They’re killers accused of murder.It’s unlikely any juror was unaware of that, the intertwining of homicide proven and homicide alleged.But never was the name of Tim Bosma uttered in Courtroom 2-6 over the seven weeks of trial. Not in front of the jury anyway.That Dellen Millard and Mark Smich shot the Hamilton man dead and fed his body into an industrial incinerator — a ghastly crime for which they were both convicted in 2016 — was ruled inadmissible as similar fact evidence by Justice Michael Code in a pretrial proceeding. Hence the interminable box-empty wrangling over leaving a false impression with the jury that human bones were never found in “the Eliminator” as experts pondered blurry photo images of what might have been a specimen fragment from a deer or a person.Possibly the scant remains of Laura Babcock, the fun-loving if mentally troubled 23-year-old last seen alive shortly after Canada Day, 2012. Her body has never been found.No body. No crime scene. But mounds of circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution, even winnowed by Code.How to say what can’t be said?Or reported.Until now, as the jury began deliberations around 1:45 p.m. Tuesday.What the jury didn’t know, these wraps-off stories are labelled.Plenty.Jurors were not permitted to hear, for instance, about the illegal enterprises in which the defendants were apparently involved, together or independently, or which they discussed as future endeavours before their arrest on April 10, 2014; their mutual obsession with a criminal lifestyle: drug trafficking, drug importing, arson, theft, robbery, chopping vehicles, obstructing police and prostitution.A far broader conspiracy than the events which brought Millard and Smich to court, what they referred to as “missions” and “dark deeds.”“I’m down to merk (murder) people if it’s a big enough payoff,” Millard texted Smich in early 2012.From Smich to ...
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