I Was a Purple Heart Army Sniper — Then I Was Sent To Prison For 15 Years | Cody Boden

Locked In with Ian Bick

Ian Bick

Society & Culture

4.8 • 745 Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2026

⏱️ 170 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cody Boden grew up in Grand Junction Colorado, the son of an alcoholic father in a coal mining town. In this episode of Locked In with Ian Bick, Cody shares how he found his purpose in the U.S. Army — becoming a sniper with the 1st 40th Cavalry, earning two Purple Hearts from a bombing and a VBIED attack, and witnessing horrors overseas that would follow him home forever. When he returned from war the military forced him into medical retirement — leaving him without the only life he'd ever known. What followed was a bar altercation, drug dealing, a 15 year sentence he served 5 years of, and a battle with opiate addiction he finally won in June 2017. Now he faces his greatest fight yet — terminal liver failure connected to an illness contracted during deployment, waiting for a donor since May 2023.This is a story of war, trauma, addiction, prison, redemption, fatherhood and faith — and a man the system tried to throw away who refused to give up. _____________________________________________ #PurpleHeart #VeteranStory #TrueCrime _____________________________________________ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ _____________________________________________ Shop Locked In Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 Purple Heart Army Sniper to Federal Prison — Cody's Full Story 00:21 Growing Up in a Coal Mining Family and the Childhood That Shaped Everything 04:13 High School Struggles and the First Time Drugs Entered His Life 07:07 The Family Coal Mining Business and How Everything Started to Change 11:28 His Father His Grandfather and the Discipline That Defined His Childhood 16:01 Losing His Grandfather and the Moment He Turned to Drugs to Cope 18:59 Joining the Army to Escape — The Decision That Changed Everything 21:31 Army Training and How He Fought His Way Through Early Addiction 28:35 Making It to Army Sniper School and What Life in Alaska Really Looked Like 37:18 Preparing for Deployment and Adapting to the Most Extreme Environments Imaginable 41:01 Life in Alaska — Brutal Weather Brutal Training and What It Built in Him 45:00 Deploying to Iraq — His First Combat Experience and What He Wasn't Ready For 51:40 The Toughest Missions and the Friends He Lost in Battle 54:00 Survivor's Guilt — What It Does to You When the People Next to You Don't Make It 01:00:43 Heavy Combat Devastating Losses and What Leadership in War Really Looks Like 01:11:04 Coming Home — Injuries Forced Retirement and the Painkillers That Started Everything 01:18:50 A Bar Fight An Arrest and His First Real Taste of Jail 01:27:49 How Addiction Took Over and What It Did to His Family 01:30:47 Fighting for Custody of His Kids While Fighting His Own Demons 01:39:10 Prison — The Legal Troubles the Politics and What Survival Really Looks Like Inside 01:46:35 Prison Life Racism and the Mental Health Programs That Started to Help 01:58:03 Therapy Childhood Trauma and the First Real Steps Toward Recovery 02:05:00 Life After Prison Meeting Katherine and Then the Hepatitis C Diagnosis 02:12:42 Building a New Life Staying Clean and Finding Professional Purpose 02:18:11 The Terminal Liver Disease Diagnosis and the Transplant Journey Nobody Prepares You For 02:26:26 Medical Hardships Finding Hope and the Faith That Kept Him Going 02:32:23 The Delays the Donors and the Nightmare of Navigating the Medical System 02:36:09 What His Family and Legacy Give Him the Will to Survive 02:43:17 Reflection Gratitude and What Moving Forward Really Looks Like _____________________________________________ To advertise on the show, contact sales@advertisecast.com or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/LockedInWithIanBicka Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My guest today earned two Purple Hearts as an Army sniper, then came home, got thrown away by the military, went to prison, beat addiction, and is now fighting terminal liver failure from an illness he contracted while serving his country.
0:14.1	His name is Cody Bowden, and this is what America did to one of its own.
0:21.3	So I grew up down in Grand Junction, Colorado.
0:24.0	It's not a real big town, but it's the biggest town on the western side of the state.
0:30.6	And I was born in there, and I came back when I was in high school.
0:33.9	So we moved around, and I got a taste of being living in Arkansas.
0:37.2	I taste to live in Wyoming. But I really spent my high school. So we moved around and I got a taste of being living in Arkansas. I taste to live in
0:38.1	Wyoming. But I really spent, you know, my high school years in Colorado. And then that's where I
0:44.5	went from there and I joined the Army. Why do you guys move around a lot? My grandfather owned coal mines.
0:49.5	So we had a coal mine that was outside of, or that we had coal mines in Colorado. And my grandma
0:56.6	lived in Grand Junction, so we always kind of stayed around central to her. And then when my grandpa
1:02.4	opened a mine in Rock Springs, Wyoming, we went up there. It was a mine called Lion Cole. And I
1:09.7	used to run around the mine with my grandpa, I crashed his two-story loader into the side of the building. But you know, he owns the thing, so you can't really get mad at the boss. And he was an old school Italian guy. I don't even think he graduated or he didn't, I know he didn't graduate, but like, I don't even think it made it out of middle school, but engineers would call this man for knowledge. Like, it was just beyond me how smart this man was.
1:32.5	But he, uh, he, he opened a mine in Rock Springs. We went up there. And then when he went to open
1:38.8	another mine in Fort Smith, Arkansas, or south of it, we moved down there with him, which that's, that's a culture shock. You know, I'm not necessarily white. So I'm, I'm Native American and I'm a mix of white. So I'm darker. So when I moved down there, it was kind of weird. Like I fit on the other side of the segregation line, which didn't ever make sense to me,
2:01.3	because I'm like, what do you talk about? I'm white. But, you know, in downwoods, deep woods,
2:06.6	Arkansas, people could get pretty disgusting. So I had a different experience living down there,
2:12.9	and then moving back to Grand Junction for my high school years, obviously, it's better to be in a place
2:17.8	where you're not hated due to skin color, you know? And it's not like I was that segregated,
2:22.0	but it was just strange to me because I wasn't raised that way, never felt that way. And then
2:26.9	when I was treated that way, it was kind of off-putting, obviously. But I went from the backup from the mine and sugarloaf that was in Arkansas.
2:38.7	We never were able to open it.
	...

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