Monday, October 02, 2006

Awesome Article w/ Details of Luster bust!!!!

Grateful to be safely home in Hawaii, Duane 'Dog' Chapman and associates reveal why they really fled Mexico after taking down Andrew Luster Fugitive and convicted rapist Andrew Luster is finally off the streets and locked away in prison where he can no longer entice young women into his sadistic world of handcuffs, drugs and sexual assault. The notorious cosmetic heir is now just another sexual predator behind bars, but the intense publicity sheen that has covered the worldwide manhunt since last January shows no signs of fading. If anything, interest in Luster's sadistic criminal activity and six-month run from the law took on a fresh new glow last month following his stunning capture in Mexico. Authorities found handcuffs, ropes and video equipment in Luster's Puerto Vallarta motel room. They also found marijuana and GHB, the "date rape" drug, and a piece of paper with pick-up lines written in Spanish. Hollywood couldn't have scripted a more dramatic finale, but it's working on it. A made-for-TV movie about the case was in final production last month but reportedly had to be halted so the ending could be rewritten to include the capture. Luster, the 39-year-old great-grandson of cosmetics tycoon Max Factor, fled California last January in the middle of his trial for 86 counts stemming from the rapes of three women who were incapacitated with GHB. At the time, he was free on a $1 million bond. Police searches of Luster's California home turned up graphic videotapes of Luster having sex with women who appeared to be either asleep or unconscious. After his disappearance, the jury convicted Luster in absentia, sentencing him to 124 years in prison. He has since been returned to California and is now at the Salinas Valley State Prison, where he'll be eligible for parole in 104 years. Meanwhile, as Tinseltown renews its faith in life being stranger than fiction, the tale has taken yet another turn. Suddenly, the high-profile villain is being upstaged by a lesser known hero. With Luster caught and incarcerated, the story film producers and book publishers are now salivating over is the astonishing ordeal endured by the three bounty hunters who took Luster down. Duane "Dog" Chapman, arguably the most famous bounty hunter in the world, had been tracking Luster since the criminal jumped bail in January. The veteran bloodhound who claims he has made over 6,000 collars in his 25-year career, pulled out all of his tricks for this one, including appearances on CNN and national television programs such as America's Most Wanted, where he taunted Luster and solicited assistance from the public in his manhunt. It paid off. Last month he received a tip from a couple who had just returned from vacationing in Puerto Vallarta where they felt certain they'd seen Luster. Though the couple notified the FBI that same day, it was Chapman who moved on the information first. With his son Leland and associate Timothy Chapman, he tracked Luster's car to the beach resort and located the hotel where the fugitive was staying. Most media accounts, initially gleaned primarily from local authorities, have since reported that around 5 a.m. on June 18, the trio, accompanied by a two-man film crew, apprehended Luster at a taco stand just outside the Hotel Los Angeles. In the days immediately following the arrest, reports were sketchy and varied. On June 19, Court TV reported that Chapman and his team had actually seized the fugitive heir, who'd been using the alias David Carrera, in Zoo Bar, near the intersection of avenues Mexico and Honduras. The report says the Chapmans used mace and handcuffs to subdue Luster and that they then piled into two trucks, a Chevrolet Suburban and a Chrysler Voyager, and fled. By the next day, June 20, the international media was all over the event. They reported that local merchants who witnessed the scuffle alerted local police who then intercepted the two vehicles minutes later outside of town and arrested all six men, charging all but Luster with kidnapping. Bounty hunting is considered kidnapping in Mexico and is illegal. Luster was handed over to the FBI and extradited back to the United States the following week. The camera crew, Boris Krutonog and Jeff Sells, were released within hours of the arrest, but the bounty hunters weren't released until June 23. All three were charged with criminal association and deprivation of liberty, counts that carry up to eight years in prison. They also were told to remain in Puerto Vallarta and check with the court every Monday awaiting trial. A week later, they left the country, eventually making their way to Los Angeles, where at a news conference Chapman dismissed claims that he had violated the terms of his bail for missing a court appearance in Mexico. Sporting a black eye, Chapman told reporters his lawyers are handling the issue and that he will continue to cooperate with the Mexican courts. Chapman, who owns Da Kine Bail Bonds in Honolulu and three more in Colorado, returned to Hawaii July 11, triumphant but bruised and shaken. He says he's lost 20 pounds since his incarceration in Mexico. Tim and Leland say they've lost 12 pounds apiece. In