How a monster murdered his ex-girlfriend and her harmless nine-year-old son as a result of he was autistic… and the agonising dilemma her heartbroken household now face

Shortly before midnight on a May weekend in 2021, a young man called Daniel Boulton set out on foot on a deadly 28-mile journey.

His destination was his ex-girlfriend Bethany Vincent’s home in the Lincolnshire market town of Louth, and his purpose was chillingly clear: as he had declared to staff at the hostel where he had been living, he intended to ‘wipe out the bloodline’.

Less than 24 hours after he set out on his murderous mission, two people were dead – Bethany and her nine-year-old son Darren Henson, known as DJ, for whom Boulton had developed a visceral loathing, convinced that his autism would ‘infect’ the nine-month-old child he had with Bethany.

Their lives had been ended in minutes: not long after 8pm on Monday May 31st, Boulton had kicked in the back door of 26-year-old Bethany’s home and stabbed her nine times as she stood in the living room cradling their baby.

He then went upstairs to DJ’s bedroom, where he beat the nine-year-old boy and smashed his teeth before stabbing him repeatedly.

Afterwards, he calmly stepped outside and lit a cigarette – leaving his baby crawling on the floor beside his mother’s body.

A frantic 24-hour manhunt followed before Boulton was finally apprehended after being spotted by an off-duty police officer.

Today Boulton, now 34, is serving a life sentence for his devastating crimes, and will not see freedom again for at least 40 years.

But there is another life sentence being served too, by Bethany’s grieving family. In the aftermath of their unimaginable loss, her parents are not only grieving Bethany and DJ, but have stepped in to raise Bethany’s youngest child, born to her and Boulton, and who they have asked not to name.

In time, they face the daunting task of telling the child about the circumstances surrounding his mother and brother’s deaths.

‘We worry about it a lot,’ says Caroline, 51, at the family home in Chapel St Leonards, just north of Skegness. ‘How do you explain not only the way they died, but that it was his own father who did it?’

Their full, horrifying story is told in a compelling two-part documentary, The Skegness Psycho: 28 Miles To Murder, which forensically revisits the events of that Bank Holiday weekend and the haunting timeline that preceded it.

It is underpinned by a devastating question: how could a young mother who had done everything she could – severing all contact with her violent ex, against whom she had been granted two restraining orders – still end up dead?

‘There have been no consequences for any of the agencies involved,’ says Caroline of her daughter’s death. ‘It’s always “we will learn lessons”. But we hear that time and time again. Every time you hear about a girl murdered, it’s the same story – it didn’t come out of nowhere.’

‘Bethany did everything she was supposed to do to escape Boulton. But other people didn’t do their jobs properly. If they had, our family would still be with us.’

It is why the anger of Bethany’s father Darren, a maintenance worker and mother Caroline, a former shop assistant who gave up work to help raise her now five-year-old grandson, remains as palpable as their love for those they lost. Their home is dotted throughout with photographs of Bethany and DJ, and their eyes light up when they speak about her.

Bethany was the Vincents’ first-born – the couple have a younger daughter Chloe, now 29, who dearly misses her sister.

Bethany, a bookworm as a child, grew into a fiercely independent young woman.

‘She liked her own space,’ says Caroline. ‘But she was very family orientated. I’ve got such a large family she didn’t really need loads of friends – she had cousins, nieces and nephews everywhere.’

Bethany became a mother at 19, following a relationship with a local boy, Kieran. The couple eventually split but remained close, co-parenting their son DJ and maintaining a warm relationship.

‘Kieran was part of our family – still is,’ says Darren. ‘They were just very young when they met.’

And while parenting a child with autism is not always easy, Bethany rose to the challenge. ‘She really loved that boy,’ he says.

In early 2019, after several years of remaining single, Bethany met fairground worker Boulton. ‘Infatuated’ is the word Caroline uses of those early months. ‘He love-bombed her – no question,’ she says. ‘It was all “we’re going to have this amazing life” and promises about the future. He seemed understanding about DJ at first too.’

