Boyfriend of teenage mum, 33, who shook her baby to death a week after they met found guilty of murder

A man who shook his teenage girlfriend’s baby to death a week after they met is facing a lengthy jail term after he was found guilty of murder. Kieran Humphreys, 33, was left to look after 19-year-old Saskia Woodbridge’s son Archie while she popped out to have her nails done. While she was gone, he lost his temper with the six-month-old boy, who was teething, and ‘gripped and shook’ him. The callous killer then tried to ‘save his own skin’ by persuading other people – including his ‘naïve’ young lover – to help him by claiming he had not been left alone with Archie. Opening the trial last month, prosecutor Charlotte Newell KC said: ‘It transpired he [Archie] had a fatal injury – gripped and shaken with force while in the sole care of Kieran Humphreys. ‘He has provided no alternative explanation as to how or why this otherwise healthy baby died whilst in his sole care.’ Humphreys has now been convicted of murder and cruelty to a child by the jury. Mr Justice Morris remanded him into custody and told the minimum jail term he will serve under a mandatory life sentence will be decided when he is sentenced on a date to be set. Humphreys had ‘befriended’ Miss Woodbridge after meeting her in a shop on February 2, 2024, the court heard. He ‘lavished attention’ on her and Archie, leading them to believe he would ‘care’ for them and be their ‘saviour’. Miss Newell told the jury that Miss Woodbridge had been ‘charmed by this older man’ and left Archie in his care at a friend’s home in Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, when she went to the nail salon on February 9. Unemployed Humphreys, who lived in the town, had been playing Call of Duty on Xbox ‘throughout the night’ and flew into a rage with the baby in her absence, Luton Crown Court heard. Evidence showed Archie had been ‘gripped and shaken’, leading to him suffering a fatal brain injury Instead of calling 999, Humphreys and his friend Karen Smith waited for Miss Woodbridge to return and then moved the baby to the home of a relative nearby before summoning paramedics. The trial heard how Miss Woodbridge – who is now 20 and lives in Leighton Buzzard – told the 999 operator her son was ‘blue’ and not breathing. Paramedics arrived and Archie was taken to hospital where died the following day. Humphreys later claimed to police that the boy’s arms had suddenly gone ‘all floppy’ and he ‘panicked’. ‘I ain’t done nothing wrong. I would never hurt a child,’ he told them. ‘I love that kid like my own. He wasn’t dropped or squeezed or whatever you are trying to say… he wasn’t injured in my arms. ‘It wasn’t me. All I did was try to save that boy.’ Miss Woodbridge told officers that Humphreys, his mother Sharon and Smith ‘made her lie about what happened and when’. He had ‘put pressure’ on her to avoid suggesting Humphreys was ‘in sole charge of Archie’. Miss Newell told jurors: ‘The priority of Kieran Humphreys from the get-go was to save his own skin, regardless of the welfare of the child.’ Smith, 40, her partner Sam Wyatt, 36, and Sharon Humphreys, 59, all of Houghton Regis, all admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Mr Justice Morris said they would be sentenced at the same time as Humphreys, who admitted the same charge. Speaking after the trial, Detective Chief Inspector Nick Gardner, from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire major crime unit, said he hoped the guilty verdicts would bring Archie's family ‘some measure of justice and peace’. He added: ‘This was a deeply distressing case in which a defenceless baby lost his life at the hands of someone who should have been caring for him. ‘Kieran Humphreys' actions reveal a distinctly self-serving approach, as his primary concern was to save himself, rather than prioritising Archie's welfare, by attempting to cover his tracks.’