Mark Smich appeals first-degree murder conviction for killing Laura Babcock
TORONTO — An Ontario man found guilty of killing a young Toronto woman who vanished five years ago is appealing his first-degree murder conviction and sentence, saying the verdict was unreasonable and the sentence too harsh.
Mark Smich, 30, of Oakville, Ont., and his friend Dellen Millard, 32, of Toronto, were found guilty in December of murdering Laura Babcock, with a judge ruling last month that the pair would not be eligible for parole for 50 years.
The 23-year-old Babcock disappeared in 2012 and her body has not been found. The pair’s trial heard Millard and Smich burned her body in an animal incinerator days after she went missing.
Millard and Smich have also been convicted of killing Tim Bosma — a Hamilton man who went missing in May 2013 after going with the pair for a test drive of a truck he was trying to sell online.