In the Laura Babcock murder trial, Dellen Millard who is representing himself, told the court that he believes she’s still alive.

Millard spent the day trying to pull apart the evidence we heard against him over the past six weeks. He brought up a few witnesses who thought they saw Laura Babcock after July 3rd or 4th, when the crown alleges she was killed. He talked about her mental health problems, her drug use and her recent work as an escort and he suggested it was more likely Laura Babcock just left town. But then he tripped up that argument when talking about the red suitcase found at co-accused Mark Smich’s house, the one with Laura Babcock’s ID tag still attached. Witnesses had described her suitcases at the end of June 2012 as black, Millard said:

“the red bag wasn’t the one Laura had when she died.”

Millard’s other main goal was to disprove the crown theory about the love triangle between him, Christina Noudga and Laura Babcock that the crown alleges led to Babcock’s murder. Millard showed the jury all the ways he treated Christina Noudga badly and failed to buy her things. He didn’t care about Noudga, he didn’t care about Babcock, he certainly didn’t care about bickering between the two he told the jury.

He told the jury several times that this was the first time he’d done this and he hadn’t had time to properly prepare his defence. He asked the jury not to judge him on his bad behaviour or other criminal activity, just the facts before them about Laura Babcock. But the jury seemed to find him arrogant, according to the expressions on their faces. They looked incredulous at some of his arguments, not one of them smiled even a little when he made jokes.

Wednesday, Mark Smich’s lawyer Thomas Dungey will close his case to the jury and he’s not expected to take long, he has stayed quiet for most of this trial. If he finishes early, the crown could also start the close of her case tomorrow.