The Child No One Heard: Ellie Butler

This week’s episode comes with a very serious warning.

We’re covering the case of Ellie Butler, a six-year-old girl whose death shocked the country and exposed devastating failures within the child protection system.

Before we get into the case, we talk honestly about how difficult this one has been for us to research and record, and why we felt it was important to flag that upfront. This is not an easy listen.

Ellie was known as a bright, creative little girl, raised by her grandparents from just weeks old. But after a controversial court decision, she was returned to her parents, despite years of warnings, evidence, and concern from professionals.

What follows is not just the story of one man’s violence, but a sequence of decisions that left a child unprotected.

We cover:

•  The early signs that something was wrong 
•  The legal battle that led to Ellie being returned home 
•  The systemic failures that followed 
•  And the events of the day Ellie died 

This episode contains discussions of child abuse, domestic abuse, and the death of a child.

Please take care while listening. If this isn’t one you can face right now, that’s completely okay.

Transcript

Ep 29 - Ellie Butler

Trevors, hi. It's me. We rarely do this, but Rach and I have just finished recording this week's episode and we both looked at each other and said, we're going to need to put a really huge disclaimer on the start of this one because it is hard.

A very big disclaimer. This case covers child abuse, domestic abuse, the death of a child. It's heavy.

It's been the hardest one I've ever researched. And Rach does say, whether it makes the final edit or not, that it's the saddest one. She thinks it's the saddest one we've done.

I'm not saying don't listen to it. Jesus Christ, I've researched it. Please listen to it.

But if you are in any way unable or not in a stable frame of mind, I would please take care of yourselves first. And if you don't listen to this week, you don't listen to it. I don't always need the Martianess numbers.

I think just to back up what Han said, it's the first one I've cried on. So yeah, just take care if you need to pass on this one. We get it.

No one's going to make you feel bad. And we're doing this upfront because we really don't want anyone's day to be completely ruined. And if you do go ahead and listen, then I'm sure you'll join us in understanding exactly why we've just done this.

OK, there we go. If you're going in, then may the odds be forever in your favour. I don't want to say enjoy because that sounds fucking mental.

I'll just leave it there. That'll do. Hello.

Hi. I'm Rachel. I'm Hannah.

And this is the Sinister South podcast, a podcast all about crimes, what happened, the south side of the river. Indeedy. Indeedy-do.

That's not the third time that I've had to do. Oh, we're leaving all of that in? Are we really? Yeah. OK, fine.

It can't just be me that gets humiliated routinely on this podcast. You must also. But I like it when it's just you.

But it's fine because also if you listen back to that, you'll hear me have got... Oh, you will have heard me go, hi. It's all right. Hi.

I like why I chose, right, today I'm going to speak in this voice. Hi. It has been a couple of weeks since we've recorded, and I fear that we may have lost our minds.

Yep. Oh, dear. There wasn't much left to lose.

No fair. But it has gone. It has now 100% left the brain.

Oh, dear. How are you? I'm all right. I'm in a much better headspace, and I think it's because the sun's out.

Yes, yes. I feel like I'm one of those OAPs with one lung that needs to move to Benidorm to survive. Do you know what, mate? I think that would be great for you.

But no, I'm good. Work's been busy, but it's actually not been hellish. Nice.

The last week or so, and we've got our holiday coming up. We do. And despite my travel anxiety and the fact that you won't let me have a big suitcase.

Because you're evil. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that and being away and stuff. It's going to be lovely.

I don't know. It's just been a nice, really, there's been things, but it's been a fairly gentle couple of weeks. Nice.

That's what you want. Very good. And how are you, dear? Loving your tan from your holiday.

Oh yeah, my tan. I am so tanned. She's a goth.

She is. She's a goth. Can't let any sun touch this skin.

No, all that's happened is that I, as is my want, went bright red and then peeled and immediately went back to being pasty as fuck. So yeah, we've done that. My holiday was lovely.

We, what did we do? We spent most of the time by the pool, just sitting by the pool. It was lovely. There was the Kalima, I believe it's called, which is like a weather incident.

Apparently it happens regularly over there. It's where the sands from the Sahara Desert get blown. And because the canaries are very close to that part of Africa, the sands get blown all the way over and it can kind of leave.

It feels like there's a haze everywhere. So we had that for a couple of days, which was a bit weird, but it was still warm and lovely. And there was Strawberry Kopferberg on tap as part of the all-inclusive.

There you go. So I was very happy. Good for you, darling.

Yeah, it was really nice. Really nice. Got to spend some time with the kids.

Got to spend some time with the kids doing things that didn't require us. Not ferrying them around. Exactly.

And it wasn't like, oh, we've got to get up now because we've got to do this. And actually, we just need to get stuff on. Can you just get your shoes on? It was just very much like, do whatever you want.

Have fun. Enjoy. So, yeah, that was very nice.

Did have an emergency trip to the doctor's because the small one had an allergic reaction to something, which was fun. Trying to put my Duolingo Spanish. Just telling all the pharmacy workers that you've got a red handbag.

I've got a red handbag. My child's name is handbag. It was a bit funny.

It was funny. Although, as I said to you earlier, I realized very quickly that Duolingo, it teaches you words and stuff. That's how it works.

Do you do marketing? I know, I know, right? Duolingo, it teaches you words. Done. But no, it teaches you like, you can recognize the language rather than speak it.

So it's like, I could read when we got the notes back from the doctor, I could figure out what most of it actually meant, which was quite like, oh, yeah, I can understand what that says. But actually speaking it, not a fucking chance. Absolutely no chance whatsoever.

And we had one pharmacist who was saying that we needed to take the little one to a doctor before they would give us any antihistamines. And I was trying to ask them, do I need an appointment? I could not remember the word for appointment at all. I was sitting there being like, reunion, because that's meeting.

And then I just kept thinking like, negocio? I said, no, that's business. That's not going to help me. It's business meeting? So I ended up resorting to the good old Google Translate.

Fair, fair. You were in a panicky situation as well. It's not like you were at a bar trying to order anything.

You were like, my kid's face is falling off. It's very large, actually. She's got quite a swollen eye.

But yeah, no, it was fine once we got her scene. And then we just got to enjoy ourselves, which was very lovely. And I'm glad that she was in good spirits about it as well.

She was. She was very good about it. Me dragging her around in 27 degree heat being like, I know your face is very large.

I'm aware of it. That's why we're doing this. We're trying to find a pharmacy.

But no, she was fine. I ended up buying her an ice cream. And that was, she was just happy with it.

All good. So, so, yeah, it was nice. But yeah, we got back, had Easter and all of that.

And now just, yeah, back into the routine of stuff. So, yeah, I'm very much looking forward to the next one. It's been, it's been too long.

And actually, I really need some time off. You deserve it. I do.

I mean, I've done four days. I'm such a brave soldier. But before we get into anything else, I just thought I would give the Trevors a little bit of an update.

I have finally ordered the backing cards. I did not know what you were going to say then. I've ordered, I've ordered the backing cards.

Oh God, here we go, another rod for another back. Yeah, no, no more rods, no more backs. I've ordered the cards so that we can put, send the pins out.

So those will be with you very soon, which is exciting. And so I suppose on that, we do the stuff we do at the end up front. If you want to come and find us on all of the social media channels, you can do that.

We're there on Instagram and TikTok at Sinister South. And then also, is it Sinister South pod? Oh God, I should know this by now. This is why we do it at the end, because then we've warmed up.

It's true, we've gotten into the rhythm of it. I think it is Sinister South pod. Also, two weeks away, and I'm just, I've forgotten everything to do with everything.

How do I get to where I need to be? It's Sinister South podcast on Instagram and TikTok. There we go. Then we've got Ham.SinisterSouth or Rach.SinisterSouth, which are our own ones, where we try and give you a bit of a peek into our real lives without disclosing the faces of Rachel's children.

Yes, that. Also, I did not put up last week's. Rach made some brilliant canva for last week's episode and decided that you didn't deserve it, Trevor.

Only she would get to witness it. This is my reel. Just not last week.

My private reel. But no, I think we will have, by the time this goes out, we will have posted it in retrospect. Because otherwise, that my brain will not, that's too itchy.

Yeah, fair, fair, fair. They're not going to be in order and it's not going to be there. I'll get it up.

I'll get it up. So that's fine. That's fine, yeah.

But you've already had one order for a Pinterest board. Yes. I wasn't necessarily touting for business.

There you go. Especially considering it's free. But yes.

You've had a request. I have had a request for a Pinterest board. So that shall be compiled.

I have to think of a funny name for it. Might just be Grow Up. Because that was like, had to be like diagnosed what the problem area was that we're trying to solve.

I love it. I think you should. I like that as a name.

