# Marc Chavez, "Chavo" thief, liar, junkie, general asshole



## Matt Derrick (Nov 18, 2020)

_Marc Chavez, aka "Chavo"
38 years old, born September 9th.
Drives a silver Honda CRV with no license plates, insurance, and a suspended license.
Missing top row of teeth, wears dentures to hide it
http://facebook.com/shutupandread_

I recently had to kick this person out of my house. why i am posting this here is because we met through StP and while he's not a traveler he migrates around the anarchist punk scene so it's likely folks will run into him, especially in Austin, Texas. Additionally, this vindictive asshole is going around contacting my friends telling them as many lies as possible in a petty and pathetic attempt at vengence, so I feel the need to lay out the truth here so I can easily point to it when people want to know what happened.

chavo and is partner, who i am excluding from this story as they had nothing to do with the situation for reasons you'll see below, messaged me on facebook saying they were coming back to austin after spending several months in kansas because of covid. the timing seemed perfect since i had just had a bedroom open up in the apartment i was living in and it was extremely cheap, so i told them they should put in an application and sign the lease so we could get them in asap.

As I stated before, I knew these people through StP, and we'd hung out a few times, both at the bar, my house, their squat, and had a good time, no red flags so far by that point (this was pre-covid). Seemed like a normal punk/anarcho couple, so they seemed good candidates for roommates when this situation arose.

The problems started almost immediately after Chavo arrived. His partner couldn't come with him back to Austin do to some family issues back in West Virginia, so the rest of the roommates couldn't meet her before he moved in. We were willing to roll with that, but it also quickly became apparent that Chavo wouldn't be able to sign a lease, since he has a felony record and no identification. He kept pushing his desire to not sign the lease at all and pay us directly. We asked him to please put in the application anyways since there was a decent chance he would still be accepted. Throughout the five days he 'lived' with us, he made no attempt to put in that application, but he did pay us $240 for the room which covered rent for the room until the end of November.

Things got uncomfortable pretty quickly. Chavo's attitude was _constantly _combative. We'd get in arguments constantly, mostly over little petty things that were mostly situations of him forgetting he said something and then getting mad when he couldn't remember doing/saying that thing to us later. He forgot he put his tool bag in my room and then got extremely angry with me and accused me of purposefully hiding them from him, to the point he started screaming at me and telling me to fuck off and stomping out of the house. In another incident, he nearly started a fight with a cop at a junkyard I took him too, for no other reason than he was there and nearly got us kicked out. He would constantly be aggro and passive aggressive, agreeing to one thing claiming it was fine, only to come back a few minutes later to tell me what an asshole i was for saying a one thing or the other. In another incident, he got extremely pissy with me because I told him there was no more room for his stuff in my car when we were grabbing a few of his things from the storage unit; before we'd even left the house i'd already explained (twice) that a prius doesn't have much room and if that was okay, to which he said, 'sure that's fine', so I was a bit irritated and baffled as to why he was getting angry with me.

These are just the instances that happened with _myself_. He also managed to piss off the other roommates, and some of their friends. He came out of his room slurring his words heavily and couldn't master how to put back together a french press and actually got in an argument with one of the roommates when he tried to show him how the pieces went together. All these things happened in the first _four days_ he was living with us. I personally have never encountered this many red flags in such a short period of time living with someone, so I was reasonably worried by this point that I'd made a huge mistake in letting this person live with us.

During this time I also went extremely out of my way to help Chavo in just about any way I could. Rides for errands, helping him move his furniture and things into the apartment, etc, buying him beer, hanging out, etc, just generally trying to be a good friend and give him the benefit of the doubt while all the above was happening.

On the fifth day though, the roommates approached me and said this situation was clearly not working out with him. I agreed and as a collective decision of all the roommates (4 other people beside myself) we approached Chavo and as gently as possible told him this situation wasn't going to work. We explained that we couldn't live with his constantly combative nature, and that he was seriously disturbing the peace here. despite all that, we made it clear it wasn't personal, and we were giving him two weeks to find a new place and that if there was anything we could do to help him (including helping him moving his things) we'd be happy to do that.