their first in-depth media interview since their release from jail, the three amigos agreed to sit down with MidWeek to "set the record straight" about their ordeal in Mexico. Sitting next to Leland and Timothy at a large patio table by the pool in the back yard of his home in Kahala, Dog Chapman looks dogged out. He wears a leather poncho given to him as a gift in Puerto Vallarta and his trademark black jeans and silver-toed snakeskin boots. Leland and Timothy, both decked out in black, look gaunt and reserved. All three are visibly edgy. They chain-smoke and wear dark sunglasses throughout the interview. Leland's wife, Maui, and Timothy's wife, Davina, sit quietly to the side as Chapman's longtime partner Beth Smith prepares a huge pitcher of ice water in the kitchen. "We're just waiting for the lawyer to show up," Smith announces as she brings the water and glasses to the table. Within minutes, Honolulu attorney Guy Matsunaga appears, introduces himself and sits in a chair next to Dog. The bounty hunters currently retain the services of 15 lawyers, several to represent their interests in Hollywood, the rest to see them through the messy episode south of the border. "We had a big meeting with the lawyers this morning about what we can and cannot say," Smith says to establish ground rules. Chapman's spokesperson is apparently just one of the many hats she wears for the team. "So, I'd like you to ask Timothy and Leland some questions, Duane will make a few comments and we'll tell you if we can talk about it or not." The first question is what was it like in the Mexican jail, to which Smith immediately responds, "They can't talk about that." "Well, no, we can talk about some of it," Chapman tells her. A brief debate ensues, a scene that repeats itself every few minutes for the next two hours. Chapman finally turns and says, "We're lucky to be alive." "They starved us," Timothy speaks up and says. "When we first got there, they gave us a piece of paper that said, 'This is a poor country ... If you don't know somebody who can send you food and water, you won't have any." Dog says Timothy Chapman, 38, whom the media has reported as being everything from his son to his brother to his nephew, is not even related to him, that they simply share the same surname. "Tim started working for me when he was 17," Chapman says. "So what's that, 21 years? In Mexico they thought he was one of my sons, so we let them think that so they wouldn't split us up." It's a good thing they didn't. In reference to the shiner under his right eye earlier this month, Chapman says, "We had some scuffles." A few minutes later, ignoring protests from Smith, he says they were in fights from the first day they were in jail. "It was so dark we couldn't tell day from night," he says, adding that they didn't know if they were fighting guards or other prisoners. "We just got back-to-back and fought our way through it together. We were the last three standing in our cell. The others, they picked up off the ground and dragged them somewhere else." At first the Chapmans were kept in a jail in Puerto Vallarta, then transferred under heavy guard some 70 miles in the back of a pickup truck to the state penitentiary in Jalisco. The night before their release, they were transported back to Puerto Vallarta in the back of another pickup. "I was sitting right over the muffler in the back and it was burning the s-- out of me," Timothy recalls. "We couldn't move because the truck was full of guards with machine guns. I definitely had the worst seat in the house." Timothy says they were given no food or water the first two days. Mercifully, members of the media, who showed up en masse and camped outside of the prison, tossed bottles of water through the bars to help the three men stave off severe dehydration. By the third day, Beth had hired several Mexican attorneys who started bringing them food. As for the arrest of Luster, the three bounty hunters say they can't give details on the actual capture, presumably because of legal issues, but also because they don't want to break agreements with movie and television producers or pre-empt an upcoming book about Chapman called In Dog We Trust. The book is being written by former MidWeek managing editor Bill Mossman, who says it should be released sometime this fall. Still, Chapman appears eager to correct some of the things he has read in the media about the Luster take-down. "First of all, we never maced him, never," he points out adamantly. "We have the whole thing on videotape," Smith adds, saying the full story will be divulged in the upcoming book, and the footage will tell the whole story once they release it. "I won't give you details," Chapman says, "but one of the cameramen filming the capture took his eye away from the camera to watch and later said he'd never seen anything so fast in his life. We've been working together a long time and know what we're doing." The self-proclaimed "greatest bounty hunter in the world" may appear to be a wild man, but according to Mossman, who has researched Chapman's life for over a year, he is a precise technician when it comes to staging and executing a collar. "He doesn't just run in and jump on someone yelling