In CCTV footage from October 2013, Jennie Gray can be seen running from her central London office desperate to get a taxi back to her family address in Sutton, 12 miles away.
Dressed all in black, she was picked up by Derek Greenwood outside her offices.
This is the moment Ellie Butler's panicking mother hailed a cab home after her partner allegedly told her he had murdered their daughter
In CCTV footage from October 2013 shows Jennie Gray running from her central London office desperate to get a taxi back to her family address in Sutton, 12 miles away
Dressed all in black, she was picked up by Derek Greenwood outside her offices. Providing evidence today, Mr Greenwood described the 36-year-old as being 'desperate to get a cab
Providing evidence today, Mr Greenwood described the 36-year-old as being 'desperate to get a cab', adding that she told him: 'Can you take me? My child's really ill.'
He then claimed to have heard Gray making frantic phone calls to her abusive partner Ben Butler as she rushed home from work.
Prosecutors allege she returned to their family home to help him cover up the murder of their six-year-old daughter, who experts said had been left with injuries normally seen in car crash victims.
Mr Greenwood said that while driving an 'agitated' Gray, he overheard her asking a series of panicked questions over the phone, including: 'You done what?'
Jennie Gray seen running for a taxi after daughters murder
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Prosecutors accuse Ben Butler (pictured, with partner Jennie and daughter Ellie) of battering his six-year-old daughter to death at their family home in Sutton, south London, in October 2013
The prosecution say Gray - who had raced out of work shortly before - was talking to her partner Ben Butler, also 36, who had phoned her minutes before to tell him that he had killed their little girl, Ellie.
The jury was told how, after arriving home an hour later, Gray spent another 60 minutes helping Butler stage a scene in Ellie's bedroom to make it appear as though the youngster had died in a tragic fall.
A taxi driver heard Jennie Gray (pictured) making panicked phone calls to her partner as she rushed home from work to help him cover up the murder of their six-year-old daughter, a court has heard
Mr Greenwood told the court: 'I heard her say: "You've gone where? You've done what?"
'I remember this as I was waiting for her to tell me a new destination.'
He said: 'She seemed keen and desperate to get a cab.
'She asked me how much to go to Sutton. I said to her I didn't know. I was just trying to refuse the job because it was all the way to Sutton.'
Mr Greenwood said Gray ended up paying him just under £50 for the journey. He said it was only the next day, when he heard on the news that a child had died, that he thought the fare might be significant.
During today's hearing, the jury were also shown CCTV footage of Gray's desperate dash home amid a flurry of phone calls and texts with Butler.
The court was told Butler first tried to call at 12.46pm but was diverted to voicemail. Seconds later, he texted 'answer'.
Telephone records show she called him back immediately and they spoke for 21 seconds.
Two minutes later, Gray was caught on camera hurrying out of her office at 20 Old Bailey, before dashing across the street running past the court - where she is now standing trial - to hail down the taxi.
In a statement read to the court, Tracey Bernstein, a colleague who worked alongside Gray at Octopus Investment, described the moment the graphic designer left work.
'The way she got up just wasn't right,' Ms Bernstein said. 'My gut feeling was she was walking out of the job and not coming back.'
Another colleague, Victoria Harris, who bumped into Gray in the building's lobby said: 'I saw Jen on the phone with her hand over her mouth looking agitated.
'She appeared not to want people to hear her conversation. I can't put my finger on it but she appeared agitated. It seemed more than just a secret conversation - something was not right.'
Neighbours 'saw bullying stay-at-home father calmly walking family Jack Russell after battering his six-year-old daughter to death'
Bullying stay-at-home father Ben Butler calmly took the family's Jack Russell for a walk after battering his six-year-old daughter to death in a fit of rage and leaving her 'cold' on her bedroom floor, a court has heard.
The 36-year-old walked the pet across a nearby park, disposed of items in the communal bins and put his clothes into the washing machine to allegedly portray an act of normality as his little girl lay dead at their family home in Sutton, south London.
He and his besotted partner Jennie Gray, 36, then orchestrated a harrowing 999 call in which they pleaded for an ambulance, claiming they had just found their daughter in that position and that she had died due to a tragic accident, the court was told.
Butler is accused of leaving his daughter with such catastrophic head injuries that it looked as though she had been involved in a high-speed crash
Butler is accused of leaving his daughter with such catastrophic head injuries that it looked as though she had been involved in a high-speed crash.
Gray has already admitted lying to police about how Ellie was found. But Butler denies murder, insisting he found the little girl lying flat on her back when he went to give her a jam sandwich after a routine afternoon at home.
Today, giving evidence from behind a screen, neighbour Tracey Stanton told the Old Bailey that she and her friend Angela Bains had been standing at the open double kitchen window of her flat on the afternoon of Ellie's death when she saw Butler walking across the nearby park towards them with a dog.
Ms Bains said the only thing she found unusual was that a man of Butler's size was walking a 'handbag dog'.
She told the court: 'He saw us smiling and he just waved and smiled back at the children [inside Ms Stanton's house]. Then I walked away from the window and sat down.'
