Millard tells Noudga that her most important role will be on the witness stand at his trial.
Protecting your credibility and preparing to give testimony is how you can help me most. Do not allow that to be sacrificed by trying to solve less important issues.
The second most important role, is getting Andrew on board to help. He’s got to say he never heard anything about any thefts or plans to steal anything, especially nothing about stealing a truck. He heard I wanted to buy a truck. Lots of people heard buy, he was just being pressured, coached even, by police….
…Bringing Andrew back to my side, brings me back from losing, and puts me at a tie. Your testimony, though, will be what wins it….If Andrew wants to be helpful, maybe he can contact Matt. Andrew’s good hearted, but a tad bit slow. If he does want to help, impress upon him how important it is to keep any contact with you a secret. If he goes to talk to Matt, he must not say where he got his information. He needs a cover story completely thought out in advance.
Help me ObiwonRubikinks, you’re my only hope.
The letter includes a large sketch by Millard of Noudga dressed in a Star Wars–style helmet and goggles. He is a gifted sketch artist.
As Leitch reads the letters one by one into the record at court, he stops regularly with questions for Noudga.
“Did you ever think holding on to [the letters] could protect you in some way?” he asks.
Noudga looks blank.
He rephrases the question. “Did you have any concerns about anything Mr. Millard might do?”
She says she didn’t. A few minutes earlier, she had insisted she kept the letters only because “I always wanted him to love me back the way I loved him.” Now, she says, looking back, she sees “it was very stupid, very idiotic, of me.”
—
IN OCTOBER 2013, MILLARD STARTED teaching himself Ukrainian in jail and writing passages of his letters to Noudga in her parents’ native tongue. In a letter that was also a language-learning exercise, Millard wrote several phrases in Ukrainian, including “Dellen loves Christina,” “Never a lender nor a borrower be,” and “First learn the alphabet.”
“Prior to incarceration,” asks Leitch, “had he shown any interest in the Ukrainian language?”
“It wasn’t on the top of his language list,” says Noudga, who, despite her infatuation with Millard, seems to have sensed on some level that learning Ukrainian might be a ploy to ingratiate himself with her. Although he was also learning Spanish and was interested in a lot of languages, Millard had never before tried to talk to her in Ukrainian. Yet after a few months in jail, he was signing his letters to her with the Ukrainian phrase meaning “your man” or “your husband.”
Millard was also obsessed with surveillance. In a letter sent in October, he tells Noudga that a recent visitor to his mother’s house, who stopped by when Madeleine Burns wasn’t home, was pulled over by police fifteen minutes later on Highway 27 “by an unmarked cruizer (the kind that look like cop cars, but the word police is obscured). It seems like a routine traffic stop, until he’s ordered out of his car, and the car is searched. Nothing was found. Then to top it off, he was asked what he was doing at my mum’s.”
Millard says these cops are “real undercover,” who can’t be detected. He was sure they knew that his mother and Christina were meeting. “I hope you read these letters in an enclosed place where none of the public can see you,” he says. “I hope you take this warning very seriously.”
Despite the perceived danger, Millard still wanted Noudga to contact Michalski with what he called “Mission Impossible, James Bond, super spy perfection.” He was okay if she played the romance card. “I don’t mind you being publicly flirtatious if it’s in my favor,” he writes. “Just so long as all of him stays on the outside of you.”
A few days later, Millard told Christina he needed her phone records for May 5, 6, 7, and 8. He wanted incoming and outgoing calls and texts, with times and locations. “Send me a copy AND keep a copy for yourself,” he says. “So that I can write you about them, and we can cross reference.”
Leitch asks Noudga if she obliged.
“No,” she says. “I thought it was, like, a waste of time.”
“Was that your response?”
“I don’t know if I used those exact words….I was probably like, ‘I don’t think you need the phone records, because I know what I was doing the entire week.’ ”
As frustrated as Millard may have been with Noudga’s lack of response to his requests, he kept on cozying up to her. “I was going to wait to hear from you before writing this letter, but I don’t want that much time to go to waste,” he writes on October 27. “So until I do hear from you, I am going to continue writing as if your response is a resounding Yes! That you will be my secret agent; effectively my savior.
“Only the craftiest of coyotes will be able to avoid charges like witness tampering or perjury,” he continues. “Of paramount importance is that you keep our contact secret.”
Noudga maintains that she didn’t know at first that a court order forbade Millard from communicating with her. She says a few of her friends and both her parents were aware she was in contact with him.
By mid-November 2013, six months after his arrest, Millard was still discussing phone location data, although he admits to Noudga, “Because there is still so much disclosure to come, it is not certain what defense I will use.” He wanted her to testify that he had a habit of lending his phone to Smich and to help him find any possible supporting evidence. “This can be done in the positive, ie: someone called my phone [and] instead of me answering, Mark would answer and say that I wasn’t there. Or, this could be done in the negative, ie: someone saw me, but I did not have my phone on me.” He asks Noudga if Snoff and Kodiak, the code names he has assigned to Hagerman and Michalski, “will help create the precedent. Careful what you tell them. Be sure they will help before giving them any information.”
