Court Guards Boy’s Embattled Trust Fund

Travis Butler broke the hearts and opened the wallets of people he never met.

From across the country, money poured in. Checks written by strangers who couldn’t bear to think of a boy so terrified, and so determined not to be treated as an orphan, that he lived with his mother’s corpse.

More than $200,000 was collected. Then his maternal grandmother, Shirley Wilder, tried to use it to buy a big house. Then his estranged father, Kevin Butler, whom Travis didn’t know, sued Wilder and accused her of stealing.

Then a judge stepped in, took Travis away from his grandmother and barred her and the father from touching the money. The two are also fighting for custody.

What happens to the money depends in large part on who wins Travis.

Last month, Chancery Court Judge Bill Lutz took control of the trust funds and had deputies remove Travis from the Wilders’ run-down trailer.

He now lives in northern Mississippi with Dorothy and Nathaniel Jeffries, friends of his mother who discovered her body 33 days after she collapsed and died.

Lutz also imposed a gag order on everyone involved in the custody case, saying news stories about the Memphis, Tenn., boy who lived with a corpse were hurting Travis.

“I’m not going to give you any information. I’m sorry,” Lutz told the Associated Press.

“It ain’t right,” says Travis’ step-grandfather, H.P. Wilder, who lives in the rural outpost of Carthage, about an hour’s drive from Jackson, Miss. “He got kinfolks. He shouldn’t be with some stranger.”

Betsy Rathe, a wealthy New Yorker, read about Travis in the newspaper and donated $60,000 toward his education. She says it cannot be used for anything else.

“You can’t get into that with a lock and key and a chain saw,” Rathe says. “If anybody thinks I am helping anybody else one iota other than Travis Butler, they have the wrong people.”

About $110,000 has been given for Travis’ general care, and an additional $15,000 has been donated for housing. Celebrities and professional athletes contributed some of the funds.

The court, at the behest of the fund’s trustee, may grant withdrawals for necessary items such as clothes, shelter, food and transportation.

Travis’ trustee, appointed by Lutz, is a court clerk.