That's a very good one. Oh, hello. My cat has decided to join us and then very quickly abandon us.

There we go. Yes. So there's stuff and you can go and find us on things.

And there's Facebook, which is Trevor's Unite. Yeah. And Patreon, which is what we're talking about here because of the pins.

So on our Patreon, if you are five and up, you do get a pin. You get a pin. You also are meant to get other episodes.

You get a pin. There's pins. A pin for you.

And if anyone wants a pin, but can't afford to be a patron, then you could just like join once. And then, you know, we've had people go, can I buy a pin? But we'll just join it for one month and then cancel it. Then you'll get a pin.

Or find me in the street and give me a fiver. Yeah, fair, fair, fair. You could do that as well.

Could do that as well. I won't tell Rachel. My money.

Would we be surprised? Oh, dear. What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine. Yeah, it's true.

I used to say that to Will all the time. No, actually, I think you'll find that this is all mine, all of it. I was going to give some sort of anecdote.

So now I've completely forgotten what they were. I, the other night, decided to copy you. Oh, okay.

A notes app thing. But I've typical me fashion. Yeah.

Don't know what they mean. Oh, okay, good. Oh, I love this.

100k not sensible things. Scared of own hair. Richard skincare.

Excellent. I love all of that for you. I'm assured with myself that they were very funny at the time.

And I was like, I'll say that on the podcast. Can I remember what any of that means? Nope. I'm genuinely going to have to start leaving myself voice notes because I it's getting ridiculous now.

Well, this is the thing, right? I've seen these little devices that I think are called like pockets or something. We're not sponsored. But they're like little devices that you can just they do like the magnet things on the back of your phone, you know? Oh, yeah.

And it's just like a voice recorder that you can just talk into. And then like AI will turn it into a summary for you and all that. But I was like, Oh, I should get one of them.

Because we were we went for a walk, Trevor's. We did. I actually got off my arse and it was lovely.

But as we were walking around the park, I said, Oh, I'll tell you, I'll say this on the podcast. I will remember it. I can't remember what I said to you.

What did I say to you? Well, when I said, Oh, let's talk about it now. Let's talk about our best lines. About the Edgar Allen Poe themed bar.

Yes. So I mentioned this to Hannah on our walk. I have been having a lot of I've been targeted by the ads.

And it's been I think it's from like, is it Viva? Oh, yeah. Is that what the company is? Anyway, regardless. There was a Edgar Allen Poe speakeasy that was like a pop up bar thing that was around in January when it was my birthday.

And because she's kooky and a little bit quirky. God, she's so alternative. So alternative.

A 30 something year old wants to go to something Edgar Allen Poe themed. Oh, but I really wanted to go because it looks cool. And I'm yeah, exactly.

Ravens, actually. Just but I was like, yeah, that looks fun. That looks better me.

We'll go and do that. Anyway, turns out we couldn't go because it was a pop up for one day only. And we happened to be doing something else on that one day.

So we didn't go. Anyway, ever since I clicked on that targeted since then, I've been getting nothing but targeted ads for fever or whatever it's called. And one of the ones that came up recently was the Edgar Allen Poe one again.

Yeah, it's happening again in April. But we're on holiday. I can't go.

I'm just never going to get to go and see the Ravens. But the other one that's been coming up recently is like a night, like a serial killer themed speakeasy thing. You said it was immersive.

It's immersive. Yeah, I'm just trying to find it now. It's the less successful follow up to Saturday Night Fever.

Not staying alive. Not staying alive. Oh, I fucking love it.

You can tell by the way. I'm a murder man. No time to talk.

Oh, Lord. Um, yeah, so these are it's now come to London. Apparently, it was in England, in America.

So I've got I've typed it in the search has come up with like the ones in the search. But it's now come up with like Colorado Springs and stuff. So I think it's good of it.

But yeah, it's the serial killer speakeasy. And it says it's a true crime cocktail experience where four infamous stories unfold live on stage through the eyes of the killer, like your favorite true crime podcast, but with cocktails atmosphere and a killer twist. Step into an ominous true crime world as the stories of Bundy, Bundy, Dharma, Gacy and Gein come to life.

Fucking hell. I know, right? I mean, there's one thing doing a podcast and there's one thing being interested, but that's fucking weird. I'm sorry.

It is right. Like there's loads of I'm just. What? Really? Really? But yeah, I know.

And what do we need? Yes, through the eyes. I would really love the serial killers point of view. Well, especially, especially those lesser known ones.

Yeah, yeah. Who haven't already had multiple Netflix shows about the documentaries. One of their victims.

Well, exactly right. Exactly. It's just yeah.

Yeah. I mean, like we do this or we're. Our interest without running the risk of sounding like all killer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got a mutual interest in serial killers, right? Or a mutual interest in true crime. Yes, exactly.

But I believe that our interest is based on fear. A hundred percent. And I need to understand the psychology behind scary.

Then I can rationalize it. A hundred percent. Like that's where that came from for me anyway.

The same is like the ocean's too deep, right? You know, I don't need to go and have a fucking blood red cosmopolitan and be like, crime. I'm with you. I'm so with you.

It's ridiculous. It's like I said to you when we were walking like I. I have the same fascination with true crime and serial killers as I have with the zombie apocalypse. Yeah, it's because it terrifies the living shit out of me.

So, of course, I have a zombie survival plan because I need to make sure that I've got in case the worst should happen. I like to be prepared, but I'm not going to like, well, I say that I did go and do an escape room with a zombie. So maybe I would.

Maybe I am the target market. I don't realize. Here we go.

No. Well, the escape room with a zombie was actually it was fucking terrifying. What did you think it was going to be? Well, I don't know.

Talking to the girl that took down a tourist child in Madame Tussauds. Forget about that. Yeah.

Don't forget. Fuck off. Yeah.

No, well, it was actually my lovely friend, Camilla, who does listen to the podcast. Hello. Hi, Millie.

She it was when she was first dating her now husband. And we went to go and meet up with him. I think it might have been the first time I'd met her now husband.

But she went he's over from I think he was stationed at the time. So I think he may have been stationed over in Germany is in the American military. And she's always over for a bit.

So we wanted to do something fun, but I want you to meet him as well. So we've booked to do this escape room. We've got to try and escape from a room with a zombie in it.

I was like, oh, OK, fine. Yeah, cool. We failed.

Failed miserably. I managed to break a pair of my own boots. Oh, good.

Because I was jumping, like physically throwing myself around the place. What was it? Rather than trying to solve any of the puzzles was your approach to the escape room just slamming the door. No, so it was one of these ones where it was like, so the zombie and I'm doing air quotes, there's a guy who did a very good zombie scream.

It was fucking terrifying. An actor dressed up as a zombie who was on a chain. I didn't think it was a real one.

I just thought maybe you thought it was really like, you know, really got in with this, like just a reanimated corpse. It was this actor guy and he was on he had like a thing around his neck and it was on a chain and the chain would get longer. Yeah.

So for every minute that you were left in the room, his chain would get a little bit longer. So it got to a point where it was like he could basically reach any part of the room. So I was having to like throw myself from one counter to another to try and stop this fucking man from like touching my leg or whatever.

And I managed to break my boots. Just sounds like a night in the venue. You're not wrong.

You're not wrong. But but yeah, like and we did we did all of that. But it's like I'm not I don't actually have a fascination with zombies because they are terrifying and like I want to know about them.

And I like, you know, I'll read all of the silly books like, you know, Max Brooks's zombie survival guide and all that. I read all of them. And it is there's a part of it that's like, well, I must prep.

I must know what I'm going to be dealing with if and when this happens. And it's exactly the same with serial killers and with true crime. Like there is a fascination behind it with the psychology of it.

And it's like how can I struggle to understand how how people can do the things that they do, especially serial sort of crime and have it just like, oh, no, that's just but then go about their daily life and just be like hidden in plain sight and all of that. It's absolutely terrifying. I don't need to then subject myself to it in terms of like, oh, here's someone who's pretending to be like that.

I've probably walked past psychopaths and I'm happy I don't know about it. Keep that to yourself. Exactly.

That's a you thing. That's fine. But yeah, it's just this whole kind of glorification of serial killers and true crime.

And I get it. Like there's a lot of money to be made in true crime because it is so popular. Is there? Well, not for us.

Could someone tell us? Not for us. We're just apparently not very good at it. But there is, you know, it's as a genre.

It's huge. So I understand people like wanting to try and buy into something that's got like it's part of the cultural zeitgeist. I mean, I'm sorry, it's like I promised myself I wouldn't get on my soapbox about this.

Yeah. Because it is a fine line. But it's like this ITV or is it BBC announcing the dramatization of the Sarah Everard case.

