Laura Babcock’s dad reacts to Millard and Smich sentencing

CAPTION: Dellen Millard and Mark Smich will spend at least 25 years behind bars for the murder of Laura Babcock, on top of the 25 years each received for killing a Hamilton man.

Babcock’s dad called the two men “horrible specimens of humanity.” (Feb. 26, 2018) 1.

SOUNDBITE: Clayton Babcock, Laura Babcock’s father PLACELINE: Toronto CREDIT: The Canadian Press STORYLINE: Dozens of supporters in a packed Toronto courtroom erupted into cheers and a standing ovation on Monday after the judge announced two convicted killers would not be eligible for parole for 50 years after killing a young woman who vanished five years ago.

Dellen Millard is "profoundly amoral and dangerous" while his partner in crime, Mark Smich, "enthusiastically" participated in the murder of Laura Babcock, 23, whose body was never found, said Justice Michael Code.

Millard, 32, of Toronto, and Smich, 30, of Oakville, Ont., were convicted in December of murdering Babcock in the summer of 2012 and burning her body in an animal incinerator. "Justice has been served to the murderers of our cherished daughter, Laura," Clayton Babcock, the victim's father, told reporters outside court. "Somehow life in prison seems lenient when Laura didn't even get to see her 24th birthday." Millard and Smich had previously been convicted in the murder of Tim Bosma, a 32-year-old Hamilton father who went missing in May 2013 after going on a test drive with two men interested in buying his pickup truck.

That murder trial in 2016 heard the pair burned Bosma's body in an animal incinerator — called the Eliminator — that belonged to Millard.