By Robel Yohannes –
Thirteen-year-old Duane Chapman pulled a knife on his dry drunk dad.
“I was tired of the beatings,” Duane says. “I told him that if he touched me, I would cut him.”
His mother was a fifth generation preacher in the Assemblies of God, but the physical abuse of his father got him kicked out of his home. He turned to a life of crime before returning to Christ in jail. Today Duane Chapman is better known as Dog the Bounty Hunter.
At 15, he saw the Hell’s Angels biker gang at a concert. They wore cool leather jackets, got the girls and commanded respect. People go out of their way. He decided that’s what he wanted to do with his life
He got a fake ID that said he was old enough and joined the associate biker club The Devils Diciples (sic). Because his violent father had taught him how to fight with boxing and karate classes, Duane was able to fight his way up to Sergeant of Arms at the national level.
Seeing he always prayed for his food, the president knighted him “Dog” because it was God backwards.
They would rob hippies who dealt marijuana and LSD, but one robbery went sour. Dog’s biker brother shot the dealer when he reached for a gun. Dog went home and called 911 and thought he hung up the phone. He failed.
As he explained to his then-wife what happened, police were listening in.
Dog didn’t think he would be arrested because even the victim cleared him before he died, but Texas law from the time made you guilty by participation.
Today, Dog says he’s good at chasing people down (as a bounty hunter) but he’s not good at running away. When he heard on the news he was being sought by the law the next day, he ran out the back door – and straight into the hands of sheriff’s deputies.
In jail, he finally read the Bible that his mom was incessantly telling him to read. He also (finally) read The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson.
The prison chaplain visited him. “Is your name Dog because it’s God backwards?” he asked. Dog was blown away. From his pentecostal upbringing, he knew about prophetic words and discernment.
The chaplain said he would pray that Dog’s bail would be reduced. In the 1970s, a bail of $50,000 was impossible for him to make.
“Go ahead and pray,” Dog responded. “It ain’t gonna work.”
But the next day, bail was lowered to $5,000, and he was released with the help of his grandfather. He got a job cleaning the church for that same chaplain. The trial was a year later.
Dog didn’t expect to go to jail. He didn’t pull the trigger. The murderer confessed. Dog had called 911. But because Texas law was hard on guilty-by-association, he was given five years in the penitentiary.
“Why am I here, Lord?” he asked inside the “hole.” The Lord responded: he didn’t commit the crime he was convicted of, but he had committed many, many other crimes for which he didn’t get busted.
“You see every brick that this prison’s built out of,” God said. “Those represent all the laws you broke. You know better than anybody you’re going to reap what you sow.”
Dog applied for and got the job of prison warden’s barber. He never had cut hair before, but he lied on his application and picked up the skill quickly enough. This gave him great favor and protection among all the prisoners because he was a favorite of the warden.
After being released, Dog decided to hunt down bail-breakers for the reward money. He went to the post office and copied the information from the FBI’s most wanted list. He tricked a police supply into getting him a badge, and he got to work. He was a bounty hunter.
When he and his son and an associate tracked down bail breaker Andrew Luster in Puerto Vallarta, Dog grabbed international fame and was given a reality show. Luster had been convicted in absentia for drugging and raping a number of women as the heir of Max Factor cosmetics.
As he was driving Luster out of Mexico, he got pulled over and arrested by Mexican police. He found himself in an international spat, a political bargaining chip. The resolution of his arrest in Mexico was anything but clean and pretty.
IN 2004, A&E launched Dog the Bounty Hunter on television. It ran for eight seasons. His subsequent reality shows included Dog and Beth on the Hunt, Dog’s Most Wanted and Dog Unleashed.
Dog was good at chasing down fugitives, but he also helped the bail-busters by destroying any evidence of crimes they had committed when he took them into custody.
Even though he is illiterate, he has published books You Can Run But You Can’t Hide, Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given and Nine Lives and Counting: A Bounty Hunter’s Journey to Faith, Hope, and Redemption.
He has married six times. He and his current wife Francie are involved in church.
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