Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given (2010) (7 page)

In the meantime, Tucker was getting into more and more trouble. His stealing got worse. He was always taking things like money, jewelry, and other valuable stuff he could easily get his hands on. He’d steal from anyone without a care or thought about what he was doing. He showed no conscience. He even stole all of his little brother’s and sisters’ Christmas gifts one year, leaving nothing but the discarded wrapping paper under the tree. He cleaned us out, taking everything, including a laptop Beth had bought, jewelry I’d given to her, and even a precious ring my mother had given to me before she passed away.

It was hard for me, but I told Beth to call the police even though I knew we were reporting my own son. This was the first time I had ever done anything like that against one of my children. It was a painful yet
crucial decision because he was out of control and there was nothing I could do to stop him from stealing. I thought the cops might be able to rattle him into straightening out. I was enraged by the situation, but I also understood my son needed help, help that he wouldn’t accept from me. I could hardly bear to listen as Beth made the call. When Tucker was sentenced, the judge told him “there will be a time when your dad cannot and will not be able to help you.” Thankfully, because Tucker was only seventeen and a half, the judge took mercy on him and sentenced him to probation because he was a juvenile.

Even though the judge was easy on him, it wasn’t enough to deter his behavior or keep Tucker out of trouble. By the time he was eighteen years old, his stealing had become even more out of control. One night, Beth and I were watching the evening news when we heard a story about a robbery in a local hotel room. Two men had broken into a hotel and stolen computers and other electronic equipment from a Japanese businessman. They duct taped the man’s hands and feet together so he couldn’t move and covered his mouth so he couldn’t yell for help. Beth looked over at me and said, “That sounds like something Tucker would do.” And she was right, because Tucker always had duct tape around. At first he used it to amuse Bonnie Jo, who was just a baby. She loved touching the sticky part of the tape. And then one day we came home to find Bonnie Jo’s hand taped to the side of her head. Beth warned Tucker not to do that ever again. But that didn’t stop him. Another time, we found the baby’s wrists bound by the tape.

“Someday that tape is going to be the end of you!” Beth warned Tucker.

Although Beth had her suspicions, I never once thought that my son would commit such a serious crime. I have a knack for ignoring the obvious when it comes to my children. When Tucker came by the house the next day, I asked him if he had anything to do with the robbery. He was emphatic in his answer. “No way, Dad. I would never do something like that.” His denial felt sincere and that was all I needed to hear to put my mind at ease.

Somewhere along the way, Barbara Katie, Tucker, and Baby Lyssa
made a pact with one another: They would never rat on each other, ever. But I could tell something was going on because Barbara Katie kept telling me she had something to say but never offered up the information. Beth and I sat Tucker down again and reminded him of the time we called the police on him after he stole the Christmas gifts.

Beth said, “Tucker, if you’ve got something to tell us, say it now before it’s too—”

“OK, I did it!” he confessed.

Beth and I looked at each other.

“Did what?” I asked.

“I stole the computers. I robbed the Japanese guy, Dad. I’m sorry!”

His confession put me in the worst position I have ever been in as both dad and bounty hunter.

“Son, you have to leave my house right now,” I said. “If my phone was to ring and it’s the police asking about you, I’d have to take you in. You need to walk out that door right now. I can’t harbor a known fugitive in my house, Tucker. I could go to jail. You have to go.” This time, there was absolutely nothing I could do to help my son. He was on his own. The anguish and guilt nearly killed me.

Shortly after he fled, I received a call from local authorities who asked me to help them find Tucker. They knew for sure he was one of the guys who pulled off the heist.

“Listen,” I said. “You’re talking about my son. How dare you call and ask me to help you find him. The mayor’s son has been wanted on drug charges four or five times and I am positive you didn’t ask him to find his kid. You wouldn’t call a fellow cop if you were looking for one of his kids. Why would you call me? I won’t do it. I won’t help you arrest my son.” I slammed down the phone.

Tucker was apprehended a couple of weeks later, but not before putting up a good fight. In fact, I heard he was stopped in Honolulu.

“Tucker!” It was a local police officer.

