Where Are the P.I. Moms Now? A Look At Their Lives Over a Decade After Their Boss Was Busted for a Drug Operation By Lynsey Eidell

In 2011, the P.I. Moms were on the brink of becoming reality television stars.

The group of women were all employees of Chris Butler, an ex-cop turned private investigator who ran his own firm in the Bay Area in California. The firm, called Butler and Associates, was well-known for its team of mothers who doubled as private investigators.

The women were experts at uncovering everything from insurance fraud to cheating spouses, according to Butler — and their success in the field began to generate buzz both locally and nationwide.

By 2010, Butler and his P.I. Moms had made appearances on The Dr. Phil Show and the Today show and had a reality television show in the works. The series was set to debut on Lifetime in 2011 before Butler and the business he had built with the P.I. Moms all came crashing down.

In early 2011, Butler was exposed for faking private investigation cases to keep up with the content demands of the Lifetime show, according to This American Life. But his problems didn’t stop there: the investigator was also caught at the center of a massive crime enterprise that involved police corruption, drug deals, prostitution rings, extortion and more.

Denise Antoon and Ami Wiltz, two of Butler’s P.I. Moms, are now telling their side of the bizarre story in the latest installment of Netflix’s Trainwreck series, which was released on July 22.

So where are the P.I. Moms now? Here’s a look at the women behind Butler’s operation’s lives today.

Who are the P.I. Moms?

The P.I. Moms were the brainchild of Butler, a former cop turned private investigator who ran his own firm in San Francisco. Butler first staffed his firm, named Butler and Associates, with off duty cops and former law enforcement officers, who were all typically men — but he found them “competitive, impatient and difficult to deal with,” he told Diablo magazine in 2011.

“Male investigators have an alpha mentality,” Butler explained to the East Bay Times in June 2010. “They’re competing, not acting as a team.”

Butler shifted his approach after he hired a female investigator (who was also a mother) to his team. He was so impressed with his new hire — calling her “the best investigator” he had ever worked with, according to Diablo — that he began to focus solely on hiring women and mothers.

By 2010, all but one of the 11 investigators on his team were women — and seven were moms, the East Bay Times reported.

“In private investigation, you live by your wits. Moms are used to dealing creatively with unexpected developments,” Butler told the newspaper about his unconventional team.

The mothers on Butler’s team weren’t just hired for the fact that they had children, however — they all brought impressive backgrounds, experience and skillsets to the firm. One investigator and mother-of-two, Michelle Allen, studied acting at the University of Southern California and Julliard, according to ABC 7 News. Another P.I. Mom with two children was Charmagne Peters, who has a communications and rhetoric degree from the University of California, Davis.

Antoon and Wiltz were also investigators on Butler’s team. Antoon is a mother of three with a law degree and criminal justice background; while Wiltz, who also has three children, had previously worked in the sheriff’s office before joining Butler’s team. Both appreciated the flexibility that working at Butler and Associates afforded them — as well as the exhilarating cases.

“There was just an empowering feeling of knowing one part of you is taking the kids to school and daycare, and the other part is doing undercover work, investigating fraud or surveillance in some cheating spouse,” Antoon shared in Trainwreck: P.I. Moms. “It was pretty cool.”

What type of work did the P.I. Moms do?

The majority of the P.I. Moms’ cases involved infidelity, according to the East Bay Times. The moms were typically hired to stake out the suspect in question, tailing them for hours at a time in an unsuspecting minivan in hopes of capturing any indiscretions on camera. Any evidence discovered during their surveillance was then presented to the client.

“If you think someone is cheating on you, you’re almost always right,” Peters told the East Bay Times. “But you don’t always trust your feelings. We validate a man’s or woman’s worries one way or the other so they can stop being paralyzed and do what’s best for them.”

Some of Butler’s methods, however, were more unconventional. In addition to the mothers he hired as investigators, Butler would also hire female “decoys” to use as operatives in certain sting operations. These attractive women would be used to try and bait their suspects into cheating — or worse.

Butler described a successful sting where they used a decoy operative named “Sharon” to catch a cheating husband on an appearance on The Dr. Phil Show.

“We inserted Sharon into the hotel bar … Well sure enough, once our investigator was in the bar and he walked in, he made a beeline right for her,” Butler told Dr. Phil McGraw on the show, per CBS News.

Butler continued, “Sharon is a professional and she does know what’s expected of her on these cases, and that’s gonna include hugging, kissing … and she knows to stand at a 90-degree angle to the camera so that if there is any kissing that’s going on … we’ll be able to get that.”

How did the P.I. Moms become famous?

Butler branded his team as the “P.I. Moms,” and the group began to attract the attention of both local and national media. After appearances on the Today show and Dr. Phil, Butler was approached by several reality television producers about bringing the P.I. Moms to the small screen.

A reality show starring the moms was pitched to multiple networks, and it was ultimately snatched up by Lifetime. The show, called P.I. Moms, focused on Butler and a select few of his employees — including Antoon, Allen, Wiltz and Peters. It began production and filming in late 2010 and was scheduled to debut on Lifetime in March 2011.

