Duane Chapman skyrocketed to fame in 2004 when his habit of professionally tracking
fugitives was chronicled on A&E's Dog the Bounty Hunter.
And throughout his difficult life, the TV star has proven over and over again, as he
once put it, "You can't keep a good Dog down."
This is the tragic, real-life story of Dog the Bounty Hunter.
"I said to myself in the mirror, I am gonna change and be the best at whatever I do, in
the world."
Having grown up with an admittedly difficult childhood, Duane "Dog" Chapman held nothing
back when he described his painful early years in his 2007 autobiography, You Can Run But
You Can't Hide.
While his home life may have seemed typical from the outside, growing up in a middle class
home in Denver, Colorado, with his mom and dad and three siblings, the bail bondsman
revealed that this wasn't the reality.
He wrote,
"As a young boy, I never knew that other kids didn't get hit by their dads…I simply didn't
know anything different…I was expected to take it like a man.
But I wasn't a man.
I was a young boy looking for love and approval from my father."
"My dad has instilled very strong family values in us, and he's showed me how important it
is to be there for your kids as a father."
Noting that he vowed to break this cycle of abuse in his own family, Chapman also revealed,
"Until very recently, I never understood that none of his abuse was my fault…and yet I
swore that I would never beat my kids."
"I was not a bounty hunter when we started.
As a matter of fact, I was on the other side of the law."
It's safe to say that Chapman's adult life didn't get off to the best start.
As reported by the Toronto Star, a 23-year-old Chapman found himself in a world of trouble
back in 1976.
While living in Texas, the future star was waiting in a car with people, while his friend
bought marijuana off a dealer.
Unfortunately, the drug deal went south, and ended with Chapman's friend shooting the dealer
dead.
Everyone was implicated in the crime.
Chapman told the outlet,
"In Texas in the '70s, if you were present, you were just as guilty.
I shouldn't have [gone].
And I shouldn't have been the person I was back then."
Chapman was released on parole after serving 18 months of a five-year prison sentence.
But that conviction continued to impact Chapman's life decades later, when he was cast on the
U.K.'s version of Celebrity Big Brother and had his visa request denied, barring him from
traveling abroad.
About his criminal record, Chapman told the Toronto Star,
"[It's] something that follows you the rest of your life, no matter who you become or
who you are.
I'm not proud of it."
Chapman's personal life has certainly been a complicated one.
According to Entertainment Tonight, Dog has 12 children and has been married five times.
But about his son, Christopher Hecht, Chapman told the National Enquirer,
"Christopher's mom [Debbie White] [took her own life] in the '70s while I was in a Texas
prison doing 18 months.
I didn't know I had a son until I got out."
While the two formed a relationship after Hecht reached adulthood, Christopher has had
a difficult life, struggling with alcohol abuse, legal trouble, and multiple arrests.
According to his adoptive mother, he went missing in 2007, after serving a 90-day stint
behind bars.
While Hecht eventually reappeared, he continued to find himself in trouble.
In 2014, Chapman revealed to a tabloid that he and his family had organized an intervention
and Hecht agreed to go to rehab.
While Dog was serving his prison sentence in the late '70s, he and his first wife split
up.
Shortly after his release, Duane Chapman married wife Number 2, Anne M. Tengell, with whom
he shares three children, according to Entertainment Tonight.
One of them, a baby boy named Zebediah, was born prematurely on January 1, 1980, and sadly
passed away just 30 days later.
Chapman and Tengell's marriage didn't survive this tragic loss, and the couple divorced.
Chapman would go on to get married and divorced two more times, before meeting the woman who
would become the love of his life, Beth Chapman.
The two tied the knot in Hawaii in May 2006; however, their big day was marred by another
tragic loss.
On the evening before the ceremony, Duane received some devastating news: his 23-year-old
daughter, Barbara Katie Chapman, had passed away in a car accident near her home in Fairbanks,
Alaska.
"There's a time to mourn, and it's not right now.
You think if God wanted to stop this marriage, he would have killed my baby?"
