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When 34-year-old Joshua Boren didn’t show up for his 10 pm graveyard shift as a patrol officer for the Lindon Police Department in Lindon, Utah on Thursday, January 16, 2014, his colleagues initially assumed that he may have just overslept. However, as the minutes turned into an hour, authorities decided to call in for a welfare check. When the Spanish Fork police drove to Josh’s 4 bedroom, two-story home at 37 N. 630 West, they could have never prepared themselves for what they found inside.
At work, Josh Boren was a highly respected police officer who was often referred to as a big teddy bear. He was born on May 11, 1979 & during his early teens he went to live with his grandparents. While attending Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, he met Kelly King, who he went on to marry on June 4, 2005.
The couple welcomed their son Joshua “Jaden” in May 2006 & their daughter Haley Marie, who was affectionately known as “Bug” to her family, was born two years later in July 2008.
After graduating from the police academy in 2006, Josh worked for the Utah County Sheriff’s Office before he was hired at the Lindon Police Department on October 14, 2013 from a pool of 76 highly qualified applicants. His colleagues indicated that he had been nothing but professional while his conduct had been described as exemplary.
Kelly King was born on July 21, 1981 in England to parents Jeffrey & Marie King & since she grew up in the military, she lived all over the U.S. as well as abroad. She was described as a kind, loyal person who set high standards for herself & she loved any activity that brought her into the great outdoors, including hiking. If she set her mind on doing something, she would always do it 100%. Kelly worked as the finance director for the city of Vineyard for six years, but had recently taken a new position within the city of Bluffdale.
In 2014 7-year-old Jaden was a second grader at the American Leadership Academy Charter School where recess was his favorite subject. He was described as a sweet & loving boy who adored bugs, frogs, wrestling & karate.
Meanwhile, 5-year-old Haley loved to dress up & do girl things with her mom. She attended the same school as her big brother where she was in kindergarten. Haley loved to tell a story & when she did, her family saw how her eyes lit up.
The Boren family of four moved into their home in a newer subdivision adjacent to Spanish Fork High School about four years earlier. Spanish Fork is about 9 miles from Provo, home of Brigham Young University, with a population of about 37,000 in 2014.
For about a year, Kelly’s mom, Marie King, had been living with the family following her divorce. According to her siblings, Marie was always up for a good time & loved a night out. She had a lot of spunk & didn’t like to be told what to do, but in recent years, she relished the role being Nana & proudly showed off pictures of her grandchildren.
Although his colleagues could have never imagined it based on the persona Josh presented at work, he was hiding a dark side & alarming behavior that he had been battling since childhood. Not only had he been sexually abused as a child, but he grew to have an immense hatred for his mother. He’d also battled a drug & pornography addiction & his addiction to pornography followed him into adulthood.
Based on his own writings, he was angry at his mother for not protecting him from the sexual, emotional & physical abuse he faced as a child at the hands of her boyfriend. He also documented his inappropriate sexual activity that began when he was a child & followed him into adulthood.
Since the fall of 2013 Josh had been seeing a therapist, a time when he & Kelly separated after a devastating secret came out. Their marriage shattered after Kelly discovered video tapes that proved her husband had been drugging her with Ambien that he slipped into her protein shakes, causing her to pass out. While she was unconscious, he set up a videotape & raped her, something that happened on four or five occasions over the course of two years. After she found the tapes, she asked Josh to move out while she & the children stayed in their family home, Marie eventually moving in.
One night before officers came to his house for a welfare check, Kelly & Josh got into a heated argument via text messages. The messages proved that they each seemed to come to the conclusion that their eight-year marriage was finally over.
Kelly wrote, You (expletive) drugged & raped me. She then sent four more texts with only the word raped. She then wrote, I hate my life because (of) you. You killed part of me. I don’t want to live in fear & hate & anger.
The following morning, Thursday, January 16, 2014, the argument over text messages continued. Kelly voiced her anger that Josh allegedly called her a bad mother & she threatened to take the children. Josh responded, Don’t involve the kids, they are innocent.
As the conversation came to an end, things had settled down & seemed to smooth over. Josh agreed to pick the children up later & drop them off at their house. Although they weren’t living together at the time, he was still coming to the house each morning to get the kids ready for school & he would pick them up each afternoon after school.
