February 1990: White Supremacist Church Names Convict as New Leader

Ben Klassen, the 72-year-old founder and leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), announces that he has found a successor (see 1988). Klassen announces that Rudy “Butch” Stanko, currently serving a six-year sentence for selling tainted meat, will take over once he is released from prison. Skanko is, according to Klassen, an “outstanding man, who has been tested by fire and torture, by success and adversity.” Stanko is the former owner of the Nebraska Beef Packer and Cattle King companies, until he was proven by investigative reporters to have sold unsanitary meat to school cafeterias. He is serving the final year of a six-year prison term. Klassen became aware of Stanko through his book The Score, an intensely anti-Semitic screed accusing Jews of destroying his meat-packing corporation. Stanko writes in the February 1990 issue of the COTC’s newsletter “Racial Loyalty”: “It is a great honor and a supreme challenge to be selected as the next Pontifex Maximus of the Church of the Creator.… It is my avowed purpose to provide the necessary leadership, organizational and promotional talents to… smash the tyrannical Jewish network once and for all time. It is my hope and dedicated goal to bring this about in the next decade, the last decade history has allowed us for the final showdown.” Unfortunately for his dreams of leadership, Stanko will be arrested three months after his release from prison for speeding, obstructing a police operation, criminal mischief, and driving without a license; he will twice attack police officers during the booking procedure. The COTC will cut ties with Stanko, claiming that he is no longer interested in being part of the organization. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]