The Netflix documentary series Trainwreck brings us another incredibly strange story this week with its latest episode, PI Moms, which looks back at a reality show that became the basis for a true-crime show. In 2010, Lifetime Television approved a reality show starring three mothers working as private investigators for an organization, with the goal of following the women's lives and work as they solved cases. However, the show was ultimately canceled, and PI Moms delves into the reasons for this failure, with exclusive interviews with the participants and the people responsible for uncovering the truth.
The story of PI Moms began with reality showrunner Lucas Platt, who was looking for a new topic for a spectacular show that would immediately capture the public's attention, back in 2010. Based in New York, Lucas had just finished filming the first season of "Steven Seagal: Lawman" for A&E and was looking for an original story that hadn't yet been published in the media industry. Reality television was gaining popularity at the time, with shows like "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and "Real Housewives" being huge hits and generating significant revenue for the networks. So, when she received an email from Lifetime Television asking about their interest in doing a reality show on such a unique topic, she jumped at the chance.
Director: Phil Bowman
The idea for the show was based on an interesting Fox News program, which featured interviews with three women with seemingly normal lives, except they were also private detectives. After years of service as a police officer in Antioch, California, Chris Butler decided to retire and move to the Bay Area to start her own business. She knew investigation was her specialty, so she soon founded Butler & Associates Private Investigations, seemingly achieving consistent success.
Eventually, Chris decided to specifically hire women and mothers as investigators for her company, believing they would be the best fit for the job requirements. In a television interview, she stated that mothers were already good, efficient spies, to a certain extent, as they had practice spying on their children, and that mothers who dedicated themselves to investigating their children would rarely be suspected of being detectives. Therefore, she hired a group of women to investigate numerous cases in the Bay Area, ranging from financial fraud to infidelity. Two of these women, Denise Antoon and Ami Wiltz, appear in the Netflix documentary, where they talk about how they became involved with the organization and what their responsibilities were.
Denise recalls applying for the position after finding the opening online. After a long career as a legal advisor for various companies, Denise had to take a break after giving birth to her second child. With two very young children at home, she looked for any job opportunity that would allow her to balance her personal and professional life, so Chris's organization seemed very attractive to her. Not only could she leverage her experience in the legal world and play the role of detective, but she would also be able to spend enough time with her children at the end of the day. Likewise, Ami also looked for any job that would allow her to spend time with her young children, as her current job as a police officer required her to work 12-hour shifts. Ami rarely spent special family occasions with her children, so she immediately joined the Private Investigator Moms group as soon as she discovered it.
Both Denise and Ami admitted that the job seemed very appealing, as they had to drive around following suspects or, sometimes, tricking them into revealing important information. They were provided with all kinds of modern equipment, such as recorders and spy cameras, and the idea of conducting real detective fieldwork was simply exciting. The team of Denise, Ami, and two other women, Michelle Allen and Charmagne Peters, bonded easily, which helped them work better. This unique story of soccer moms solving detective cases in the Bay Area began to attract media attention, and the team appeared on multiple talk shows to explain their unusual organization. It was then that Lifetime came up with the idea of making a reality show based on the team, and Lucas Platt eventually joined them.
Chris got involved immediately when Lucas contacted him, evidently wanting to be associated with the entertainment media, and almost seemed to know that his unusual decision to form a team of soccer mom detectives would bring him so much attention. The women themselves were also intrigued by the premise, though Denise claims she specifically wanted to make sure the show didn't take on a nasty tone, like other reality shows of the time. She was strongly opposed to any kind of "storylines" where the detectives would fight each other, which would make the whole thing seem too vulgar. Lucas assured her that none of that would happen, and with everyone's approval, work on "Private Moms" eventually began.
Around the same time, Pete Crooks, a journalist for Diablo magazine, received an email from a publicist asking him to write an article about the Private Moms and the reality show being filmed around them. Pete found the proposal very interesting, as he thought it would basically be a superficial article to publicize the upcoming show to potential Bay Area viewers. He was offered the chance to accompany the team of detectives on one of their missions, on a day off from filming, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity.
As Pete recalls, the mission that day was to follow a man on behalf of his fiancée to find out if he was having an affair with someone else. He had a great time spending the day inside the Investigative Moms' van, closely following their investigation, and it all came to an epic conclusion when they saw and photographed the man kissing another woman in a public parking lot. Although Pete found it a little odd that the man would choose that exact spot, right in front of the Investigative Moms' van, and at a perfect angle to film his infidelity, he didn't think much of it. After all, he had just participated in a thrilling investigation that ultimately exposed the suspect as an adulterer, so he went home satisfied, ready to write his article.
Pete had begun his article by focusing on how the Private Investigator Mothers were very sympathetic characters and would therefore make a brilliant cast on the upcoming reality show. He was truly giving the show his full support, but everything changed when he received an email from a "concerned citizen" (as the email referred to) named Ronald Rutherford. The email warned him not to publish the article he had been writing and claimed that Chris Butler had deceived him by staging the mission the journalist had been invited to participate in. Furthermore, it claimed that everyone involved in the affair, including the investigators, the alleged suspect, and the woman he was seen kissing, were paid actors who knew what was going on. The documentary doesn't really delve into whether the Private Investigator Moms knew it was all a setup or if they were kept in the dark about the journalist's innocence that it wasn't a real assignment.
