A week ago last Thursday, Neal Gray picked up a photograph of his late wife, Linda, from the sitting room mantelpiece, as he’s done every morning since her death four months ago.
He told her: ‘I’m going to see Miss Lynch today. She’s a nice lady. I think she’s going to make things right. You look after Ellie and tell her we haven’t stopped fighting for her. I miss you both very much.’
Then Neal, 71, put on his jacket, collected his walking stick and left his home in Wallington, Surrey, for a hearing at Croydon Coroner’s Court.
Miss Lynch, the South-East London Coroner, listened to an hour of submissions from a barrister and two solicitors, each of whom is working pro bono to see justice finally done for Neal’s granddaughter, Ellie.
It is up to Miss Lynch to decide whether to reopen the inquest into Ellie Butler’s death and thus force the local authority and courts — along with a private team of social workers appointed to the case by Mrs Justice Hogg — to answer for their actions. Or rather, their abject lack of action......
But, yet again, in an abominable mockery of British justice, Butler is considering an appeal.
Should his taxpayer-funded lawyers decide to push ahead, the nice Miss Lynch will not be able to ‘make things right’ for Ellie or her grandparents any time soon.
The last wish of Linda Gray, who died on April 19 on the opening day of the trial, was that the youngest of her three children should not know she was dying of cancer.
Nor was Jennie welcome at her funeral. Linda was cremated the following week and her ashes were scattered in nearby Beddington Park where, two years earlier, they had sprinkled Ellie’s ashes.
‘Ellie loved going there with her dog, Jess,’ says Neal. ‘She liked to go round the lake on her scooter and, when she got a bit older, her bike. I knew Lin wanted to be scattered with her.....
Neal and Linda also had a son, Jamie, 41, an electrical engineer, and daughter Julie, 40, an archaeologist. Neal says: ‘They never gave us a day’s trouble. They went to university and have professional jobs. ‘Lin and I soul-searched for years. Even in the last days, my wife was saying: “Where has it gone wrong? Where have we gone wrong? How have we produced a child who can be so evil as to stand by and see her partner kill her own child?” ‘I’ve asked the vicar, the doctor, the lady I had counselling with when Lin was dying. I said: “Is it me? Is it my wife?” She said: “It’s not you.”
‘They were all brought up the same, all given the same. We were as proud as punch of them. But somewhere, Jennie took the wrong road and mixed with the wrong crowd.’
