Dark Ambition

by Ann Brocklehurst

  Sharlene thanked her family and the Bosmas, their friends, the churches, and all the strangers who had volunteered to be part of the search to find her husband. She said her faith in God had helped her get through the last few days.

  “My husband, Tim, is a loving father to our beautiful two-year-old girl, and she needs her daddy back,” Sharlene said as her voice broke and she fought back tears. “His parents need their little boy back. All of our brothers and sisters want their brother back. We look forward to being able to put our arms around Tim and to tell him how much we love him. We hope and pray that today is the last day of this nightmare.”

  She said that the many kids in her extended family couldn’t understand what had happened to their favourite pest of an uncle and were wondering when their next water fight would be. One of them, in the way that children do, had perfectly and simply described what was going on. “Uncle Timmy has been stolen,” he said.

  As Sharlene became more visibly upset, Tim’s mother, Mary, reached out to pat her on the back. She kept her hand there as her daughter-in-law spoke directly and angrily to the two men who had taken Tim. It was the moment that would be replayed hundreds and thousands of times, the video clip seared into everyone’s minds.

  “It was just a truck,” she said slowly, loudly, spitting out every word. “It is just a truck.

  “You don’t need him, but I do, and our daughter needs her daddy back. So please, please, let him come home. We need him to come home. And may God have mercy on you.”

  That was the end. There were no goodbyes, no thank-yous. Sharlene and the two families simply filed out of the room while Constable Greg Slack held open the door and Detective Kavanagh followed. Slack then walked to the podium where Sharlene Bosma had just stood.

  “Okay, so that concludes the briefing for today,” he said to the assembled media. “That’s all.”

  Like everyone else left in the room, he was at a complete loss for words.

  —

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TIM BOSMA became a discussion topic not just on the big social media sites like Facebook and Twitter but also at Websleuths.​com, a forum devoted to true crime where armchair detectives “sleuth”—to use their own favourite word—missing persons and mysterious murder cases. Originally founded in 1999 to discuss the still-unsolved murder of the child beauty-pageant star JonBenét Ramsey, Websleuths now has active threads on thousands of murders in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Thanks to its popularity and longevity, it ranks high in Google search results and is a magnet for those looking for information about specific cases. And just as many people with knowledge of a crime can’t resist the temptation to talk about it in real life, so too does that “loose lips” principle apply on the internet.

  On at least one occasion, the actual murderer has joined in a Websleuths discussion. After the 2009 murder of Abraham Shakespeare, an illiterate Florida labourer who won $32 million in a lottery, police started investigating his financial adviser, Dorice “Dee Dee” Moore, as a suspect. Websleuths members began discussing Moore’s possible involvement, and soon Moore had signed herself up as a member to defend her actions. Although she pretended to be a disinterested third party, Moore’s comments betrayed insider information, and one or more sleuths reported her to police. Detectives then contacted Tricia Griffith, the owner of Websleuths, and asked her to let Moore keep posting in the hope that she would reveal more information. She did, leading to her arrest and eventual conviction for first-degree murder.

  While the Moore case is the most notable one associated with Websleuths, Griffith gets several subpoenas a year from law-enforcement agencies interested in who is posting non-public details about crimes on the site. Although some members, like Moore, participate to throw people off and try to ferret out information, others just want to set the record straight, find support, or ask for advice. Websleuths encourages those with noncriminal ties to become “verified insiders” by providing forum moderators with documented proof that they are who they say they are. This private information will not be made public, but other sleuths can be satisfied that what insiders say is coming from a source who has been checked out. Likewise, members can be verified as lawyers, doctors, police officers, and journalists. The vast majority, however, are simply true-crime fanatics anonymously discussing cases on the internet with others who share their fascination.

  As a result of its demographic makeup, there is a low signal-to-noise ratio on Websleuths. Posters chew over insignificant details endlessly. Their tendency to take a fact and blow it all out of proportion is exacerbated when information is scarce. In contrast, when there is relevant material to look into, some of the sleuths can hold their own with police and the best investigative reporters, which is why both cops and journalists keep an eye on the site.

  By the time Sharlene Bosma made her appeal, Tim’s disappearance was a big enough story that several Websleuths members were monitoring the press conference as it was streamed live on the internet by The Public Record, an online Hamilton news magazine.

  “This is breaking my heart,” wrote “mollymae” as she watched. She included a sad emoticon.

  “Sooooo sad and the wife speaking just makes me cry,” wrote “canadiangirl.”

  “I hope Tim gets home safe,” wrote “LoyalSleuth.”

  Their sentimental reaction was not out of the ordinary. Many Websleuths members get so wrapped up in the crimes they follow that they even use photos of the victims as their online avatars. Yet in spite of this, and the fact that Websleuths defines itself as a site friendly to victims and law enforcement, an ugly strain of commentary can emerge from members who think they know more than anyone else. “LoyalSleuth,” for example, was unwilling to accept Detective Kavanagh’s statements that Tim Bosma had been targeted for his truck and did not know the suspects.

  “Something tells me Timothy knew these people,” she wrote shortly after Sharlene’s appeal. “Leaving in the dark with two strangers that ‘walked’ to my home in the country, is too far fetched IMHO.”