I haven't seen that. I posted about it as well. So, yeah, they've announced that they're doing a drama.

For fuck's sake. And it's one, it's too soon. Yeah, far too soon.

Two, it's so fucking unnecessary. Yeah. Just let the poor girl rest in peace now.

Like, fuck it now. I get it. It's slightly hypocritical.

I do think a documentary looking into the failures of the system and the evil mind of that man is that would be a welcome. I'd watch that. I will eventually write the case for this podcast.

But it is one that I am dragging my feet with because it's just a bit too raw. Yeah, 100%. You know, so I get that those things could also be classed as potentially being slightly not, slightly uncomfortable.

It's not exploitation. A dramatization feels like exploitation. That's exactly what I was about to say.

It's not, you know, those things that a documentary or a podcast episode about it is not purely for just entertainment, like evening entertainment over dinner. Yeah, no, exactly. There's something about, yeah, I think when you're kind of like, and at risk of just being like, oh, yeah, but not us because we're good.

We're fine. We're fine, but everyone else isn't. But like, there is something about, you know, telling a story, telling the story as in like, these are the facts as we know them.

This is what's out there that is in the public record that people can find. We're not taking any creative license on what we're talking. And documentaries, hopefully, we would hope are the same.

And most podcasts, I would say, are, you know, if they're doing a true crime story, they're going to stick to... Because the only other thing, because I've been thinking about this a lot. So I watched the Hugh Edwards series, Martin Clunes playing him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Does a very good job. And Martin Clunes has done quite a few. Yeah, but I was like, well, hang on a minute, Han, like you're watching this, you're enjoying watching this.

What's the difference then? Like, why is this one? And one, it was because, so the unknown, the anonymous victim who was groomed and then like, kind of, you know, never got justice, realistically, and has never been out like, whose name has never been in the public record of their choice. Yeah, it would seem like, good, that's fine. But like, also not their choice at the time.

Yeah, and stuff. Anyway, it was a way of them telling their story, and they were involved in it. And it was centered around them as the character, not just glorify, not just trying to like, look at what he did, but also like the ramifications of what he did, not just on, you know, the pedophilia and, and the crimes he was convicted of.

But actually, the ripple effect and the grooming and, you know, all of that stuff. That's what I feel like is different. Now, if you were to tell me that Sarah's family are working with whoever's producing it, a dramatization, and they want to do it to solidify and record something about Sarah that might not be out there any other reason, any other way, I'd feel differently.

But something tells me that it's not going to be like that. Yeah, it's a bit like with, did you ever see the Sophie Lancaster dramatization? I don't think I did. It's, it's fucking hard to watch.

But so those I'm sure all the Trevor's notes, Sophie Lancaster was a lady who was beaten to death for being alternative, specifically goth. And she was trying to protect her boyfriend, and they were both really badly hurt. He survived.

And unfortunately, she didn't. And then her mom, Sylvia went on to start the Sophie Foundation, which is all about kind of trying to deal with hate crimes, and getting people to have tolerance and understanding for everyone, regardless of what their differences are. But they did a dramatization of it with the lady who played Haley in Coronation Street.

She was, I think she was portraying Sylvia in the show, and it was done with the Sophie Foundation. And it is absolutely harrowing. But it was all done like the the point of it was that it was created so that they could get Sophie's story as part of their charity work.

And that was like it was, it was really hard to watch. But it was the fact that her mom was so involved in it, the fact that the foundation that is working in her name was using it for their educational. Exactly.

Yeah, it was helping them. More informative. Yeah, helping them make their points.

Is why it doesn't feel exploitative. But you're right. I think if it's just, if it's just like, oh, you know, everyone's really interested.

Yeah, like, that's not okay. It's not. It's, it's interesting.

But yeah, so, well, if anyone decides to go to the serial killer speakeasy, do let us know what it's like. Yeah, that worked out. Yeah, but I suppose it's a bit like when we went to the serial killer exhibition in Waterloo.

And that was, I think we both did that. And then we were like, we're never doing anything like this again. No, it's like, yeah, yeah.

Like, that was weird. It was very odd. I quite liked all the bit at the end, or it was like the interactive bits around like, are you a psychopath and all of that.

That was fine. But I didn't need to see all of the gory crime scene. And then being like, these are actually Jeffrey Jarmer's glasses.

Are they? Also, even if they are like, why? Why do I need to see that? Yeah, exactly. It's interesting. Anyway, talking of absolutely harrowing and anger inducing cases.

Good, good. Would you like a story? I would love to hear you tell me a story. Okay, so I do have some caveats.

And some trigger warnings. Yeah, this is a fucking difficult one. It does involve child murder.

And it is horrible. Yeah. So do look after yourselves.

And if it's not for you, it's not for you. That's okay. They'll, they'll be next week.

Also, there are at least there is at least one other child involved in this story, who I don't reference at all until it is absolutely necessary to. Fine. Okay.

They've never been named. They were a very young child when this happened. And I don't know, I couldn't find any details about how involved or not they've been since.

And I just think, let people live their lives. It would literally be just sensationalism to add in Fine. Any more than was absolutely required.

Fine. But I didn't want people to think, well, hang on a minute. There was another child that wasn't even mentioned.

And there is also a talk of a phone call, which I do reference, but I don't kind of directly quote. It is out there. Yeah.

But again, felt quite sensationalist to me. So I do reference it when it's necessary. But again, I don't want it to seem like I'm skipping over detail.

Yeah. But at the same time, I only I think the story is fucking harrowing enough without trying to add drama through these methods. Fair enough.

Okay. In the autumn of 2012, a family court judge in London made a decision. She was one of the most senior family law judges in the country.

She'd spent decades weighing questions about children and parents and risk, and she was considered good at it. What she was being asked to decide that day was, on the face of it, a question about where a little girl should live. Should she stay with the grandparents who had raised her for the past five years, or should she be returned to her biological parents, a father in particular, who had been fighting for years to get her back? In the courtroom that day was a man named Neil Gray.

He was the girl's grandfather. She had lived with him and his wife, Linda, since she was 10 weeks old. He had been there for her first steps.

He had walked her to the park on her scooter. He had sat through school fates and gym club performances and watched her decide that she wanted to be an artist. She occasionally called him dad.

Neil Gray had been fighting this case for years, and as the judge prepared to deliver her ruling, he looked at her and said something that she would never publicly respond to. He said, quote, one day you will have blood on your hands, end quote. Oh, God.

Today we're in Sutton, and the case I want to take you through is one of the most significant and most troubling child protection cases in recent British legal history, not just because of what one man did, but because of everything that made it possible. The girl's name was Ellie Butler. She was born on the 30th of December, 2006.

She was six years old when she died. But we're going to start long before the end, because this story only makes sense if you understand how it got there. The people, the decisions and the years of process.

So let's go back to the beginning. Sutton sits in the far southwest of London, one of those parts of the city that doesn't generate a lot of headlines. There's no tube line.

It's served by the Overground and the Thameslink, which rattles south through the suburbs towards the M25. It's quiet, largely residential, streets of terraced and semi-detached houses, a town centre with the same shops you find everywhere, retail parks off of a dual carriageway. It's also the home of Phone Shop, which you still haven't watched.

Anyway, carrying on. I mention this because I think it matters. There's a tendency when we talk about violent crime to reach for a setting that feels appropriately dramatic, a place that fits the story.

Sutton doesn't fit that instinct. It's ordinary. And the ordinariness is part of the point.

Because what happened here didn't happen in unusual circumstances, really. It happened on a quiet residential street, in a house much like any other, while neighbours went about their days, while a dog was walked, while a cake was bought in a local shop. It happened, in other words, in the kind of place where people don't expect this kind of thing, which is, of course, exactly where most of it does happen.

100%. Yeah. But here's what I also want us all to hold on to from the start.

This is not simply the story of what one man did inside one house. It's the story of a system, courts, social workers, agencies, judges, that was given every possible opportunity to prevent it, that was told clearly by multiple people what the risk was, and that found a way through a sequence of decisions spanning several years to set those warnings aside. That is the story.

And to understand it, you need to understand the people in it. So let's meet them. As I said, Ellie May Butler was born on the 30th of December 2006 at St Helier Hospital in Sutton.

A winter baby, just missing Christmas. The people who knew her as a child described her as one that was impossible not to love. Bright, funny, curious about everything.

She liked making pictures and gluing things together. She wanted to be an artist. She did gym club and swimming and brownies.

She had, in her grandfather's words, the kind of energy that makes a house feel full. Her parents were not living together when she was born. The relationship between them was off and on and they shared custody of Ellie from the start and she moved between them in those earliest weeks of her life.

Her father was a man called Ben Butler. He was 27 when Ellie was born and he was already known to police. Not for minor things.

