Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given (2010)

by Chapman, Duane Dog

  “You got it, Dog,” he told me. “Let me know how it goes.”

  When we got to the jail, vivid memories of my time in Huntsville flooded my head. When I stared up at the one giant fan blowing hot air into the entire building, I thought, This had to be built by Texans. It was so much like the prison I was in; same color too. Before long, Fred and I were greeted by the most redneck son of a bitch I had ever met. He was worse than any officer or warden I lived with for my entire eighteen months inside. Even so, I had to be cool because I needed the officer to cooperate so I could get my man.

  “Officer Chapman, I’ve heard an awful lot about you, son,” he said.

  I shook his hand and introduced him to Fred. “This is my partner, Fred. Show him your badge, Fred.” I could see a look of panic come over Fred’s face as I cajoled him along.

  “That’s not necessary, boys. What can I do you for?” This good ol’ Southern boy couldn’t have been more accommodating as I began to tell him our story.

  Just as I thought I’d closed the deal to hand over Halligan, my cell phone rang. It was my old buddy, Keith Paul. He’d heard about what I was doing and thought he’d check in to see if I needed a hand. I played it cool, like Keith was my boss. I handed the prison officer my phone so he could talk to Keith, too.

  “Keith Paul, FBI. The guy they’re tracking is a sucker.” Keith’s unexpected call gave us the last bit of credibility we needed to get our man without hesitation from the officer. The only rub here was he now thought we were federal marshals, although we never said we were. Because of the call from Keith, the officer asked us to come back to the property room before he’d hand over the fugitive, so we could check something out they found when they arrested my guy. He opened up a jar full of clear liquid and asked me to smell it.

  “What is it?” the officer asked.

  “Jesus, you’ve got a half a million dollars’ worth of speed in there,” I answered. “It’s liquid meth, bro.”

  The officer called the sheriff and told him what they had. The sheriff made a beeline back to the jail so he could see what was going on for himself.

  “Let’s go do a raid, boys,” the officer said as soon as he hung up the phone. So the sheriff, Fred, and I, along with another eighteen officers, paid a surprise visit to every inmate’s cell. I was pulling a wagon behind me because I was certain we’d need it for the evidence we were about to find.

  “How you doing, fellas?” I asked the first two inmates we searched. “You know what this is? It’s Christmas Day. Get out here while we search your cell.” After turning the place upside down, I came out with several boxes of illegal contraband.

  The sheriff was stunned by my discovery. “Jesus Christ!” he said.

  Fred was nervous the entire time. He was worried they’d figure out we were just a couple of bounty hunters and not feds. I pulled him aside in the hallway and tried to calm his nerves.

  “Let them assume whatever they want, Fred,” I whispered to him. “I never told them we were the law. They came up with that all on their own. We’ve done nothing wrong here.”

  Unfortunately, everything I said failed to get through and calm Fred down. He became consumed with the idea that he and I were going to end up in jail for our charade. Fred’s skin, which was normally of a dark complexion, had turned a light white. He was scared to death. Fred looked at me and said, “Do you remember cell number seven? I want that one because it was the cleanest we saw. We are all done, Dog. We are in the South. They’ll never let us go. It’s over. I know it is.”

  When we finally got to Halligan’s cell, I immediately knew he was my guy. It was definitely him. When Halligan looked up and saw me standing there, all he could say was “Oh shit.”

  I took a step forward and looked him dead in the eyes through the bars of his cell. “Warren, my man,” I said. “Who is the greatest bounty hunter in the world?”

  “Damn, Dog. It’s you,” he answered.

  “You ran on Mary Ellen, brotha,” I told him. “That’s a bad thing to do.”

  He was in total shock and disbelief he’d been found. Warren thought he’d do his ninety-day stint inside the joint and then be let out a free man. He already had a new name and identity. If he got through his sentence, he’d be long gone.

  The sheriff informed Fred and me that we could take Warren the next day. He even offered to let us stay with him at his house, but Fred couldn’t bring himself to take him up on it. He wanted to call Mary Ellen and tell her what was going on so she would know we were definitely going to jail. After all, we were still pulling the wool over the sheriff’s eyes by continuing to let him think we were the law.

  The following morning, Fred and I showed up at the jail as planned, to grab Halligan. All we had to do was get him in our car and we were out of there. But just as the officers were about to escort him out, the sheriff called us back inside. He told us to head over to the district attorney’s office down the hall. When I asked why, the sheriff explained that the DA was the only person who could sign the extradition papers.

  When Fred and I walked into the DA’s office, there was another sheriff waiting for us.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” the DA asked. Man, was he pissed.

  “I’m not sure what you are talking about, sir,” I calmly answered. Under the circumstances, I thought being polite could only help things.

  “You’ve been down here telling everybody you’re FBI. Well, we just checked with the Bureau and they tell us you’re a damned bounty hunter.”

  Technically, I had never told anyone anything, because no one ever asked. “Just because I had an agent on the phone doesn’t mean I told anyone I was in the FBI,” I pointed out to the district attorney. “If your guys jumped to that conclusion, that’s their fault, not mine.”