“Did you reach out to them about this phone issue?” asks Leitch.
“No,” says Noudga.
“In your time with Mr. Millard, did you ever see him loan his phone to Mr. Smich?”
“I’ve seen him not have it, but I’ve never seen him lend his phone.”
Somewhat ironically, Noudga appears—according to her testimony on this point—to have been almost as unhelpful to her jailed boyfriend as she was to the police and prosecutors. She maintains that in the same way she ignored his requests for her phone records, she didn’t engage with him about what defence strategies he might use at trial.
Millard also worried about his mother’s role as intermediary. In one of his letters, he describes an incident where Burns called him from a pay phone and put Noudga on the line.
It was wonderful to think you could hear me on the phone. I could almost feel your presence. Even now days later, it puts the hint of a smile on my face.
But, it was also reckless of my mum to do that. Your credibility as a witness is the ace up my sleeve. If either you or her are under surviellence, what are you gonna say when the prosecution pulls out a snapshot of you in the phone booth, with phone records, and jail records, to say I was on the other end of the line?
…A phone call you can’t talk back on is not worth the risk. There were a hundred officers assigned to this case. It doesn’t take that many to listen to the jail phone, and fetch coffee. These aren’t traffic cops. They’re like the KGB. You, and my mum, are the only people who haven’t given any statement at all. Your names are probably on a board in some detective’s office with big question marks beside them. I don’t think my mum appreciates that police focus could be on her, and you. I need you to appreciate it. I need you to play the role of the illusive spy. Illusive, cunning and catious; if you can be these things, I can get out of here and be yours again.
According to Noudga’s account of this phone call, she did not say a word, just listened as Millard sang the Oasis song “Wonderwall” to her. The lyrics, especially the chorus a
bout being the one to save him, likely struck him as relevant.
Leitch is skeptical. “He has the opportunity to speak to you in person and all he does is sing ‘Wonderwall’?”
“Correct.”
“How does he know you’re there?”
“His mother mentions it to him.”
“Did you ever do this again?”
They never had any further voice contact, she says.
As 2013 drew to a close, Millard’s letters suggest he was becoming increasingly worried that his hold on Noudga was weakening. He asked one of his visitors in jail to reach out to her. And in an interview with the Toronto Star, weeks in the making, he laments not being able to speak to Noudga due to the no-contact order. “We were in love,” he declares for the world to read.
Before the Toronto Star article appeared, on December 30, Millard had informed Noudga that he was speaking to a reporter, who had also expressed interest in talking to her. “I shrugged my shoulders, and said I did not mind. But when he contacts you, I think, you should not talk to him,” Millard writes. “Don’t say anything to him, not about me, not about you, not about the weather. I don’t know yet if what he is going to write, is going to help me, or hurt me.”
For her part, Noudga let Millard know that she’d “withheld” a lawyer, to which he responds, “Oh how I miss your diction! Its ‘retained,’ my love.” The two of them regularly corrected each other’s language mistakes. He called her his “english professor,” probably because she gave him grief over his atrocious spelling, while he took aim at her vocabulary mix-ups and malapropisms. (In court, for example, she confused recant with recount several times.)
Millard also encouraged Noudga to keep active on his behalf. “Surely your super spy self can get in touch with Kodiak. How about going to Yuri’s and getting him to call in a plumbing emergency. Or, going to the same New Year’s party,” he writes in early December.
“We can’t know what to say until disclosure is fully in. That’s still months down the road,” he says. “More disclosure could change everything and require a different approach with what will be best for you to say. What Kodiak needs to say is already clear, that won’t change.”
“So this is a reference to you testifying,” says Leitch.
“Uh, yes.”
“How do you respond?”
“I don’t mention it, really. I had other plans for New Year’s and Christmas anyways, and that’s what I talked about.” She says Yuri was a friend of hers, Millard’s, and Michalski’s.
When Leitch reads the translation of a date written in Ukrainian in the next letter, Noudga corrects him, as she has done on a few previous occasions. “You need a new translator,” she says.
“You could be right,” Leitch says. “Maybe we should have hired you, Ms. Noudga.” Then he asks if she was still in love in December.
“Unfortunately so,” she says, but adds that her feelings were contradictory. When she expressed this to Millard, he responded, “What do you mean by—the more you love me, the more you hate me? Or was it—the more I open up with my emotions, the more you hate me? Please elaborate.”
“Why the hate?” Leitch asks.
“Just…I always had, like, feelings that he was seeing other women, but he rejected them and was aloof about that, and I was madly in love with him, but I wasn’t sure how he felt back at me. I kind of felt like I was being played, and I wasn’t sure what was going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s just because he was in jail he was getting really passionate and emotional,” she says. He had expressed loving and lustful sentiments before, but he had never come on quite so strong.
So, Leitch asks, it was the “declarations of love interspersed with requests to reach out to Crown witnesses. Is that what you mean by getting played?”
Noudga says it is.
Leitch comes to an undated letter with AGENT COYOTE written in the top right-hand corner. In it, Millard refers to Michalski as Kodiak again and to Mark Smich as Itchy. Along the top of the paper are instructions for Noudga: “reread this page, commit to memory, then *destroy this letter*.”
