According to Noudga, Burns started delivering Millard’s letters in late May or June 2013, though at first she would just show them to Christina and not allow her to keep them. As far as Noudga remembers, they mostly described Millard’s life in jail, interspersed with declarations of his love for her. The letters stopped, for reasons unknown, in January 2014. Some sections of the letters in evidence have been redacted and are not shown to the jury or made public. The earliest letter found in Noudga’s bedside table was dated July 25, 2013, and titled “A Letter To an Arabian Princess.” The spelling mistakes are Millard’s.
I have a new prized possession. It’s a little scrap of paper with a muddy paw print on it. It’s fabulous! Thank you—you really do know me better than anyone else. It’s the perfect gift in this place. When I was first brought in they treated me as though I were Hannibal Lecter. Paraded down the halls in chains and surrounded on all sides by a team of guards. I suppose the attention should have been flattering. For the first two weeks I was kept naked in a bare video recorded cell, and given only bread and jam to eat. In conversation the presiding psychiatric, [name redacted], actually admitted he was trying to see if he could make me suicidal as part of his pet project to figure me out. He called me an “enigma.” He never did get a chance to finish his experiment. I managed to slip out of his clutches and into prison orange clothing. The good doctor does not realize the service he actually did me. He applied such great pressure in his quest to crack my spirit—what he accomplished was hardenning me, like loose carbon turned to diamond. Once I almost broke down. I had taken a Styrofoam cup and broken it into little granuels. I was pushing them about on the floor into different geometric designs. Almost immediately there was a bang at the door. “What are you playing with?” I replied that it was Styrofoam, that I wasn’t aloud to read, or draw, and so that was all I had available. The guard confiscated the Styrofoam granuels, and I was back to absolute deprevation. I sat, hugging my knees, and began to cry. I wiped away the first tears with a forearm and the words tattooed there immediately jumped out. Here was text the doctor could not confiscate. “I am heaven sent, don’t you dare forget.” I had forgotten, and thanks to that tattoo, at the moment I needed reminding, I got it. I stopped crying and smiled. If the doctor had not been so cruel, I do not think I would be fairing so well now. I’ve been in “the hole” for two months. This is where other prisoners are sent for misconducts, such as fights: They come, they stay for a couple of weeks as punishment, and they go back to their respective ranges. They think this is punishment? Ha! I have clothing, pencil, paper and books. As my great grand mother would have said “tis luxury.” The challenge is no longer enduring the day to day realities of prison life, it is bearring the loneliness. Being separated from you is terrible. All the pleasures of modern society; cars, movies, restaurants, itunes, I can do without. My favorite activities; sailing and flying, I could do without. What I long for most is to wake up next to you. I miss you so much—gonna cry.
Your letter has uplifted my spirits like an infusion of helium! I love you like I’ve never loved any other woman. I’m coming for you.
After lead prosecutor Tony Leitch reads this aloud in court he asks Noudga what she had written to Millard. (Her letters to him have never been found.)
“Um…hmm,” she says. “Probably, you know, generic: ‘I love you, I long for you…don’t worry, you’ll get through this.’ ”
Leitch reads the second part of Millard’s July 25 letter, in which he segues abruptly from his fantastical account of life in jail and declarations of love for Noudga into not so subtle instructions for her.
Some day sooner or later X may be forced to give a statement, or be sepinaed to take the stand. People often make small lies, and are caught lying by the details. X NEEDS to know, what the police already know, so that X doesn’t say anything contrary. X must have this information! Police know Mark gave Dell a locked toolbox. They know Mark told Dell it contained drugs; and that Mark wanted Dell to hide it. They do not know if Dell was told the combination. (Dell will say he did not know the combination.) Police know that Dell used Christina’s cell phone to text Matt and ask him to hold the toolbox. Police do not know if Christina was in the Yukon, only that Dell had access to her phone at the time. Matt stated he could not see into the Yukon. (Dell will say the toolbox remained locked the entire time. Christina may have seen it in the car, but it was closed, never openned. Dell will say he borrowed Christina’s phone to send some texts. The only reason he gave was that Mark had made a terrible mistake and Dell was trying to contain it. Dell will say he left Christina and Pedo at Maple Gate, taking her phone with him, saying he had to meet someone briefly, and would be back soon. Dell will say he returned to Maple Gate without the toolbox, and returned Christina’s phone to her, with the text history cleared.) Police know that after Dell’s arrest Matt returned the toolbox of drugs to Mark. After Mark’s arrest police found the toolbox EMPTY in Mark’s basement.
“Any idea who X is?” asks Leitch.
Noudga says implausibly that she doesn’t. She does, however, concede that the letter was odd. “I didn’t see any reason for him to hide the fact that I was in the car,” she says. “I probably responded with a vague ‘Okay, that’s interesting,’ and then moved on with talking about my day. I never agreed or disagreed.”
“Did you realize what he was asking of you in this letter?”
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking at it now, he’s obviously asking me to tamper with evidence and testimony.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“No.”
“Why did you choose not to go to the police?”
