Tim Bosma murder tied to two other investigations in OPP-led probe

A criminal investigative process established in the wake of the Paul Bernardo trial is now being employed in a probe into three cases that appear to be connected to murder suspect Dellen Millard.

Millard, 28, was arrested in May and charged alongside Mark Smich, 26, for the first-degree murder of Hamilton-area father Tim Bosma. As that investigation proceeded, the Toronto Police Service began to review the disappearance of Laura Babcock, a former love interest of Millard, and the apparent suicide of his father Wayne.

What followed was a mishmash of investigations by Hamilton and Toronto police, highlighted last month when Toronto police led a forensic search of Millard's farmland, previously searched as part of the Hamilton police investigation.

According to the Hamilton Spectator, the three cases are now part of one massive official investigation under the banner of the Ontario Provincial Police's Major Case Management (MCM) system.

[ Related: Police return to Dellen Millard farmland in Babcock investigation ]

The Spectator reports that an "investigative link" has been made between the three cases, prompting the Ontario Provincial Police to bring everything under one roof.

Presumably the link in question is the alleged connection to Bosma, making this move less about expanding the investigation and more about reorganizing the investigations that are already taking place.

The MCM system was borne from a review of the 1995 conviction of Paul Bernardo, which found that a lack of cooperation between police forces contributed to a dangerous predator "falling through the cracks."

The MCM system is a mandatory part of certain murder, sex assault and abduction investigations that are found to be multi-jurisdictional. According to the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, it works as a centralized computer system that helps investigators spot similarities and track large amounts of information.

Essentially, instead of three separate investigations being conducted by two different police forces, one large investigation will be conducted by an investigative team led by the OPP.

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The MCM system is not employed every day. The process tends to be implemented for only the largest Ontario investigations. The system was used during two provincial SARS outbreaks to track the spread of the virus. It was similarly used during the recent E-coli bacteria outbreak.

It was also used for several murder cases, including a 2003 manhunt for in the abductions, sexual assault and murder of 10-year-old Holly Jones and the 2006 abduction and death of Cecilia Zhang.

The Millard case’s inclusion on this list is an interesting twist, considering that in two of the three cases it has not even been alleged that a crime was committed.

Wayne Millard, the previous head of a family aviation company passed down to his son, is believed to have shot himself last year. And Laura Babcock’s 2012 disappearance was not considered suspicious until Millard was arrested in the Bosma investigation and a romantic link between the two was brought to light.

All that ongoing haze is all the more reason, one supposes, to bring out the big guns and get some questions answered once and for all.

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