Some thoughts on the Toronto Star’s jailhouse interview with Dellen Millard

My immediate reaction, as a reporter following this story,was that the quotes from Dellen Millard confirm much of what I know and believe about his character. There was some new and very revealing information in the interview. But my number two reaction was that the piece was terribly edited and could have been far stronger.

The article should have clarified that Dellen Millard spoke without consulting his lawyer Deepak Paradkar. That’s a pretty dumb thing to do and shows that the accused murderer of Tim Bosma doesn’t listen to his handpicked and highly paid legal counsel, who said in an email to me that he had not approved any interviews. Deciding to ignore your lawyer and talk to the press is the action of someone who thinks he knows best and can’t be told what to do, even in an extremely serious situation.

This is very similar to Millard’s behaviour when he wrote to a jailhouse groupie last summer. At the time Jim Van Allen, former manager of the OPP’s Criminal Profile Unit, described the decision to write the letter as “impulsive and somewhat reckless.”

“This type of personality is a nightmare for a lawyer. You can’t control them,” he said. “They are individuals who often don’t consider the consequences of their actions.”

Both incidents raise the obvious question of just how far out of his way the accused murderer will go to challenge and flout authority of any kind.

I’m also surprised at the Star‘s description of Millard as doe-eyed, which is not just Fifty Shades of Grey-style prose, it’s also wrong.  While it’s true that Millard looks very different in person than he does in his best-known party-boy photos, he is not, by any stretch of even a chick-lit-fueled imagination, doe-eyed. It’s a particularly bizarre characterization given that it seems designed to evoke innocence and, as a result, sympathy.

As for the “I shop at Costco” and I’m reading On War by Carl von Clausewitz stuff, all that is highly calculated to portray a certain persona. Millard is a complete control freak about his image and anything to do with himself. For example, he called the web developer to personally select the colour of the single-page Millardair website, he chose and orchestrated every detail for his engagement photo shoot, and he personally hacked up, with a kitchen carving knife,  the jeans he wore to get the distressed look exactly right.

Given the terrible, ungrammatical prose in the strange obituary that Millard wrote for his father — who, among other things, didn’t read and write five languages, as his son maintained — it’s also striking to see the Star describe Dellen Millard as “articulate” and, all the more so given that nothing in quotation marks reflects that choice of adjective.

But since I wasn’t there, I’ll just let that one go and raise my eyebrows — for now.