What Bethany didn’t know was that Boulton already had a restraining order against him from a previous girlfriend. He also had extensive criminal record for other violent offences.

Within months, Boulton had moved into the home Bethany shared with her son DJ, and quickly set about isolating her from her family. The daily phone calls with her parents stopped, replaced by hurried conversations when Boulton was briefly out of the house.

‘You’d message and she’d say she was busy,’ Caroline recalls.

Only later did they learn that Boulton was also systematically undermining Bethany’s confidence, telling her she was worthless.

‘Like any parents we worried,’ says Caroline. ‘But she was an adult – we couldn’t tell her what to do.’ In those early months there were endless promises. Boulton told Bethany he would start a business in London, and that he would make lots of money.

Then, in December 2019, Bethany arrived at her parents’ house to tell them she was pregnant. They barely had time to digest the bittersweet news when Boulton stormed in to their home, shouting that Bethany was a ‘bad mum’ who couldn’t even look after the child she already had. When Darren remonstrated with him, Boulton tried to provoke a fight.

At this point Darren called the police, who carried out a risk assessment using a controversial tool known as Dash – which stands for Domestic Abuse, Stalking and Honour-Based Violence. Bethany was graded as ‘standard’ risk, meaning police felt there were no significant current indicators of risk of serious harm.

‘At this point they knew a lot more than we did, that he had convictions for violent offences, including strangling a previous girlfriend,’ says Caroline. ‘But nothing was said.’

Following the baby’s birth in August 2020, things appeared calmer – although not for long. Within weeks of his birth, Boulton had persuaded Bethany to move to the town of Louth – nearly an hour’s drive away from her family, for a ‘fresh start’.

The Vincents believe the move was a deliberate attempt to isolate her. ‘He wanted her as far away from his family as possible,’ says Caroline.

Meanwhile, Boulton’s apparent devotion to his own baby was matched by a growing hatred for DJ. He called the boy a ‘retard’ and claimed his autism could somehow ‘infect’ baby Josh.

‘On the rare occasions we spoke to him, he would say that DJ was being horrible to his brother. It was heartbreaking,’ says Caroline. ‘Because DJ absolutely adored his brother.’

Indeed, photographs and video footage shown in the documentary capture that bond – DJ beaming with pride as he cuddles the baby.

By November 2020, Bethany had plucked up the courage to end the relationship for good, but when she broke the news to Boulton – who by this stage had spoken to health workers about his violent feelings – he smashed her head against a wall.

She called the police and Boulton was arrested and bailed under an order not to contact Bethany, whose risk level was upgraded to ‘medium’ – where it stayed even when, within a month, Boulton returned to the house, and, finding Caroline there, proceeded to attack Bethany again.

‘I called police and when he heard me, he threatened me,’ Caroline recalls. ‘He said: “I will have you. It might be a day, a week or a month – but I will have you.”’

Again Boulton was arrested and bailed, only to breach his bail conditions within days, turning up again outside Bethany’s house. Rather than arresting him, on this occasion officers drove him home.

‘What is that if not harassment?’ says Caroline. ‘He should have been in custody.’ Astonishingly, Bethany’s risk was downgraded to ‘standard’.

In early 2021, Boulton was convicted of the November and December assaults on Bethany at two separate hearings. The consequences were minimal: he received a community order and was told to attend a course called ‘Building Better Relationships’.

‘I would love to ask that judge – if it was his own daughter, would he think that was enough?’ says Caroline. At the second court hearing, his previous restraining order was extended. ‘What good did that do?’ asks Caroline.

Nonetheless, for a time, calm prevailed: by then Boulton was living in a homeless hostel 28 miles away from Bethany and, as he didn’t have a car, the Vincents believed he was safely out of the picture.

‘Bethany seemed happier,’ Caroline recalls. ‘She was visiting us more. We were seeing DJ and the baby properly again. It was lovely.’

