Childhood friend of kid killer Ben Butler reveals murderer once tortured dog so badly it lost a leg
Former pals reveal horrific childhood of demon child who later killed his own six-year-old daughter
CHILD murderer Ben Butler showed “psychopathic tendencies” as a lad and even pulled the leg off his pet Yorkshire Terrier.
An anonymous family friend revealed that killer, 36, who was jailed last week for battering his six-year-old daughter Ellie to death, yanked the dog’s leg so hard it had to be amputated.
Speaking with the , the former pal said the vicious attack on the defenceless animal, named Toffee, happened when the murderer was aged just eight.
Branding him a "psychopath", he also revealed that Butler’s parents were called to his school after he savagely “beat up” a little girl who was three years younger than him.
He said: “How he ended up caring for a child is beyond me. Ben is toxic, he ruins every life he comes into contact with. He is nothing but a psychopath.
“I remember when he was eight he grabbed hold of Toffee, the family’s Yorkshire terrier, and pulled his back leg with such force the limb was almost hanging by a thread.
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“It was so badly dislocated the vet had no choice but to amputate.
“But that was Ben all over, always picking on smaller and weaker targets than himself.
“His stepfather Bob told me he was summoned to school because Ben had beaten up a girl about three years younger than him. He was always picking on Tony, his younger half-brother.”
Butler was jailed for life, and will serve least 23 years, for killing his little daughter Ellie leaving her with “catastrophic” brain injuries.
The tot’s mother Jennie Gray was sentenced to three years behind bars after trying to cover up the appalling crime.
Former neighbour Micky Buck, who grew up with the cold-blooded Butler in Sutton, south London, revealed the killer hospitalised his brother with a cowardly sucker punch.
As the two boys prepared to fight, Butler allegedly offered to shake hands with Micky’s sibling before suddenly launching an attack at him and breaking his nose.
Butler’s former girlfriend Hannah Hillman, 32, also told to The Sun that his eyes would turn black as he beat her senseless while foaming at the mouth.
Brave Hillman said her former partner is a “psychopath” who beat her over 100 times and even attacked while she was pregnant.
She said: “Ben is a psychopath. That absolute blackness in his eyes and the way he would foam at the mouth — it upsets me so much that Ellie will have died seeing that.
“During our relationship he must have punched, pushed or kicked me over 100 times — it was a horrible, abusive relationship.
“The last time he attacked me I was pregnant — it was our first baby. I fell to the ground and he was kicking me like a football. In the head, in the stomach, all over.
“He did that so in his mind he made me lose that child.”
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