Privileged Psychopathy

What could possibly begin to explain how someone of privilege, with his own social circle of friends and admirers, himself in possession of the kind of wealth and heritage that most people can only dream about, would end up proving himself a psychopath? Social contacts, wealth and position are no guarantee of character, of course, but people do think of those attributes as representing a real leg up in life. Perhaps it's the very fact of having it all that leads to a sense of entitlement.

Undeserving, since in the case of Dellen Millard, he inherited his privileges, his social position and his wealth from his grandfather's vision and entrepreneurial skills, which his father then built upon. And which inheritance, the practical side of it, in any event, Dellen Millard preferred to spurn. He experienced the distinction of being the youngest person ever to fly solo as a teen, schooled in his capability by his father's patient tutelage. And that seemed to represent the extent of his interest in the family business.

Mr. Millard has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Tom Bosma. Dellen Millard had driven from the Toronto area to Ancaster, Ontario, where Mr. Bosma lived with his young family. The purpose was a response to an advertisement on social media websites for the sale of a used truck. And Mr. Millard, like his grandfather, collected American-made trucks. He had the means at his disposal to easily pay for a dozen such trucks without blinking a prudent eye.

But on May 6 in the early evening, Mr. Millard drove into Mr. Bosma's driveway, then soon afterward backed out of it with a friend, and Mr. Bosma, for a test run of the truck Mr. Bosma was selling. Following them was the SUV in which the two men had arrived, driven by a third man. Mr. Bosma casually informed his wife he wouldn't be long. Nor should he have been; a simple transaction, the type of which is repeated frequently during the course of any normal day.

This was not a normal day for Mr. Bosma. Nothing would ever be normal for him again, nor for that matter, for his wife and his young son. His burned-beyond-recognition corpse was discovered by police on a property acquired by Mr. Millard, worth close to a million dollars. On the day following Mr. Bosma's absence, with mystifying alarm motivating friends, relatives and police to engage in an exhaustive search for his whereabouts, Mr. Millard bought a two-bedroom condo in Toronto for $627,523.

This is a man whose grandfather founded Millardair Ltd. in 1954 and built it into a fleet of airplanes, founding a busy and profitable aviation company at Pearson International Airport, in Toronto. "In those days it was not unlike [the TV show] Ice Pilots. Those guys loaded all the airplanes, did all the work, looked after the passengers if there were any and off they went", explained an aviation consultant.

At the age of six, Dellen Millard became very familiar with airplanes, accompanying his father on numerous flights, sitting directly beside the pilot, his father. At age 14 he flew solo both in an airplane and a helicopter, both on the same day. "It was just incredible flying alone. You look over at the seat and there's nobody there", he said afterward, marvelling at his experience.

He became a social, party animal, as it were. He had no interest in the family business. His interest was in off-road racing, in collecting vintage trucks. He owned a large home in Maple Gate, customized as a party pad, with a large aquarium of fish and turtles, television, X-game consoles to amuse his friends. He was generous with his friends, buying them Seadoos, travelling abroad on holidays with them, all expenses paid.

At some time or other this 27-year-old fellow who wasn't averse to dyeing his hair pink and wearing an Apache punk hairstyle, had the word "Ambition" tattooed on one of his wrists. Unusual enough to have been noted, and because someone had noticed it, was able to give investigating police that information, aiding them in the process of identifying him as a suspect in this disturbingly horrible case.

Police have not yet been able to identify the other material witnesses - or suspects - or co-murderers who accompanied him on his mission to obtain a truck and abduct its owner. The truck was discovered, on a trailer, in the driveway of  his mother's house located in the countryside north of Toronto. Police have confirmed that Mr. Bosma's body was "burned beyond recognition" and that a large incinerator was found to be on the farm he had bought in Ayr, Ontario in 2011.