  Fred was panicked by this exchange. He wouldn’t even sit down in the DA’s office. Throughout the entire discussion, he kept pulling me aside and saying, “We’re going to jail, I told you, Duane. We’re definitely going to jail.” He sounded like Rain Man, repeating himself as he paced and said, “Oh my God” over and over. I kept telling Fred we weren’t going anywhere but the airport. Jail wasn’t in the cards.

  I began laying into the DA for his dumb-ass sheriff not knowing about the dope he had in custody or that he had an inmate incarcerated under a false identity who was wanted on a $250,000 federal warrant or inmates who were hoarding all sorts of contraband.

  “Listen, Mr. Smart Ass DA! I want my man,” I insisted.

  “The only thing I’m going to give you is a one-way ticket to jail unless you get your ass out of my town, and I mean right now!”

  “I ain’t leaving without my man,” I repeated. Fred and I had come too far to go home empty-handed. Perhaps the sheriff knew I wasn’t going to budge until I got what I wanted. He finally caved in, if for no other reason than to get rid of me, and said, “I’ll give you a body receipt, but that’s it. He’s not going anywhere. He’s our man now.”

  I was fine with that because a body receipt was enough to get Mary Ellen off the bond. I didn’t care about Halligan or where he ended up as long as Mary Ellen and Fred were released of their obligations. The judge took them off the bond right away. This Dog always gets his man.

  END OF INTERMISSION ONE

  CHAPTER 12

  Lucy Pemoni

  When I was a young boy, my grandpa used to tell me the story of Humpty Dumpty. Over the years, I adapted that famous children’s rhyme to fit my personality a little better.

  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

  Got together and put him back together again

  Whenever I’d repeat my version of the nursery rhyme, Grandpa was quick to point out I wasn’t repeating it right. But I knew exactly what I was saying. I liked my version better because I’ve always been a fixer of men, not a destroyer. I never liked the thought of a man being so fragile that he
breaks. I visualized the king’s men busting out a giant tube of Elmer’s glue and piecing Humpty Dumpty back together until he was as good as new.

  In a way, that’s how I see myself when I capture fugitives today. I am not out to destroy these people. My intent is to help them put their lives back together. I believe everyone deserves a second chance and an opportunity to right the wrongs they have done.

  There’s a human limit to how much pain someone can take before they break. When I was in prison, I watched plenty of guys pay an inmate named Skinner to take his toilet brush and break their arms so they wouldn’t have to work in the fields. When he hit their bare skin, their arm would break. You could actually hear the bone crack. The guys screamed in horrible agony for a few minutes and then, as quickly as the pain hit, it was gone. The mind takes over and protects the body by putting it into a state of shock so you stop feeling anything. I thought these guys were all nuts. There was nothing that would ever convince me to harm myself like that just to avoid hard labor.

  Murder one didn’t break me. Mexico didn’t break me. Losing my daughter didn’t break me. But there were times when I thought I just might shatter from the fallout of the “N” word debacle. I told Beth on several occasions I wasn’t sure I would make it through. But she didn’t buy into my self-pity. Beth has always been tough on me, but she is also my greatest supporter. When we took our vows to stand by each other through thick and thin, we both knew we’d be in for a heck of a ride. There’s no one I’d rather have in my corner when the chips are down than my Beth.

  After the Enquirer story broke, I met an eighty-five-year-old black man who put his arm around me and said, “Where I come from, Dog, that word means ‘slave.’” He began to cry as he continued. “Growing up, all I heard from people was ‘N***er, go get this and go get that.’ It was not considered a bad word—it was just the way things were back then. I can promise you though, this will pass.”

  All I could manage to say to this man was “I’m sorry.”

  “Dog, I promise you, this is going to pass. You will be forgiven.”

  I didn’t understand what he meant by “pass,” because I’d spent the thirty years since I left prison paying for my felony. I didn’t want to spend the next thirty paying for my ignorance.

  The old man began to tell me a story about a guy who drove his car off a bridge with a woman other than his wife in the passenger seat. He got his seat belt off and was able to swim to safety, but he left the woman in the car. He fled the scene but didn’t call the authorities until after her dead body was found the following morning. The next day he called the police to tell them his car was in the river and so was the woman. That’s when he told me he was talking about Ted Kennedy.

  “If America can forgive Kennedy for something like that, surely they will find mercy in their heart for you,” the old man said. “What you uttered is nothing compared to that incident. You will be forgiven and yes, this will pass.”

  I have always been a huge fan of the Kennedy family and all they have done for our country. I think about the late Senator Ted Kennedy today and how the world loved him. His legacy will live on forever.

  I understood the message the old man was trying to convey, and yet the words of the Old Testament kept coming back to me, “lest ye forget.” I hoped and prayed the old man was right, but I feared he was just being kind and consoling. I had a long road ahead of me to turn around the thoughts of all the people I had hurt, but I believed it could be done, because I know most people have mercy and forgiveness in their hearts.

