Ex-Football Star Guilty of Killing Boy, Raping Girl

A former Fremont High School football star, described by a prosecutor as a South-Central Los Angeles “neighborhood bum,” was convicted Tuesday of raping a 5-year-old girl and killing her 4-year-old brother by slashing the boy’s throat.

Donnie Butler, 25, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the crimes, and psychiatrists who examined him concluded that he was psychotic.

But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gordon Ringer, who presided at a non-jury trial, decided that Butler was, nevertheless, legally sane.

Ringer also found that “special circumstances” of murder committed during the course of sexual assaults were true. Butler thus faces a term of life in prison without possibility of parole when he is sentenced Feb. 26.

The district attorney’s office did not seek the death penalty for Butler, because “there’s no doubt that he is severely mentally ill,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Sandra L. Buttitta said.

The prosecutor said that Butler won a football scholarship to the University of Arizona in 1978, but dropped out because of poor grades.

Butler was hospitalized twice for mental problems in 1982, before returning to Los Angeles, where he became a “neighborhood bum,” occasionally sleeping in a vacant duplex in the 300 block of West 71st Street, next door to the apartment where his victims lived, Buttitta said.

The prosecutor said that Butler attacked the children on the morning of Dec. 9, 1983, within hours of his release from County Jail, where he had spent time for purse snatching.

The children had been left alone because of a mix-up with a baby sitter, who was to have called for them while their mother and stepfather were away, Buttitta said.

The stepfather, Omario Silva, captured Butler shortly after the attack and held him for police. Silva is now in prison, after pleading guilty to a charge of molesting the child who survived Butler’s attack, Buttitta said.