When more shocking information came to light, it was revealed that Chris Butler had a habit of "staging" situations, even during his time on the police department. He had a habit of attacking men, usually after receiving payments from individuals with ill intentions, and he would hire women to intentionally get them over the legal limit drunk. As soon as these men started to wander away from the scene, Chris would approach them in his patrol car and arrest them for driving under the influence. In essence, he was running his own scheme, receiving payments from clients simply to arrest and charge the selected men.
Therefore, it was no surprise that Chris staged some, if not most, of the cases on the show. In fact, Lucas Platt confirms that there was a real shortage of cases, which caused him problems with the reality show's producers. When signing the contract, Chris had falsely claimed to have far more clients and pending cases than his organization actually had. The only way out must have been to create stories and fake filming locations, although the show ultimately never made it to the big screen.
Faced with a shortage of cases to cover, the creators of the show "Private Investigator Moms" decided to forgo case-based episodes and focus on the personal lives of each of the detectives, mothers. Meanwhile, the team discovered an individual posing as a private investigator without the necessary licenses and even serving clients in the Bay Area. Tracking down and confronting this unlicensed private investigator would have made an excellent plot for the show, so they decided to film an episode based on the story. Everything seemed set, as they convinced the unlicensed private investigator to meet with someone they believed to be an interested client. Plans were made to corner and confront the suspect at that location, recording the entire interaction.
However, as the camera crew and the Private Investigator Moms prepared to catch the unlicensed private investigator, he never appeared. When they called him from the scene, they revealed that they had just received a tip from a concerned citizen, who had warned them not to fall into the trap. This was clearly an intentional ploy to sabotage the show and the private detective organization, and Lucas became determined to find out who the saboteur was. Now that the show's secret was out, Lucas directly asked the unlicensed private detective for help, telling him to call the number from which he had received the tip. As soon as the saboteur answered the call, it was revealed to be Carl Marino, one of the investigators on Chris Butler's team.
Carl Marino, the only male employee on the team at the time, was a financially struggling actor who had joined the organization to make ends meet, but his focus always remained on acting in front of the cameras. In fact, when Lucas first contacted the team about the reality show, Carl had insisted that they include him in the cast as well, stating that his previous on-screen acting experience would make him a far better role model than any of the women. But because Lucas's idea for the series revolved around female private investigators, and because he considered Carl to be quite arrogant, he immediately downplayed it and rejected it. So, driven by revenge to ensure the series would never see the light of day, Carl Marino impersonated Ronald Rutherford and attempted to sabotage the shoot by any means possible. His initial plan, to inform Pete Crooks about the series' setup, didn't work, as the journalist had cleared things directly with the showrunner. Thus, he had now obtained the information about the unlicensed private investigator internally and then revealed the news about the series to them, completely ruining the planned episode.
As soon as Lucas learned of Carl's attempts to sabotage the series, he informed Chris and expected Carl to be fired from the organization immediately. However, this didn't happen, and Chris got him off the hook simply by warning him not to try anything similar in the future. Something seemed extremely odd, and Lucas reveals that he was certain the boss and the employee must have some kind of romantic relationship. However, the truth was far from a secret office romance and was much more scandalous, as its revelation led to the immediate cancellation of the "PI Moms" program.
It turns out that Chris Butler was secretly running a drug business with Norman Wielsch, commander of the local police department's Narcotics Enforcement Team. As the leader of his unit, Wielsch had no problem taking the stash of drugs confiscated from smugglers in the area and delivering them to Chris, who then sold them in those same areas, earning a nice cut in the process. In most cases, Chris enlisted Carl's help in physically delivering the drugs, and that's precisely why he did almost nothing to his employee at the PI organization, to ensure his secret wouldn't be revealed.
However, Carl Marino was still desperate for any attention and any spark that would help him advance professionally, and he saw this as the perfect opportunity to make a name for himself. He wrote another email to Pete Crooks, under the false identity, and informed him that Chris was running a drug deal with the narcotics chief. The reporter immediately contacted Daryl Jackson, the police department's lieutenant inspector, and arranged a meeting between the official and Carl. During the meeting, Carl even presented a kilo of marijuana as proof of his claims. This was enough for the authorities to conduct a quick investigation, with the help of Carl, who secretly filmed the incident.
After Chris's arrest on multiple drug charges, he was charged with numerous counts, including embezzlement, second-degree theft, and conspiracy. It was even discovered that he was running a brothel in Pleasant Hill, California, and there was simply no way out. In May 2012, Chris pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Technically, it was a reduced sentence, as he had been offered a plea deal after cooperating with federal investigators. Although Chris Butler was supposed to have been released in 2020 after serving his sentence, there is no information about his current whereabouts, suggesting that he must have changed his identity to evade his shameful past.
Carl Marino was hailed as a hero by the media after Chris's capture, as he was credited with dismantling the drug trade. This had been Carl's exact motive from the start: to get noticed. He subsequently also dabbled in acting, playing Lieutenant Joe Kenda in Investigation Discovery's crime documentary series, Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda. However, he didn't have a successful acting career, as he never appeared after the show. Trainwreck: PI Moms doesn't mention what the mothers themselves have been up to lately, though the appearances of Denise Antoon and Ami Wiltz confirm that they have a fairly stable life and are still quite angry and heartbroken over the failed reality show that could have changed their lives.
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