As Chapman's publicist told the news outlet, Chapman met with a minister to discuss the
best course of action.
It was mutually agreed upon that the wedding would go ahead as scheduled, while using the
reception as a celebration of Barbara's life.
In 2011, Chapman was awarded temporary custody of his then-nine-year-old grandson, Travis
Mimms Jr.
According to Radar Online, a judge made the decision after hearing a shocking and deeply
disturbing audio recording of the boy's father, the husband of Chapman's late daughter, Barbara,
allegedly physically harming the couple's son.
As Dog explained to the media outlet, his goal in gaining custody was not to take the
child away from his father, but to simply remove the minor from a dangerous situation.
He said,
"I want [Travis Senior] to take parenting classes…I was beaten by my father, too.
But we have to break that cycle."
Later telling the tabloid that he was quote "shocked and heartbroken" over the abuse,
Chapman revealed that his actions resonated with his late daughter's last words to him.
He said,
"I love my grandson and only want what's best for him.
During the last phone call I had with my daughter, Barbara Katie, she said to me, 'Please, daddy,
take care of Travis Jr.
Don't ever let anything happen to him.'"
Over the course of four days in the spring of 2012, Chapman and his family received menacing
emails that contained graphic threats of violence.
According to Radar Online, the FBI began investigating the messages that May, which threatened an
array of heinous acts against the family.
The Chapmans later issued a statement to confirm that the story was indeed true and that the
reported threats against their lives were real.
It read, via E! News,
"The Chapmans are taking these threats seriously and are very concerned about the safety of
their family…[Chapman] will prosecute to the full extent of the law for the threats
made against his family."
Speaking to the Today show with his wife, Beth, around that time, Duane Chapman revealed
that they'd received a "few" threats over the course of nine years, but this time, it
had gone too far.
Calling the culprit a quote "coward" hiding behind the internet, he added,
"Go ahead and threaten me and whatever, you know, let's meet at noon.
But I don't like when someone threatens my little girls and Beth."
Chapman has unfortunately had some rather fraught relationships with some of his children.
And that has definitely been the case with daughter Lyssa Chapman, who's made headlines
over the years for supposedly feuding with late stepmom Beth amid her battle with cancer
in 2017, and for slamming her father's alleged girlfriend, Moon Angell, in early 2020.
She also made some shocking allegations about her dad back in 2013.
"At the time, when you're young, you don't really realize the bad situation that you're
in."
According to an excerpt of her autobiography, Walking on Eggshells, Lyssa, who's the daughter
of Chapman and his third wife claimed that she saw what she called "drug paraphernalia"
in the family home when she was just five.
Alleging that Duane began using serious drugs when she was in the second grade, Lyssa wrote,
"At about this same time Dad became more and more distracted, and business dropped off
significantly…[He] began smoking a crack pipe like it was a cigarette."
Chapman reportedly denied claims of drug use, later saying he didn't even know what crack
was.
Lyssa continued, writing,
"That maybe explains why when Dad first started smoking crack [from my perspective] he never
tried to hide it."
"I didn't dream of being a bounty hunter, I just dreamed of being with a bounty hunter."
In 2017, Beth and Dog received some devastating news: Beth had a stage two cancerous tumor
growing in her throat.
As The Blast reported, she underwent a 12-hour surgery that September to remove the tumor,
which was seemingly successful.
And an A&E special, Dog & Beth: The Fight of Their Lives, aired that November, featuring
the Dog the Bounty Hunter couple celebrating when Beth was deemed cancer-free.
Chapman said at the time, via E! News,
"This could be a miracle."
Sadly, their happiness was short-lived.
In November 2018, the Chapmans' attorney, Andrew Brettler, told Fox News that Beth had
experienced difficulty breathing and was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital, where a mass was
found in her throat.
During an emergency surgery, doctors discovered the cancer had returned.
Brettler said,
"It's serious and her doctors are evaluating her treatment options."
"Once you find out that it's an incurable lung cancer, where is there to go from there?"
As Beth continued to try alternative treatments, Dog kept fans updated on her condition.
