Finley Boden: The parents who 'deceived everyone' to kill their son

By George Torr, Navtej Johal & Callum Parke

BBC News & Press Association

Finley Boden was 10 months old when he succumbed to horrific fatal injuries at the hands of his mother and father. How did these violent drug users manage to convince professionals they were responsible parents, despite all the evidence to the contrary?

“It’s unbelievable – you can’t put it into words,” is Det Insp Stephen Shaw’s assessment of the brutality Finley was subjected to.

The Derbyshire Police officer, who led the investigation into the baby boy’s death during a Covid lockdown in 2020, told the BBC he had “never seen this level of injury” in his 23-year career.

Finley had suffered 57 breaks to his bones, 71 bruises and two burns, one likely from a cigarette lighter flame.

Det Insp Shaw said Finley would have been in “excruciating pain” up to 14 days before he died, 39 days after being returned to his parents, Stephen Boden and Shannon Marsden, by social workers.

The couple, from Old Whittington, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, were convicted of murder after a trial at Derby Crown Court and jailed for life on Friday.

Ordering Boden and Marsden to serve at least 29 and 27 years respectively, Judge Amanda Tipples said they had subjected their son to “unimaginable cruelty”.

The judge said they were “both persuasive and accomplished liars” who denied Finley medical care that would have saved his life.

The trial of Boden, 30, and Marsden, 22, began in November 2022, before the jury was discharged and a new one sworn in.

The court heard the couple were regular and heavy users of cannabis, who prioritised getting money to spend on the drug over their son’s care.

Jurors were told how they worked together to keep professionals away from Finley to protect each other and cover up serious violence, and that Covid lockdowns gave them the “perfect excuse” to do this.

This included cancelling a health visitor appointment two days before he died and, when social workers arrived unannounced, telling them Finley may have Covid and refusing to let them in.

At the start of the trial, prosecutor Mary Prior KC told the jury the pair were “in it together”, repeatedly lying to hide their abuse from police, social services and their own families.

The court heard how they conspired together and remained in love, despite incidents of domestic abuse and frequent drug use, to inflict “repeated acts of violence” on their son.

Believing he was likely to suffer “significant harm” at home, Derbyshire County Council social workers removed Finley from his parents shortly after he was born in February 2020.

Boden and Marsden were living in squalor, social workers said. Their terraced house smelled of cannabis, was “very unclean” and “at times hazardous, with faeces on the floor”.

But over the next six months, the couple, aided by Covid restrictions that limited physical interactions with others, persuaded social workers they had made positive changes.

During the 2020 spring lockdown, social workers were not routinely going into homes. In Finley’s case, they were instead sent photos by his mother, showing her house looking clean and tidy.

The pair reduced their cannabis use in an effort to convince social services they were responsible parents.

Later that year, Finley was returned to his parents’ care through a court order following an eight-week transition, despite social workers having asked for a four-month transition, according to documents from the Family Court.

Finley had a guardian, Amanda O’Rourke, appointed to represent his best interests.

However, she had only been able to see him once, via a WhatsApp video call, while he was with his carers. He was a “smiler”, who liked to “blow raspberry’s” (sic), she wrote.

She noted the squalor, drug use and domestic violence in his parents’ past. Her report said she agreed in principle with a transition plan, but that it should take place much sooner, given the parents had “clearly made and sustained positive changes”.

Ms O’Rourke’s report to the magistrates recommended Finley go back to his parents’ full-time care “within a six to eight-week period”, half the time requested by the local authority.

Guardians are employed by Cafcass, the independent Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.

In a statement, it said it was “not possible” to say whether a longer transition plan would have prevented Finley’s death, adding that this had been down to the “ability of his parents to deceive everyone involved” about their love and desire to care for him.

After Finley returned home, cannabis use again became commonplace.

Money sent by relatives for the children was spent on drugs, with one drug deal witnessed by a social worker two days before Finley’s death.

Boden later admitted to smoking the drug in the same room as his son.

The couple’s relationship was turbulent, with Boden and Marsden heard arguing by neighbours as early as 2019.

If you have been affected by any of these issues, you can visit the BBC’s Action Line.

On 12 December 2020, Marsden texted a relative saying Boden “did not want Finley in the house”.

She later searched for emergency housing in Chesterfield, while Boden told his cannabis dealer that his partner and son were “doing my nut in”.

On 21 December, days before Finley’s fatal collapse, Marsden messaged another relative, saying: “Get the police to mine, tell them I’m scared of Stephen around the baby.

“He’s just hit me again… tell them he’ll kill me. He just tried.

“Please, I will be dead. Not joking.”

While Marsden stayed, neither she nor Boden took Finley to a GP or hospital, stopping family members and social services from seeing him.

When paramedics arrived in the early hours of Christmas Day, they noticed Finley had dirty fingernails and clothes, and believed he had been dead for longer than Boden and Marsden were suggesting.

Toxicology tests showed cannabis was found in Finley’s blood, indicating that he must have inhaled smoke in the 24 hours before his death, the court was told.

After Finley was pronounced dead, Boden and Marsden told a series of lies, offering different accounts to different people, at different times, of the details of their son’s illness.

When they were called in to say goodbye to him in hospital, Marsden said to Finley she was sorry and “had let him down”.

But later on Christmas Day, the couple were heard asking what food was to be served at a family dinner and were seen laughing and joking at a family gathering on Boxing Day, with Boden later telling a relative that they delayed calling an ambulance so they could hide their drugs.

Blood, faeces and saliva were seen on Finley’s cot and on clothes, alongside bottles of gone-off milk and signs of cannabis use.

On 11 January 2021, Marsden saw Finley in a mortuary and was heard saying: “His dad’s battered him to death. I didn’t protect him.”

During the trial, details of Boden’s anger were laid bare.

The court saw images of doors with holes punched in them, and heard details of how Boden slapped Marsden and verbally abused her during a row two days prior to Finley’s death.

Other fights saw Marsden “slapped around the face a few times” and Boden place his hands around her throat, the jury heard.

Despite both being on bail with conditions not to contact each other, the pair continued a sexual relationship, frequently meeting up as they remained under investigation for killing their son.

After being remanded in custody in 2022, they sent each other Valentine’s Day cards. In Marsden’s to Boden, she said she would love him “forever” and would “always be standing by” him.

Georgia Hubbard, who lived next door to the family, told the BBC that Finley, his parents and the house were “absolutely filthy” when she met them for the first time.

“My first, honest thought was ‘I don’t understand how they’ve got the kid living in there,'” she said.

“If I’d have known what I know now, I’d have done something but how are you supposed to piece it together through a wall? I’ll forever feel guilty for that. It makes me sick.

“As parents, you’re supposed to protect them, not harm them. I don’t understand it.”

The state of the home in Holland Road was corroborated by police officers.

Det Insp Shaw said they found it full of clutter with dishes not washed for weeks, rotting food on the floors and Finley’s room “filthy”.

His bedding had blood stains on and there were dog faeces inside the house.

“But I don’t think that prepared us for the level of injury that we discovered when the post-mortem took place,” he said.

“I think sometimes we say nothing surprises us any more, but this investigation continued to surprise us.

“There were more fractured bones than unfractured ones in his body. He [Finley] would have been in excruciating pain.

“He suffered terribly. The injuries were from 14 days old. So the 39 days he was in their care, he was abused for roughly half of that time.

“To add to that pain, medical attention wasn’t sought and infection came into the injuries. This resulted in sepsis, which would have only added to his pain and suffering in the days before his death.”

On Boden and Marsden, he said: “I think they are evil. Why would you want to do that to any human being, let alone a defenceless child?”

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