Behind the scenes however, Boulton’s anger and obsession were only growing. ‘We later found out he talked openly about how much he hated DJ,’ says Caroline. At one point, hostel staff overheard him saying he planned to ‘destroy the bloodline’.

The hostel says staff alerted police, though Lincolnshire Police later said they had no record of such contact.

Meanwhile in Louth, Bethany, oblivious to the mounting danger, was excitedly making plans to move out of Louth and find a place closer to her family. ‘She was going to be just minutes from Kieran [DJ’S father], who had helped organise things, and [her sister] Chloe,’ says Caroline.

Even so, Darren had an uneasy feeling. ‘You just worry,’ he says quietly. ‘People talk.’

And indeed, Boulton did learn of the planned move – a discovery which set the final fatal chain of events in motion. As sentencing judge Mr Justice Pepperall later pointed out, once Bethany moved nearer home, Boulton risked losing all control over her.

‘If you were to kill, it had to be then,’ he told him.

Evidence of Boulton’s mounting rage was chillingly laid bare in the 900 Facebook messages he sent to Bethany in the days before the attack.

‘Did you not see anything wrong in all this?’ read one. ‘I’ll never stop fighting until you give in and do as you’re f***ing told,’ was another. In one chillingly ominous message meanwhile, he wrote, ‘there’s going to be a nightmare on Holmes Street’ – referring to Bethany’s address.

Then, on the afternoon of May 31st – four days before she was due to move closer to home – Boulton appeared at Bethany’s door after route-marching 28 miles throughout the night.

She refused to let him in, and he left – or so she thought: in fact, CCTV captured him loitering nearby, waiting until her son DJ returned home from visiting his father.

What happened next unfolded with alarming rapidity. Before he went to bed, DJ Facetimed his grandmother, proudly showing off his new Chelsea football shirt.

‘It was such a lovely call,’ she says. ‘DJ was kissing the baby and Bethany was excited about the move.’

Minutes later Boulton struck, kicking down the back door and storming inside to where Bethany was standing by the front window with the baby in her arms.

He stabbed her repeatedly before heading upstairs to DJ’s bedroom, where he launched another savage attack before calmly leaving the house, smoking a cigarette and walking away.

The entire assault lasted less than four minutes.

Hours later, the Vincents’ lives changed for ever when they awoke to a knock on the door at 2am, and found police on the doorstep.

‘It’s like an out-of-body experience,’ says Caroline quietly, of learning that her daughter and grandson had been slaughtered. ‘You keep thinking you’ll wake up, and it isn’t real.’

Two hours later a social worker arrived carrying Bethany’s baby.

‘We’d lost our daughter and our grandson, and suddenly we were holding a nine-month-old baby.’ says Darren. ‘We didn’t even have nappies.’

Boulton was captured the following day after an extensive manhunt, during which he stabbed an off-duty officer in the leg. In February 2022 he was convicted of murder and handed two concurrent life sentences with a minimum term of 40 years.

The sentence brought little comfort for the Vincents, who have spent years trying to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives.

Darren suffered a nervous breakdown, unable to cope with the sense of guilt he felt at letting his daughter down. ‘I tortured myself thinking: why wasn’t I there?’ he says.

He admits he also struggled to bond with his grandson. ‘I love him to bits now, but it took time,’ he says.

Some people questioned why they took him in at all, to which Caroline’s response is simple: ‘Whoever his father is, he’s our grandson.’ Yet even from prison, Boulton tried to oppose their legal bid to gain parental rights.

‘He didn’t want us to have him,’ says Caroline.

DJ would be 14 now. ‘We’d give anything for just one hour with him, to see the young man he would have become,’ says Darren.

That grief, and their anger at the failures they believe allowed Boulton to remain free, is why they are speaking out. As Darren puts it: ‘If doing so stops even one family going through what we have, then Bethany and DJ won’t have died for nothing.’

The Skegness Psycho: 28 Miles To Murder is streaming now on Crime+Investigation Play.