Although many of Josh’s colleagues saw him as a sweet teddy bear, in 2011, he faced disciplinary action at work for a highly disturbing act that involved animal abuse. On March 21, 2011, Josh, who once worked as an animal control officer, called his supervisor to say that he was in trouble. After coming across a stray dog, rather than taking it to the South County Animal Shelter as per policy, he took the dog to a remote area & fired at least three rounds at it with a .22 rifle.
It’s unclear how many rounds, if any, struck the dog, but one round did strike the passenger door of his patrol car. He was suspended without pay for 36 hours after the Orem Police Department didn’t find enough evidence to support criminal charges. This meager suspension was the only disciplinary action taken against him between the two departments he worked for.
One of Kelly’s best friends, RiRi Whiting, believes there was far more going on in the Boren’s marriage than what appeared on the surface. Although text exchanges between Josh & Kelly had cooled off that Thursday, as Kelly drove home from work that evening, she was venting to RiRi via text. She told her friend that she was done with her marriage & used the word rage when referring to Josh.
When RiRi texted back to clarify what was going on, Kelly told her they would talk more later when they met up at the Gold’s Gym that night. Sadly, Kelly never showed up at the gym & this was the last time RiRi heard from her.
According to RiRi, Josh was a very insecure man who was often jealous. He monitored Kelly’s Facebook activity constantly & confronted her if she liked or commented on someone’s feed that he didn’t know. He would then try to friend the person in question.
About 45 minutes before Josh was set to end his previous shift, he made Google searches that included America’s most brutal serial killers & narcissism. He sent his last message to his mom just before 6 pm on Thursday, January 16 writing, I hope you are having a good day. Have a long & healthy life.
After Josh’s dad ended his own life when he was five, his mom began using drugs & seeing several men, one of which allegedly sexually abused Josh. Struggling to cope with the trauma in the aftermath, his sister indicated that he began using drugs & then as a teen, he developed sex & pornography addictions. According to his family, he had been clean from drugs since 2000.
Eight years into his marriage, Josh called his sister & confessed that he had drugged Kelly & raped her while videotaping it. The latest occurrence happened in late 2013.
Several people who were interviewed by the Spanish Fork police, including Josh’s sister, indicated that he had a horrific temper. He was known to bottle up his emotions until he snapped & when he did, he was uncontrollable.
During a family gathering in December 2013, when Josh got into a confrontation with his mom, she later said that his eyes looked evil. While they argued, people overheard him say, I’m just like you, Mom, I sweep everything under the rug.
He began seeing a therapist to cope with his sex addiction & marital issues & his therapist indicated that he spent much of his sessions trying to get over his hatred toward his mother. The therapist referred to him as a 3-year-old boy stuck in a big man’s body.
Although Kelly confided in a few friends as well as her therapist about the shocking video tapes she’d found, she indicated that she’d chosen not to report her husband’s drugging & rape to police because she didn’t want to ruin his career in law enforcement. However, according to a later investigative report, word about him drugging & raping his wife began to get out & it’s likely Josh felt he was close to being reported which would have not only resulted in him losing his job, but also incarceration.
As part of his therapy sessions, he was instructed to begin journaling his thoughts & feelings. Police later found several of his notebooks. In one dated December 2013, he wrote:
I have a sex addiction. I fantasize regularly about people I see. I’ve always hated sex offenders & their behaviors. I fantasize about drugging & having sex with Kelly & other women regularly.
Since Josh & Kelly were bodybuilders, they regularly worked out at the gym & Kelly’s friends indicated that she was involved with another man she met there. When police spoke with the man in question, he indicated that they had shared more than 13,000 texts leading up to January 16, 2014. One of these texts read, Josh is starting crap again. Kelly’s new man believed that Josh was unaware of their relationship & his phone number was saved in her contacts as Jana.
Kelly had been actively training for her second bodybuilding/bikini competition that was coming up in March. On January 6, she made a simple post to her Facebook page: Discipline. Determination. Faith In Yourself.
