Accused Concord Private Eye Talks Technique in YouTube Videos

Before he became a defendant in a scandal that is rocking the Contra Costa County law enforcement community, Christopher Butler was a Concord private eye who took pride in his investigative techniques.

Those techniques, and that pride, are evident in a couple of television pieces in which Butler invited TV journalists along as he was tracking wayward husbands. The YouTube videos from the syndicated Dr. Phil national show and from NBC 11 in the Bay Area are available on the Claycord Web site.

In the Dr. Phil segment, a wife suspects a husband on a business trip to Hawaii, and Butler’s agency “inserts” a woman in a hotel bar. She is approached by the husband, and the detective agency gets video of them “swimming, sunbathing and shopping.” “Our client was very thankful for our investigation,” Butler says on camera.

Private eyes are heavily booked around Valentine’s Day with romantic hijinks “filled with roses, chocolates and high-tech surveillance equipment,” the NBC piece points out. Then Butler, in his goatee and pointed sideburns, explains that a client is suspicious of her fiancé. Butler and an associate follow the fiancé as he takes another woman, with plenty of outward displays of affection, to a nice dinner in San Francisco. It's all captured by the agency’s hidden camera.

Butler and Norman Wielsch, who both served on the Antioch police force at one time, are charged in a scandal that also involves police officers in Danville and San Ramon. Wielsch, the former commander of a drug task force in Contra Costa County, and Butler have been charged with conspiracy; selling methamphetamine, marijuana and steroids; and possessing methamphetamine, marijuana and steroids for sale.

More recently, the case has featured .