He took it well, but we could tell he was pretty mad and went into his bedroom for about an hour. While I was doing dishes in the kitchen, he came stomping out of his room straight at me and started yelling at me about how this was all my fault and I was a real shitty friend, etc. I pretty much stopped him right there and said, "Dude, I didn't do shit to you. You did this to yourself." at which point he exploded and started screaming at me that he was going to 'fuck me up' and going through the usual list of name calling. Chavo isn't a big guy so I flat out told him very calmly, "That isn't going to go the way you think it is." to which he just continued calling me a bitch and a string of other expletives on his way back into his room.

About 15 minutes later I noticed the whole apartment smelled of cigarette smoke. None of the roommates smoked and anyone who did did so outside. I knocked on Chavo's door and told him to stop smoking in his room and that he knew we didn't allow that here. He opened the door and said, "I'm not smoking in here," to which I replied, "Bull. Fucking. Shit. I'm not stupid." so he slammed the door in my face and started screaming "FUCK YOU BITCH ILL DO WHATEVER I FUCKING WANT ILL FUCKING SMOKE IN HERE IF I WANT FUCK YOU ILL FUCK YOU UP BITCH" etc, etc.

Honestly I was worried at how violent he was getting to the point where I went and dug up a can of bear spray out of my closet, just in case it came to a full on assault. At this point Chavo had threatened physical violence upon myself and was being completely unreasonable, so I gathered the other roommates, let them know what was going on, and we all agreed we weren't going to spend another night with this person. We stood outside his door and let him know he had to go, _now_. We didn't want to call the cops, and told him so, and asked him if he would leave on his own. We promised he could pick up his things tomorrow and that we wouldn't mess with any of it.

He responded to our pleas with top of his lungs screaming every curse word in the book mixed with threats of bodily harm against me, my roommates, the house, etc at one point saying, "I'm going to get crazy on this place" (implying retaliation in the form of physical damage to the room/house). I finally called his partner in West Virginia, asking her to please call him and try to calm him down (see screen shots). He had locked himself inside his room and spent the next several hours screaming obscenities, threats, etc and promising that he'd never leave and we'd have to physically remove him.

*This went on off and on for about seven hours.* During this time we continued to negotiate with him, even offering him his rent money back. I paid the money out of my own pocket (instead of collectively from the other roommates) because I felt responsible for bringing this crazy person into the house.

Chavo continued screaming things like "THIS IS ILLEGAL" and "YOU'RE NEVER GETTING RID OF ME" and how two weeks wasn't nearly enough time to move out, he needed a _month _(keep in mind he moved into the house in less than 48 hours) and we kept explaining that we couldn't have someone that was threatening violence on everyone in our house for even one night, so our previous offer of two weeks to move out was now null and void, he had to go _tonight_.

Pathetically, after all the violence and screaming, he did at one point break down and start bawling like a child saying things like "why are you doing this to me?" and "i didn't do anything to any of you" between sobs. It was just fucking sad. It genuinely seemed at this point that he could not recall why he'd gotten into this situation.

After seven hours had passed we decided we had exhausted all our options, including physical removal, so I called 311, but due to the threats of physical violence coming from Chavo, they elevated it to a 911 situation.

I let his partner know what was going on (she was surprisingly understanding of the situation) and she let him know (via phone) that we'd finally called the police. At that point he packed a bag, took the rent money we were returning to him, and proceeded to walk out the door, but not before threatening me again with a 'fake-out' punch, at which point we came very close to exchanging blows until he backed down and left. The police showed up about five minutes later, explained what our rights were in the situation and left.

We immediately moved all his belongings out of the room to the front door of the apartment, and in doing so found a heroin spoon, two needles, and two meth/crack pipes (photos attached), so it's extremely likely hard drugs were a factor in this whole situation.

Chavo has been communicating with one of our roommates as to when he would be coming by to pick up his things. As im writing this he is picking up his stuff from the living room, saying how he is going to tell everyone at 'his work' (implying Monkey Wrench Books) what happened here and that 'Matt won't be able to sell his book there anymore after they hear about this'.

