sent after purportedly finding his father dead in bed. Jim Falconer said the texts were recovered from one of Millard’s computers seized from the home he shared with his father in Toronto’s west end. Dellen Millard texted his girlfriend in the early morning hours of Nov. 30, 2012 that his 71-year-old father had suffered from depression and had shot and killed himself. In the texts read out by Falconer, Millard tells Christina Noudga his “world has never been so upside down.” At the time, Dellen Millard was working for his father, who was in the middle of transforming Millardair from an aviation company to a maintenance and repair company and had built a massive hangar at the Region of Waterloo International Airport.

“The last time I spoke to him, I told him the company’s financial troubles were his doing and that he was a failure,” Millard wrote. “Usually he tells me not to worry. But this time he said maybe I was right.”

Millard also told her his father has “always had depression, but he’s never been suicidal.” Within days of his father’s death, Dellen Millard changed the locks at the hangar and fired everyone working at Millardair, court heard. On Dec. 4, 2012, Millard called all Millardair employees to the new hangar, which included 11 mechanics and five managers, including John Barnes, a longtime aircraft maintenance and repair manager.

“We were advised of Wayne’s death,” Barnes testified. “We were told at the time it was an aneurysm and that the business was going to be closed down.”

Barnes said he met Wayne Millard the day before his death to discuss what benefit packages to sign the new employees up for. The company had recently received a crucial license from Transport Canada to operate the business. “He seemed excited, enthusiastic,” Barnes said. He said Millardair had a customer lined up in Halifax, and there were other opportunities as well. The company, he said, was “going to be viable.” Barnes said he wasn’t sure of the younger Millard’s role in the business other than that his property company was doing the interior work on the hangar. He later found out he owned half of Millardair.