Teen babysitter who tortured and murdered boy, 3, will be freed

A teenage babysitter who tortured and murdered a three-year-old boy and left him with ‘car crash’ injuries will walk free from jail next week after just 14 years behind bars.

Kayley Boleyn, then 19, and her ex-heroin addict boyfriend Christopher Taylor, 25, were jailed for life in 2010 for the horrific murder of Ryan Lovell-Hancox in Bilston, West Midlands.

The couple were found guilty by a jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court of killing Ryan in December 2008. The toddler had suffered more than 70 injuries.

At sentencing for murder and child cruelty, Boleyn was given a minimum term of 13 years in jail and Taylor’s tariff was set at 15 years.

MailOnline can reveal that Boleyn, now 33, had a private parole hearing on September 18 and was told two weeks ago that it had recommended she be released on licence.

Under parole rules, the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has 21 days to ask the Board to reconsider its decision. So far, she has not done this and the time runs out on Thursday 28th October.

If the release decision stands, Boleyn will be back on the streets a few weeks before Christmas - albeit under a series of strict conditions that include ‘residing at a designated address, disclosing developing relationships and an exclusion zone to avoid contact with the victim’s family.’

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Battered toddler died hours after an official mistook his groans for the sounds of him waking up

The decision to release Boleyn - one of Britain’s most notorious killers after the cruel murder of Ryan - is controversial as a summary document reveals that she had been ‘returned to closed conditions for breach of a prison rule.’

It states that she had spent three years in an open prison before being transferred to a higher security jail, where she continues to be an inmate.

The panel writes: ‘The circumstances of this were closely examined by the panel which concluded that Ms Boleyn had learned the lessons of this experience.’

Boleyn has taken a number of accredited programmes to address her decision-making and since her return to a closed prison had spent time in a specialist regime where she had been able to undertake work on outstanding areas of risk.

It continued: ‘This work had included a focus on her understanding and management of healthy relationships and the panel found that she had a good insight into the risks associated with relationships which become unhealthy.’

The Parole Board said it had identified ‘protective factors’ which would reduce the risk of reoffending. ‘These were considered to be the development of a pro-social support network in the community and the establishment of a routine in her daily life.’

It also approved a release plan by Boleyn’s probation officer which included ‘strict limitations on Ms Boleyn’s contacts, movements, and activities.’

The summary continued: ‘The panel concluded this plan was robust enough to manage her in the community at this stage.’

During its conclusion, the panel outlined the extensive licence conditions Boleyn must adhere to or risk being hauled back to prison.

The list includes: ’To submit to an enhanced form of supervision or monitoring including drug testing, signing-in times, and a specified curfew.’

It concludes: ‘After considering the circumstances of her offending, the progress made while in custody, the details of the release plan and the full evidence presented at the hearing and in the dossier, the panel was satisfied that imprisonment was no longer necessary for the protection of the public.’

A spokesperson for the Parole Board said: ‘We can confirm that a panel of the Parole Board has directed the release of Kayley Boleyn following an oral hearing.

‘Parole Board decisions are solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community.’

The horrific murder of Ryan sparked revulsion but also anger as it emerged at their trial that Boleyn and Taylor were well ‘known’ to the social services and various agencies had failed to protect the vulnerable boy.

The jury was told that Ryan died on Christmas Eve 2008 after suffering 75 separate injuries at the hands of his teenage carer and her alcoholic boyfriend during a month of abuse in ‘hell and squalor’.

Only hours before he was taken to hospital, where he died, a housing officer called at Boleyn’s run-down social services-funded bedsit and heard the battered child groaning under a duvet.

But she failed to act after assuming that Ryan was being temporarily looked after and was simply waking up.

Officials also failed to notice Boleyn had moved her sadistic and domineering lover Taylor, and two dogs - including an alsatian called Soldier Boy - into the flat.

These were breaches of her tenancy which could have been used to evict her and save the boy’s life.

The failures echoed the Baby Peter case, in which the child’s mother, Tracey Connelly, kept brutal boyfriend Steven Barker’s presence in her home a secret.

Ryan had been entrusted to Boleyn’s care by his mother, Amy Hancox, 21, a childhood friend, who was suffering from depression and struggling to cope with her son.

Boleyn took him in to her bedsit in Bilston two months before his death in return for around £20 a week towards his keep.

The trial heard how Boleyn and Taylor blamed each other for Ryan’s injuries. He was thrown against walls and floors, locked in a cupboard, punched and screamed at so aggressively that he wet himself in fear.

Taylor, a crack cocaine addict, rubbed the child’s face in the soiled carpet as punishment, causing a friction burn to his nose.

In his final hours in December 2008, Ryan was struck up to ten times around the head causing injuries comparable to those seen in children involved in a head-on car crash. The injuries caused a brain haemorrhage which led to a cardiac arrest.

During a sentencing hearing at Wolverhampton Crown Court in July 2010, Mrs Justice Macur told the couple: ‘You showed more concern about the two dogs that you introduced to the household than you displayed to Ryan.’

Ryan’s father, John Lovell, 24, walked out on Miss Hancox ten months before the tragedy when she started an affair.

After firemen attending a false alarm at Miss Hancox’s Bilston flat found that she had left a child - not Ryan - in the company of drunks, social workers visited her but decided not to open a file.

Boleyn, meanwhile, had been in the care system herself and had been living in the bedsit for six months at the time of Ryan’s death as part of a plan to prepare her for independent adulthood.

The illiterate teenager was monitored three times a week by a charity contracted by Wolverhampton City Council to deliver its ‘after care’ service. It was one of the charity’s housing officers, Kelly Janner, who heard Ryan groaning.

The boy died at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, 38 hours after he was admitted. He was baptised just before his death.

Mr Lovell and Miss Hancox sobbed in court as the judge told Boleyn she had been ‘put in a position of trust by Amy Hancox to look after her little boy’.

The judge added: ‘This was a decision [Miss Hancox] will regret until her dying day.’

Outside court, Mr Lovell and Miss Hancox said the killers should have been jailed for whole life terms. They said: ‘They deprived Ryan of his life, so they should be deprived of their freedom.

‘They should never be released from prison. Life should mean life.’

Wolverhampton City Council instigated an independent Serious Case Review into Ryan’s death which reported in June 2011. It criticised 14 agencies for failing to intervene and protect the toddler.

Taylor remains in jail and has not yet been referred to the Parole Board for a hearing.