“He was pretty much an alcoholic and drug addict,” Butch remembers. “And he says to me 'You can't be dating Tracy - 'cause she's your sister! You'll have retarded babies.' I was like 'Man, you're high!' So he grabbed a bag of weed, we rolled a joint and went on a dirt road and he was like 'Me and your mother... Look at you. Look at me!' I kind of thought we looked alike, but I was shocked. I'm thinkin' 'This guy is crazy! He's gettin' high on his own supply,' you know? So I went home and asked my father.”
It wasn't long before Butch confirmed that much of the life he knew was a lie. His mother, a half-German, half Native American “wild woman” named Jacqueline Joyce Fritz, had indeed had an affair with Potato Joe. “She never would admit it, but then my aunt told me it was true,” he says. “My whole fucking world was shot. I was mad at the whole world. I hated everybody.”
For years, Butch had believed his birth father was a Chevrolet assembly line worker named Willie Baltierra, who spent his free time building hot rods with his boys. Willie also had a daughter named Kimberly and two other sons, Dale and William Daryl. “To me, he was my father,” Butch says. “Even though he didn't make me, he made me. He made me the man I am. He gave me a good work ethic. He is hardcore.”
Potato Joe, meanwhile, eventually committed suicide. “He bought a 22 and laid in bed and put a pillow over his head and pulled the trigger,” Butch says. “He had seven nervous breakdowns.” Jacqueline walked out on her family when Butch was just three years old. He was raised by Willie (with occasional help from Willie's live-in girlfriend Darlene) in a home environment he likens to being “a dog in a fucking cage.”
“There was no 'I love you, son' or 'I love you, brother,'” he says. “I had a lot of issues. I was depressed with my childhood growing up, with my father beating me...all that shit. I remember seeing my mother going through a big picture window when I was three. Layin' on the grass, screamin' and hollerin'. The police coming... There was blood everywhere. The psychologist told me I wasn't supposed to remember that at three years old, but I can tell you all the details - where everyone was standing... I can tell you everything. I can see it right now. In color!”
Butch didn't see his mother again until age 13, when she surprised him near a basketball court in New Haven, Michigan. “She kept yellin' 'Darl, Darl.' And nobody called me Darl. So I walk over and say 'Who are you?' And she says 'I'm your mother.' And she hugged me and kissed me. I was like, 'Damn, I got a mom!' Before that, when I was a kid, I used to lay in my bed and wet the bed every night. My dad beat the shit out of me. He scared me so bad. I didn't know that was why, but that was why. I would sit there thinking 'The only one that loves me is my mother.' I would pray to God, 'I know, Lord, she is the only one that loves me.' I didn't even know the lady. And I would cry myself to sleep and say 'She's the only one that loved me.' Then all of a sudden, bam! She is in my life. Out of the sky.”
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“I was drinkin' and doin' crack the whole time of the filming. Nobody really knew. Well, I'm sure they knew, but... If you watch the show you knew. But 99% of the time I had beer in me. Or marijuana. That is what I did. I was an alcoholic, drug addict.”
- BUTCH BALTIERRA
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Butch and his mother remained in contact, mostly by phone, until her death in 1992 from an aneurysm. “She was makin' apple pies and crocheting in a chair, smoking when she died,” he says. Like Jacqueline, Butch struggled with substance abuse for much of his adult life. He admits to being stoned or drunk during almost all of his appearances on 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom. “I was drinkin' and doin' crack the whole time of the filming,” he says. “Nobody really knew. Well, I'm sure they knew, but... If you watch the show you knew. But 99% of the time I had beer in me. Or marijuana. That is what I did. I was an alcoholic, drug addict.”
Substance abuse has played a role in many of Butch's run-ins with the law. He landed behind bars for the first time at age 24 for snorting cocaine off the glove box of a 1976 canary yellow Cadillac in Capitola, California. His growing rap sheet also includes multiple arrests for breaking and entering as well as charges of domestic violence, larceny, and home invasion. Butch was most recently sent back to jail following a 2011 domestic spat with his current wife, April, a chain smoker and former quality control agent. At the time, April claimed that her husband of two years came home under the influence of drugs on the night of September 8, slammed her head into a bathroom wall and tried to choke her with a towel. “He didn't look like himself,” April explained during the final season of Teen Mom. “I was on the phone with my girlfriend and he thought I was talking to [MY son] Nick's dad and he freaked out on me. I'm all bruised up. I look like I got ran over by a truck.”