“I didn’t want to be involved,” she says. “Not so much [due to] the love I had for him. It was more so I had plans to go abroad, get on with my life.”
The fact that Millard was charged with first-degree murder was apparently inconsequential to Noudga. “I didn’t want to make a statement,” she tells the court. According to her account, it never occurred to her that the police might be interested in the letters. “I just left them there and they collected dust,” she says.
“Were you prepared to lie for him?” asks Leitch.
“No.”
Along with Millard’s letters, police also seized various notes, diary-like musings, and draft letters from Noudga’s room. Leitch shows her some of her writings.
“This is your own handwriting?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Do you see what you wrote?” Leitch asks. Then he puts his earlier question to Noudga again. “Were you prepared to lie for him?”
“I wrote that with thoughts of maybe helping him out,” she says of her notes, which are not shown in court. “I thought about it, but I wasn’t prepared to do it.”
“Put it in writing but thought better of it? That’s your position?”
“Yes.”
Leitch shows a second letter to the court, this one from August 2013. It follows the same pattern as the first. Millard alludes to Smich getting him in trouble, saying he should have paid more attention to a piece of advice he heard on Breaking Bad: “Never trust a drug addict.” He professes his undying love for Noudga. “I adore the effect your spirit has on me,” he writes. “It’s like sunshine to a meadow.” And then he tells her that to get around the damning cell phone evidence, he may claim to have lent out his phone.
Millard gives the impression of having way more confidence than someone in his situation should have. “The entire case is circumstantial and full of holes,” he declares. He asks his girlfriend to check Smich’s Facebook page for pictures of Mark working at the hangar and, if she finds the photos, to send them to him.
Noudga tells the court she couldn’t have done that even if she’d wanted to, as she deleted her Facebook account shortly after her boyfriend’s arrest, and it would have raised suspicions if she’d used someone else’s account. Throughout her testimony, she insists she didn’t oblige Millard in any of his requests, othe
r than to send along some sexy pictures of herself. His letters seem to support her claims, as he becomes increasingly anxious about her willingness to help him.
—
UNTIL HE LANDED IN JAIL charged with first-degree murder, Millard exerted a lot of control over Noudga, whose goal was to have him love her as much as she loved him. Although she denies it in court, her text messages about all-nighters and mission digestion can be interpreted to mean she was not only aware of Millard’s murder plan but also approved of it. Judging from their texts and letters, it appeared that Noudga regarded Millard as a kind of superman unbound by society’s rules, the perfect mate for the brilliant, sexy woman she imagined herself to be. To Millard, Noudga—with her lack of empathy or moral core—was a suitable candidate for number one girlfriend. But he was not prepared to be exclusive: on the side, he also continued to see the realtor Lisa Whidden, and Jenn Spafford, the glamorous ex-fiancée who was still enjoying the use of his car and one of his condos. Once he was behind bars, however, Millard realized that he was going to have to offer Noudga more if he wanted to keep her loyal. In September, he wrote promising her children and a life together.
Pedo is my child in name and spirit, but the most basic life goal is to have children of my own flesh. My one true fear is to die before being a father.
I usually keep my hopes and plans to myself. Did you know my plan for us and the sailboat? I know I told you I was buying one soon. It was supposed to be this summer. What I didn’t tell you was that as early, next spring, as weather would have allowed, I planned on Michalski bringing it, with me, to Toronto. By then you’d be done with your school year. I wanted us to set sail, just you, me and Pedo, and we’d head for the Atlantic. From Halifax we could go where ever the wind blew us. The winds would probably favor Norway, with a stop in Iceland. Then south to Scottland and England. I figured we’d explore each by harbouring and renting a car. After that the summer would be ending and you’d have to decide if you wanted to fly back for school in Canada or keep on going. I don’t think it would be hard to convince you to keep on going….
…I planned to sail the world with you. I hoped to time our ship’s return to Canada with you pregnant. So we could each benefit from the advice of, and share in the joy with, our mothers.
It chews me up on the inside knowing what I’m missing; worrying what I may never have. If I beat the charges, this dream could still be realized….
…I knew before I was arrested that I wanted you to be the mother of my children. I was waiting for you to finish school. I was waiting for my business to stabilize. I was waiting for us to explore the entire globe. Maybe I was waiting for me to be just a little more mature; to be better emotionally settled. But I’ve known for some time that I had finally found the girl I have spent my entire life waiting for. And now I’m in jail. Fuck!
What if I don’t beat the charges? What if I’m given a life sentence? I’m sure you would book overnight trailer visits. But for how long? I’m certain that if I win the trial we’ll have children. But would you have children with a man in prison for life? It may not be a fair question, but these aren’t fair times. It’s on my mind and will be every day.
P.S. Even as a prisoner I could make a better husband and father than most free men.
As Tony Leitch reads this letter aloud in the courtroom, it causes extreme discomfort. The Bosma family is visibly shaken. Members of the normally stoic jury look horrified. And when the gallery of spectators files out for the afternoon break, they are pretty much speechless.
