Paid sexual encounter went awry before Crissy Field murder

December 8, 2023

Further details are emerging in the case of Leion Butler – presently in federal custody accused of murdering a 32 year old man in a parking lot at San Francisco’s Crissy Field last month.

Newly-filed court documents detail what amounts to a paid sexual encounter gone awry, with a dispute over money arising after the victim unexpectedly realized that Butler was a transgender woman.

When FBI agents raided Butler’s home eight days later, prosecutors say, she leaped from a second-story window and ran off through neighboring back yards before being apprehended.

A federal grand jury this week returned a one count indictment charging Butler, 20, with second-degree murder.

She will next appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Alex Tse on December 14 for a detention hearing.

In a Motion to Detain provided to the court ahead of the detention hearing – where a judge determines whether a defendant will remain in custody before trial – an attorney for the Government outlined the sequence of events that led to the murder.

Butler was working as a sex worker on the morning of November 12 and had been approached by the victim with a view to her services being retained. She got into the victim’s car – a 2014 Hyundai Accent – and was driven at the victim’s suggestion some 20 minutes to Crissy Field.

“There’s no money back…I was never giving [the money] back to him.”
Leion Butler

Once they arrived at Crissy Field, reads the motion, the defendant performed a sex act. “Afterwards, the victim said he wanted more and, at that point, the defendant told him that she was transgender.”

It was then, say prosecutors, that the victim demanded his money back and the defendant refused. There followed an argument between the two with the victim ordering Butler out of his car while Butler, for her part, worried about being stranded, refusing to get out.

“The defendant explained that if she had gotten out of the car she would have been ‘stranded cold as fuck’ and looked ‘dumb as fuck’…[t]he defendant believed that the victim should take her back to where he picked her up, and she thought the victim was trying to ‘play her.’”

At some point after the defendant refused to leave the car she shot the victim in the head with a gun she kept in her purse. After considering her next steps for a few minutes she pulled the body, which had fallen into the door of the car, out of the way and drove his car to Kiska Road in the city’s Hunters Point neighborhood.

She called her mother who arrived presently driving a Jeep Commander. Using materials given to her by her mother, and others that she took from the Jeep herself, Butler then wiped down the Hyundai.

By 6:57am Butler, having completed her task, got in to the Commander and was driven away.

FBI agents raided the home of Butler’s mother, on Lisbon Street in the Excelsior district, eight days later. Prosecutors say that Butler did not surrender, instead jumping from a second-story window and fleeing through the back yards of neighboring homes before being apprehended.

A federal grand jury this week returned a one count indictment against Butler charging her with second-degree murder.

The victim drove Leion Butler to this parking lot at Crissy Field

Six months before the incident, court records show, she was arrested for spraying mace at concert-goers during a pride event at San Francisco’s Civic Center. She also maced the SFPD officer who detained her.

Butler, out of custody, last appeared in San Francisco Superior Court on October 27 2023 – 17 days before the murder – in an attempt to get three of the felonies she was charged with for the mace incident reduced to misdemeanors.

In a motion provided to the court ahead of the hearing, city public defenders noted that Butler was a trans woman, living in transitional housing in San Leandro, who was in the process of changing her first name. “Furthermore,” the motion adds, “Ms Butler has been moving her life forward in a more positive direction and has been attending her ACM Anger Management classes during the pendency of this case.”

At the hearing on the 27^th Judge Patrick Thompson continued the matter and ordered the parties to appear again on November 21.

An attorney for Butler, who has previously used the first names Christopher and Leniyah, last week complained in court that his client – who presents in court as a female – was being housed at San Francisco County Jail in an all-male facility described as “a pod with 20-25 men”. U.S. Magistrate Judge Alex Tse directed the U.S. Marshals Service – on whose behalf San Francisco Sheriff’s Department is holding Butler – to respond to the concerns.

Butler will next appear before Judge Tse on December 14.

United States Parks Police at the scene of the murder on November 12, 2023