Region’s white supremacists on the decline

The North Idaho home and former national headquarters of the Aryan Nations will be sold at public auction next week – another indicator, experts say, of the decline of the white supremacy group in the region.

With one exception, this summer was the first time in a quarter century that there wasn’t an Aryan Nations World Congress in North Idaho and an accompanying, highly disruptive parade of racists through downtown Coeur d’Alene.

Experts who track hate groups say the disappearance of the Aryan Nations in the region is attributable to the death last September of the group’s founder, Richard G. Butler.

The 86-year-old racist, known around the globe, died of a heart attack in the Hayden suburban rancher that served as the Aryan headquarters after Butler lost his prized 20-acre compound in the aftermath of a $6.3 million civil judgment.

After his death, no one made the monthly mortgage payments, prompting the lender to initiate a foreclosure action.

Butler’s former home at 10137 N. Sunview Lane in Hayden is to be sold to the highest bidder at a public auction at 11 a.m. Wednesday at First American Title, 1866 N. Lakewood Drive, in Coeur d’Alene.

“He was the glue of the Aryan Nations movement in the Northwest, if not the country,” said FBI agent Norm Brown, supervisor of the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force, which tracks terrorism.

“As a result of his death, we’ve seen a marked decrease in Aryan Nations activity in the Inland Northwest,” Brown said Friday.

But even with the disappearance of the Aryan Nations, hate crimes and racists haven’t completely vanished. Two racists claiming to have Ku Klux Klan connections were arrested last weekend after a violent attack on a group of Native American teens swimming in the Spokane River.

Norm Gissel, a Coeur d’Alene attorney and longtime member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, said he believes the Aryan Nations “is now an extinct entity in this region.”

The racist message of the Aryans was “thoroughly rejected by the good people of the Inland Northwest,” Gissel said.

“If there’s no public support for their beliefs, and that’s what happened here, groups like the Aryan Nations go elsewhere,” Gissel said.

With the organization now based in Lincoln, Ala., Gissel said “what we’re witnessing is a racial Diaspora.”

“They’re careening through the United States, looking for their place, and they haven’t found one. And, I predict, nor will they.”

Butler, an aeronautical engineer from California, moved to North Idaho in the 1970s and built his Church of Jesus Christ Christian, also known as Aryan Nations, on a 20-acre rural site north of Hayden Lake.

Beginning in 1981, racists from throughout the United States and Canada gathered every July at the compound for the annual, three-day Aryan World Congress. The gathering included cross-burnings and, in more recent years, a parade through downtown Coeur d’Alene. The one exception when there was no annual gathering was 1985 when a splinter faction from Butler’s church, known as The Order, was indicted for racketeering.

But Butler lost his prized racist landmark after he was hit with a $6.3 million civil judgment in 2000 and was forced to sell the property after filing bankruptcy.

In the fall of that year, millionaire racist Vincent Bertollini moved Butler and the Aryan Nations operation into a house at 10137 N. Sunview Lane in Hayden. The hate group continued its operations, largely on the Internet, and conducted weekly church services in the suburban rancher.

Just weeks before his death on Sept. 8, 2004, Butler hosted his last Aryan gathering at a private campground near Cataldo, east of Coeur d’Alene.

Weakened by heart disease, he sat in a lawn chair in the back of a pickup truck on July 17, 2004, for his final Aryan Nations parade.

This year’s gathering, scheduled for Sept. 16-18, will be held in Scottsboro, Ala., not far from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the well-known civil rights organization that financially toppled the Aryan Nations.

“They have moved their operations down here,” said senior investigator Joe Roy, who monitors hate groups for the law center in Montgomery, Ala.

“For years,” he said, “Butler was the only magnet who had any success holding that group together in the Northwest.”

With his passing, others in the Aryan camp looked for a more centrally located place and picked Alabama, Roy said. “The southeastern United States is more historically the cradle of hate. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

Instead of one man, the Aryan Nations is now led by Clark “Laslo” Patterson, of Talladega, Ala.; Jonathan Williams, of Conyers, Ga., who is Web master and communications director; and longtime Butler confidant Rick Spring, of London, Ark., who is security director.

By moving to Alabama, Butler’s Aryan successors walked away from a sizable equity in the home in Hayden. There is an unpaid balance of $91,486 on the newer ranch-style home – now surrounded by waist-deep weeds and a front yard tree apparently felled by an act of nature. Real estate experts say the home, if cleaned up, would bring $200,000 to $220,000 in today’s market.

In 2000, according to public documents, Bertollini made the down-payment and arranged a mortgage through Indy Mac Bank in Pasadena, Calif., allowing Butler to move his Aryan Nations operation into the Hayden home.

The 86-year-old Aryan founder continued making monthly mortgage payments until last Sept. 8 when he was found dead of an apparent heart attack in his bedroom. The mortgage company filed a “notice of default” on April 19 – the date of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, which Butler so fondly celebrated each year with skinhead gatherings.

The foreclosure action against the home continued on June 27 when First American Title Co. of Coeur d’Alene, acting as the agent for the lender, filed a notice of trustee sale.

Kim May, a title officer with First American, said notices of the foreclosure action were posted on the home and mailed to Bertollini.

But the former Sandpoint man, who used his millions to help promote Butler’s racist message, is now a federal fugitive. If he is apprehended and returned to Idaho, he faces the possibility of serving a mandatory two years in prison, if convicted, for another drunken driving arrest.

Bertollini is believed to be living outside the United States, perhaps in Ireland, authorities said.