Duane Chapman has been involved in several high-profile manhunts, including the search for Brian Laundrie in the wake of Gabrielle Petito’s murder in 2021. Among the most famous fugitives Dog the Bounty Hunter has caught: Andrew Luster, heir to the Max Factor makeup fortune. In January 2003, a court in Ventura, California, found Luster guilty of more than 80 criminal counts, most related to sexual assault, along with some drug and weapons charges. The jury voted on Luster’s case in absentia, because the defendant had fled the United States during a pause in the trial and after posting $1 million bail.
In June 2003, Luster was apprehended in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, by a bounty hunter team led by Duane “Dog” Chapman, months before he’d make his reality TV debut on the odd careers series “Take This Job.” While Luster would be extradited back to the U.S. to begin serving a prison sentence initially set at 124 years, Chapman and his associates remained wanted by authorities in Mexico, where bounty hunting is legally viewed as akin to kidnapping. In 2006, after he’d become a TV star on “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” Chapman was apprehended in Hawaii and charged with illegal detention and conspiracy for his role in tracking down Luster. “You see what the American government is doing to us? They throw us in jail,” Chapman said during his hearing (via NBC’s Today). Facing extradition, trial, and imprisonment in Mexico, Chapman found himself free of legal issues in 2007 when a judge decided that prosecutors had waited too long to start legal proceedings.