He had served a prison sentence of nearly four years for armed robbery with violence and witness intimidation. He had previous convictions for assault. He had attacked a former girlfriend while she was pregnant.

He had what the records described as a history of alcohol-related violence. The pattern ran across years and across multiple victims. A man for whom violence was not an aberration but a recurring fact.

He was also, by the accounts of people who encountered him without knowing his history, capable of being extremely charming. He could be very warm, persuasive. He could make a good impression.

And we need to hold both of those things at once because the gap between those two versions of Ben Butler, the one who presented well and the one the evidence consistently described, is one of the engines of this entire story. Ellie's mother was Jenny Gray who was almost a year older than Butler and, on the surface, very different from him. She'd grown up wanting to be an actress.

As a teenager, she'd had small parts in The Bill and Silent Witness and had appeared as an extra in EastEnders. The acting hadn't turned into a career and so she retrained as a graphic designer and found work in the city. She was professional, composed and organised.

She met Ben Butler at her own brother's birthday party in March of 2006. She was immediately drawn to him. Eight weeks after that first meeting, she discovered she was pregnant.

Wow, okay. She decided to keep the baby. Looking back at the relationship from the outside with everything we now know about it, it's easy to describe it as a mistake made plain from the beginning.

But that is not what it looked like from the inside. Not to Jenny and not to most of the people around her at the time. What it looked like from the inside was a relationship she was committed to, that she believed in and that she was determined to make work.

And that determination, total, stubborn, apparently immune to evidence, would come to define her life in ways she could not have anticipated. Ellie was only five weeks old the first time something went wrong. Oh my god.

On the 7th of February 2007, she was taken to the GP while in her father's sole care. She had burns on her forehead and her fingers. Butler told the doctor that she had rolled onto a hot radiator.

She's five weeks old? The doctor believed him, treated Ellie for the burns and they were sent home. What? What? What? Okay. I'm going to make a lot of these noises throughout this episode, aren't I? Okay, sorry.

Eight days later, on the 15th of February, Butler was alone with Ellie again when he called an ambulance. He told the paramedics that he had glanced over and seen her go suddenly limp and pale in her carry cart while he was playing on his Xbox. The ambulance crew took her to St. Helier Hospital where she was born.

And what the doctors found when they examined her stopped them cold. Oh god. Ellie had subdural hematomas.

No. Bleeding on the brain consistent with a significant head injury. Shaken baby.

She had retinal hemorrhages. She had seizures. These findings taken together were what doctors at the time understood as the hallmarks of a baby who had been violently shaken.

The force required to cause that kind of injury in an infant is not something that happens by accident. No. It is not a fall.

It is not a rollover in a carry cart. The police were called and Ben Butler was arrested and charged with grievous bodily harm. Jenny's response at this point was to defend him.

He was a good father. She told anyone who had asked. He would never hurt Ellie.

Ellie was placed in foster care at first and then from July 2007 she was placed with her maternal grandparents Neil and Linda Gray who lived nearby in Sutton. She was 10 weeks old when she went to them and she would spend the next five years in their home. Neil Gray was a man in his mid-60s at the time and he and Linda took Ellie in without hesitation.

He would later describe those years in terms that make it clear he didn't just care for her. He loved her completely the way a parent would love their child. They went to the park virtually every day.

She had a trampoline that was in his words her domain. She started walking. She started talking.

She started making those pictures and asking questions and getting into bed with the adults. Meanwhile the legal process around Butler was moving forward. In January of 2008 the family court completed its own investigation and the judge not the judge who would later become central to this story but an earlier one his honour Judge Atkins concluded that Butler had on the balance of probabilities intentionally caused Ellie's injuries.

He also found that Jenny Gray had failed in her duty to protect her daughter. A psychiatric assessment in March of that year found neither parent had a mental disorder but noted something significant. Given the inconsistencies in Butler's various accounts of what happened that night he should not be left alone with a child.

Good. Just before you go in, sorry. I understand the court's ruling but were we saying that Ellie was in just with her dad? Yes.

Only when both of these things happened? So yes, I mean you could argue why did Jenny allow him to have Ellie on his own after the first time? Exactly. Is that what they're saying is that you didn't protect her? Fine, okay. Sorry, jumping ahead.

It's all right. There is other stuff that comes up but I think realistically, yeah. They'd had one dodgy encounter that a doctor kind of let slide and then this and I think it was so severe.

It was like, I think the general vibe was like you don't wake up one day and decide you're going to shake a baby. Yeah, no you don't. It is an escalating pattern of violence in your life and you already know that he's attacked a previous girlfriend while she was pregnant.

You already know that he's intimidating, that he's violent, that he drinks. Yeah, fair. Like you have a level like, okay, you don't cut access.

Yeah. And you know, you don't stop the dad seeing the child but you probably don't allow him to see her alone. On his own, yeah, fair.

Okay, sorry. Or if you do, you're really hot on like everything that's going on and checking in and you know, I just, yeah. Fair, fair enough.

In March of 2009, Butler was convicted at Croydon Crown Court of causing grievous bodily harm to his daughter. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Good.

He served seven of them. Oh, fuck's sake. And then he appealed.

What? By the time Butler's appeal came to be heard, the legal landscape around non-accidental head injuries in infants had become considerably more complicated than it had seemed a few years earlier. There had been a number of high-profile cases, some of which genuinely were miscarriages of justice, in which parents convicted of harming their babies had later been exonerated when the medical evidence was re-examined. Right.

New expert witnesses were coming forward to argue that certain combinations of injuries previously considered to be diagnostic of violent shaking might, in some cases, have alternative explanations. Right. Birth trauma, pre-existing conditions, factors that earlier medical consensus had not adequately considered.

Right. The courts were being asked to reckon with the fact that medicine had overstated its certainty and that some of the convictions built on that certainty might not be safe. Okay.

In Butler's case, fresh medical evidence was produced at appeal, including a suggestion of a possible pre-existing cyst that might have made Ellie more vulnerable to injury. The court of appeal found that the original conviction was unsafe, not on the basis that Butler was proven innocent, but on the narrower grounds that the jury had not been properly directed to consider whether they could exclude the possibility of some other unknown cause. Right.

Okay. Yeah, so it's not that he's innocent of it. It's unsafe because the jury haven't had everything they needed to be able to make that decision effectively.

And they might have still come to the same decision. I think, actually, it would have been highly probable that they would have come to the same decision, but they weren't given all the evidence appropriately. So they can't have judged.

So they can't have considered it appropriately. Okay, fine. That is a specific limited finding.

It is the legal system saying we cannot be certain enough to the criminal standard to sustain this conviction. It is not a finding of innocence. It is not an exoneration.

But that is not how Ben Butler presented it when he walked out of the court of appeal in June 2010. Standing on the steps outside, he told a journalist, if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. It ruined me.

I still haven't got over it. Fuck off. He positioned himself as a victim.

And that is the performance that would drive the next two years. The quashing of Butler's criminal conviction did not automatically undo the family court's separate finding, which was a civil judgment reached on a different standard of proof that he had probably harmed Ellie. That finding meant that the protection around her was still in place.

And she remained with Neil and Linda. And she was safe. Butler and Gray were determined to change that.

They wanted Ellie back and they were prepared to do whatever it took to get her. And what it took, it turned out, was a PR campaign. They hired Max Clifford, who was, at the time, one of the most powerful media fixers in the country and who would later be convicted of historic sexual offences and die in prison.

With Clifford's help, Butler and Gray gave interviews to national newspapers. They appeared on breakfast television. They went on ITVs this morning, sitting on the sofa and making their case to the country.

Two young parents, separated from their little girl by a system that had got it wrong, fighting to be reunited with their child. It was an effective performance. Butler was good-looking and impassioned.

Gray was articulate and composed. Together, they were exactly the kind of couple that the press found easy to sympathise with. Photogenic, coherent, speaking the language of wronged innocence that certain tabloid editors have always responded to.

The coverage was largely sympathetic. Some of it was as far as enthusiastic. Headlines celebrated them as victims of social services overreach of a system that had cruelly separated a family on the basis of discredited medical evidence.

What that coverage generally didn't dwell on was Butler's conviction for armed robbery. His history of assaulting a former girlfriend while she was pregnant. The family court's finding that he had intentionally caused harm to his infant daughter.

The psychiatric assessment that said he should not be left alone with a child. The late night threatening phone calls to Neil and Linda Gray. Oh, my God.

The court's finding that the parents had directly intimidated the grandparents. Fuck. And they're her parents? You wait.

None of that was the story the press were telling. The story was about a miscarriage of justice and it was gaining ground. Neil and Linda Gray watching all of this and fighting to keep the grandchild they had raised from a baby spent their entire life savings fighting the case.

