Teen Mom Confidential: Secrets & Scandals From MTV's Most Controversial Shows (24 page)

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 out 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.