  She and other sleuths began looking for potentially damaging information in Tim and Sharlene’s past, posting links to their wedding and engagement albums, which they had discovered on the photographer’s website. Within minutes, “canadiangirl” had gone through the albums and found what she believed was a clue.

  “In one of these photos it looks like [Tim] may have some tattoos on his fingers,” she wrote.

  “You’re right!” responded “LoyalSleuth,” who believed the letters SK were tattooed on Tim’s middle finger and OK on his index finger. “Pure assumption, but tattoos on fingers are something done in jail?” she wrote, adding that the poor quality of these tattoos supported the theory that Tim had been in custody at the time he was inked. “Identifying marks for sure,” she concluded—until she looked again and noticed that the supposed jailhouse tattoos were not present in any other image of Tim.

  “Photoshopped by the photographer perhaps?” suggested “canadiangirl,” who was loath to see her clue get tossed.

  In the end, however, she could not prevent the inevitable. Other sleuths soon pointed out that the tattooed-fingers photo on which everyone was basing their wild theories was not, in fact, a picture of Tim Bosma at all. The artsy close-up—shot from the shoulders down and showing a man buttoning his vest as he prepares for the ceremony—was of another member of the wedding party. The man “sporting the knuckle tats has a wedding ring on. TB had no wedding ring on before the ceremony,” wrote “Lori McA.” “AND the biggest clue it is not TB—the man pictured is wearing a dark vest. TB’s vest was white/off white.”

  Despite this debunking, the rumours regarding Tim Bosma’s tattooed fingers persisted for months. The nonexistent tattoos would be invoked time and again to prove that Tim wasn’t really as squeaky clean as the media were making out, and that a regular guy with a beautiful wife and adorable baby daughter didn’t just disappear off the face of the earth. The tattoo rumours fed the pecu
liar hope that this was not just a random crime, even if they did so at the expense of the victim’s reputation and caused his family added distress.

  DAY 5—FRIDAY, MAY 10

  Less than twenty-four hours after Sharlene’s appeal, the Hamilton Police and Detective Kavanagh called yet another press conference—this time to announce new developments in the case. They had learned that on the night Bosma went missing, at approximately 10:10 P.M., his pickup truck had been spotted in downtown Brantford. And on Thursday they had been called to an industrial area in the west end of Brantford where Bosma’s cell phone had been found. The police were once again asking businesses in Brantford to check their video surveillance systems for any type of activity between 9:30 P.M. and 10:30 P.M. on Monday night. They wanted to see if they could figure out the route Bosma’s truck had taken through Brantford.

  The most significant information, however, came not from the phone itself but from production orders—a type of search warrant—used to obtain call information from phone companies, among other things. Police quickly discovered the phone number Tim Bosma had been called from to set up the test drive, and they soon got a production order for that phone. It turned out to be what’s known as a burner phone, registered in a bogus name. The purpose of burners—which run on prepaid accounts and don’t require a contract and credit card—is to avoid leaving an electronic trail. They are often replaced frequently, sometimes after just a few calls. And most important of all, they do not provide any connection to the user’s real-life identity.

  When police contacted the other numbers called by the burner phone, they learned that the same two men who had arrived at the Bosma home had gone for a test drive in a similar truck in Toronto on May 5, the day before. The owner of the vehicle was able to provide a description of the suspects, which not only closely matched the one given by Sharlene but added to it. Because that Sunday, the day before Bosma’s test drive, had been an exceptionally warm May day, the taller of the two men had dressed for the weather in a short-sleeved T-shirt.

  “On one of his wrists—the witness wasn’t sure if it was the left or right—where a person wears a watch, was a tattoo of the word ambition framed by a box,” said Kavanagh. “Police have researched this tattoo. This tattoo itself is not uncommon. Many people have the word ambition tattooed on their body. However, the location and the frame around it is unique. This male has not been identified as yet. There is no further description of the second male.”

  Kavanagh asked the public to continue providing information and then took questions from the press, the first of which was unpleasant but necessary.

  “Do you think Timothy Bosma is still alive?” asked the reporter.

  “We always have to hold out hope,” answered Kavanagh. “That’s all I can say.”

  Another reporter wanted to know more about the Toronto test drive. “Was it the same scenario where they met this person at his or her home, took the car for a test drive, and then brought it back? What happened?”

  Kavanagh described an almost identical situation in which “two individuals walked up to this male’s business not having a vehicle. The test drive was the same, the taller individual in the driver’s seat, the potential victim in the passenger seat, and one male behind him.”

  As the reporters, by then a much bigger crowd than earlier in the week, began to interrupt each other, Kavanagh warned them to take it one at a time.

  “Did he find them suspicious in any way? Did anything trigger with him that day that was unusual?”

  “Yes, he did. That’s all I’m going to say. Yes, he found them suspicious.”

  Another reporter was curious about a possible third person. “How did the two men arrive at the Toronto location? Did they drive themselves there or did somebody drop them off? Or what can you say about what happened at the Bosma residence?”