yeehaw!" Mossman says. "He was trained by the FBI and orchestrates each capture very carefully." "Another thing that hasn't been reported in the media is that we had a police officer with us at the capture," Dog reveals. "He didn't participate in the capture, but he accompanied us and was at the scene." The significance of this information is that it challenges allegations from the Mexican government, the FBI and the National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents that Chapman entered Mexico illegally and had planned to circumvent local authorities to spirit Luster out of the country illegally. "We weren't arrested leaving town," Chapman says, referring to widely reported charges by local police. "We were on our way to the police station. This cop can vouch for that. We were trying to do it right." Leland Chapman, who has remained silent up to this point, speaks up and says, "We were just two and a half blocks from the police station when they arrested us." Now 26, Leland has been working with his dad since he was 15. On stakeout in Puerto Vallarta, he was the one who positively identified Luster at a nightclub the night before the capture. He called his father, who was in another town at the time, and told him he was "1,000 percent sure" it was Luster. "I called (his dad) and said, 'Yeah, I'm positive ... I touched him," Leland recalls. "I didn't actually touch him, I walked right by him. He said 'What's up?' and I said 'What's up?' I was standing right next to him." Ironically, Dog Chapman's own checkered past with the law may actually lend some credibility to his insistence that he was trying to take Luster in to local authorities. The born-again Christian had been arrested 18 times for armed robbery before being convicted in 1977 on a murder charge and serving two years in prison. As a convicted felon, he only has to mess up once -something as minor as trespassing, and he goes back to jail. Even though the Luster grab was in another country, sources close to the family say it's unlikely someone as careful as Chapman would enter the country illegally and risk an endrun around the authorities. Chapman says he and his team were never actually charged with kidnapping, which he says was an allegation fueled by the governor of Jalisco who, he claims, recognized the enormous wealth of Luster's family and then publicly condemned the bounty hunters before formal charges were ever filed. The illegal entry and criminal association charges were dropped while Chapman was still in custody. All that remains is the deprivation of liberty charge, which he says he was told was a misdemeanor the equivalent of a traffic violation. Chapman maintains the judge in his case, Jose de Jesus Pineda, saw through the whole thing immediately. "The judge pulled me aside and whispered, 'You know, the charge against you is a very minor violation." Still, there may be more going on behind the scenes in the Jalisco courtroom than meets the eye. Though the judge has yet to declare Chapman and his associates in violation of their bail, state prosecutors seem anxious to start extradition proceedings to bring them back to court. Smith insinuates this may have something to do with money, citing Luster's family fortune as a possible source. "Why else would they be pushing to bring them back? C'mon, it's a misdemeanor. We pay the fine instead of going to court. They allow that in Mexico." The plot thickens further when Chapman explains, for the first time publicly, why they left Mexico just one week after their release, particularly when they were told to remain until a court date could be set. "Tell him, Leland," Chapman says to his son. The soft-spoken Leland leans forward and says, "A government official approached me and said, 'We have protected you for 14 days, but I don't think we can do that any longer. The cartel is here." "What he was saying is they learned that $300,000 had just hit the street and that our lives might be in danger," Dog says. "The drug cartel is really pissed at us right now." This, from a man who has made a living from his keen sense of what's going down on the street. Still, without more information, it's difficult to read between the lines. Attempting to elaborate without saying too much, Smith says, "Think about it ... they (Dog, Leland and Timothy) escaped out of the country, and their man (Luster) went to jail." It's anyone's guess why a drug cartel would be mixed up in this case. Had they been given a contract? If so, who would have had an interest in retribution? Regardless, the Deep Throat threat received by Leland caused the three men to leave the country that same day. The story of their daring and arduous exodus by ground will be revealed at a later date, Smith says, leaving one to wonder if that means it will be an episode in the weekly television series Chapman signed for earlier this year. "I'll go back to court in Mexico if they need me to be there," he says. "I think the judge will find us not guilty, because we are not guilty." "The bottom line is there's a serial rapist back in jail," Timothy points out. "He's not out there raping women anymore."
And thank Dog for that.

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