Richard Girnt Butler
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Richard Girnt Butler (February 23, 1918 in Bennett, Colorado - September 8, 2004 in Hayden, Idaho) was an American aerospace engineer for Lockheed turned neo-Fascist leader of Aryan Nations, a movement built around Christian Identity.
Butler, who was educated in southern California, including Aeronautical Engineering at Los Angeles City College, was a co-inventor for rapid repair of tubeless tires and held both U.S. and Canadian patents thereon.
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[edit] World War II career
Butler was a pilot and during World War II held duties, including that of a Flight Engineer Instructor in the U.S. Army Air Force.
[edit] Later career
In 1946, Butler organized and operated a machine plant for the production and precision machining of automotive parts and engine assemblies for commercial and military aircraft in the USA, Africa, and India. Butler was a marketing analyst for new inventions from 1964 through 1973. Butler then became a senior manufacturing engineer for Lockheed Aircraft Co. in Palmdale, Ca.
[edit] Founding of the Aryan Nations
In the 1970s, he moved from California to North Idaho, where he founded the Aryan Nations, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, whose ideology is a mixture of Christian Identity and National Socialism. The organization operated from a 20-acre compound in Hayden, Idaho, a suburb of tourist town Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which became the center of a U.S. neo-nazi network with worldwide links. Butler was implicated in plots to overthrow the U.S. government in the 1980s, and had ties to the domestic terrorist group The Order. His group often blanketed the community with hate flyers and mass mailings, and held an annual parade in downtown Coeur d'Alene, but was never welcomed by the town or its residents, becoming a major pariah. Locals responded almost immediately by forming the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations. Legal battles often overshadowed the parade.
In 2000, Victoria and Jason Keenan, two Native Americans who had been harassed at gunpoint by Aryan Nations' members, successfully sued Butler. Represented by local attorney Norm Gissel and Morris Dees' Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, they won a combined civil judgment of $6.3 million from Butler and the Aryan Nations' members who attacked them. Butler then sold the compound. In the fall of 2000, fellow Sandpoint, Idaho millionaire Vincent Bertollini provided Butler with a new house in Hayden, Idaho. The house was troublesome for neighbors; police were forced to respond to at least one domestic disturbance call. Two Aryan members were quarreling on the lawn.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Aryan Nations website - Led by August Kreis III
- Comment by Edgar J. Steele, Butler's lawyer
