Charles "Cowboy" Butler
Charles "Cowboy" Butler
Charles "Cowboy" Butler is a white supremacist originally from Cottonwood, Arizona.
He currently lives in Toledo, Ohio and is studying construction engineering at Owens Community College. He works in construction and landscaping as a laborer. He also lived in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Attack of Adrian Williams
Charles Butler and his friend Robert Paschalis attacked Adrian Williams, a black man in a racially motivated hate crime. They attacked Adrian with a broom breaking his eye socket bone and damaging his eye.
Toledo Police arrested Charles and Robert on felony hate crime charges.
On May 18, 2016, Charles and Robert saw Adrian unloading items nearby his home in north Toledo while they were driving in their truck. They then got out of their truck and started beating Adrian. Adrian grabbed a baseball bat to try and stop them however Charles took a broom and started beating on him.
During the fight Charles and Robert called Adrian many racial slurs including a “nigger” and “faggot.”
The fight was stopped by four good samaritans who intervened.
Two of the good Samaritans were Ohio Public Safety Officers.
Another was in the United States Navy. The last owned a mechanic shop in the area.
On Facebook, he posted a photo with his head in bandages and captioned it, according to the complaint, “(N word) running his mouth but like a (expletive) he grab a bat… I’m in the ER so his (sic) the (n word). His got broken ribs. I’m fine…just a lil pissed cuz the cops showed up while me and my brother was kicking his ass.”
The next day after the attack he wrote “Hell as u can c I’m fine…More scores to add to my war book of the White Man… I’m a warrior and fight till the death.
DEATH B4 DISHONOR.
All in the name of the White Race.
My battle wounds will heal but I’ve lived to fight another day.
He said “I have no idea why they say this is racially motivated, because I’ve gotten in fights with white people, Japanese, Mexican.”
Criminal History and White Supremacist Beliefs
On social media he also advanced white supremacy ideology, said the complaint, filling his Facebook page with photographs and posts of Adolf Hitler, burning crosses, Nazi war eagles, Aryan Nationalist Alliance logos, Confederate Flags, Ku Klux Klan, references to “President Barack Obama as a monkey” and various white pride symbols.
When he was serving a previous prison sentence in 2015, authorities seized white supremacist literature from Butler’s cell – handwritten notes regarding the Aryan Republican Army, a white supremacist group known throughout the Midwest. The group was active in the 1990s when it committed bank robberies, the complaint says.
According to the complaint, the literature included “recruiting materials for racial and religious hatred and causing violence throughout the State of Ohio in the name of white Christians (Aryans.)” The complaint says there were also instructions on training procedures, the paramilitary structure of the organization and weapons needed to carry out the mission of the Aryan Republican Army.
The complaint says Butler told prison officials he wrote the papers and wanted to restart the Aryan Republican Army, which was inactive.
He spent time in prison for domestic violence in Mansfield, Ohio.