  Kavanagh said that in the Toronto scenario, the witness described how two individuals walked up to his business. “He asked them how they arrived, and they said they walked there. In the Bosma case, there was no other vehicle spotted at the Bosma house. We can only presume there was a vehicle in the area.”

  A reporter pushed for more details on what the Toronto man found suspicious about the two visitors. “The gentleman from Toronto advertised his vehicle in the same way Mr. Bosma did: by internet. It was the same type of vehicle. It was a newer vehicle. What he found suspicious is what I’ve already talked about, the fact that two individuals walk up to an industrial area which is a ways from residential areas. They walk up without a vehicle. And their interest in the vehicle, he thought it was odd because of the size of the vehicle. It’s more a business vehicle than a personal vehicle.”

  “And did he do anything to act on his suspicions? Did he cut the test drive short? Did he tell them, ‘Bring me back to my business’? Did he pick up his phone and call someone?”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Kavanagh, adding a piece of information that not all detectives would tell the media. “I think fortunately for this person, he’s a very large individual. And I think that he would overpower the both of them, and I think that was his advantage.”

  Soon after that ominous note, the press conference ended.

  DAY 6—SATURDAY, MAY 11

  For the fourth day in a row, a press briefing was called at Hamilton Police headquarters. This time, it was to inform the public of an arrest in the Tim Bosma case. The news was delivered by Hamilton Police chief Glenn De Caire and force superintendent Dan Kinsella, who, even though it was a Saturday afternoon, appeared in uniform short-sleeved white shirts with badges and stripes.

  The man with the “ambition” tattoo was now in custody, said Kinsella, and being charged with forcible confinement and theft over $5,000. He was Dellen Millard, twenty-seven years old, from Toronto. Kinsella declined to answer questions about whether Millard was talking, and when asked if police believed Tim Bosma was dead, he gave almost exactly the same answer Matt Kavanagh had given the day before: “There’s always hope. We hold out hope.”

  He described the ongoing investigation as “rapid, fluid, and dynamic [and] changing minute to minute” as search warrants were being prepared and evidence gathered. During the extremely brief four-minute question period with reporters, Kinsella said police did not yet know the identity of the second suspect.

  He stressed that the welfare of Tim Bosma was the top priority, and he repeatedly urged anyone with information to contact the police. “For those responsible, turn yourself in,” he said as he quickly removed his papers from the podium and stood aside.

  The Googling of Dellen Millard had already begun.

  —

  PETE VANDERBOOM’S MEMORIES OF the day Tim Bosma went missing begin when he said to his wife that same morning that they needed to get Tim to hook up the air conditioner in an outbuilding on their property. Vanderboom lives and runs his excavation business on a hilltop about three miles north of the Bosmas’ home. The autumn before, Tim had installed a natural gas furnace in his office to replace the baseboard electric heaters that were costing a fortune. Now, he needed AC to keep the temperature down. While Vanderboom is almost ten years older than Bosma, from Burlington not Ancaster, and Canadian Dutch Reformed Church not Christian Reformed, the two men had met through business and mutual friends.

  A few years earlier, Tim’s mother had told Pete’s wife, who she knew from the gym, that her son needed fill material for his house. Getting rid of dirt is a huge problem for excavators like Vanderboom, so he happily delivered a few loads. From time to time, Vanderboom would call Bosma to remove air conditioners when he needed to dig around houses. The two men also socialized occasionally as part of a group that went snowmobiling in the winter.

  Vanderboom first heard that Bosma had gone missing via text message. As soon as he could, he and a co-worker hopped in his truck and headed over to the Bosma house. The driveway was already packed with pickups and cars, and the garage was filled with people.

  The police had asked ev
eryone to stick to getting the word out about Tim’s disappearance on social media and putting up posters, but Vanderboom had other ideas. As an off-road hobbyist who knew the area well, he thought he could be more useful searching back roads, the type of places someone might leave an injured man.

  For three afternoons, he and his friend drove down every farm laneway, into every field entranceway, and along every hidden driveway they could find between Ancaster and Brantford. At Heron Point, they checked under a bridge near a golf course. In other places, they got out and walked through the woods. Spring leaves were just coming out, so they could still see well into the distance. “A week later and everything would have been greened over,” Vanderboom recalls. “We concentrated on areas we thought nobody else was going to be.” Their best-case scenario was that they would find an injured Tim Bosma and take him to hospital.

  Later, after the police announced that Bosma had been murdered, the unanswered questions continued to consume Vanderboom. He wondered if Tim had somehow unknowingly crossed paths with Millard and Smich, so instead of searching country roads, he scoured the internet looking for clues. Eventually, he had to step back. “I couldn’t get this stuff out of my head, and it was driving me crazy,” he said. “Maybe I just wanted it to be about more than a stupid truck.”

  TWO

  THE CROWN’S FIRST WITNESS

  Sharlene Bosma is taller in real life than she looks in the “just a truck” YouTube video, which is the opposite of how it usually works. It’s far more common to find that someone you’ve watched on a screen is much smaller and more fragile in person. But in her black patent-leather stilettos, dark-grey pencil skirt, and turquoise blouse, Bosma towers over Detective Kavanagh as he shows her into the courtroom and points out the path she should take to the witness box.