Tim Bosma trial this week: letters from jail ask girlfriend to be 'covert operative'
Live coverage continues Monday at 10 a.m.
This week at the Tim Bosma trial, jurors heard dramatic testimony from the girlfriends of the two men on trial for the murder of Hamilton's Tim Bosma.
The week began with Marlena Meneses, the ex-girlfriend of Mark Smich, testifying that she spent months telling herself the man she loved and wanted to have a child with couldn't have killed Tim Bosma. On Monday, Meneses recounted how she had planned to marry Smich, a man who was abusive and wanted her to become a stripper to help support him.
"You wanted a child with him, you wanted to marry him?" asked Nadir Sachak, the lawyer for co-accused Dellen Millard.
"Yeah," responded Meneses, 22, choking back tears.
Smich, 28, of Oakville, Ont., and Millard, 30, of Toronto, are charged with first-degree murder in Bosma's death. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Meneses told the court on Tuesday that Millard gave her "the creeps." She said "He just gave me the creeps, he would stare at me up and down, make sexual comments to me, he would hit on me and if Mark and I would fight, he'd ... make a little hint, like, you're fighting with him, but me and you aren't fighting right now."
Bosma, 32, who lived in the suburban Ancaster area of Hamilton, vanished on May 6, 2013, after taking two men on a test drive in a pickup truck he was trying to sell. Investigators later found charred human remains, believed to belong to Bosma, in a livestock incinerator on Millard's farm in Waterloo, Ont.
Christina Noudga
The testimony became even more dramatic on Wednesday when Dellen Millard's girlfriend, Christina Noudga, testified. Noudga has been charged as an accessory after the fact in Bosma's death. She told the court that, just minutes after she and Millard dropped off a trailer with Bosma's truck in it to the home of the accused killer's mother, she performed "sexual favours" on Millard as he drove them to the MillardAir hangar in Waterloo, Ont.
"It was more of a sexual expedition driving that way... he was driving, and I was performing sexual favours to him," she said.
The jury also heard that Millard gave Noudga a digital video recorder (DVR) just before they moved the truck, and asked her to hold onto it. The court has previously heard that DVR was from the MillardAir hangar, and contained security camera footage. The Crown alleges Bosma's body was incinerated at the hangar.
She said she put the DVR in her room, and later put it in the back of her closet. Noudga testified she never viewed what was on it. "It didn't spark my curiosity," even after Millard was charged with first-degree murder, she said.
"At some point it must have dawned on you that it could be evidence," Leitch said.
"This specifically? It never dawned on me," Noudga replied.
Letters from jail
On Thursday, the jury learned that Millard attempted to use Noudga as his "secret agent" from behind bars to influence the testimony of key Crown witnesses in the case. Assistant Crown attorney Tony Leitch read out pages and pages of letters Millard sent to her from jail.
"You said you wanted to be a secret agent. Be mine?" one letter from Millard to Noudga read. "Here's your chance to be a covert operative."
"It was Mark who f--ked up a truck robbery, not me," Millard wrote. "Just because I helped clean up Mark's mess, does not mean I should also pay for it."
The letters to Noudga also referred to Millard's friend Andrew Michalski, who testified earlier in the trial.
"Andrew is the only evidence of any planning," Millard said in another letter. "He must say he did not hear any planning of any kind. Ever."
The trial resumes Monday morning at 10 a.m.