Since hearing that from my room (I am purposely avoiding him while he gets his things to prevent any further physical confrontations) I figured that it would be easier to write all this out explaining my side of things since when you hear Chavo's side of this story in person, it is likely to be heavily skewed in his own favor. I've already heard versions of his story from friends that know him claiming I was being 'creepy' to his girlfriend. Keep in mind his partner wasn't even present for this entire situation, she was in West Virginia.

Additionally, this situation occurred in front of four witnesses (three roommates and a visiting friend) and we recorded a few parts of the situation (waiting on the visiting friend to send me the files) and I have screenshots of the conversation between myself and chavos gf which I am attaching to this thread.

Update: So as I was writing the last paragraph, apparently no one was watching Chavo take his things, so on his way out he leveled several more threats, dumped a few items from his fridge onto the floor, and stole our internet cable box on his way out. After looking around it seems one of our bikes is missing as well.

This puts me out almost $500 (returning rent, cost of new cable box, does _not _include cost of the bike) for essentially doing someone a favor and having that person be extremely disrespectful in return. He's a liar and will present himself as the victim whenever possible, refusing to accept responsibility for anything he's done. Fortunately, he's also a coward. He will try to use intimidation and threaten to fight you only to back down when it's clear you're gonna make him work for it. If you see this person, you should give them a swift kick in the nuts for me, or at least let him know he's a piece of shit and do your best to avoid him.


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## Eng JR Lupo RV323 (Nov 18, 2020)

I've met Chavo and been in the same room with him, his girlfriend and Matt. I didn't notice any creepiness from Matt towards Chavos GF at that time. She seemed pretty chill really. He seemed alright, but I kinda got a couple vibes from him that had me raising an eyebrow a bit. 

Mostly just the very first second of meeting him/first impression he did come at us kinda sideways insinuating we were taking too long going from the car into the squat. Which just felt like a weird unnecessary flex, we were moving from car to house in a hurried manner as it was.

He then had me drive him "up the street" which was more like halfway across Austin to score some weed at a park. None of this really had me trippin on the guy but I could feel his vibes and just kinda felt like he had a lot of sucky he was keeping inside. 

I was actually on the phone with Matt when he was expressing concerns about a roommate/friend he'd went to bat for having him move in. He kinda described all the agro shit and my response was "Chavo?" And Matt was kinda dumbfounded I was able to guess. He had forgotten I'd met him before and we all hung out at the beginning of the year. 

Idk, you know what they say. Sucks to suck.


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## starfarer (Nov 18, 2020)

Whoa Matt! You had a near meth experience 😮


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## iamwhatiam (Nov 18, 2020)

damn matt...sorry that happened to you. ya try and help someone and then their true nature comes out and they try and paint you as the bad guy. people are whack.


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## MetalBryan (Nov 19, 2020)

That sucks. Something similar happened to me recently and it's been hard to let go of the betrayal. I try to take comfort in the knowing that these kinds of individuals are most likely fucking miserable all the time and only deserving of pity.


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## roughdraft (Nov 19, 2020)

that was a riveting write-up. my youngest brother behaves this way (he's currently trapped in the system for related offenses - which I wouldn't wish on anyone, but for fuck's sake) people like this royally suck, and having one in my immediate family is just unbearable. I was glad that it sounds like you have some solid people around to back you up and hold it down.


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## Matt Derrick (Nov 19, 2020)

Thanks for the kind words everyone. Strangely, he sent me this text message just now.






pretty much using the fact that i've been selling copies of my book at monkey wrench books (the local anarchist bookstore here in austin) to somehow 'hurt' me. oh no. chavo, please stop. /s


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## James Meadowlark (Nov 19, 2020)

Sucks. Had a similar situation when I was living in a group house in college. We had a roomate move out, didn't need to have anyone move in, but offered his room to a 'friend of a friend' who was in a bad situation, and seemed cool and reasonable enough when we (me and my roomies) met with him over a pitcher of beer at a local bar. 

Dude turned out to be a gas huffer, like you'd literally have to check under the wheels of your car every morning to make sure he wasn't passed out underneath, gas-cap in hand. Saved him from heat-stroke a dozen times after he disappeared in the back yard for an hour and found him in the shed unconscious in our closed shed after huffing from the lawnmower and breathing paint in the middle of August in Florida. Also had homeless people over (not travelers, couch surfers, etc. but homebum crackheads) late at night to do hard drugs. There are a million stories with that guy, but I really hope he's put his life together by now, we're all almost fifty by now.

