Right, “predator” is a lot more appropriate.
But really, there’s nothing wrong with being a predator in the food chain, as all humans naturally are.
I think these journalists should go back to calling murderers murderers, and stop trying to be creative. “Murder” is the unjustified killing by humans of other humans.
That pretty much says it all, and distinguishes the act from innocent animals, innocent hunters, or innocent victims defending themselves.
If the particular murderer killed a lot of people - or was especially brutal, crazy, or sociopathic, we have adjectives for that: “mass”, “serial”, “brutal”, “psycho”, “sociopathic”, etc..
I don’t like “butcher” either - because that’s an innocent and necessary profession.
Calling murders “shootings” or “deaths” or “abortions” is problematic too, because it infers passivity - like they just happened and no one is responsible for committing them.
The term “butcher” has been used euphemistically for military leaders who killed a lot of civilians. Also, the term was used by the Normans to mean an executioner.