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On August 24, 2010, Pete Crooks, a senior writer at Diablo magazine, received a call from a Los Angeles-based publicist representing Chris Butler’s private investigation firm. The pitch he got was intriguing: Butler had hired a group of local mothers to run surveillance on cheating husbands, and business was beginning to boom. The firm was featured in People, The Today Show, and Dr. Phil—and most recently, Lifetime Television had just greenlit a new reality show called P.I. Moms San Francisco about its East Bay operation.
Butler had a proposal for Crooks: Take part in a ride-along with one of the mothers, watch them catch a philanderous man in the act, and write about it. It smelled like a great story and Crooks eventually hopped in a car with Denise Antoon, one of four moms Butler had employed. The mission went like clockwork. The man they were following met up with a young woman and began kissing her in a parking lot, all while Denise grabbed photos and video. Crooks understood why Lifetime was eager to turn this into a series.
But did everything go down a little too perfectly? Soon after returning home, Crooks got an email from someone named Ronald Rutherford that made him question everything. “It would be a mistake to write a story on the P.I. moms and Chris Butler,” the email stated. “Chris totally played you. The case that you sat in on was totally scripted. All the participants or employees are paid actors. I hope that publishing it is not in your plans.”
As chronicled in Netflix’s new documentary Trainwreck: P.I. Moms, that mysterious message was just the beginning of a scandal that involved lying, cheating, wire-tapping, methamphetamines, and jail time, and would ultimately kill the Lifetime reality series before it ever aired. In this retelling, director Phil Bowman interviews a couple of the moms, Lifetime producers, and several others involved with the show to paint a better picture of how Butler’s enterprise wasn’t everything it…
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