It almost came to fisticuffs on move out day when our lease ended (he never paid anyway). 

If you're going to invite someone to share your home for more than a few days, you really need to be careful, and if I were someone being offered a spot, I would not be offended if the residents were especially careful with me. No good deed goes unpunished, and it works both ways.


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## danidatx (Nov 25, 2020)

The first thing I see on the internet after a two day procedure is a post that says it excludes me but still has my name and face attached to it - that’s not exactly leaving me out of it and is a violation of my consent.

It meant a lot to find some secure housing during a pandemic. When I was on the phone with Chavo, after I asked you to give us some time to figure something out, people were antagonizing him and threatening to call the cops. At no point when I spoke to him was he being aggressive.. It was pretty wild.

It’s not creepy that there were issues after you learned of my condition, but it is strange that things seemed fine until that point. He was such an asshole he got invited back to bike polo? I dunno man. 

Using your platform to throw mud on a person who you admitted to not having issues with in the past, who you made houseless during a national health crisis while in a great deal of personal turmoil is shitty. This isn’t call out” post, it’s a hit piece with a lot of petty insults and also some toxic and harmful ones.

Anyone who calls the cops is definitely not a comrade. Anyone who kicks someone out after learning that he and his partner are going through a really emotionally difficult situation is not a friend.


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## Matt Derrick (Nov 28, 2020)

danidatx said:


> It meant a lot to find some secure housing during a pandemic. When I was on the phone with Chavo, after I asked you to give us some time to figure something out, people were antagonizing him and threatening to call the cops. At no point when I spoke to him was he being aggressive.. It was pretty wild.


So I just made everything up. Sure. Makes sense.



danidatx said:


> It’s not creepy that there were issues after you learned of my condition, but it is strange that things seemed fine until that point. He was such an asshole he got invited back to bike polo? I dunno man.


He did not get invited back to bike polo. Your 'condition' played no part in our decision to remove Chavo from the house.



danidatx said:


> Using your platform to throw mud on a person who you admitted to not having issues with in the past, who you made houseless during a national health crisis while in a great deal of personal turmoil is shitty. This isn’t call out” post, it’s a hit piece with a lot of petty insults and also some toxic and harmful ones.


I understand your need to side with someone you've been in a relationship with for a long time, but this 'hit piece' is an accurate re-telling of the events so that when Chavo's lies appear, I can point to this thread instead of having to constantly defend myself against victim-blamers.

I'm strongly encouraging you to re-evaluate the version of events being told to you by Chavo and why it is so _vastly _different than the ones posted here and witnessed by three other individuals. Either we're all lying in a grand conspiracy against Chavo (that has no motivation, i.e. "just because"), or he simply fucked up by being a complete and utter douchebag.

The short version is that he is lying to you.



danidatx said:


> who you made houseless during a national health crisis


I also want to point out that this is another falsehood that Chavo kept screaming about during his seven-hour sit in. We (the residents of the apt) did nothing to make Chavo 'homeless' (he was already homeless, and failed to take even the simplest steps to get on the lease, despite agreeing to do so before he arrived) and using COVID as an excuse to make us look like terrible people is not only disingenuous, but is also extremely petty.

On a side note, let's not forget that Chavo had a car to sleep in, a storage unit to put his things, $2,000+ dollars in the bank (from unemployment payments) and claims to be a punk/traveler of some kind, yet incessantly complained about the idea of having to spend one night alone on the streets. Wow, that dude is sure hardcore.



danidatx said:


> Anyone who calls the cops is definitely not a comrade. Anyone who kicks someone out after learning that he and his partner are going through a really emotionally difficult situation is not a friend.


Anyone that gets in multiple arguments in four days, physically threatens myself and others, leaves hard drug paraphanalia behind and steals our internet cable box on the way out is not a comrade, and there is no justifications for his actions. _Especially _after we went so far out of our way to welcome Chavo and help him.