As a police officer, Josh was given a mental health screening & a background check was completed when he was hired. However, once an officer is hired, there aren’t regular checkups. Counselors are made available after traumatic events such as an officer-involved shooting, but there aren’t any regular mental health screenings.
He had disclosed his previous drug use during his juvenile years that included acid, cocaine, stimulants known as cross tops, marijuana, meth & mushrooms. He also disclosed that he hired a prostitute when he was 18 at a brothel in Nevada.
According to the report, a fellow officer who Josh had been confiding in encouraged him to get screened for possible mental illness after he told him that there was someone else that lived inside of him.
When Josh hadn’t shown up for work that Thursday, officers from the Spanish Fork police department arrived at the Boren home at about 11 pm. The last time anyone had heard from him was at about 4:30 pm that day. Officers noted the family’s cars parked in the driveway as well as lights on inside. When their knocks went unanswered, police looked through a window of the home & saw blood on the floor & shell casings in the front room of the main level.
Once they came in through the unlocked front door, officers saw a large amount of blood on the staircase leading up to the second floor. Once upstairs, they found Kelly’s mother, 55-year-old Marie King, dead in a bedroom, although some sources indicate she was found on a downstair’s couch.
As they entered the primary bedroom situated next to the bedroom where Marie was discovered, they found four victims laying face up on the bed. Josh was positioned next to Jaden & his little sister, Haley, who laid next to her 32-year-old mother, Kelly.
After a seven month investigation, it was determined that Josh utilized his department-issued Glock 40-caliber semi-automatic pistol to kill his wife, two children & his mother-in-law before turning the gun on himself. Each victim, including Josh, had died from a gunshot wound to the head while Kelly, Jaden, Haley & Marie also suffered at least one additional bullet wound, some sources saying they had also been shot in the chest.
After the four members of the family were dead, Josh moved Marie’s body to one bedroom & then laid his two children & wife side-by-side on the bed before laying down & taking his own life. He left no suicide note behind & investigators never found the disturbing videotapes that depicted him raping his wife after he’d drugged her.
No calls or complaints to police had come in from the home while the family had lived there. Nearby neighbors told police that they hadn’t heard the sound of gunshots or other signs of trouble coming from the home that night.
Since Josh was a bodybuilder, some questioned if roid rage could have contributed to his actions, but toxicology tests revealed no drugs or alcohol in the bodies of the victims, including Josh. However, vials of prescription testosterone had been located under the dresser in his house.
Although some had been aware of the Boren’s marital issues, during the seven-month investigation, not a single person suspected that Josh could have been capable of what he had done to his entire family. Family, friends as well as the community were left stunned by his unimaginable act of violence.
Since the Lindon police department was a small department that employed only thirteen other officers, they were all stunned to learn what Josh had done. They often gathered together & he was known to bring Jaden & Haley into the department to visit, presenting himself as a wholesome family man.
Marie King, Kelly, Jaden & Haley Boren’s lives were taken in a place they should have been the safest & by a person who Jaden & Haley looked up to, loved & trusted with everything. A home is meant to be a safe haven where memories are built & members of a family can come to at the end of the day to let their guard down & be their true selves. Instead, for them, it became the scene of an absolute nightmare.
Those who knew & loved the family are left with a loss that will never make sense; a loss that leaves behind birthdays that will no longer be celebrated & milestones that will never come. The lives of Marie, Kelly, Jaden & Haley deserve to be remembered more than the violence that took them. They were mothers, daughters, siblings & people who mattered.
If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available 24/7. Please reach out for help by calling or texting the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by simply calling or texting 988.
References:
- Lindquist Mortuary: Kelly Boren
- Wing Mortuary: Joshua Kenneth Boren
- KSL: Report: Officer who killed family formerly disciplined for shooting at a dog
- The Guardian: Five dead after Utah police officer murders family then kills himself
- Deseret News: Officer who killed family had dark side, struggled since childhood
- BBC News: Boren family Utah shootings: Northampton sister talks of loss
- Online Athens: Police: Officer who killed family had raped wife
- The Salt Lake Tribune: Police: Lindon police officer responsible for Spanish Fork murder-suicide
- The Salt Lake Tribune: Utah police officer who killed family & himself had ‘secrets’
