Overview

The pitch went like this: Chris Butler, a retired cop, ran a private investigator firm in Concord, California. His business had a fascinating angle--his firm was staffed entirely by soccer moms. In fact, Butler employed PI Super Moms: attractive, organized, smart, and trained in investigative techniques, self-defense, and weaponry. This American Life host Ira Glass described them as MILF: Charlie's Angels. When this story came across Pete Crooks's desk when he was working at Diablo magazine in 2010, he was instantly hooked. He'd heard a little bit about Butler and his super moms in the news; they'd been featured in People magazine and on Dr. Phil. What Butler's publicist was offering was too tantalizing to pass up: an opportunity to ride along with Butler and a few of his sexy PIs as they prepared to start filming a reality TV show. But after the ride-along--and after he started receiving mysterious emails from one of Butler's employees--Crooks started to realize something didn't seem right. After doing a little digging, he discovered the sting he'd seen only had one real victim . . . him. The PI bust had been a setup. Crooks wasn't a hard-boiled crime reporter. He did lifestyle pieces for a regional magazine. The more he learned about Butler's operation, the more he realized he was in far over his head. But swallowing his fears, he decided he was going to write an expos� on Butler and his entire organization. He soon found himself deep in the underbelly of fake sting operations, wannabe celebrities, police corruption, drug-dealing, reality television, double-crossing employees, and more twists and turns than a dozen crime thrillers.

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"Keith Sellon-Wright is an audiobook narrator and an actor with more than thirty years of experience in Hollywood. His television roles have included Frasier, Seinfeld, The West Wing, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Grey's Anatomy, and Scandal. He also serves as a ""voice of the New York Times,"" narrating selected articles for their daily audio edition. Lt. Joe Kenda, a twenty-three-year veteran of the Colorado Springs Police Department, spent twenty-one years chasing killers as a homicide detective and commander of the major crimes unit. Kenda and his team solved 356 of his 387 homicide cases, getting a 92 percent solve rate--one of the highest in the country. After retiring from law enforcement, he starred in Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda, an American true-crime documentary series that ran for nine seasons on the Investigation Discovery network and was aired in sixty-nine countries and territories worldwide. At its peak, Homicide Hunter averaged 1.9 million viewers in the US. See Lt. Kenda on his new crime series, American Detective, available to stream now on discovery+. Lt. Joe Kenda, a twenty-three-year veteran of the Colorado Springs Police Department, spent twenty-one years chasing killers as a homicide detective and commander of the major crimes unit. Kenda and his team solved 356 of his 387 homicide cases, getting a 92 percent solve rate--one of the highest in the country. After retiring from law enforcement, he starred in Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda, an American true-crime documentary series that ran for nine seasons on the Investigation Discovery network and was aired in sixty-nine countries and territories worldwide. At its peak, Homicide Hunter averaged 1.9 million viewers in the US. See Lt. Kenda on his new crime series, American Detective, available to stream now on discovery+. Pete Crooks is a Bay Area-based journalist, and the author of the seminal investigative story about one of the Bay Area's most sensational crime and corruption stories in recent history. Crooks is one of the editors of Diablo magazine, and was on assignment for the magazine when he broke the incredible crime scandal detailed in The Setup: A True Story of Soccer Moms, Dirty Cops, and Reality TV. Crooks's reporting on this stranger than fiction story about reality show wannabes, duplicitous soccer moms, and a conspiracy involving corrupt cops and a sociopath private investigator received national acclaim, inspiring episodes of the award-winning radio program This American Life and 48 Hours on CBS news, for which Crooks served as an official consultant."

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