Couple Wants to Meet Former Kkk Leader Turned Priest Who Burned Cross on Their Yard

By Richard Reeve
WJLA
August 24, 2017

http://wjla.com/news/local/couple-wants-to-meet-former-kkk-leader-turned-priest-who-burned-cross-on-their-yard

For Phillip Butler and his wife Barbara, it began with a neighbor’s phone call.

“Told me there was a cross,” he recalls. “I don’t know if it was smoking or burning, I don’t know which one it was, in our front yard.”

The Butlers say since that summer night in 1977, they’ve never forgotten the sight of the 6-to-7 foot cross, wrapped in rags, reeking of flammable fluid.

“I’d never seen a cross,” Barbara Butler told reporters. “You see something like on television or something like that, but to really have one in your yard… is there that much hatred in your heart?”

Her husband says as he took down the cross, before calling the police, his mind was ticking.

“Someone is against us,” he remembers thinking. “What did we do to put the cross in our yard?”

That someone turned out to be William Aitcheson, a 22-year-old University of Maryland student, who according to the Washington Post, was later identified by police as an ‘Exulted Cyclops’--- a leader of a KKK lodge.

Eleven years before he would be ordained as a priest, Aitcheson was charged with several cross burnings, making bomb threats, manufacturing pipe bombs and writing a threatening letter to Coretta Scott King.

He was sentenced to 60 days in jail with four years of probation.

A judge also ordered him to undergo a program of psychiatric or psychological treatment.

“My actions were despicable,” Now, Father Aitcheson wrote in a first-person article published Monday in the Arlington Catholic Herald, in which he confessed he was a member of the KKK 40 years before.

“When I think back on burning crosses, a threatening letter, and so on, I feel as though I am speaking of somebody else,” he wrote. “It’s hard to believe that was me.”

The priest also apologized.

“To anyone who has been subjected to racism or bigotry, I am sorry. I hope you will forgive me," Aitcheson wrote.

He said his statement was triggered by images of the recent tragedy in Charlottesville: “…memories of a bleak period in my life that I would have preferred to forget.”

But Arlington Diocese officials now say there was something else.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, the Diocese says “a freelancer reporter, who introduced herself as a parishioner, contacted the Diocese and stated that she learned that Father Aitcheson’s legal name matched that of a man arrested in the 1970s.”

The statement continues: “Father Aitcheson was approached about this, he acknowledged his past, and saw the opportunity to tell his story in the hopes that others would see the possibility of conversion and repentance, especially in the context of what happened in Charlottesville.”

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (ABC7) — For Phillip Butler and his wife Barbara, it began with a neighbor’s phone call.

“Told me there was a cross,” he recalls. “I don’t know if it was smoking or burning, I don’t know which one it was, in our front yard.”

The Butlers say since that summer night in 1977, they’ve never forgotten the sight of the 6-to-7 foot cross, wrapped in rags, reeking of flammable fluid.

“I’d never seen a cross,” Barbara Butler told reporters. “You see something like on television or something like that, but to really have one in your yard… is there that much hatred in your heart?”

Her husband says as he took down the cross, before calling the police, his mind was ticking.

“Someone is against us,” he remembers thinking. “What did we do to put the cross in our yard?”

That someone turned out to be William Aitcheson, a 22-year-old University of Maryland student, who according to the Washington Post, was later identified by police as an ‘Exulted Cyclops’--- a leader of a KKK lodge.

Eleven years before he would be ordained as a priest, Aitcheson was charged with several cross burnings, making bomb threats, manufacturing pipe bombs and writing a threatening letter to Coretta Scott King.

He was sentenced to 60 days in jail with four years of probation.

A judge also ordered him to undergo a program of psychiatric or psychological treatment.

“My actions were despicable,” Now, Father Aitcheson wrote in a first-person article published Monday in the Arlington Catholic Herald, in which he confessed he was a member of the KKK 40 years before.

“When I think back on burning crosses, a threatening letter, and so on, I feel as though I am speaking of somebody else,” he wrote. “It’s hard to believe that was me.”

The priest also apologized.

“To anyone who has been subjected to racism or bigotry, I am sorry. I hope you will forgive me," Aitcheson wrote.

He said his statement was triggered by images of the recent tragedy in Charlottesville: “…memories of a bleak period in my life that I would have preferred to forget.”

But Arlington Diocese officials now say there was something else.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, the Diocese says “a freelancer reporter, who introduced herself as a parishioner, contacted the Diocese and stated that she learned that Father Aitcheson’s legal name matched that of a man arrested in the 1970s.”

The statement continues: “Father Aitcheson was approached about this, he acknowledged his past, and saw the opportunity to tell his story in the hopes that others would see the possibility of conversion and repentance, especially in the context of what happened in Charlottesville.”

“He came forward only after he was going to be exposed,” said the Butler's Attorney Ted Williams on Wednesday.

The Butlers say they were unaware of Aitcheson’s status as a priest until Tuesday.

They say he has never apologized to them or paid the $23,000 in court-ordered restitution.

“While the Butlers are willing to forgive, they are not willing to forget how the actions of Father Aitcheson affected their lives,” Williams says.

The couple, both in their seventies, say they would like compensation-- and answers.

“We were just starting out. He didn't know anything about us,” Barbara Butler says. “Who sent you, why did you come?”

The Butlers, and their attorney, are convinced that then-student Aitcheson wasn’t working alone when he planted the cross.

They suspect--- and fear--- there were others involved who haven’t been identified.

“He needs to come clean,” Williams says. “He needs to give up other Klansmen or Klanswomen who was involved in putting that cross on the Butler's property.”

In its statement, the Diocese says Father Aitcheson, now on a voluntary leave of absence, will “fully cooperate with law enforcement addressing details of this case that were not gathered previously.”

The statement also says the priest will also “fulfill his legal and moral obligations to the family.”

It looks as though a meeting between the priest and the Butlers could happen.

“Father Aitcheson fully acknowledges that the Butler family deserved and deserves an apology,” the statement continues. “Father Aitcheson is open to meeting with the Butlers privately, to address some of their rightly-held concerns and questions.”

For the Butlers, perhaps some answers, after living eight years of fear in their own home.

“We need to find out why this was done,” Phillip Butler says.

In 1982, President and Mrs. Reagan visited the Butlers.

“This should not happen in America,” Barbara Butler recalls the president saying.

Now too, perhaps some closure.

“Father forgive them, for they don't know what they do,” Mrs. Butler said quietly. “But you did know what you did. And for that, I have to give it a lot of serious thought, because you changed our lives a lot.”