The abduction death of Hamiltonian family man seeks justice
On May 6, 2013, Hamiltonian Tim Bosma told his wife he’d be right back before taking two men from Toronto on a test-ride in his Dodge Ram pickup truck which he had advertised online.
He never returned.
I’m from Hamilton. I remember the nation’s eyes turning towards us. But I remember even more vividly the hometown ache. Everyone in Hamilton knows everyone else. It’s a city of 520,000 people, I know, but it’s true. I remember seeing Tim’s face all over my newsfeed, I remember having several friends on facebook who knew Tim and his wife personally. I remember their panic, their fear, and I remember their hope that he would be found safe, that this would all be some absurd misunderstanding. That’s not what happened.
Bosma disappeared and the police began searching for a man who reportedly had “ambition” tattooed on his arm. Several days later, Hamilton police identified Dellen Millard as the man with the tattoo and arrested him on charges of forcible confinement and theft over $5,000.
Tim Bosma’s truck was found two days later parked inside a trailer on the property of Millard’s mother in Kleinberg. Even worse, a few days later, Tim Bosma’s charred remains were found on a Cambridge farm owned by the accused.
I don’t know what kind of evil walks up to your front door under pretence of civility and takes you from your family.
Before police found Tim Bosma’s remains, his wife Sharlene gave a heartbreaking press release. “I watched my husband drive away just after 9 o’clock Monday night. He smiled at me and said [he’d] be right back. I haven’t seen him since,” she said. “It was just a truck, a stupid truck. You don’t need him, but I do. Our daughter needs her daddy. I beg, I plead to whoever has my husband to please let him go.”
We had hoped that they would keep the truck, that whoever was responsible would see sense and decency and let him go. Just drop him off somewhere whole and sound. “You can keep the truck, we all thought. You can disappear; nothing has to come of this.”
I’m not sure how we live in a world that allows for these kinds of things to happen. A world that allows for the disappearance and murder of kindness. Injustice happens all the time, I know, but it’s hard to move past it when it happens in your own city.
On Feb. 1, 2016, the Tim Bosma murder trial began in Hamilton. Dellen Millard, of Toronto, and Mark Smich, from Oakville, Ont., are both charged with first-degree murder for Bosma’s death. The lawyers of both men said that the two accused will plead not guilty. Back in mid-July 2014, the Attorney General’s office approved a direct indictment, sending the case straight to trial on the first-degree murder charge against Millard and Smith. It was a rare legal move in Ontario that allowed the prosecution to skip the preliminary hearing.
Tim’s wife Sharlene finished her 2013 statement by saying, “Tim is a loving father to our beautiful two-year-old girl and she needs her daddy back.”