Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [2]
“Take another deep breath, Chapman,” the guard demanded.
“Wait!” I screamed. “Stop! This can’t be happening. I’m too young to die. I want to live. I’ll do better. I promise.” I was pleading for my life.
“Ain’t no one gonna help you now, Chapman. You’re a dead man. Breathe in.” And that was the last thing I heard.
CHAPTER 1
Lucy Pemoni
October 31, 2007
“Duane, Duane. Big Daddy, wake up. You’re dreaming again.” Beth gently shook me as she often does when I have a nightmare. It took me a second to realize I was safe.
Hell, it took me a second to realize that I was still alive.
I’d been having a lot of bad dreams lately. I get scared once in a while, especially when things are going good. I was enjoying the success of my first book, You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide, which debuted number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The charges against me in Mexico for the capture of Andrew Luster were about to be dropped, and my show on A&E was enjoying great success. When things are going like that, I often wonder if I will wake up someday and realize it was all a dream.
There’s some deep hidden fear inside me that all of my hard work and perseverance don’t mean squat—that it could go away in the flash of a moment. When I let my thoughts go there, I try to snap myself out of it so I don’t dwell on the negative, but rather focus on the positive—all the good things in my life that surround me. Ever since I went to prison in Mexico, I’ve frequently had terrible dreams of doing bad things like robbing a bank or, worse, killing someone. When I wake up after having one of those dreams, I have to remind myself, You didn’t commit that felony. It was only a dream. You’re the Dog! You don’t kill people, you help them. It’ll be OK.
Thankfully, I didn’t kill Magic that day in Boulder, but I could have. What actually happened was that I did take a shot at him, but I purposely shot too low. I missed the front of his bike by an eighth of an inch. I saw my bullet ricochet off the pavement. I don’t know why I pulled my gun at all, but I guess I just wanted to show off. Or maybe I wanted Magic to know he couldn’t…or shouldn’t mess with me.
I didn’t want anyone to know I had chickened out and purposely missed, because that went against everything I was as a Disciple. The Lord was right. There is a fine line between success and failure. I walked it for years. I have been to the edge many times, but I’m no killer. Never was, never will be. Even so, ever since Mexico, I keep having those dreams and they scare the living hell out of me.
For those of you who might not know about the Andrew Luster situation, here’s a quick overview of what happened. In the summer of 2003, Tim “Youngblood” Chapman, my son Leland, and I went to Mexico to track down Andrew Luster, the heir to the Max Factor family fortune. Luster was arrested in 2000 suspected of eighty-seven counts of rape and was standing trial in Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles.
Luster was considered a wealthy playboy who spent his days surfing off the beaches of Southern California and his nights partying at his beachfront home or college bars in Santa Barbara. He was a complete womanizer with $31 million in the bank to support his party-boy lifestyle.
Beth and I were flying from Honolulu to Los Angeles on January 5, 2003, when twenty minutes into the flight Beth woke me up to show me the headline from the Los Angeles Times:
HEIR TO MAX FACTOR FORTUNE MAY HAVE JUMPED MILLION-DOLLAR BAIL
By the time our plane landed in L.A., Luster was officially on the run. He failed to show up for his court date. He had removed his court-ordered ankle monitor two days prior and hadn’t been heard from since. By the time we deplaned, he’d been declared a fugitive and a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
We knew finding Luster would be a challenge, which made hunting him all the more interesting. Beth took the reins to make sure we did everything by the book. She