Canada's Highest-Profile Murder Trial Just Ended with a Guilty Verdict

This post originally appeared on VICE Canada.

After a harrowing trial that often bordered on theater, a jury has found Dellen Millard and Mark Smich guilty of first-degree murder in the death of 32-year-old Tim Bosma following a week of deliberations.

Bosma disappeared from his Ancaster, Ontario, home in May 2013 after taking the two men for a drive in the Dodge Ram pickup truck he was selling via online ads. His body was found just over a week later, burned beyond recognition. Millard and Smich were charged with first-degree murder after police discovered an animal incinerator nicknamed "the "Eliminator" on Millard's property, in which they found fragments of Bosma's bones. Police later found other burn sites on the property.

The often gruesome four-and-a-half month trial has gripped Canadians, many of whom struggled to comprehend the senseless motive behind the killing. Emotions were particularly high when Bosma's wife, Sharlene, took the stand and painfully recalled the last time she saw her husband alive. Other members of Bosma's family including his mother have also been in the courtroom since day one, often sitting through graphic forensic evidence.

Millard, 30, and Smich, 28, admitted to stealing the truck that night, but both attempted to pin the murder on the other. While Smich took the stand and accused Millard of being a "cold-hearted killer" and "demonic," Millard, who did not testify, presented Smich as the one who ultimately pulled the trigger that night. In a particularly damning turn, Millard's jailhouse letters to his then girlfriend Christine Noudga, who is facing charges of being an accessory after the fact, presented a controlling figure who was trying to shape his defense from behind bars. Millard urged Noudga to reach out to potential witnesses and even suggest that Smich had somehow been involved with Sharlene Bosma.

Today's verdict is hardly the end of the pair's legal troubles. Millard and Smich are also both facing a first-degree murder charge in the death of a Toronto woman, Laura Babcock, who disappeared in July 2012.

Millard is also facing a first-degree murder charge for the death of his father, whose November 2012 death was initially ruled a suicide.

Both of those trials are scheduled for 2017.

Later this afternoon, Millard and Smich returned to the court for sentencing. Both declined an opportunity to speak before Justice Goodman, who handed each of them life sentences without parole until 2038, calling their actions "callous" and "despicable."

With files from Molly Hayes.