It's around £70,000 and it was everything they had. Butler and Gray were granted legal aid. More than a million pounds of it.

What? I want you to sit with that number for a moment. Over a million pounds of public money allocated to help a man pursue the return of a daughter who had been formally found in a court to have been seriously harmed in his care. Oh, my God.

And it was working. Everything was working. And the case was heading back to court.

Oh, my God. Okay. The case was transferred officially to the family division of the High Court and assigned to Mrs Justice Hogg.

Dame Mary Hogg, as she is now. Okay. A bit of background on who she was because I think it's important.

Yeah, fair. She came from a very particular corner of the British establishment. Her father was Quentin Hogg, Baron Horsham of Marylebone, a former Lord Chancellor, one of the defining conservative political figures of the 20th century.

Her brother was Douglas Hogg, the Member of Parliament, who became one of the most recognisable faces of the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal when it emerged he had claimed public money to have the moat of his country estate cleaned. For fuck's sake. The Hoggs were not simply a prominent family.

They were a family embedded in the architecture of British institutional life across generations. A world in which authority is deferred to, professional presentation carries weight, and institutions are generally assumed to be acting in good faith. I am not suggesting that the background determined her judgment, but I think it is worth understanding the world she came from because it contextualises the particular kind of confidence with which she approached this case and the particular kind of resistance to the scrutiny that followed.

She had been appointed to the High Court in 1995 and had spent her entire judicial career in the family division. By 2012, she was among its most experienced judges and what she was tasked with in this case was conducting a fresh fact-finding hearing on one question. Had Ben Butler caused the injuries to Ellie in 2007? Well, we know the answer is yes.

This was a rehearing of a question that had already been answered. Judge Atkins had answered it in the family court. Yeah.

Probably yes. A criminal jury had answered it at Croydon Crown Court. Yes, beyond reasonable doubt.

The Court of Appeal had then found that the criminal conviction was unsafe on a narrow legal point, but that court had not declared Ben Butler innocent. It had not exonerated him. It had said the evidence in retrospect was not certain enough to sustain the conviction to a criminal standard.

Now the question was being heard again in the family court on the lowest civil standard of proof, the balance of probabilities. Was it more likely than not? Sutton Council social workers came and said what they had consistently said. Butler was high risk.

The history of violence, the pattern of intimidation, the inconsistencies in his accounts, Ellie's own apparent fear of her father during contact visits. Wow. All of it pointed in one direction.

The police had the same position. Multiple professionals who knew this case, who had worked with this family across the years, were saying clearly, this child is not safe with this man. Butler's legal team had a counter narrative.

The conviction had been quashed. The medical evidence was contested. He had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice and to continue to keep his daughter from him was to compound that injustice and punish him for something he hadn't done.

Before writing her judgment, Justice Hogg made a decision about her process that would later become one of the most remarked upon details in the entire case. She recorded it herself in her own words in the judgment. Quote, I have not read the judgments of Judge Atkins, dated the 29th of January and 28th of April, nor the summing up to the jury of Stowe in March 2009, as I did not wish to be influenced in any way by another judge of first instance.

For fuck's sake. So we're just going to ignore absolutely everything. Let's think about that again, eh? Oh my God.

She had chosen not to read the previous judge's findings. In a rehearing of a case with a long and well-documented history, she had decided that the accumulated judicial record of what had happened to this child and the family court finding that Butler had intentionally harmed her, the criminal conviction, the psychiatric assessment, the sentencing remarks, were all things she did not want to know. And she did not, in her own words, want to be influenced by.

Oh my God. So hang on, you're just gonna, you, brand new, but you know enough about this case. You don't need to rely on anything anyone else has said.

She's only going to know what she's told in that courtroom. Yeah, she's also arrogant enough to think that what she's being told in that courtroom, she'll be able to see through if there's anything to be seen through. Fucking hell.

And what she wasn't shielded from was Butler himself. Yeah, exactly. He gave evidence at the hearing and her assessment of him, written into the judgment, was, quote, I was impressed by the father.

He came across, he came through as reflective, thoughtful. Sorry. It's all right.

Quote, I was impressed by the father. He came through as a reflective, thoughtful individual who at times overreacts through frustration. End quote.

A reflective, thoughtful individual. Without the previous judge's findings to arm herself with, Justice Hogg had sat across from Ben Butler and found him compelling. She had met the performance.

She had not read the record. I just. In July of 2012, she ruled.

She concluded that the medical evidence did not conclusively prove Butler had caused Ellie's injuries. And she could have stopped there. That was the scope of what she'd been asked to decide.

But she did not stop there. She went far further than the court of appeal had gone. She formally and fully exonerated Ben Butler.

Oh my God. She declared his original conviction a miscarriage of justice. And then she ordered that Sutton Council write at her instruction to be sent to every agency involved in the case, which is up to 40 organisations in total, covering social services, police, schools, health.

A letter stating that Butler had never caused harm to his child and that there was an innocent explanation for Ellie's injuries. And she went further still. She gave Butler and his legal team the power to send their own supplementary letters to any of those agencies at any point in the future, reinforcing the message.

She was giving him a permanent judge-sanctioned instrument to deploy against any professional who might at any point down the line raise a concern. She then... No, no, no. ...removed Sutton Council social workers from the case entirely.

Their relationship with the parents, she said, was too adversarial for them to be used going forward. Any assessment they conducted would be, in her words, quote, doomed to failure. Instead, she appointed an independent, private social work company, a small agency called Services for Children, known as S4C, to oversee Ellie's transition back to her parents.

No, no, no, no. S4C received Justice Hogg's judgment of exoneration. They did not receive Butler's criminal history.

For fuck's sake. They did not receive the years of firewalls that Sutton's own team had built. They had, in effect, been handed a document that told them that the slate was clean and asked to proceed on that basis.

The people who knew this family best had been replaced by people who knew nothing about it. If you wait, mate, it gets worse. No, it can't get worse.

To understand what that meant in practice, to understand why this decision has the effects it did, it's worth pausing for a moment, right? Imagine you were a teacher. One of your pupils comes in with a bruise. There's something in their manner that concerns you.

Normally, you flag it, you make a referral, you set that process in motion. Yeah, 100%. But there is a letter on file, sent by the order of a high court judge to your school, to 39 other agencies, stating that this child's father has never harmed her, that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice, that the system got it wrong.

And you know that if you raise a concern, that father has the legal authority, personally granted by that same judge, to write to your institution challenging you. That the local authority social workers who might ordinarily support you have been removed. That there is no obvious channel for your concern to flow through.

What do you do? This is not a hypothetical. This is what every professional working around Ellie faced from the moment that ruling was issued. The serious case review that would later examine her death found that professionals across multiple agencies described feeling consistently, universally powerless.

That word comes up again and again, not incompetent, not indifferent, powerless. That's... I can't... What? Before the ruling was finalised, Neil Gray had spoken directly to the judge. He had told her that she would have blood on her hands.

She did not respond. In November of 2012, Ellie Butler was five years old. Knowing something was wrong, but not knowing what, she was moved to Westover Close, Belmont in Sutton.

She was going to live with her parents for the first time in her conscious life. In the weeks before the handover, the people around Ellie were documenting her state of mind. Her aunt Julie, Jenny's sister, who had maintained contact with the grandparents throughout the legal proceedings, sent an email to S4C.

The email set out what Ellie was communicating in the weeks before she was due to move. It read in part, quote, she has been asking why does she have to go and live with mummy because she does not want to. She wants to stay with Nana and Grandad forever and ever.

She is very clear that she does not want to go and live with Ben and Jenny, but she would like to visit and return to her home afterwards. She has recently got into the habit of not wanting to go to sleep in case she is taken away in the night. She is having nightmares about waking up somewhere else.

She's getting into bed with my mum and dad or myself when I stay over so that she cannot be taken away in the night. And she has also started to wet herself on several occasions, which I'm informed is a sign of stress in a child who does not usually have this problem. This email was sent to the court appointed social workers before the handover.

Ellie's fear of the move was formally documented and placed in the hands of people responsible for managing it. The serious case review later noted that Ellie had also asked directly to be allowed to speak to the judge herself to say that she didn't want to move. The request to speak to the judge was not granted.

A five-year-old girl had asked to speak to the judge who had decided her future and nobody answered that request. I don't know if it's because I have my own five-year-old girl, but this is... It's fucking horrible, mate. It's so dark.

Let's power through. Yeah, cool. Yep, yep.

Because otherwise I'll cry and then we won't get anywhere. No, it's fair. Okay.

The day Ellie left, Neil Gray described it like this. The day Ellie left us was simply heartbreaking. She had no idea what was going on.

