Millard called dad a failure, blamed him for family business woes, trial hears
Posted June 12, 2018 2:48 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A Toronto murder trial has heard that a man accused of killing his father called his dad a failure and blamed him for the family company’s financial woes in the days around his death.
Dellen Millard has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of his father, Wayne Millard, whose passing was initially ruled a suicide.
Retired provincial police forensic detective Jim Falconer has presented scores of text messages in court from Dellen Millard around the time his father died on Nov. 29, 2012.
The texts were recovered from one of Millard’s computers found at the home he shared with his father in Toronto’s west end.
The younger Millard texted his girlfriend in the early morning hours of Nov. 30, 2012, the day after his father’s body was found, that his dad had depression and shot and killed himself.
In the texts read out by Falconer, Millard tells Christina Noudga his world has never been so upside down and adds that he told his father he blamed him for problems faced by Millardair, the family’s aviation business.
“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 in the text read in court. “Usually he tells me not to worry. But this time he said maybe I was right.”
On Dec. 4, 2012 Dellen Millard fired everyone working at Millardair and wound the burgeoning company down, court has heard.
Wayne Millard had taken out a multimillion-dollar loan to build a new hangar at the Region of Waterloo International Airport in an effort to revamp the business and turn it into an operation that serviced, repaired and maintained aircraft, the trial has heard.
Just weeks before his death, Millardair had been approved by Transport Canada to operate the business.
The trial has heard that Dellen Millard told police he found his father dead in bed around 6 p.m. on Nov. 29, 2012. It has also heard that the younger Millard bought the handgun found next to his father’s body from a weapons dealer and Dellen Millard’s DNA was found on the handle of the gun.
Millard told police he last saw his father alive around noon the day before and said he stayed the night at his friend Mark Smich’s house. Phone records indicate one of Millard’s phones moved from Smich’s house around 1 a.m. on Nov. 29, 2012, to his father’s home where it stayed until shortly after 6 a.m.
