Services Are Held For Betty E. Butler

Funeral services and private burial were held Tuesday for Betty E. Butler, the 74-year-old wife of Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler.

She died Friday at Kootenai Medical Center, following a lengthy battle with liver cancer.

“She’s been fighting it steady for two years,” Richard Butler said shortly before services Tuesday afternoon at the Church of Jesus Christ Christian north of Hayden Lake.

The funeral services were conducted by Rev. Harold Von Braunhut, the Aryan Nations Maryland leader and a longtime Butler family friend.

Private burial followed at Coeur d’Alene Memorial Gardens.

Born in Los Angeles, Betty Litch married Richard Butler in 1941.

The couple lived in Southern California for more than 30 years before moving to North Idaho in 1973.

There, they established the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, a Christian Identity religion, and its political arm, the Aryan Nations.

The group adheres to a white separatist religious belief that people of Northern European ancestry are the true Israelites.

Butler shared her husband’s political and religious beliefs, but rarely spoke publicly.

She was at his side in Fort Smith, Ark., in 1988 during a federal trial where Butler and a dozen co-defendants were acquitted of plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government.

In addition to her 77-year-old hus band, she is survived by two daughters, Bonnie A. Hart, of Scottsdale, Ariz., and Cindy Witherwax, of Hayden; four grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

, DataTimes