Butch remembers the episode differently: “She accused me of cheatin' on her! Normally (in a situation like that) I will just leave. I will say a few things that are derogatory and I try to leave. And she will try to stop me. That is when it gets physical. At that particular one, we were at our neighbor's. Our new neighbors that had just moved into Port Huron. And the girl was pretty hot. We were over there drinkin' a couple of beers and they gave me a quarter of an Oxycontin, which is not my thing. I don't do pills. And she gave me half a Valium. And I am drinkin' Budweiser. When we got home, April accused me of tryin' to get with the neighbor. She grabbed me and I had to stop her from grabbin' and hittin' on me. I got pictures of the scratches on my neck. She stopped me, jumped on my back and all kinds of stuff.”
Butch's daughter Amber (b. 1987) wasn't buying his story. She immediately took to the Internet to blast her father for his actions. “I dare someone to try and defend my piece of sh** 'dad' now!!” she wrote on Facebook. “Comes home high and beats his fu**ing wife & the best part is the cops caught him red handed!!” A subsequent posting added: "Drug addicts can't handle TV money. This just goes to show what he cares about. Crack. Bottom line.”
Butch ended up pleading not guilty and the charges were dropped in January 2012. But he remained a guest of the state since the altercation violated a “no contact” order that was still in place at the time of his arrest. He will be eligible for parole in April 2013. “I don't want people to think I am some kind of woman beater,” he insists. “It is very important for me to let people know that. I am not that kind of person. My dad did that stuff, but that is not me. I had that one moment, but beating up defenseless women is not my M.O.”
Butch and April's sometimes-turbulent love story began in July 2008. Tyler had been dating Catelynn for several years and she was a frequent guest at the Baltierra house. “I came home on parole and I met Catelynn cause I was stayin' at Tyler's house,” Butch remembers. “Catelynn goes 'My mom would like you!' I was like 'Where's she at?' I was man-whoring around anyways. I just got out of jail, looked good. 185 pounds. I was pretty ripped up after doin' Tae Bo for five years.” Catelynn put in a good word at home and soon after the two chain smokers were introduced. “She invited me over for Nicholas's second birthday party,” he says. “We drank some beers, she jumped in my truck, we hit a few bars, went down a back road and did the country thing.”
The couple dated for six months before tying the knot on February 13, 2009 at a small chapel in Warren, Michigan. Tyler was the only member of Butch's family to show up. “I never did ask Amber why she didn't come,” he says. “She had something else going on, I guess.”
Butch recalls being “pretty fucking drunk” the night before the nuptials. “I didn't get home until about six in the morning,” he says. “I left in the middle of the night and went to get high. April thought I had cold feet and left. She was up crying when I got home. Then my daughter (Amber) came over and did her hair. After we got married, we went to Famous Dave's Restaurant. Her father dropped us off at a hotel room and we stayed there all weekend. We were drunk in the hot tub for three days.”
But those days are behind him. Butch says he hopes to move into a residential rehab program or sober living facility when he is released. “I don't
even smoke cigarettes no more,” he says. “I'm pretty proud of that. I've been smoking cigarettes since I was eight years old. I ain't never thought I could [quit]. I'm breaking my arm right now trying to pat myself on the back. There's plenty marijuana in here, plenty of cigarettes, that I could do any time I want. But I'm done. I'm 50 years old and I hit the end of the road. I had a good time, I had a good run. It just wasn't working out very well for me.”
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Q: What is your current prison experience like?
It is level one, low security. We were just in the news (recently). There are about three to four stabbings a week. It is kind of rough. But I stay busy. I got a P90X class I go to at the gym, three days a week. I hit the gym. I am in pretty good shape for 50 years-old.
Q: Do you have cellmates?
I got about seven. We are in a big cubicle. There ain't much room in there. Four of us on one side and some lockers. Then four more on the other side. I am on the top bunk by the window. I gotta have air. The African Americans like it real hot. People are fartin' and smokin'...
