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Did drug party tool box hold gun that killed Tim Bosma?

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HAMILTON, Ont. — Where’s the gun that killed Tim Bosma?

The jury at the murder trial for Dellen Millard, a 30-year-old dynastic owner of a fading aviation company, and Mark Smich, a 28-year-old aspiring rap artist, has seen and heard mounds of evidence over 32 days on the disappearance and incineration of Bosma, the 32-year-old father last seen leaving with two strangers on a test drive of the pick-up truck he was selling online.

It has seen Bosma’s blood-stained truck, a bullet casing found inside it, the trailer it was hidden in.

It has watched surveillance video and taken a deep dive into cellphone tracking and text-message recovery.

It’s heard from Bosma’s wife, police, friends of both of the accused, technical experts, witnesses who saw something suspicious, and others — with many key witnesses still to come.

Perhaps most poignantly, the jury has been shown the inside of the incinerator where it is believed Bosma’s body was burned.

But no murder weapon.

This week, the jury heard of a frantic hot-potato act with a mysterious tool box by friends of both Millard and Smich after Bosma disappeared.

The plastic, yellow and black Stanley tool box filled everyone who touched it with dread, as if it was cursed.

The tool box once had a happy connotation in Millard’s inner circle. It was the party box — a container in which Millard kept various drugs, pulled out at parties inside his Toronto home, court heard.

After Bosma disappeared on May 6, 2013, that changed.


Mark Smich, left, and Dellen Millard are accused in Tim Bosma's murder. (Court exhibit)

The tool box was first passed from Millard to his friend, Matt Hagerman, in the dead of night.

“He asked me to do him a favour. He said he was feeling some heat and wanted me to hold onto something,” Hagerman said.

“Can you tell me what these toys are so I can prepare myself?” Hagerman asked Millard in a May 10 text message at 1:49 a.m.

“A tool box,” Millard replied.

“Haha full of guns?” Hagerman typed back.

Hagerman told court he was joking about guns and assumed the box was stuffed with drugs. Even so, he was nervous. “The situation itself just seemed very shady,” he said.

When Millard arrived about 4 a.m., meeting Hagerman in the driveway of Hagerman’s parents’ Toronto house, he looked harried, Hagerman said.

“It was a quick exchange,” he said. “I asked him what was wrong. He seemed dishevelled and he said it was better if he didn’t tell me.”

Hagerman said the tool box weighed four or five pounds and he stashed it on a shelf in the fruit cellar of his parents’ basement and went to bed.

“It was kind of concealed but not really hidden,” he said.

The next day, May 11, Hagerman woke up to a flurry of missed calls and text messages from Andrew Michalski, his and Millard’s mutual friend.

“Call me ASAP,” Michalski texted. “We have a situation! I need to meet you at your park today.… It’s about the thing someone gave you.”

When they met at the park, Michalski told him Millard had been arrested and police had swarmed his house, where Michalski was also living. He said he had left the house with a backpack in his trunk that Millard had given him, Hagerman said.

Michalski knew Millard had also given Hagerman the tool box. They both had items that suddenly seemed ominous and they discussed their options.

“We were both in a panic,” Hagerman said. “I just wanted to get rid of it.”

Michalski said Millard would want both items to go to Smich, Hagerman claimed. They agreed to take the items to Oakville, where Smich lived.


Andrew Michalski. (Twitter)

They put the tool box and the backpack in the trunk of Hagerman’s parents’ car and headed west. The backpack “smelled strongly of weed,” said Hagerman and he assumed it was filled with marijuana.

As the pair drove, a radio newscast announced the arrest of Millard in the Bosma case. It said Bosma was still missing and Millard was a prime suspect in what was looking increasingly grim for the victim.

Hagerman panicked.

“I pulled over to the side of the road and we quickly dumped the tool box and the backpack in a stairwell,” Hagerman said, weeping and sniffling throughout much of his testimony. “My main goal was to get it away from me.”

Picking a random secluded spot, they went to the rear of a pharmacy in an Oakville strip mall and left the box and bag at the bottom of a set of service stairs. Hagerman assumed Michalski told Smich where they dumped it.

Brendan Daly, who considered Smich his best friend, told court Smich told him he had another friend collect the tool box, a man named Arthur.

Even for the brief moment Arthur had the tool box, it caused him grief — for some reason he felt compelled to tell his mother about it and she was furious. She even started yelling at Smich in Russian.

 

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