Ms Bains told the court that the women both thought they had seen Butler between 3pm and 3.15pm on that day - after the ambulance arrived at the family home.
Prosecutors allege it was part of the cover-up to convince nearby residents that everything was fine as Ellie lay dead.
Another neighbour on the estate, Samantha Stanton, said in a statement she saw Butler carrying five supermarket bags towards the communal bins.
The prosecution say he was disposing of documents that might incriminate him as a 'violent' and 'abusive' man.
The court also heard from one neighbour who said the couple were often heard arguing.
Lucy Jackson, who lived upstairs from Butler and Gray, said Ellie was always 'well-presented and clean' but that she recalled a raised male voice coming from their home.
In the autumn of 2013, around the time Ellie died, Ms Jackson heard him shout: 'Where did you hide the f****** underwear?' the court was told.
On the day of the alleged murder, Ms Jackson recalled hearing a child's scream 10 to 15 minutes before the ambulance arrived. Prosecutors say Ellie was already dead and the noise must have been made by another child who was in the property at the time.
Ben Butler, 36 (pictured with partner Jennie Gray_, walked the pet across a nearby park and disposed of items in the communal binsto portray an act of normality as his little girl lay dead, the court was told
Lucy Jackson, who lived upstairs from Butler and Gray in Sutton, south London (pictured), said Ellie was always 'well-presented and clean' but that she recalled hearing arguments and a raised male voice
Butler was the only adult at the family home when Ellie died on the in October 2013. Jurors were told the complex injuries included at least two significant and fatal impacts to the head.
Her death came 11 months after Ellie was handed back into the couple's care when Butler's conviction for assaulting her as a baby in 2007 was overturned three years later.
Butler and Gray had launched a successful custody bid in the High Court to return her to the family home.
Mr Brown told the court today that it was a very 'distressing' case.
'A father is accused of the murder of his six-year old-daughter - the murder of a young child carried out in a most violent fashion, having perhaps in a moment lost his temper,' he said.
'The father is further accused of failing to seek medical help for his own six-year-old daughter when she so plainly needed it - someone in that home having been responsible for causing the fractured shoulder blade.
'It would have been really painful, at the time and for a period after its infliction and the main carer, her own father, declined to take her to the doctor even.'
Butler denies murder, while both defendants (pictured together in a court sketch at the Old Bailey) deny child cruelty over an untreated shoulder fracture caused in the weeks leading up to Ellie's death
He continued: 'That same child's mother is accused of wholly failing her daughter, failing to seek the medical help she needed, preferring to dedicate her attention elsewhere.
'The child's mother then - when her own daughter was so terribly injured - proceeded to hide, disguise and destroy evidence from those who were seeking to find out how it was her daughter had been killed - all to protect Ben Butler.'
Yesterday, jurors were told how Butler was 'constantly teetering on the edge of a violent loss of temper' and his 'short fuse' dominated their 'toxic' family life.
He is said to have resented his role as a house husband and killed his daughter in a moment of rage.
Gray has already admitted her role in staging the scene of Ellie's death and lying to police during the subsequent investigation.
But Butler denies murdering Ellie, claiming he was busy making her a jam sandwich when she was accidentally injured in her bedroom.
The trial continues.
'Father's deadly assault on six-year-old daughter left her with catastrophic head injuries like a high-speed car crash - and nothing like the accident he and his bullied girlfriend claimed it was'
Abusive Ben Butler left his six-year-old daughter with such catastrophic head injuries that it looked as though she had been involved in a high-speed car crash, the trial heard today.
Butler, 36, claimed that he went into his daughter Ellie's bedroom in October 2013 to find her lying on the floor beside a child's stool.
He and her mother Jennie Gray, 36, then made a panicked call to 999 to report that their little girl had been seriously injured in an accidental fall at their home in Sutton, south London.
The couple are pictured on This Morning in 2012 after Butler's conviction for assaulting Ellie was quashed. It is alleged he left his daughter with catastrophic head injuries usually linked to high-speed car crashes
But the court was told today how Ellie's injuries were 'wholly incompatible' with that scenario.
One expert said he had never seen such extensive accidental head injuries in a domestic setting, adding that the girl's wounds would usually be associated with car crashes or plunging from a first-storey building.
Gray has already admitted her role in staging the scene and lying to police during the investigation into their daughter's death.
But Butler denies murdering Ellie, claiming he was busy making her a jam sandwich when she was accidentally injured.
Opening the second day of the trial, prosecutor Ed Brown outlined the evidence from experienced forensic pathologist Dr Nathaniel Cary.
He told the court: 'In Dr Cary's opinion, this major head injury was the result of one or more very forceful blunt impacts arising, for instance, through being thrown against a wall or the ground, or struck with a heavy blunt weapon.
'A domestic fall of the sort that Ellie might have encountered cannot in reality have caused the particular pattern of injuries here and had the effect the injuries clearly had on Ellie.
'A domestic accident could not, say the Crown, have given rise to these complex, catastrophic and rapidly fatal injuries.'