Q: Do the other prisoners know who you are?
Do they know who I am? Yeah, I'm like a big star in here! I'm very well known. Everybody knows who I am.
Q: Have Catelynn or Tyler been to visit you in a while?
No. I talk to him on the phone. He keeps sayin' he is gonna come. But I ain't seen nothing. Last time I was in prison my sister kept sayin' she was coming to visit. She is all I had one time when I was locked up.
Q: What do you think of the way MTV has portrayed you on TV?
They made their own story up. They decided what they wanted it to look and sound like. It wasn't real reality. There is a lot of stuff that wasn't real about it, that was scripted. Which I had a problem with. I am a pretty outspoken person. I am not all that stupid. I do some dumb things, granted. But I think I got a pretty good head on my shoulders as far as being on the streets.
Q: Did they pay you to appear?
Yeah, they pay us by the season. It is really for 10 episodes. So it comes out to about $850 per episode. I told them I wanted $10,000 last time. And they gave me $8,500. They said “We edit you out of most of the episodes.”
Q: Does Tyler support you or help you out with money?
No, he don't. I had to beg him -- it took me 6 or 8 weeks -- to get him to give me a [care package]. I finally sent him a form of everything I wanted. Then he fills it all out and put in his credit card information... Then he says “Yeah, Dad, I sent it out and I wrote you a letter.” It was the first time he wrote me a letter in the whole year I have been down. He sent me a picture of Carly. I open the letter up and here is the secure pack (order form). It was a good letter. It kind of choked me up. It said, “No matter what, I will always love you.” There is a song that we like by Creed, “With Arms Wide Open.” When he was 8 years old I told him “This song reminds me of you.” The kid does love me. He's just mad at me, I guess. It wasn't like I was gone forever. I was gone for two or three years at a time. But I was always in their life when I was out [of prison].”
Q: What was your first reaction when you met Catelynn? Did you like her?
I am thinkin' “She's alright. He's hittin' it. He's gonna hit that for a while and then get another one. She'll be one of the many that's gonna come in and out.” That was my first thought. Tyler was all serious. “I really love her dad. She's the one I want to be with...” I was like “I felt that way when I was 16, too.” Then I went and told him the story about his aunt, my sister. [laughs] They have been together ever since. I think maybe they are out to prove something to someone.
Q: Did you ever talk to Tyler about safe sex?
He said he had a rubber in his wallet and he didn't know his mother washed it. He said he'd had it for a long time in there and he used it and evidently it broke.
Q: What was your reaction when he told you Catelynn was pregnant?
We wanted to keep the kid. Catelynn comes to me with her (mother) and April says to me, “Your son got my daughter pregnant.” We offered Catelynn… She wanted to abort it. She said, “OK I will.” Then I had the money to give her to have it aborted and they started talking to Tyler's mom, and she's a Christian lady. Her name's Kim. She don't believe in abortion. She wanted the kids to give it up for adoption. That went on for a minute and she's telling us the whole time that she's keeping the baby and that we're going to help her and whatever, and I'm into all that. But behind closed doors she went and got a…not a lawyer, but liaison. She went and got one of them to represent her because she was only 16 and she was talking to Bethany Christian adoption agency. In the meantime, we're thinking that she's keeping the kid. I went and got a place, rented a big ol' house on the water. (April's) buying bassinettes. We're all ready to go. Then about a week before she has it she says “I'm going to give the baby up for adoption and here's the people I'm giving it to.” You know, she played her mother this whole time. She crushed her mom. And I was pissed. I said, “You don't give your kid away! We don't give our kids away!” She said, “Well I can't take care of it and I don't want it to be around this. I don't want it being around you guys.” So I said if you want to give it a better life, give it to her. Him or her, we didn't know what it was. I said, you give it to her. Tyler's telling me this. I told him, “You're the one that can give her a better life. You want to give her to someone else so they can do it? I said I would have stayed in an abandoned car rather than give you motherfucking kids away. We don't do that in our family. He said, “Well I think it's a good idea.” I told him that we were there to help them in any way, you know. So it went on like that and I was pretty pissed about it. I didn't talk to the kids for three or four months. We had an attitude about it. He's stubborn, I'm stubborn. Then I had to try to accept it, you know what I mean, so I could get my son back. I said, “OK I'm alright with it. I'm glad you picked who you picked. But I don't know how you can just give your kid away in a parking lot of the fucking hospital. Your first born. I don't understand how you could do it. I said, “This is going to come back and it's going to haunt you for the rest of your life, I want you to know that. He said, “I know I'm doing the best thing for her.” I said, “You may be doing a good thing for her but you want this kid to have a silver spoon in its mouth. Be a man and step up to the plate. Cowboy up, as I say, and give it to her. You do it. You want someone else to raise your kid.” That's my deal on it. I'm a man. I said, “I'm already a role model on what not to do, Tyler. I'm a living example of what not to be like and what not to do. So you already know what not to do.”
