Documents portray abusive marriage before 2015 Denali Highway double homicide

PALMER — Lynn Butler was in the midst of a divorce in July 2015 when she and Richard Casler were killed along the Denali Highway.

Her husband, 42-year-old Bruce Floyd Down Butler Sr., immediately became a suspect, court documents show. But the Wasilla man wasn't arrested until Tuesday after he talked about his role in the slayings this month at a Kenai Peninsula park.

The killings took place at a remote campsite on Valdez Creek Road off the rough highway that connects Cantwell and Paxson, a summer destination for campers, off-roaders and miners.

Lynn Butler, 42, and the 61-year-old Casler camped together, court documents filed with first-degree murder charges show.

Friends reported them missing after they didn't show up to go ATV riding. The friends found "blood and 'brains' on the ground" at their camper, according to a sworn affidavit filed with the charges by Alaska State Troopers Investigator David DeCoeur.

Troopers and investigators found a large amount of blood in Casler's Ford F-150, the affidavit states. Three days later, they discovered a horrific scene in a conex-trailer containing Butler and Casler's bodies.

The State Medical Examiner Office concluded the gunshot on her left torso killed Butler. Three gunshots in the center of his belly and blunt-force injuries killed Casler.

Once the investigation began, numerous witnesses told troopers that Lynn Butler suffered years of violence at her husband's hands dating as far back as a decade and as recently as within three weeks of the killings.

Friends of Lynn Butler's described visible bruises, threats and a dime-sized, inch-deep hole in her leg that she said Bruce Butler made by stabbing her multiple times with a pen, according to the affidavit.

One witness "reported on approximately 20 occasions, she heard Bruce tell Lynn that if she ever left him or divorced him, he would kill her," DeCoeur wrote.

Another told investigators Bruce "would make comments that Lynn would not be around to get any of the property from the divorce." Bruce Floyd Down Butler Sr. became a suspect immediately but wasn't arrested until Monday, court documents show.

Troopers found multiple male DNA samples, including on Casler's gloves, in the conex near the campsite but couldn't isolate one to Bruce Butler, according to the affidavit.

They found cellphone records that showed Bruce Butler and a friend, Matthew Nelson, communicated with each other around the time of the killings though both their phones went quiet during the actual event.

Nelson, jailed on unrelated assault and coercion charges and hoping for a break in sentencing, in 2016 told DeCoeur that Butler confessed he'd killed Lynn before the media reported her killing, the investigator wrote.

Nelson had confronted Butler after he borrowed Nelson's truck before the Fourth of July weekend and brought it back unusually clean, with 500 miles on it and items missing that were later found at the crime scene.

After the killings but before Butler reported his wife missing, he and others took "a large amount of expensive property" from his wife's home, the affidavit states. A 28-foot boat that was part of the "contested" divorce proceedings was later spotted at Nelson's property in Houston.

The case included 430 pieces of evidence, interviews with numerous acquaintances of both Butlers, and multiple contacts with Butler himself after the killing.

But it wasn't until Butler made a trip to the Sterling area and told someone he was responsible for the killings in June that the case against him gained speed, the documents indicate. A few months earlier, he had also threatened someone with whom he was in a "troubled relationship."

The person who encountered Butler in June told investigators he didn't want to get detailed because he could still be prosecuted, the affidavit states. He said he was moving belongings when "his dead wife caused a scene by jumping on a truck" and then said she was dead seven hours later.

Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak on Tuesday approved the arrest warrant for murder based on the contention Butler knew he was a suspect and might be a danger to himself, the person in the relationship or the public, according to the affidavit.

Butler was arraigned in Palmer court Wednesday.

He told the judge he was on suicide watch.