Austin Police Hunt 64-Year-Old Kenneth Butler Over Sex Offender Registry Warrant

Austin police are asking the public for help tracking down a 64-year-old man wanted on a felony warrant for failing to comply with Texas sex offender registration requirements. Kenneth Mitchell Butler Jr. is described as 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighing 198 pounds, with a photo on file dated October 16, 2025.

The Austin Police Department featured Butler in Wednesday's #WantedWednesday bulletin, published through the department's Austin Police Department account, which listed his warrant number as D1DC26302754. That D1DC prefix designates a felony-level arrest warrant issued through Travis County District Courts, as Hoodline has previously reported. Capital Area Crime Stoppers is offering up to $1,000 for information leading to Butler's arrest, and all tips submitted through the organization are anonymous.

Anyone with information can call Crime Stoppers ATX at 512-472-8477 or submit a tip through its online portal at www.austincrimestoppers.org. The bulletin was also distributed in Spanish, consistent with the bilingual outreach APD has used in prior fugitive alerts.

What Failure to Register Means Under Texas Law

Butler's warrant stems from an alleged violation of Article 62.102 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, which governs compliance with the state's sex offender registration system. Under that statute, failure to comply with registration duties is prosecuted as a felony, with penalties ranging from a state jail felony carrying 180 days to two years in prison for ten-year registrants up to a third-degree or second-degree felony carrying as much as 20 years for lifetime registrants or repeat offenders, according to legal analysis published by FindLaw. Chapter 62 of the code governs sex offender compliance statewide.

Texas law requires registered sex offenders to report any change of residential address, job, or secondary location to local law enforcement within seven days of the change, per the Law Offices of Ned Barnett. Missing that seven-day window constitutes a separate felony offense on its own. Legal analysis from the L&L Law Group notes that Texas courts treat failure-to-register cases as strict-compliance offenses, meaning procedural oversights or a missed deadline generally do not serve as a defense, since prosecutors do not need to prove intentional evasion.

How Austin Tracks Registered Offenders

The Austin Police Department maintains a dedicated Sex Offender Registration Unit at its headquarters that processes initial registrations, annual verifications, and address updates for registrants living within city limits, while residents in unincorporated areas register instead with the Travis County Sheriff's Office. The Texas Department of Public Safety separately maintains a centralized public registry under Section 62.005 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, aggregating registration data from local departments across all 254 Texas counties and allowing searches by name, zip code, or county.

Local oversight of that system has drawn scrutiny before. An investigation reported by KVUE in October 2025 raised past victim and community concerns about APD's staffing and physical verification practices for registry compliance, at a time when the department was responsible for tracking more than 1,600 registered sex offenders citywide.

Part of a Recurring Public Alert System

Butler's case is the latest in a string of Travis County felony warrants APD has publicized through its recurring Wanted Wednesday campaign. The department routinely issues bilingual alerts on social media platforms including X and Facebook to crowdsource public leads, with each bulletin listing physical descriptions and warrant numbers in both English and Spanish. Hoodline has covered several similar bulletins in recent months, including an April case in which a suspect wanted for skipping sex offender registration was nabbed by a multi-agency task force after a warrant was issued, as well as searches for other registrants in April and July, and a separate bulletin earlier this month seeking a man wanted on a sexual assault bond warrant.

APD has not released details about the underlying conviction that placed Butler on the registry or how long he may have been out of compliance before the warrant was issued. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is urged to contact Crime Stoppers ATX, with all tips kept anonymous.