She had been told that she was having a sleepover at her mum and dad's and we told Ellie that we loved her and that we would see her tomorrow when she came home. But she never did. Westover Close is a street in Belmont, a residential area in the south of Sutton, neat and suburban and utterly unremarkable.

The house was a terrace property. From the outside, nothing about it would have attracted any attention. What was happening inside was considerably less unremarkable.

The arrangement that Justice Hogg had described in her judgment was that Ben Butler and Jenny Gray had to have been settled together as a couple in suitable accommodation and ready to be parents. Right. They had put on this front but it had already begun to come apart at the seams.

The parents had in fact never really been living together. Their relationship had always been volatile and now Butler was a stay-at-home parent home all day with the children while Gray went to work in the city and he resented it deeply. The responsibility of caring for small children frustrated and angered him and he made that known in ways that would only become fully visible when detectives began recovering the digital record of his household.

Why the fuck does he want the kids in the first place then? Sorry. The text messages between Butler and Gray, recovered later, ran to hundreds of exchanges and they painted a picture of a relationship defined by his contempt and her devotion, his cruelty and her determination to stay. He called her names that are too degrading to repeat here.

Okay. She wrote to him that she was obsessed with him, that she would do anything for him, that she thought about him all the time. She also, in the privacy of her own diary and in internet searches made from her own devices, documented a very different reality.

She searched for information about stab wounds and treatment for broken bones. She wrote in her diary about what he was doing to her and in a series of searches that felt, reading them later, like someone trying to reach out into the world without quite daring to use their own name, she typed the words, I am with a bully who beats me and tells me I am ugly and fat and hurts me all the time. End quote.

The searches were dated from 2008, years before any of this became visible to the outside world. The violence had been present throughout and in the accounts that would eventually emerge, its severity was stark. Butler had broken Jenny's nose.

He had stabbed her in the leg while she was pregnant. He had beaten her on her birthday. A colleague at her city office had noticed a visible injury on her head the following day.

He had tracked her to a hospital where she had given a false name to seek treatment away from him and he attacked her there. What? This was the home Ellie was being sent back to. Contact visits between Ellie and her grandparents did continue during this period and those visits were becoming troubling.

She was quieter, more withdrawn, less like the child Neil and Linda had raised. She arrived at some meetings with face paint on, applied in a way that seemed to be covering marks on her face. Her grandfather noticed bruising on her forehead and scratches that hadn't been there before.

Neil Gray left multiple messages for S4C raising concerns about Ellie's welfare. S4C would later say that they had no recollection of not responding to his contact. Ellie's school also had concerns.

Her attendance had become irregular. S4C acknowledged it and said that they had passed that on to the parents. But the school, like every other institution around Ellie, was operating in the shadow of a high court ruling that said the history they remembered had been officially overwritten.

To push harder would have been to push against a judge. God. Other details were surfacing too, pieces of a picture that nobody at this point was authorised to put together.

Jenny Gray had presented at hospital with the children when they were hungry. She had been admitted to another hospital under a false name, denying she had children. The family home was falling into rent arrears.

Butler had refused to engage with any of the services at all. S4C made their final visit to the family in March of 2013. They issued a written report to Sutton Council in April.

They made no further contact. Their report raised no significant concerns. That's the end of social services involvement.

By the autumn of 2013, Ellie was no longer subject to any child protection plans. There were no formal orders in place. She was, on paper, a child in a family that had been wronged by the system and deserved to be left well alone to get on with things.

She was six years old and she had a broken shoulder. She had been living with this broken bone for weeks. She had not been taken to a doctor.

Nine days before the 28th of October, Ben Butler sent a text message to Jenny Gray. It read, quote, I can't cope anymore. Woke up in a rage already.

Been in place so many times. My hands are shaking. One more mistake.

I'm going to lose it. You're pushing my hate. End quote.

It was a Monday. Gray had gone into work in the city, as she did most days. Butler was at home with the children.

The morning passed. We don't know what was said or what happened before what came next. All we know is the outcome.

At some point on the morning of Monday, the 28th of October, Ben Butler killed his daughter. He struck her head either against a hard flat surface or with a large blunt object. The evidence does not establish precisely which.

With force that her doctors would later compare to the trauma seen in high speed road accidents or falls from very significant heights. It's Daniel all over again. She suffered catastrophic skull fractures.

She suffered severe brain injury. The only real saving grace is that they said she would have died quickly. She's six.

He then shut the door of her bedroom and he called Jenny Gray at her office. The time of that call was 1246 in the afternoon. Gray gathered her things immediately and left without explaining herself to her colleagues.

She flagged down a taxi outside and told the driver her child was unwell. She arrived at Westover Close at approximately 1.50 in the afternoon. She did not call 999.

In her initial interviews with police, Gray said Butler had told her, had not told her anything serious was wrong when he called. She later admitted in court that that was a lie. He had told her that he thought Ellie was dead.

She had known from the moment she got into that taxi what she was going home to. She arrived and she found her daughter dead on the bedroom floor. And for the next hour, she and Butler stayed in that house together without calling for help.

They put their clothes in the washing machine. Butler took Gray's diary in which he had for years been documenting the reality of their life together, the violence, the fear, and he disposed of it in the communal bins outside. He then went for a walk with the family's Jack Russell terrier, a dog named Minnie.

He walked down the street. He waved to neighbours as he passed. He commented to one of them on the awful weather.

He was entirely, visibly, ordinarily calm. Inside, the scene was being arranged. Ellie was positioned on her back on the floor of her bedroom next to an overturned pink stool near the wardrobe.

The story they agreed on was that they had been downstairs and that Ellie's younger sibling had gone upstairs to call her down for cake and had found her like that. Which meant that when the time came, they sent their younger child upstairs. They used a four-year-old to stage a discovery.

Gray had gone out to a local shop and brought a cake. She came back and she'd sliced it and arranged it in the kitchen. At 2.46 in the afternoon, two hours after Ellie had died, one hour after her mother had arrived home knowing she was dead, they called 999.

The call was chaotic. Gray screamed and wept. Butler grabbed the phone partway through, swearing at the operator, saying Ellie had fallen down.

In the background of the recording, a small voice could be heard. It was Ellie's younger sibling. She was saying that her sister wouldn't wake up.

The paramedics arrived and found Ellie on the floor of her bedroom exactly where her parents had placed her. She was cold. She had no pulse.

She was taken to hospital where of course she was pronounced dead. When the medical team at the hospital were asked to examine the younger child, Butler and Gray refused. An emergency protection order was obtained.

The child was examined and bruising was found all along her back, consistent with being hit with a belt. She was taken into care that evening. Sorry.

No, because I'm going to go. Sorry. Butler was arrested and he said nothing.

Gray gave a lying account and she maintained its essential features for years. What followed was a meticulous unravelling of what had happened inside that house on that day and in the months before it. Detectives recovered hundreds of text messages between Butler and Gray.

They recovered the internet search histories. They found what remained of Gray's diary. Piece by piece, they assembled a record of a household that bore no resemblance to the happy, wronged family that had appeared on breakfast television only 18 months earlier.

Fucking hell, it's so quick. The search histories were particularly stark. The records of Gray searching for treatment for her stab wounds and for her broken nose, stretching back to 2008, years before any of this had been visible to the outside world.

Her diary entries about what he had done to her, the texts in which he calls her name, too degrading to read. And she wrote back about her devotion, the entry for nine days before Ellie died. Like... The post... The post-mortem told its own story.

Ellie had suffered catastrophic fractures and severe injuries from blunt force trauma. As I said, the force required was compared to a very high-speed road accident or a fall from a very significant height. She had also... She also had... She also had bruising under her jaw in the shape of fingertips, consistent with her head having been seized.

Fuck. And the fractured shoulder blade was visible on imaging. Had... Like, they could see it had been broken for weeks and just been left untreated.

Her whole shoulder blade. That's insane. She had been living with that broken bone for weeks in pain.

In 2014, while the criminal proceedings were still ongoing, the family court also heard evidence in related proceedings regarding Ellie's younger sibling. Mrs Justice King delivered a judgment, which had to be sealed until the criminal trial had concluded, that set out her findings about life at Westover Close. She found that Grey had been a victim of domestic abuse of serious and sustained severity, dominated and controlled by Butler to a degree that had left her, in Mrs Justice King's assessment, unable to protect her children.

She described the atmosphere in the house as one of, quote, violence and abuse, coupled with a regular excess of drink and or drugs. She also noted carefully, and of course, with the benefit of hindsight, that had certain information been brought before the court in 2012, things might have been different. It had not been before the court because the judge who sat in 2012 had decided she did not want to be influenced by what previous judges had found.