In keeping with his habit of following declarations of love and devotion with requests for favours, Millard’s next letter to Noudga tries to enlist her help as a “secret agent,” a career, she tells Leitch, she had long fantasized about.
I’ve always been able to achieve extraordinary goals. Winning back my liberty…Wow, maybe it’s beyond me, on my own. Maybe all the things I’ve achieved have been. I’ve always gotten help in one form or another. To get out of this bind I need help. I won’t ask you to give testimony that could be disproved. What I’ve written to you is a “rough draft.” I wanted your feedback. I WONT have you made a witness if you don’t want to be. I can’t promise the prosecussion won’t subpoena you and force you to testify though. We need to get our stories straight. I need to know what you’re willing to do? And of course nothing will go without being checked against phone and internet records. You said you wanted to be a secret agent. Be mine? Life has a funny way of giving us exactly what we wish for.
Here’s your chance to be a covert operative. I wished for two years off work. I wished for a challenge worth devoting myself to. Seems I got it. You know what I wish for now? My liberty. Yours and Pedo’s company. Freedom and exploration. To get these things I need to win at trial. To win at trial, I need help. Help could be testimony. Help could be other things too…like secretly delivering a message…just staying quiet has been an immense help already. If Mark and Andrew had done the same this would be a lot easier. Poor Andrew, shit his pants and spilled his guts. And treacherous Mark; got himself charged by trying to put it on me. These are the most lethal pieces currently played against me.
By October 1, when he wrote the following letter, Millard regarded himself as a jailhouse lawyer, proposing concrete action plans for Noudga. While some of his legal points are correct, others are not. His allegations about the Hamilton Police are unfounded. And he continues to be obsessed with Michalski and his evidence.
None of the science included in the disclosure is hugely relevant. I’m assuming they have Grissom from CSI Las Vegas working the case, and will discover and prove everything that science can. If they miss something, then bonus. If they fake something, then it’s a chance to catch them faking. The science shows a body was disposed of. It does not, in this case, show how someone died.
If someone dies accidently, and then the body is disposed of, that’s not murder. If someone dies accidently during a robbery, that’s murder. Because the robbery is intentional, even an accidental death can become a murder conviction. Most of the evidence points to me going to buy a pickup. This results in an acquittal, and I’m a free man. But there’s a problem, and it’s the testimony of Andrew Michalski. Cops tricked him into thinking a) that he was charged with murder, which he was not, and b) that they already had the evidence, he was just confirming a tiny meaningless piece for them. Andrew told police that on May 5th I showed him a picture of a black dodge pickup truck, printed from the internet, and told him there were two trucks to choose from, and that I asked “who’s should I STEAL, the nice guy’s or the asshole’s?” It took five hours of interrogation and Andrew contradicted himself many times, but that’s what he gave them.
Fucking panzy, scared into giving up a true friend. He doesn’t understand the law. He doesn’t know what the words mean. He’s the only piece of evidence that puts me in the category of intentional robbery. His testimony, not forensic science, is going to get me convicted. He is the most important, single piece of the case against me….
…His interrogation seems guided. As if the detective were hinting at what Andrew should say: When Andrew said “no Dell didn’t tell me anything about anything” the detective gets angry. When Andrew says “there was a picture of a truck” the detective is all warm and cudly. We are going to argue that Andrew was given the message that he wasn’t going home until he said what police wanted to hear. That he was untruthful, so that police would let him leave. The interrogation really does look that way too….
Andrew’s a bit gullible when it comes to authority. He is probably mad at me, blaming me for his frightenning interrogation, so that he doesn’t have to admit to himself how completely he has thrown me under the bus. All he had to do was say nothing, but instead he tried to talk his way out.
Andrew needs to say I showed him a picture of a truck and asked “who’s I should BUY.” That he changed it to steal because, before the interrogation began, cops told him they wanted to hear about the planning of a t
ruck robbery, and he wasn’t going home until he told them what they wanted to hear….
…Someone needs to shake him up. I protected him by telling him nothing. He should never have moved things after I was arrested. That was Mark who brought heat to him, not me….
…It was Mark who fucked up a truck robbery, not me. And just because I helped clean up Mark’s mess, does not mean I should also pay for it. Especially not because of a technicality in the law. Especially not because Andrew didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. I need him to undo the damage he has done me!
I love him and I know he loves me. He has a loyal heart. If he knew that his words were going to get me a life sentence, he would want to change them. Show him how he can, and he will change them.
Millard regularly warns Noudga to get rid of the evidence. “If ever there were letters to destroy, these are they. Reread them,” he writes. “Destroy them now.” Millard is also paranoid about those close to him being watched. “My mum’s house is under very elusive surveillance,” he tells Noudga. He suggests that Noudga’s and Michalski’s phones are obvious targets for bugging. He asks, “So are you my secret agent? Careful what you wish for.” He gives her the name of a lawyer, Christopher Tarach, to pass on to Andrew once she makes contact. “Chris already knows my case. He will probably take Andrew for free,” Millard says. “If need be Moose [another friend] could donate 1000.00 (warn him not to use his bugged phone).”
Dark Ambition Page 23