To help get publicity for the show, Peter Crooks — a local journalist with Diablo magazine — was pitched to write a feature story on Butler, the P.I. Moms and their upcoming series. Crooks obliged and, as part of his research, was taken on a ride-along with the moms as they conducted surveillance on a man suspected of cheating on his fiancé.

The ride-along occurred in September 2010. Crooks spent hours in the back of a minivan with Peters and Antoon as they tailed the suspect and witnessed him philandering with another woman — taking her shopping and out to lunch, kissing her in public and then checking into a local hotel.

Peters and Antoon captured all of the indiscretions on video for their client, while Crooks witnessed the P.I. Moms in action for his feature article.

What happened to the P.I. Moms and their reality show?

Butler’s and the P.I. Moms’ dreams of reality television fame fell apart as a result of the infamous ride-along with Crooks.

As Crooks was working on his article about the P.I. Moms, he received an email in January 2011 from an individual named R. Rutherford who alleged that the surveillance operation Crooks witnessed was entirely faked.

Rutherford claimed all of the individuals involved — including the client, the fiancé and the mistress — were either employees of the firm or paid actors, and that all of the events of the day were pre-planned and “totally scripted.”

“The whole ‘P.I. Moms’ thing has even been crafted just to get on a TV show,” Rutherford added, per Diablo.

When confronted by Crooks, both Butler and Antoon denied that the case had been faked. Butler shrugged off the email and its claims, telling Crooks it had been written by a former intern with an ax to grind.

But this initial email was just the tip of the iceberg: Rutherford sent Crooks a follow-up email days later accusing Butler of being involved in “serious criminal activity.” According to the email, Butler and the head of the Contra Costa County Task Force, Norm Wielsch, were running a drug operation where Wielsch would provide Butler with large amounts of drugs that had been confiscated in raids to sell.

Crooks’ response was two-fold: He connected Rutherford with a law enforcement contact that he trusted to launch an investigation into Wielsch and Butler, and he also approached the reality show’s executive producer, Lucas Platt, with his concerns about the faked ride-along.

Within two weeks of Crooks approaching Platt, the majority of the P.I. Moms had resigned from Butler and Associates — and the reality show was dead in the water.

The P.I. Moms were crushed over the cancellation of the show. “I know for a lot of people, they’re like, it’s just a show,” Antoon said in Trainwreck: P.I. Moms. “But it’s a show that we were really passionate about … and then it was gone. It was taken away from us.”

What happened to Chris Butler?

In February 2011, shortly after the P.I. Moms reality show was canceled, Butler became the target (as opposed to the mastermind) of a sting operation. Thanks to the information from “Rutherford,” undercover officers witnessed Wielsch stealing three pounds of crystal methamphetamine out of the Contra Costa Sheriff’s drug locker.

Wielsch and Butler then sold one pound of the drug contraband to a confidential informant, who happened to be wearing a wire that captured the entire interaction on video, Diablo reported.

Wielsch and Butler were both arrested and charged with 28 felony counts each. With both men facing up to life in prison, Butler turned on Wielsch — confessing to multiple crimes that included not just the drug deals, but also running a brothel, stealing from prostitutes and setting up “dirty DUIs” (drunk driving arrests that were essentially arranged by Butler and his police connections for clients who were angry with their spouses), SF Gate reported.

Butler’s criminal enterprise wasn’t the only shocking development that the investigation revealed, though. The individual named “Rutherford” was actually an employee of Butler’s at the private investigation firm named Carl Marino. Marino had anonymously turned to Crooks after Butler attempted to rope him into the drug deals, according to CBS News.

In 2012, Butler pleaded guilty to seven felony counts, including methamphetamine and marijuana distribution, theft, conspiracy, extortion, robbery and illegal wiretapping, according to the East Bay Times. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine.

While he was eligible for parole by 2020, there is no information as to where Butler is now.

Where are the P.I. Moms now?

The P.I. Moms — including Antoon, Allen, Peters and Wiltz — had no knowledge of or involvement in any of Butler’s crimes. But, as the faces of Butler’s private investigation firm, the women were still criticized in the media following his very public arrest.

“The moms, we were all attacked and made fun of and embarrassed,” Wiltz said in the Netflix documentary.

Antoon added, “People were calling us frauds and fakes and drug dealers and all sorts of things. We didn’t get to say anything about it.”

Since the demise of Butler and Associates, several of the “P.I. Moms” have moved on in their careers and personal lives. Peters left the firm in November 2010, shortly before filming on the Lifetime reality series started, to take a job with better benefits, Diablo magazine reported.

Following Butler’s arrest, Wiltz also left Butler and Associates, but went on to defend the work that the women did for the firm as private investigators. She appeared in a follow-up episode on Dr. Phil and on 48 Hours, and denied any knowledge of faked cases in both interviews.

“To my knowledge even today, those were real cases that we were working,” she told 48 Hours.

Wiltz went on to open her own private investigation agency in the Bay Area, CBS News reported.

Since leaving Butler and Associates, Antoon’s P.I. days are behind her. She now lives in Texas, where she is the founder of the Human Experience Group, a firm that aids businesses with their employee and customer experiences. The mother of three is also now a grandmother of three, according to her Instagram.