But sadly, in June 2019, Duane Chapman took to Twitter to share some heart-wrenching news:
Beth had passed away following her second cancer battle.
She was 51.
He wrote,
"It's 5:32 in Hawaii, this is the time [Beth] would wake up to go hike Koko Head mountain.
Only today, she hiked the stairway to heaven.
We all love you, Beth.
See you on the other side."
"Who's your favorite man in the world?"
"You."
"And who loves you more than anybody?"
"Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Chapman was understandably devastated by Beth's untimely passing in 2019.
His mourning, however, was cut short by a medical emergency of his own that September.
Just three months after Beth passed away, Dog was hospitalized after complaining of
chest pains at his home in Colorado, with TMZ initially reporting he had suffered a
heart attack.
That report turned out to be inaccurate, but not too far off: Duane himself later announced
he had been diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism, a potentially lethal artery blockage.
"I'm going through some, uh, psychological things right now too, so that doesn't help,
you know."
Speaking with The New York Times in January 2020, Chapman revealed that doctors had recommended
he stay in the hospital to receive treatment, but he refused.
Instead, he said he checked himself out, adding,
"[I pushed] an orderly up against a wall because he wouldn't let me leave…They couldn't stop
me."
During an appearance on The Dr. Oz Show, which was teased shortly after the reality star's
hospitalization, Dr. Oz didn't pull any punches about the seriousness of Chapman's condition.
Chastising him for ignoring care that could save his life, and encouraging him to put
his mental and physical health first, the doctor added,
"You're a ticking time bomb.
You aren't going to be here with the heart the way it is right now."
The loss of his beloved wife and the new knowledge that he had a serious health condition to
confront would be enough of a hit for anyone to handle.
But unfortunately, Chapman experienced even more misfortune in late 2019: he was completely
out of money.
"Previous shows we chased bond jumpers.
Somebody out on bail.
This one we're chasing fugitives."
In his January 2020 interview with The New York Times, Dog discussed his latest bounty-hunting
job, a $1.5-million bond on a fugitive drug dealer who'd bolted from Hawaii to California,
Chapman's quote "biggest bond [he'd] ever written," noting that he would be responsible
for paying if he didn't catch the person.
If the famous bounty hunter, who was also reportedly in charge of handling his late
wife's estate, came up short and didn't manage to bring in the fugitive, he also faced losing
his Colorado home to the bank.
Conceding that he was taking a huge risk, Chapman explained that, with no confirmed
TV contract in hand at the time, he desperately needed an infusion of cash.
Further admitting he was broke, Chapman, whose worth was previously said to be $6 million,
according to Celebrity Net Worth, indicated that his late wife's medical bills had wiped
him out financially.
"I cannot believe that she's gone.
This is not possible.
I wanna wake up from a dream."
The passing of his wife Beth left Chapman feeling lost and rudderless.
The final episode of his series, Dog's Most Wanted, featured an interview with Chapman
filmed shortly after the tragic loss.
In the footage, Chapman is at a particularly low point, revealing how he'd considered taking
his own life.
Admitting that Beth's passing quote "paved a way for [him]," Chapman shared his urge
to overdose on pain meds, according to the Daily Mail.
However, he worried about Beth's reaction should he accelerate his journey to the afterlife.
He said,
"I feel like if I did something to myself right now and passed away…and I got to heaven
and was like, 'Hi honey,'…she would she go, 'You dumbs---, why would you do that?'
Or would she go, 'Wow, you're here.'
I'll be like, 'Of course I'm here.
You left me.
I'm here.'
So, am I obligated to do that?"
Speaking with The New York Times, Chapman's manager, Amy Weiss, revealed that he's quote,
"very lonely."
She added,
"He's lost, but he knows he must go on and provide for his family."
Indeed, Chapman, who's unfortunately also been forced to dispute rumors of his own demise
during this time, opened up about his devastating thoughts on The Dr. Oz Show, crediting family
friend Moon Angell for helping him, as Dr. Oz put it, "choose life."
"She was and is and remains Dog's most wanted."
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.