Today started with Dellen Millard, who is representing himself, cross examining Marlena Meneses, who was Mark Smich’s girlfriend before the two were arrested in 2013 and Meneses repeated that she liked Millard less and less the more she got to know him. At first, she kept her eyes down, seemed very nervous and wouldn’t look at Millard but as the questions continued she seemed to grow more confident.
Dellen Millard would often tease Marlena Meneses, asking her trivia questions that made her feel dumb. Today in court he asked her if she knew how to spell hangar and the crown objected. That’s not relevant but Meneses learned a lot from Millard, he insisted.
“Oh, I have learned a lot from this,” Meneses replied.
“I once smacked your butt, didn’t I?” Millard asked and she said it was more than once and she let him know how little she appreciated the gesture.
The court heard Meneses and Smich would do jobs for Millard and he would pay for food and give them a bit of spending cash. Millard tried to prove that Meneses had lied in statements to police, but in eight statements only the first one, May 22 of 2013, was she deliberately dishonest she said.
“It was all fresh, I was scared. I was young.”
Millard’s former best friend Andrew Michalski testified in the afternoon. He lived with Millard and knew that there was tension because his friend was sleeping with his then girlfriend Christina Noudga and also Laura Babcock. In a text, Millard asked Michalski to keep an eye on where Babcock goes.
Michalski was working in Winnipeg when he heard about Laura Babcock’s disappearance from a Facebook post.
Andrew Michalski will face cross examination by Dellen Millard tomorrow morning, but the judge told the jury to expect a short day and to expect that the crown may close its case before the end of this week.