The trial of Ben Butler and Jenny Grey opened at the Old Bailey in May of 2016, nearly three years after Ellie's death. Butler was charged with murder and child cruelty. Grey was charged with child cruelty and perverting the course of justice.

Both pleaded not guilty. The prosecution laid out its case over several weeks. It detailed the medical evidence about how Ellie died.

It presented three-dimensional printed models of Ellie's skull to show the jury exactly what had been done to her. The location and severity of the fractures, the force required to cause them. It detailed the cover-up, the washing machine, the diary, the dog walk, the cake, the stage scene, the younger child sent upstairs to discover her dead sister and the two-hour delay before the 999 call.

It's absolutely abhorrent. It read out the text messages, which the jury now heard in the context of everything else. Butler maintained his innocence throughout.

He stated that he had found Ellie unresponsive and had been too shocked to act. He suggested that she might have injured herself imitating a fool from the children's TV programme, Peppa Pig. He accused the authorities of being biased against him because of the earlier alleged miscarriage of justice.

He said he wasn't getting a fair trial. Grey held her ground too. She told the jury that she had only tried to protect an innocent man.

She denied that their home had been a house of horrors. When the verdicts were delivered, she told the jury that they had made a big mistake. Butler had to be physically restrained in the dock.

He was shouting that he was 100% innocent and that he would fight forever. On the 21st of June, 2016, Ben Butler was found guilty of murder and child cruelty and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 23 years. Jenny Grey was found guilty of child cruelty and perverting the course of justice and was sentenced to 42 months.

The judge, Mr Justice Wilkie, addressed Butler in his sentencing remarks. He said, quote, you are a self-absorbed, ill-tempered, violent and domineering man who, I am satisfied, regarded your children and your partner as trophies, having no role other than to fit in with your infantile and sentimentalised fantasy of family life with you as the patriarch whose every whim was to be responded to appropriately. You murdered her in a brutal assault prompted by your evil temper.

You struck her head so hard against a flat surface or hit her so hard on the head with a blunt implement that you inflicted catastrophic skull and brain injuries from which she quickly died. All of this took some two hours, during all of which you left your dead daughter lying unattended on her bedroom floor like a carefully placed prop, end quote. Oh, fucking Zed.

Of Grey, he said he was prepared to accept that her dependence on Butler and her need to believe him had been so total that he had been able to persuade her that the deception she was about to carry out was necessary to protect his innocence. It may be, he said, quote, that you were exceptionally naive and stupid to believe him, but you still had to carry out the plan and you did so with total commitment. There is one more detail from that day that I want to tell you because I think it belongs here.

Linda Grey, Neil's wife, Ellie's grandmother, the woman Ellie had called Nana, had died on the first day of the trial. She died of cancer in April 2016 as the proceedings at the Old Bailey began. Neil had not told Jenny.

The estrangement between the man too deep and the circumstances were too raw. It was not until sentencing day weeks later as she stood in the dock waiting to hear her punishment that Jenny Grey was told her mother had died. Her barrister had passed her a letter during the procedure, at the proceedings.

She sobbed. She found out her mother was dead on the day she went to prison. On the same day that Butler was convicted, the 21st of June 2016, the Sutton Safeguarding Children's Board published its serious case review into Ellie's death.

The timing was deliberate. It had been waiting for the criminal proceedings to finish. The review had been conducted under significant constraints.

Justice Hogg and the judiciary as a whole had declined to participate. They cited constitutional reasons, the independence of the judiciary from external review processes. They provided copies of court orders and nothing more.

Fucking hell. The people whose decisions sat at the centre of the review had made themselves completely unavailable to it. Justice Hogg had retired from the High Court the week before Butler's trial opened.

Of course she has. She has never made any public comment on the case. Of course she hasn't.

Fucking... The review's findings were nonetheless clear. The chair of the Safeguarding Children's Board, Christine Davis, said, quote, the serious case review concluded that the family court's decision to exonerate Ben Butler of harming Ellie in 2007, combined with his subsequent order for agencies to be sent a letter to that effect, had a very significant impact on how agencies could protect his children from that point in time onwards. Ben Butler's exoneration and the judge's statements about him being a victim of a miscarriage of justice had the effect of handing all the power to the parents, end quote.

The review also identified the appointment of S4C, the private agency brought in to replace Sutton's own social workers, as a crucial contributory factor. S4C had been given the judgment of exoneration and very little else. They had worked with the family for a few months, declared them settled and withdrawn.

They left no protective infrastructure behind them. They were gone. And Ellie was gone with them.

Off the radar, out of the frame. No plan, no orders, no oversight. A formal inquest into Ellie's death was held in 2018 at South London Coroner's Court in Croydon, four and a half years after she died.

Both Butler and Gray appeared by video link from their respective prisons. Butler used the occasion to proclaim his innocence again. At one point, as their prison video feeds connected at the start of proceedings, he looked at Gray's face on the screen and said, quote, your eyes look different, end quote.

He told the coroner, quote, I didn't cause Ellie to die. I didn't cause any injury to Ellie at all. I believe I have got some proof about this and it is far from over and that's my message to you all, end quote.

It's the inquest of your daughter's death. So regardless of whether you did anything or not, you're there to talk about how and why your daughter died and all you can talk about is yourself. Oh my God.

The coroner Dame Linda Dobbs ruled that Ellie had been unlawfully killed. She acknowledged the failures documented in the serious case review, but she concluded that she could not hold any specific agency legally responsible for Ellie's death, that between the institutional failures and the murder, the chain of causation could not be formally established to the required standard. It's Hogg's fault.

No formal inquiry has ever been held into the family court's role. Fuck's sake. Mrs. Justice Hogg has not been required to account for her decisions in any forum.

The judiciary's position remains that its independence from external review is constitutionally protected. That doesn't mean it's fucking right. Neil Gray gave a statement at the inquest.

He described Jenny as just as culpable as Butler, that she had stood by and watched and defended him without question or remorse and that he could never forgive it. It was later reported that he had completely disowned his daughter entirely. Of Ellie, he said, quote, she was a beautiful girl, kind, happy, cheerful, and bright.

I am proud to say that Ellie was my granddaughter, end quote. I've been living with this case for a while now, and I find myself coming back to the same four things, right? The first is Ben Butler and the consistency of him. From the armed robbery in his twenties, the assault on a pregnant girlfriend, to threatening phone calls and witness intimidation, to the injuries on a five-year-old, five-week-old baby.

And the text messages, you know, the things he said the day before he killed Ellie, or nine days, sorry, sorry, nine days before he killed Ellie, about his evil, his anger. There's not a single point in the story where the evidence says something different about who this man is. The only moments it appears to say something different are the ones where he is performing for someone.

It's the courthouse steps interview, the breakfast television appearance, and the evidence he gave to Justice Hogg. He was not misread by a naive system. He was read correctly by almost every professional who encountered the actual evidence.

What happened was not a failure of recognition. It was a failure of process. A process that was successfully manipulated by a man who understood exactly what he was fucking doing.

The second is Jenny Gray. And I kind of find this the hardest to sit with. She was, by any honest reading of the evidence, a genuine victim of sustained and serious domestic abuse.

Agreed. Stabbed, broken, tracked to hospitals where she was trying to seek treatment under a false name. Controlled in ways that had reached down into the most basic functions of her own self-preservation.

And that is real. That cannot be dismissed. And yet she bought the cake.

She sent a four-year-old, her four-year-old, upstairs to go and find her dead sister. She performed grief on a 999 call while knowing her daughter had been dead for hours. She told a jury that she had simply tried to protect an innocent man.

Whatever had been done to her, those were choices that she made. 100%. The sentencing judge did try to hold both truths simultaneously.

And I think that is the only honest position. Not that she was only a victim and not that she was only a perpetrator. Both at once.

But it is a really uncomfortable place to land. Two things can be true at the same time. It's just uncomfortable, isn't it? Of course it is.

100% it is. And sorry, not to derail, I've been sitting thinking about it and I know it's so easy to say to victims of domestic violence, why don't you just leave? You can't ask them that. But at the same time, as a mum, What more would he have had to do for you to open your eyes to him? I suggest, I can't.

Like, I realistically think that the only thing is time away from him. Yeah. Then she'll wake up one day screaming about what's happened.

And I, you know, good to that extent. But at the same time, she's going to have to process a lot of her own fucking trauma. Yeah.

The third thing I keep coming back to, obviously, is Justice Hogg. And specifically that detail from her own judgment that she chose not to read the previous judge's findings. I keep returning to it.

Whatever the technical legal rationale, what it meant in practice was that she walked into the most consequential hearing in this case without the evidence of what this man had already done. And then she met him. This charming, reflective individual who occasionally overreacts through frustration.