  After my appearances on Hannity and Colmes and Larry King Live, the phones didn’t stop ringing with requests to be on numerous other talk shows. Producers from Dr. Phil repeatedly called to see if I’d be willing to appear with two leaders in the African-American community, T. D. Jakes and Al Sharpton. I refused the invitation several times before they stopped calling. In my absence, Dr. Phil went on the air and called me a coward. No one does that to me without some type of fight, so I started referring to Dr. Phil as the “Great White Dope” in all of my interviews. Dr. Phil kept pushing my buttons by challenging me every chance he got, but I wasn’t falling into his trap. He tried as hard as he could to get me to my breaking point, but he never put me over the edge.

  Dr. Phil wanted the drama of a confrontation between honorable men and a supposed racist, all in the name of television ratings. I wasn’t going to serve as his puppet. If I was going to be confronted by someone like Al Sharpton, I thought it would be much better and more effective to meet him head-on, so I called 411 and asked for his number. I hunt people who don’t want to be found for a living. Finding someone who doesn’t even know I’m looking for him is a cakewalk.

  When the young woman operator gave me the number for Sharpton’s organization, the National Action Network, I dialed it right away.

  “Hello, is this Al Sharpton’s place?” I asked.

  “Yes it is. How can I help you?” The woman’s voice on the other end of the phone sounded like she got a thousand phone calls like mine every single day.

  “I need to speak to Reverend Sharpton. My name is Duane Chapman. I’m Dog the Bounty Hunter and I am in a heap of trouble.”

  There was a short pause and then I heard, “Yes, I believe you are, sir.”

  I was relieved the young woman on the other end of the line was so gracious when she heard it was me. I half expected her to slam down the receiver without another word, but she didn’t. I explained I needed to get in touch with the reverend’s secretary or assistant. I knew that would be my best shot to get my message directly through to him. I’ve learned over the years that assistants and secretaries hold the keys to the kingdom. That’s pretty universal in the world of business. If I could make a connection with one of Sharpton’s main people, I’d have a shot with him too. Time was of the essence because Reverend Sharpton is notorious for setting up highly public displays when he is boycotting something. I was worried he was going to organize a march in front of the A&E headquarters to pressure them into firing me for being a racist. It was important to convince someone at his organization that I was a good man who’d made a terrible mistake. I was willing to beg for mercy if I had to.

  “Look,” I continued, “I know you’ve probably read the stories and heard the recording of the conversation I had with my son. I am so sorry about what I said, but I need Reverend Sharpton to know that I am not a racist.” I was pleading with the receptionist to put me in touch with the right person.

  “I think you’ve got an uphill climb, sir,” she told me.

  I swallowed hard. It was the end of the road. And then I heard something I’ll never forget.

  “I am Al Sharpton’s daughter, Dog, and I haven’t answered this phone in years,” she said.

  “Thank you, Lord!” I screamed.

  “I heard the tape and I think it’s all been taken out of context.”

  To hear Al Sharpton’s daughter say she understood my situation meant so much to me. Now all I had to do was convince her to relay my message to her dad. Relief washed over me when she gave me a private number to call her back on the next day.

  I phoned her as planned, but there was no answer. I called again. Still no answer. The third time I called she picked up.

  “Hi, this is Dog.”

  “Hi.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “About what?” My heart was in my throat. I had hoped she was going to give me good news. On the contrary she started to explain that her father had decided to stay out of my situation.

  I had no plan B. Everyone had told me how stupid it was to think I could pick up the phone and get Al Sharpton to back me. They said he’d hang me from the highest tree before joining forces. But I didn’t see it that way. If I could somehow get his support, I believed everyone else would have to follow. I hesitated before I opened my mouth, but I thought this was my last shot at finding a way to her dad.

  “I’ve got to resolve this,” I told her. “Your fa
ther is one of the most courageous and fearless leaders in the black community. He’s never backed down from controversy.” I began rambling as fast as I could. She had me so nervous I was fumbling over my words and thinking I ought to go hang myself since that was what her father was about to do to me anyway. But then she interrupted me.

  “I’m just teasing you, Dog. Dad said he is not going to say anything about the incident if you take care of a couple of things for him.”

  She said Reverend Sharpton wanted me to attend a rally against guns, which I was all too happy to be a part of. She also mentioned Dr. Phil was going to be there too.

  “That Great White Dope? What a peckerwood!” I said. She started laughing on the other end of the line. “I’ll go to the rally, but I’m not getting anywhere near that arrogant jerk.”

  To this day, Reverend Sharpton has kept his word. He never said a negative thing about me. And though there were several people I met along the way who offered me their support, it wasn’t until a chance meeting in January 2008 that I thought I might actually be welcomed back into the African-American community.

  Despite his efforts to get A&E to pull my show, I also reached out to Roy Innis and CORE to see if there was some way to make amends. Mr. Innis was resistant at first, but we were eventually able to set up a meeting to get to know each other. I knew I could turn him around if I spent some face time with him. His son also attended the meeting, and for whatever reason, he was wearing a name tag that read, “Niger Innis.” After spotting it, I looked at Roy in total disbelief.

  “Now, listen,” I told him. “This is my life I’m trying to defend. You mean to tell me you named your son the ‘N’ word?”

  They both broke out in uproarious laughter. “Duane, his name is Niger, as in the river,” Roy said.