Criminal Investigation

"At this point in time we are definitely confirming that we have started and are conducting an investigation that was brought to our attention by the owner of Discovery Yacht Charters here in Little Current as a result of him observing the Dellen Millard incident from the media.
"It sparked him to contact our detachment with concerns he had in relation to Mr. Millard's attendance on Manitoulin and renting a chartered boat.
"We initiated an investigation. The investigation is still ongoing and I am not at liberty at this time to discuss any specifics of the investigation due to possibly compromising the integrity of the investigation."
Ontario Provincial Police spokesperson

Defence lawyer Deepak Paradkar, is definitely not pleased with the way this investigation has been pursued, and most certainly not pleased that information is being given out wholesale to the news media, claiming that such information should be handled more discreetly, shared with the defence on behalf of the accused murderer of Tim Bosma, Dellen Millard. Rather than so generously provide titillation for the reading public, in effect, setting the stage for judgement without justice.

Compromising, in other words the "integrity of the investigation", but most certainly the trial which seeks that justice be done. A conclusion that a defence lawyer, insisting on the innocence of his client, would naturally reach, and verbally protest in concern for the well-being of his client.

Which may or may not be the end result in this macabre case of abduction and murder of someone who simply wanted to sell a truck he no longer wished to possess, advertising it in social media, never dreaming that a three-man team would arrive in his driveway, from Toronto to Hamilton, take the truck for a test-drive with the owner accompanying them, never to return to his home, his family, in fact his life.

It's just possible that the OPP are cursing themselves over their casual conclusion that the November 2012 death of Wayne Millard in his home which he shared with his son Dellen, was a suicide. It was imagined that Mr. Millard, 71, had shot himself in the eye, perhaps depressed, possibly under the influence of alcohol. Evidently a forensic consultant, former commander of Bronx Homicide in New York wrote an article decrying the propensity of criminal investigators to automatically assume  suicide in such cases.

"I always ask what was so bad that they had to take their life", Vernon Geberth explained in an interview. Homicides, in his experience, are taken for suicides "frequently enough that I wrote that article", referring to the article he authored: "The Seven Major Mistakes in Suicide Investigation", which was published in the magazine Law and Order, earlier in the year. It's possible the OPP are kicking themselves for having permitted Wayne Dellen's body to be disposed of by cremation.

A method that must have appealed to Dellen Millard when he sought to dispose of the body of the abducted Tim Bosma, since police found his charred remains on a farm near Waterloo, Ontario, owned by Dellen Millard. And on that farm was a handy commercial-grade incinerator. Dellen Millard inherited much from his family; his father was 'different', and so was Dellen; a sinisterly flamboyant personality who groomed himself quite spectacularly differently than most

Dellen Millard has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Mr. Bosma. And suspicion has fallen on him in the disappearance last summer of a young woman whose family has not seen her, heard from her, or has any knowledge of her whereabouts since last June. But it is known that her last contacts before her puzzling disappearance were all by cellphone, and all with Dellen Millard. The missing woman, Linda Babcock's mother, recalls having met him casually when he appeared at her door once to pick up her daughter.

The rental boat incident brought to police by the owner of a yacht charter on Manitoulin Island appears another piece of the mystery that is Dellen Millard. A ten-day sailboat cruise of the North Channel waterway left an indelible memory of Mr. Millard with a young female passenger aboard, calling the boat owner for mechanical help. And when the charter owner arrived he saw blood around the boat. The explanation given to him by Mr. Millard appeared plausible enough at the time, though what it was, was not disclosed to the media.

It was the memory of that incident that caused Chris Blodgett who operates Discovery Yacht Charters on Manitoulan Island, to contact police. The case is now under the direction of a team with the Criminal Investigations Branch of the OPP under a detective-inspector's watch. The Hamilton Police Force and the Toronto Police Force are also involved in facets of this ongoing, spreading murder mystery that might yield information about a mass murderer.