What Kodiak has the power to say, about what Itchy said to him, could change everything. Maybe Itchy told Kodiak that “I wasn’t there” and “not involved with what went down.” That Itchy had gone with two of his “boyz” and “something bad happened.” That when I found out, Itchy’s boyz threatened violence against Itchy’s family, and my family, if either of us spoke a word about them. Itchy begged me to help him hide what had happened, and I tried to. When police arrested me, I could not help them in their investigation, because to do so would have endangered my mother, my property and Itchy’s family. This is also why I have not answered questions about the case for the media. And why my mother is selling my property and her house, so that there is nothing vulnerable. And why I have not attempted bail or house arrest. I would be a sitting duck for the killers who would want to ensure I never talk. Maybe Itchy told this to Kodiak. Maybe Kodiak will tell the court. I need this kind of help to win this. Have you made contact with Kodiak? Will he help?
What it is that I found out is still uncertain. And as for what happened with Itchy and his “boyz” to result in a dead guy and a stolen truck, that is uncertain too.
Maybe Itchy’s boyz were somehow involved with the dead guy, or his wife.
Maybe some fluke accident occurred.
Maybe Itchy knew I was shopping for a truck, and knew that I was tiring of supporting him, so he hatched a plan to steal a truck, and sell it to me for a reduced price thereby engraciating himself with me, at the same time as scoring some cash for himself. A perfect plan in Itchy’s books. He enlisted two of his boyz, who had experience with car theft and armed robbery. Itchy thought he was setting up a pleasent surprise for me, that was going to pay off for him. But something went wrong.
Maybe we’ll never be certain, but what is certain is that Itchy told Kodiak that I wasn’t there. Right?
*destroy this letter*
Also of some importance is that Dell does NOT own a gun. Itchy has Boyz who are said to own guns. Their street names are Lyle and A-pock. Maybe it’s the same “boyz.” Itchy’s street name is Say10. Dell does not have a street name
This actually does more to help Itchy than I feel he deserves.
“Who’s Agent Coyote?” asks Leitch.
“I don’t know,” says Noudga. “Well, maybe he was referring to me, but it was never specified.”
“You knew this was an attempt at fabrication when you read this?”
“At the time I read it, I honestly believed in his innocence…. He was always gentle and kind.” Noudga says she never knew Millard to be aggressive. “I was in denial for a very long time.”
Leitch puts one of the last of the letters from Millard on the courtroom screens and suggests to Noudga that it’s essentially a script for her to follow in answering questions about Millard and Mark Smich and their strange relationship. While she claims she didn’t interpret the letter that way at the time, Noudga now concedes Leitch has a point. The overall theme of the letter is that Smich was starting to get on Millard’s nerves in a big way.
“Dell was complaining more and more about Mark,” Millard tells Noudga, feeding her his storyline. “He said that Mark was always smoking pot, and that Mark wasn’t helping at all, and that Dell felt like his time was being wasted….Dell told you he was going to cut Mark off soon. The first week of May, Dell told you he had the cash together, and that he was buying a diesel truck that week.”
Unfortunately for Millard, if there ever were a moment when Noudga was prepared to learn and recite her lines, it has passed. She tells the court she never heard any mention from Millard of cutting Smich off or raising cash for a truck. She also denies that Smich had access to Millard’s passwords, as Millard wanted her to say. In his letter, Millard writes, “When at Maple Gate, Mark would ask to buy songs on Dell’s itunes, or even ask to use Dell’s eBay accoun
t. Dell would yell over that it was okay. Apparently Mark had Dell’s passwords. You heard and saw this while chilling at Maple Gate. Mark had access to everything in Dell’s life.”
Millard was no doubt worried about his eBay account because he had used it to buy concealment holsters, including for a Walther PPK. As for Millard’s iTunes account, Smich having access would explain how an iPad, obtained around the time Laura Babcock disappeared, had come to be synced to Millard’s computer.
“Dell’s goal was to make Mark self sufficient,” his letter to Noudga continues. “Dell talked of the plan to produce a rap album with Mark. Dell would supply the equipment, and network with others to bring in musical talent. It was Mark’s dream. Dell thought it would be the way to finally make Mark self sufficient.” The problem, according to Millard’s script for Noudga, was that Smich had started drinking too much and taking oxycodone. And as a result, Millard was no longer prepared to further Smich’s rap ambitions.
In his letter to Noudga, Millard writes, “In March Mark told you that he didn’t think Dell was ever going to get around to making the rap album. That he thought Dell was too busy with his grandfather’s company. Mark told you that his sister had a place in Calgary, and that he was gonna move out there with Marlena, as soon as he could get enough money together to go.”
According to the script, Noudga was to say she had witnessed a conversation in which Smich admitted to Millard he was torn about the Calgary plan, and that Millard told him if he wanted to stay and make the rap album, Smich would have to get off oxycodone and work hard. Noudga was to recount that she later asked Millard why he continued to support Smich. “I told you some people gave food to food banks, some people donated money to the homeless, and some people spent months in africa building homes,” he writes. “Mark was all three rolled into one for me.”
Dark Ambition Page 24
