Morris Gulett

But for a while, there was a problem — Gulett had a hard time wearing his Aryan Nations uniform while in jail garb. And as Gulett was cooling his heels in federal prison following Butler’s 2004 death, others — ranging from August Kreis III to Gerald O’Brien and Paul Mullet — stepped forward to claim that they were the real successor. It’s been a neo-Nazi turf war, thick with name-calling and accusations of informing, over the remnants of the once-mighty Aryan Nations, which was largely wrecked by a 2000 Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit.

Emerging from prison in August 2010, Gulett wasted no time in setting up shop as the real Aryan Nations in Converse, La., and using the Internet for weekly “Sword of the Truth” sermons. He claims to be getting money from a charitable memorial trust supposedly set up by a former Klansman who died in 2003.

“I am the senior pastor at the Church of Jesus Christ Christian,” Gulett says on his website, using the longstanding alternate name for Aryan Nations, adding that his group is the “most-feared and revered white supremacist organization the world has ever known.” Like that claim, his assertion that his is the “fastest growing pro-white Christian organization in the world” is clearly ludicrous.

What is true is Gulett’s propensity for criminality.

After being arrested in 2005, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob a bank and was sentenced to six years, finally getting out in 2010. But his record began long before. “Gulett has an extensive criminal history which includes shoplifting, aggravated assault, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, homicide, felonious assault, possession of drugs and receiving stolen property,” an FBI agent wrote in 2005.

That includes going to prison in 1997 for ramming a police car in Dayton, Ohio. When he got out, he and the late Harold Ray Redfeairn co-founded the white supremacist Church of the Sons of YHVH in Missouri. Gulett and Redfeairn both visited Butler’s Aryan Nation’s compound in North Idaho, hoping he would anoint them as his successor. Redfeairn, a violent felon who once tried to murder a Dayton police officer by shooting him five times, died in 2003.

Gulett’s racial hatred is visceral. In one podcast sermon — he practices Christian Identity, a pervasively racist and anti-Semitic theology — he said he would celebrate Black History Month “when every Negro becomes just that – history.” And just as Butler did for three decades, Gulett closes all his sermons with a Nazi salute. “Heil victory,” he shouts. “Brethren, you know what to do. Let’s be out there and be busy about our Father’s work.”