Ben Butler trial: Jury retires to consider if father murdered his six-year-old daughter

Ben Butler is accused of killing his daugther and staging her death
David Crump/Daily Mail
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The jury in the trial of a father accused of beating his six-year-old daughter to death in a “volcanic” explosion of temper has retired to consider its verdict.

Ben Butler, 36, allegedly lost his temper and battered young Ellie to death at the family home in Sutton, less than a year after she had been returned to him from care.

It is said after attacking his daughter he enlisted the help of partner Jennie Gray, 36, to try to cover-up the murder.

They pretended Ellie had been injured accidentally in a fall, it is alleged, and waited two hours to call 999 while they destroyed evidence and prepared their story.

Butler says he found Ellie dead on her bedroom floor after leaving her to play unsupervised, and the delay in calling for help was out of panic that he would be wrongly blamed for the death.

Mr Justice Wilkie this morning finished summing up the case at the Old Bailey and sent the jury out to start considering its verdict.

He said Ellie suffered "catastrophic" brain injuries, and said the prosecution argued that Butler and Gray are responsible for a "cold calculated and detailed cover-up".

"[They] staged the scene, put on a series of acts, and lied for 18 months to neighbours, the telephone operator, paramedics, doctors, nurses, police, their own solicitors, and the courts, starting while their daughter lay dead and unattended at their home", he said, summing up the prosecution case.

He said it is alleged Butler and Gray's actions "can't be explained away as his panic-stricken reaction to finding her collapsed, fuelled by guilt at not having supervised her playing upstairs on her own and thereafter not calling an ambulance, all motivated by fear his child might be removed from him.

"The prosecution say deception on this scale can only be explained by Ben Butler, selfish and calculated, knowing he had killed his own daughter, seeking by any means available to cover up his own guilt."

The judge said Butler invites the jury to find that Ellie died accidentally, and says the jury cannot rule out the possibility that her injuries were suffered in a fall.

"You should not conclude you are sure it was not an accident, you should conclude it may be Ellie with her particular history, was almost uniquely unfortunate in suffering such injuries", he said of Butler's case.

Ellie died on October 28 2013, 11 months after she had been returned to Butler and Gray.

Butler had been locked up for assaulting Ellie in 2007, when she was just six-months-old, but the conviction was eventually overturned on appeal.

He then launched a legal bid to get his daughter back, eventually succeeding in November 2012.

Butler, of Westover Close, Sutton, denies murder.

He and Gray, formerly of the same address, also deny child cruelty between 1 August and 29 October 2013. She has pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.

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