And she was persuaded. She put down the armor before she even walked in. And the fourth thing, and you know, the one thing that I find I just can't put down at all is Ellie.

That email her aunt sent to S4C written in the weeks before the handover. The five-year-old who didn't want to go to sleep in case she was taken away in the night. Who got into bed with the adults around her so that she couldn't be removed.

Who said that she wanted to stay with her grandparents for 100 million years. And who asked directly to be allowed to speak to the judge who was deciding her future and was told no. Her voice was in that room, formally in writing.

The people responsible for her welfare had received it and read it and it wasn't enough. The serious case review concluded with careful bureaucratic precision that, quote, the welfare of Ellie was lost within the decision-making processes, end quote. I've been thinking about that sentence for a long time.

I don't think that she was passively lost. No. I think she was actively set aside.

That the drama of her father's grievance, the compelling narrative of his wrongful conviction and the machinery of the media campaign took up so much space that the child in the middle of it all became incidental. A supporting character in her own story. Ellie May Butler was born on the 30th of December, 2006.

She died on the 28th of October, 2013. She was six years old. She should be 18 now.

Ben Butler is currently serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 23 years and he continues to maintain his innocence. Jenny Gray was released on completion of her sentence. Her subsequent application to the Court of Appeal was rejected.

She'd be 20 now. Okay. My maths is complete bonkers.

So sorry. That's all right. I was like reading, carrying on reading.

I was like, nope. That's why you don't do quick maths. Yeah, fair, fair, fair.

Yeah, Jenny Gray was released on completion of her sentence and her subsequent application to the Court of Appeal was rejected. Mrs. Justice Hogg, now Dame Mary Hogg, retired from the High Court in June of 2016, the week before Butler's trial opened. She has made no public comment on the case.

Neil Gray has continued to advocate publicly for reform of the family court and for greater accountability in child protection proceedings. He has called for a full public inquiry into what happened to his granddaughter. As of the time of recording, no such inquiry has been ordered.

Linda Gray, Ellie's grandmother, the woman she called Nana, died on the first day of the murder trial. She never got to hear the verdict. If anything in this episode has raised concerns about a child you know, please contact the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000.

In an emergency, call 999. If you are affected by domestic abuse, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is available 24 hours a day on 0808 2000 247. I think that is the saddest case we've covered.

It's brutal. I see now. Okay.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.

I'm sorry. For your service. You told it brilliantly.

I knew Ellie's name. I don't know that I knew. Well, I definitely didn't know all the details.

Um, that was a lot harder to listen to than I thought it was going to be. That's the first time I've cried. And I feel like I've cried so much.

Yeah. And I still just feel so... It's... Like, astounded. I don't know how else to describe the feeling of just like complete... I thought we'd be hard pressed, right? And when we started this podcast, I thought the worst one we're going to cover is probably Adam.

That was always the one that I thought because it was so... It's not his real name. No, exactly. If anyone wants to listen to that and torture yourself even further, please do.

It's season one. I can't remember the episode number, but you'll find it. And then we did Daniel Iwubom.

I'm sorry if I mispronounce that last name. Again, he's season two. If you want to go and listen to that.

And then you've done this one. And there seems to be like this unwritten rule between us that when we do cases that involve children, I don't do them. Yes.

And I know that's because it's... I have children. I am very sorry to have done this to you when your children aren't here tonight for you to cuddle. Yeah, yeah.

I'm just about to say. If you do need to FaceTime them right now, that is completely understandable. I'm going to later.

It doesn't... I don't do them because of... I know I won't be able to do them. That doesn't make it any easier for you. I can't get my... I can't get my head around.

I... Full disclosure, putting it out there. I have never been in a domestic violence situation. Very glad to report that has never been my existence.

I've never known it. I don't want to know it. I cannot imagine what it is like to be a prisoner in your own home in so many ways.

I would like to think knowing my children as I know them and knowing my love for my children as I have it. There is nothing. There is absolutely nothing that could be done to me that would prevent me from protecting them.

And I know that's easy to say when I've not been in it. And I'm not trying to minimize the hell that Jenny went through. But I think you're right.

There is this uncomfortable thing of like, but... We can still judge her for what she did. Or what she didn't do. And what she didn't do.

And I think that it's... What beggars belief is it would be bad enough if this happened. And it was, you know, that she'd not been removed from their care. It would be bad enough.

But the fact that she was protected. She was safe. They took her away.

She was... The system fucking worked. It did what it was supposed to do. There were reports that this was a shaken baby.

Regardless of the... You know, like in loads of cases where there's been, you know, the probation team didn't check a box. And therefore someone was allowed to go murder people. We've been through this so many times where the police failed.

Where there's oversight. The only... There's only two kind of systematic failures here. One is the original, original doctor that didn't notice that a five-year-old probably couldn't roll over into a radiator.

No. And didn't raise a flag then. They can barely fucking hold their heads up.

It was eight days later. The first attack on her. Like, that we know of.

That resulted in her being taken into care. And then Justice Hogg. I just... Everything had been put in place to protect that little girl.

And then he's let out on a technicality. And then this fucking... I'm sorry. I'm not even going to say alleged.

This fucking arrogant cow of a woman. I'm not going to bother reading what other people have said. I don't need to know his history.

I don't need to understand that. I, and I alone, will be able to assess this man based on what I see of him. Because I am above reproach when it comes to my sense of what people are like.

It's like, honestly, it's the fucking equivalent of those people go, I've got a really good vibe on people. I can really read them actually. I'm a really good judge of character.

Really good judge of character. Fuck you. You are about to take a child.

You're a fucking judge. Read the evidence. Like, you're about to, and also you're about to remove... From your peers.

Read the evidence of your peers. It's not even like you're asked to, oh, I don't know, some lowly social worker that is beneath you. Read the fucking evidence of your judge, of a judge that's at your level.

Yeah, exactly. But it's like you're taking, you're removing a child from somewhere where they are happy, where they are safe, where they are thriving. They have dreams.

Like, and then I just, and I can't talk about it because I will go. But she told you she didn't want to go. She told you.

She asked to speak to her. I just, I can't. And at what point does that like, in all of this, she's just left, just pushed aside.

It's just, it's astounding. And the fact that like, the judiciary is above review. Fuck off.

No one, fuck off. No one is above review. It's like saying that like, you know, so every, people make mistakes.

This is how we end up with fucking nonsense in the royal family. No one is above review. Exactly.

I don't even think we need to say allegedly. I don't know if I need to anymore, I don't know. I don't know, just in case.

Yeah, fair. But like, it's just, people, right, every single, no human is infallible. No human.

No one. Everyone makes mistakes. So if you've made a mistake, okay, you've got to get called out on the mistake.

You made a fucking mistake. You did not read. No one else did that.

The stuff that you should have fucking read. You were not given, you did not, you chose, if we think that he was. It wasn't even that she wasn't allowed to or the process deemed it inadmissible in court or anything like that.

She could have read it. Her decision not to. It's like, it's just, so it's, there's a tiny, narrow margin that got him exonerated of shaking his child to start with.

Tiny, narrow thing of like, well, it could possibly have been something else. We don't think. She still would.

So even with the cyst, they're not saying that the cyst caused the injuries. It's just that she would be more prone to injury because of it. So they're not even saying that nothing happened to her.

It's just that it could be worsened. Yeah. By that.

So like what it looked like could have been worse because of the cyst. But we're then told that that conviction is unsafe because the jury did not know that information. And yet this fucking woman.

Doesn't need to know any of the information. Can ignore every single bit. And just decide on having a chat with him.

Oh my God. Right. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to wind this up because I could, I'm just gonna sit here for hours.

Thank you. You're welcome. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry to you all. That was, it was hard. That was hard.

I think we need to put appropriate. Yeah, we will. We'll do it.

We'll do all of the big klaxons about this one. Cause it is, it's hard. But thank you.

Appreciate you. Hopefully you'll be able to remove some of the. What I'm going to get out of your brain.

Absolutely paralytically drunk. I think that's an entirely appropriate response to this. Yeah, cool.

So we'll do the nice bits. Although it feels. We did them already.

So yeah, maybe we'll just skip. If you want to come and find out any info about what we do or any of the other episodes that we've done, there's a website you can go and look at SinisterSouthPodcast.co.uk SinisterSouthPod.co.uk The email address is SinisterSouthPodcast at gmail.com. There we go. And we've said all the other stuff about socials and whatever.

I'm going to leave it there, Trevors, because I need to go and put some alcohol in my body. And if you need to do the same, that's entirely fine. More healthier coping mechanisms are available.

They are available. I will not be taking them. Try not to be partaking in them, but do as I say, not as I do.

All right, Trevors. We love you. We'll see you next week.

Take care of yourself. See you next week. Bye.

Bye.