Teen Mom Confidential: Secrets & Scandals From MTV's Most Controversial Shows (23 page)

While the crime wasn't that big, Gary - at 5'11” and 300 lbs. - was. “I placed Mr. Shirley in two (2) sets of handcuffs due to his size,” the report states. “Both sets of handcuffs were checked for tightness and doubled locked. Capt. Austin stayed with Miss Portwood and the vehicle and arrangements were made for both to be picked up.” Gary, who learned his license was suspended in November 2010, was booked at Madison County Jail and released on $3,000 bond.

It's Time For Gary Time – The Show!

Gary is one of the most colorful - and misunderstood - characters in
Teen Mom
history. Over the years, we've seen him take an on-camera punch from Amber, break through the wood stairs of his house, and, thanks to
TMZ
, relish in a 12-hour strip club bender.

I had the unique privilege of spending an evening with Gary in Indianapolis recently and was surprised to see how different he is from the naïve, somewhat oaf-ish guy we saw on TV. Sure lots of people approached him saying “Hey, you're the guy that got beat up on
Teen Mom
.” But when you get past that, Gary is just a loving dad, trying to do the best job he can of raising his daughter. He is working towards becoming a Registered Nurse. He also loves to cook and says he would one day like to own a restaurant.

Gary is very aware of how difficult it is for Leah to not have her mother around, and he's very conscious about who he allows to interact with her. I was surprised to see how gracious he is with fans. Seriously, people love him!

During our outing, at least 20 people walked up asking for pictures, and he was happy to pose for each one. He kept me laughing the entire night.

Somebody really needs to give this guy his own single dad spin-off show!

Tyler Baltierra was conceived during an emotional night of grief-fueled lust, just hours after his uncle Dale died in a horrific drunk driving accident. Tyler's father, Darl - who friends and family know simply as “Butch” - had recently separated from his longtime girlfriend, Kimberly Forbes, the mother of his then three year-old daughter, Amber. But the couple came together again to comfort each other on that tragic night in April 1991, when Dale, 35, broadsided a tree and was killed on impact. “Kim really loved me a lot,” the mullet-sporting bad boy says. “She had come over to console me and we got together then. Dale was gone and Tyler got made. Out with the old, in with the new.”

Butch - a fence builder, who has spent much of Tyler's life behind bars - admits it was his excessive drug use that eventually prompted Kim to kick him to the curb. Marijuana and cocaine were his drugs of choice. “She just couldn't handle it,” the father of two confided during a series of interviews from the Central Michigan Correctional Facility, where he returned in late 2011 after a probation violation. “She just packed my shit one day. I came home and all my stuff was on the front porch. I didn't really care at the time.”

Kim, a devout Christian and former Denny's waitress, was Butch's longest lasting love - 12 years - but not his first. He had already lost his virginity by the ninth grade and was chasing skirts all around Chesterfield, Michigan at 16, rarely practicing safe sex. Wearing condoms, he says, “was like taking a shower with a raincoat on. I was just gettin' my freak on. I was tryin' to get the bitches pregnant. I didn't give a fuck about anything... I was a horndog!”

After dropping out of high school, Butch took a job at the Safie pickle factory, a few blocks from his home. It was there the young ladies man struck up a friendship with co-worker Nick Placencia, who introduced him to his 16 year-old sister, Tracy. “She was beautiful,” Butch recalls. “She was my first love.” They dated for nearly four months, but the romance took an unexpected turn when young Butch was introduced to the girl's father, a Ford Motor Company worker with 13 children who was known around town as Potato Joe.

“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.”

____________________

“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
____________________

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.”