We offered him two weeks to find a new place, explained why we were doing this (very rationally), I even offered to help him move his things out, and he still just exploded and started screaming about how he'd beat the fuck out of me before going to hide in his room. We literally negotiated with him for seven hours though his ranting and screaming and threats of violence before calling the police. When he did finally leave,_ we even gave him his rent money back._

If we were 'real punx' I guess we would have just physically removed him, which we seriously considered so the cops wouldn't get involved. But due to the psychotic manner in which he was acting at the time, he had completely broken any shred of trust there was between us and _*there was literally no guarantee*_ he wouldn't either start smashing our windows once ejected, or call the cops himself.

This was further proven when he came to collect his things (which we did not disturb, out of respect, despite the immense amount of disrespect he'd shown us), again threatening one of the roommates with physical violence "I know where you live" and stealing our cable internet box in a pathetic act of petty revenge on his way out when we weren't looking.

_*That is the kind of individual you have chosen to associate yourself with. *_Your defense of him just strengthens my justification for your inclusion in the photos contained in the OP.


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## Coywolf (Nov 28, 2020)

danidatx said:


> The first thing I see on the internet after a two day procedure is a post that says it excludes me but still has my name and face attached to it - that’s not exactly leaving me out of it and is a violation of my consent.
> 
> It meant a lot to find some secure housing during a pandemic. When I was on the phone with Chavo, after I asked you to give us some time to figure something out, people were antagonizing him and threatening to call the cops. At no point when I spoke to him was he being aggressive.. It was pretty wild.
> 
> ...



I'm not sure why you are claiming that Matt *made* this person homeless...it sounds very much like this person made themselves houseless via their own actions. Actions, it seems, that were dealt with much more leeway than most other people would have given. 

Also not really seeing why Matt and his roommates would just randomly throw some person on the streets just for the hell of it. Especially during a pandemic. Would you be willing to agree that is a valid point?


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## snailormoon (Nov 30, 2020)

I do think that Chavo's actions were very fucked up...however, I do feel that his partner's privacy should have been respected more in this instance. As a friend of the parties involved, I've tried to remove myself from the situation to be honest. I haven't been vocal about my thoughts on it thus far.
As far as the matter of how Chavo's drug use is represented in this post...while Matt and his roommates have every right to not allow the use of certain substances in their home, I do feel it was a bit overkill to take pictures of rigs and pipes for everyone to see. I understand that this may have been in an effort to better illustrate the situation, but I just feel that its harmful to use the word "junkie" and take pictures of a person's drug paraphernalia. There are so many people in this community (many that I care about) that struggle with drugs and would never act this way. I don't know, maybe this wasn't the place to mention this, but I just felt it was important to voice that.


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## Andrea Van Scoyoc (Dec 25, 2020)

WHY do people have to be such P.O.S's? 

Why can't people just be decent and not cause trouble?

Sounds like this guy has untreated mental illness, which could explain a LOT. 

I'd love to start a "Rest Spot," for fellow misfits but it's stories like this, that stop me. 

I don't expect to get many takers anyway, if I do...

I won't allow booze, drugs etc, as Father Cedar's Sisters is a Celtic religion based organization.


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## Matt Derrick (Jan 1, 2022)

One of my roommates came across this posting in a roommate finding Facebook group, looks like chavo is still being chavo


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## Bleachbomb (Jan 1, 2022)

Matt Derrick said:


> One of my roommates came across this posting in a roommate finding Facebook group, looks like chavo is still being chavo
> 
> View attachment 67347


Thank you for posting this here. I read your whole post on chavo and it's almost as if we littlerally went through the same thing. I think it's funny that dani is telling you that you are no comrade because you had to phone the police but she in fact called the police when we were attempting to evict them after giving them two weeks to move out. I agree that it's quite curious for two street punks that boast about squatting and living in sheds, they seem to hate the idea of being kicked out for their own ridiculous behavior. They also smoked in our house after we took away the wifi since they weren't paying for it.


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## NewMexicoJim (Jan 7, 2022)

No one has any obligation to endure violence or threats of violence, not for an hour much less 5 days. You really bent over backwards for the guy. I'm just glad you and roomies are ok. If someone is an asshole today and also the next day, then it isn't going to change, not in my experience.


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