All Duane "Dog" Chapman wanted to do was capture Andrew Luster, the fugitive Max Factor cosmetics heir who had been sentenced to 124 years in prison for drugging and raping three women at his oceanfront home in California.
Seems like a worthwhile project for a bounty hunter. Chapman, co-owner of Da Kine Bail Bonds in Honolulu, agreed.
"Snagging this guy would be awesome," he told the Honolulu Advertiser in February. It would also mean 15 percent of the $1-million bail Luster had skipped on.
But the deal fell apart in Mexico. Chapman and his posse grabbed Luster in Puerto Vallarta on June 18 but two hours later the local police grabbed them all. They were in a van on the way to the airport at the time.
Now Wasco State Prison in California has Luster, and a judge in Puerto Vallarta ruled on Thursday that Chapman, his son Leland and brother Timothy should stand trial for criminal association and deprivation of liberty - in essence, kidnapping.
Adding insult to injury, others in the bail bond industry have found fault with Chapman's nearly successful mission.
"He represents all of the things that bail agents are trying to get away from," Penny Harding, executive director of the California Bail Agents Association, told the Associated Press. "The cowboy image, the renegade, bring 'em home dead or alive."
In fact, a profile on Chapman's Web site, dogthebountyhunter.com, calls him "the modern-day Billy the Kid." Also a "highly intense, charismatic ex-con and born-again Christian."
Reached by telephone late last week, Chapman's wife Beth Smith declined to talk about the wayward turn of events. "I just found out my husband's not coming home," she said.
Two questions remain unanswered: How soon can the movie be made? And how will it end?