Q: In 2012, Catelynn claimed that April sold a false story about her being pregnant to In Touch magazine. What really happened?
She told me that her and Catelynn and another girl named Jamie were all going to go in on this and (try to) make some money off of this. Catelynn was okay with it. April thought she could get five grand out of it. Then (In Touch magazine) turns around and offers Catelynn and Tyler 12 grand. So that was a scam. It was a hustle. But when they called Catelynn she reneged on her mother. “I couldn't lie, Mom.” It cost April five grand. And Jamie was gonna get a couple of grand. So Catelynn kind of stabbed her mother in the back on that one.
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GANG MEMBERS TRY TO KILL BUTCH IN JAIL!
Butch is lucky to be alive after a series of violent jailhouse attacks by members of a southwest Detroit gang. On December 11 2012, he was struck in the head and “knocked out” by a metal lock wrapped inside a tube sock.
Several weeks later, Butch tells us, members of the Latin Counts crew snuck up from behind and stabbed him multiple times, leaving cuts on his hands and face. “The next day they told me to get off the yard,” he says. “I told them I wasn't goin' nowhere and they'd have to take me out in a body bag. I said 'Let's just fight. I'll take two or three of you in the bathroom.' They didn't want to do that, so they snuck up behind me while I was layin' on my bunk and poured hot sugar water on me. They got me pretty good. Burned the shit ou
t of me. They snuck up behind me. Hit the back of my head and my right back arm. The inside of my scalp got burned pretty good.”
After receiving medical treatment, Butch was moved to a different facility, in nearby Jackson, Michigan, for his own safety. The violence began, Butch says, after he confronted gang members who stole a television set from another prisoner who suffers from Cerebral Palsy and is confined to a wheelchair.
Katie Yeager's life story has all the ingredients of a spectacular, runaway train wreck: abusive, cheating boyfriend, incarcerated, drug-dealing father and an unplanned high school pregnancy. But the witty, doe-eyed Wyoming teen who always dreamt of becoming a psychologist - has somehow managed to beat the odds. Now, as she prepares to begin her junior year at the University of Utah in September 2013, and struggles to raise cutie pie daughter Molli on her own, the former kiddie pageant queen looks poised to become the breakout star of Teen Mom 3.
“Being a part of it has given me an opportunity to be able to show my daughter that her dad and I have struggled and made sacrifices for her simply because we have unconditional love for her,” Katie shared in a late 2012 Facebook posting. “I am proud of myself for growing such a thick skin and being brave enough to share my life with such a judgmental and rude world.”
The series - premiering later in 2013 - will also peek into the day-to-day dramas of cheerleader Mackenzie Douthit, dancer Alexandria Sekella and Valencia College freshman Briana Dejesus, who all appeared during the fourth season of 16 and Pregnant. “They picked more wholesome girls this time,” a show source reveals. “Each one has a job, family support, and goes to school. None of them have drug addictions or any major psychological damages.”
Still, there is plenty of drama to look forward to. Much of Katie's story line will focus on school - she recently received an Associates degree from Western Wyoming Community College - her struggle for independence and the challenges of moving on from hot-tempered baby daddy, Joey Maes. The couple called it quits, an insider says, “because Joey had been physically and emotionally abusing her for over a year.”
Teen Mom Confidential: Secrets & Scandals From MTV's Most Controversial Shows Page 14