Tucker spun around, got right in the cop’s face, and said, “What did you just say to me? Did you just call me a f**ker? Who the hell are you to call me a ‘f**ker’?”

Apparently a crowd began to gather as Tucker and the cop had this exchange. My son got the police officer so flustered, he let him go. OK, I’ll admit, Tucker should have turned himself in right then and there, but I had to laugh when I heard about this incident because in a strange way, he made me proud with his Chapman charm.

Tucker was sentenced to twenty years in jail, a stiff sentence for the crime he committed. He served four years in an Oklahoma state prison before being paroled. When he was released in 2006, he came to Hawaii to live with Beth and me.

Prison had changed Tucker, but as his dad, I always chose to see my little boy inside the angry young man who stood in front of me. Growing up, I wanted to give him every shot I could at making something of his life. Instead of teaching him how to box like the other boys, I put him in front of a computer. I tried to keep him away from violence because I thought that would deter him from using drugs. It didn’t work out that way. I tried to overcompensate for his circumstances, and much like his mother, I became more of a friend than parent.

There’s a great danger in being a friend to your children. For me, it ultimately cost me the most precious gift of all—one of my kids. Just before marrying Beth, I was faced with one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. As difficult as it was for me to accept, my daughter Barbara Katie, who was living in Alaska with her mother, had gotten in a lot of trouble with drugs. Every time she called home for a little money, I sent it. It was always the same excuse—that she had lost her glasses. After the third call in a month, it finally occurred to me that I was being incredibly naïve. At last I asked, “Are you on drugs?”

“Oh no, Daddy.” And like a fool, I believed her. I kept sending a hundred dollars via Western Union every couple of weeks, under different names so Beth wouldn’t find out. It probably didn’t matter though, because Beth no doubt knew what I was doing anyway.

Beth could see how serious Barbara Katie’s problems had gotten. She insisted that I send her to rehab, but Barbara Katie didn’t want to go. She worried that she’d always be known as “that girl who had a
drug problem.” Beth pleaded with me to send her anyway, but I still couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Beth even suggested we go up to Alaska and bring her to Hawaii. But I couldn’t do that, either. I knew if I brought Barbara Katie back to Hawaii, she and Baby Lyssa would reconnect, which I feared would have horrible consequences. I had spent an enormous amount of time straightening out Baby Lyssa and getting her off drugs when she came to live with me a few years earlier. I was terrified that Barbara Katie would somehow influence Baby Lyssa to go back to using.

Barbara Katie had sent her young son Travis to live with us while she tried to get her life worked out. Our agreement was that I’d take Travis so she could go to rehab. I wanted her to go to Betty Ford or Promises, but she didn’t want to leave home. She wanted to stay in Alaska. A week after she supposedly checked in to a local facility, I got a call from Barbara Katie saying that she was all better. But I knew she was lying and that she had never gotten the help she needed. Miracles happen, but no one gets clean in a week.

Each of my kids has a special place in my heart, but Barbara Katie was my oldest girl. She shared the same sensitivity I have, meaning she’d cry over anything! My mom was the only person I felt I could let my guard down in front of whenever I needed to decompress. We’d cry together for hours until I felt better. After Mom died, Barbara Katie became my crying pal. The night
Dog the Bounty Hunter
debuted on A&E, I was overcome with emotion. The first person I called was my daughter. As soon as she answered, we both lost it. Barbara Katie kept saying how proud she was and how much she hoped to someday be a part of the show. I promised her it would happen because she was family.

“Your dream came true, Daddy.” She was so proud of me. Of all my memories from that first night on television, those are the words I will never forget. We were so close, and that’s why it was extremely difficult to see her messed up on drugs.

Barbara Katie desperately wanted to come to my wedding. But I couldn’t let her attend while she was so strung out. On the day she
died, I heard that she’d asked her mother that morning if I had called yet to say she could come to Hawaii for the big day.

I loved her so much, but I believe
I loved her to death.
Every time I tell someone that, they tell me how sorry they are for my loss. The reality is they shouldn’t feel sorry, because I have dealt with it in every way.

