Laura Babcock murder trial

Letters found in the home of Dellen Millard’s girlfriend suggest the accused was planning an alibi for the murder of Laura Babcock, before he was charged with her murder. That evidence came as the crown closed its case against Millard and Mark Smich for the 2012 disappearance of the 23 year old Toronto woman.

A witness from yesterday was brought back to the stand to clarify something today. Matthew Ward Jackson testified that he had sold a gun to Millard in 2012, but said yesterday that Millard hadn’t shown any prior interest in guns. Today he changed that story for the jury and clarified that he and Millard had spoken about the purchase of guns in the past.

Then we heard from the crowns final witness, an officer who searched Millard’s girlfriend, Christina Noudga’s home in April 2014. The officer testifying said Mark Smich and Dellen Millard had not yet been charged with the murder of Laura Babcock.

They found 65 letters to Noudga from Millard, including one that reads:
‘The night Laura disappeared. I came over to your place early in the morning. I tapped on your window, which I do sometimes. You came back to Maplegate with me. I told you Laura was over, doing coke with Mark in the basement.
You saw her alive, with Mark and there was coke on the bar. Later, when she was reported missing, you asked me if I knew anything. I told you that Mark told me that she O.D.’d. I told you I had agreed to stay quiet about it in exchange for the promise that he would stop selling and stop using coke.’

In the letters, Millard asks Noudga to be his secret agent. He tells her she may be an important witness at his trial. Most of them have the instruction to “destroy this letter – to protect me.”

Millard later wrote:
‘that stuff I wrote before, about seeing Mark and someone at Maplegate, partying in the basement, that was brainstorming, forget it.’

This case resumes Monday and that’s when we’ll learn whether Dellen Millard and Mark Smich will call any evidence.