After Barbara Katie died, I received a call from a man who told me he was in a car that was driving behind the vehicle she was in when it flipped. He told me he saw the horrible accident as it happened. When he ran up to the overturned vehicle, he felt the pulse of the man behind the wheel. It was very weak. He told me he talked to the man and tried to tell him everything was going to be OK. Even so, the driver said he was going to die. That’s when the man looked over and noticed another body too. It was my daughter. He explained to me that her head was hanging down to her chest. It was obvious she had broken her neck. The man on the phone told me that he watched the son of a bitch driver who killed my baby take his last breath. He said he called to tell me he was there when the guy died and wanted me to know it was a miserable death.

I thanked him for calling and hung up. I got up from the table, began walking in my backyard, circling the pool, and then I started to cry. Why didn’t his phone call make me feel better? Why was I feeling mercy for the bastard that took my baby’s life? I couldn’t believe I wasn’t finding any comfort knowing that man choked on his own blood.

“God, why? Why do I feel this way?”

And then God spoke.

“This is why you will go out there and share your message with people, Duane. You have a forgiving heart like me. That’s why you’re the Dog. This is what you’re supposed to feel like.”

Being angry with the driver wouldn’t bring my baby back. It wouldn’t heal my shattered heart any quicker, and it wouldn’t allow me to set an example of the true meaning of mercy. Instead of cursing him, I forgave him. I haven’t forgotten any of the pain from that experience,
but I’ve let go of my anger. That act alone gave me the foundation to tell others that they have to do the same thing. Who pays the price when we carry around negative emotional baggage? We do. And where’s the good in that? There is none.

So maybe Barbara Katie’s death was a way for me to reach out and help others see what they choose not to in their own kids. Perhaps her death will remind you to take the blinders off, get your head out of the sand, and pay attention to
your
kid’s addictions. Don’t love your kids to death like I did. It’s not too late to reach out and pull them from the abyss—but you’ve got to take action before something terrible happens or you will regret it for the rest of your life. It was too late for Barbara Katie, and now I saw the same thing happening to Tucker.

Tucker’s attitude had become noticeably worse since meeting Monique. It was obvious that he was going downhill fast, and despite everything I knew in my heart, I did nothing to stop his spiral. He appeared desperate and without proper moral judgment. He didn’t feel good about himself. He’d moan about his felony and the many tattoos he had all over his body that he now regretted. I don’t think he felt desirable, so when Monique began paying attention to him, whether or not I approved of her was pretty irrelevant. She made him feel wanted, and who can blame him for that?

Tucker and Monique started spending a lot of time in clubs. It’s a pretty well-known fact in our family that Chapmans and booze do not mix. It’s a dangerous, deadly, poisonous combination. It basically turns us all into idiots, and Tucker was no exception. I never felt comfortable with Tucker and Monique’s party lifestyle, and I now had a growing concern for my son’s safety and well-being.

I didn’t know if it was the alcohol or something worse, but his temper had become unpredictable and combustible. I suspected that he was on methamphetamines because I had seen him through another period of time when he was on that drug, and his behavior was exactly the same. I also began to notice that Tucker was losing a lot of weight and looked as if he wasn’t getting enough sleep. He looked like hell. Then I heard that Monique had helped him buy a prosthetic penis so
he could pass his urine tests in front of his parole officer by pretending to piss clean urine. He never would have been able to pass the test without it. That’s when I knew for sure that he was back on hard drugs.

The day he came over to say he was quitting work once and for all, he actually threw a twenty-pound patio chair across the pool in a fit of anger. He was spiraling out of control. Drugs had to be a factor, because he was filled with so much rage.

When drugs get ahold of you, they take over all reason and rational behavior. There’s nothing you can do to take back your life except to get off of them. My son didn’t even admit that he had problem, which is always the first step to recovery. In truth, even though I could see what was happening to him, I still couldn’t admit the extent of the trouble he was in, a mistake I will regret for the rest of my life. Beth knew what was going on from the very start. Somehow I put my head in the sand to pretend it wasn’t happening…again.