Read You Can Run but You Can't Hide Online
Authors: Duane Dog Chapman
You Can Run but You Can't Hide (36 page)
this round clean and true.
After the interview, Roger Diamond came over to talk to me in
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the parking lot. He bet me two bucks I’d never find Luster. I took
the bet.
That evening, I did another interview with Rita Cosby, only this
time it was for her show on Fox. She asked me similar questions but
was far less confrontational than Diamond. I didn’t plan on doing
it, but during that interview, I knew I had to pull the trigger. I had
to enter the race. I told Rita I was going after Luster.
Thus on January 5, 2003, I made it official. “My name is Duane
‘Dog’ Chapman, and I have entered the hunt for Andrew Stuart
Luster.”
God bless Rita Cosby, who believed in me from the start. She
always said, “This Dog can hunt.”
Every bounty hunter worth his salt and several who were just
posers entered the chase too. But it didn’t matter. I would be the
man who brought Luster back to face his crimes. I would see to it
that justice was served. There were other bounty hunters popping
up all over the place, wearing Hawaiian shirts, practically mocking
me, saying I’d never catch the man. I knew for sure if I didn’t catch
him, no one would. My title was on the line.
I called Tony Robbins immediately following the interview.
Sometimes my mouth can get me into trouble, and he always made
me aware of making potentially career-ending decisions and com-
ments. I was afraid I had really stepped in it this time. Tony agreed.
But he also encouraged me to live up to
my
expectations, not down
to everyone else’s. He believed that I could and ultimately would
find Andrew Luster. Tony helped me spin my announcement into
something positive. He pointed out that people were talking about
the Dog. They were no longer asking, “Who is this kook?” They
were taking me very seriously.
Holy crap. I prayed, “Please, Lord. Don’t let me fail.”
Later that night, I was with Beth, Boris, and his wife, Maureen.
We were all talking about the past few days and my interview with
Rita. Maureen was once the publicist for the Rolling Stones among
others, so she usually had pretty good insight into how these types
of things go.
“Well, now that all the talking is done, all you have to do is catch
the guy!” She said it in a very put-up-or-shut-up tone.
Until that moment, it hadn’t really sunk in that I was now
searching for one of the most wanted fugitives in America. It was
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time to put my money where my mouth was. I had a lot at stake. By
joining the hunt for Luster, I was gambling on my future, my name,
and my reputation. But I knew this was my chance to show the
Lord I am worthy of His plan, His will. If this was the big one we’d
been waiting for, the time had come.
Once I entered
the hunt for Luster, I knew I had to use every
opportunity to show the world who Dog the Bounty Hunter really
is. Practically every journalist I talked with doubted my ability to
find the thirty million–dollar man. For whatever reason, they didn’t
think I was up to the task.
What is impossible for man becomes possible with God. I spent
endless hours, days, and nights praying to God to show me the way,
to point me in the direction Luster was hiding.
“Lord, this guy is a rapist. If I catch this guy, I can finally redeem
myself. I have spent half my life trying to even things up between
us, Lord. That’s why I need this capture bad. This man is a rapist.
Lord, I need your help.”
And I did.
To find a fugitive, you have to think like him, act like him; you
have to understand his wants, needs, desires, strengths, and weak-
nesses. You have to know everything about the person you’re look-
ing for. Who are they? Who is their family? Who are their friends?
Where do they hang out? More information means greater insight
into the mind of the man you’re chasing.
From the outside, Andrew Luster seemed to have it all. His mom,
Elizabeth, was Max Factor’s adopted granddaughter. Factor immi-
grated to the United States from Russia, landing in Los Angeles in
1909 during the golden era of Hollywood. He created makeup for
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the movie industry, eventually building one of the largest and most
successful makeup companies in history, named after himself. The
family sold Max Factor in 1973 for close to a half-billion dollars. Af-
ter the sale, Elizabeth Luster inherited her share of the fortune. An-
drew was just eleven years old, but he was now a multimillionaire.
When he was arrested in 2000, Luster was thirty-seven years old.
He was very tall, standing about six feet four inches. Everyone I
talked to described him as a good-looking guy, well educated, cal-
culating, and charming. Often referred to as “Drew” by his friends,
Luster was considered a wealthy playboy who spent his days surfing
the beaches of Southern California and his nights partying at his
beachfront home or the college bars in Santa Barbara. By all ac-
counts, he was living a pretty good life. Although he never married,
he did have two sons with a former girlfriend. Luster was a com-
plete womanizer with thirty-one million dollars in the bank to sup-
port his party-boy lifestyle.
Beth took the reins in researching Luster. Her role is to help me
in my pursuit any way she can. More important than that, she often
keeps me focused when I have the potential to get offtrack. She’s
constantly thinking about all of the possible pitfalls and challenges
we might face. In the beginning, Beth wasn’t as supportive as you
might think. Her tactic is usually to doubt me. She creates a lot of
negativity to keep me motivated. Mostly she nags at me, double-
and triple-checking that I have looked at every avenue. She doesn’t
think I know this about her, but I do.
Beth makes sure everything we do is on the up-and-up. She’s a
tough broad, no doubt about that. She makes sure we don’t make
critical mistakes when it’s time to take someone down. One knock
on the wrong door, and I could be out of business. Worse yet, I
could end up in jail. The fear of crossing the wrong line always
looms over a hunt.
When it came to Luster, Beth and I wanted to make sure we really
understood who we were chasing. We viewed him to be an arrogant,
rude, opinionated, egotistical punk. But we had to be careful, be-
cause his family has a tremendous amount of clout in Hollywood,
with friends in very high places. That meant we could expect a lot
of dead ends and false leads.
Most of Luster’s friends said he rarely talked about his relation-
ship to Max Factor. Although he was financially set, he was stingy
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when it came to money. He was pretty low-key, choosing to drive
a green Toyota SUV and wearing shorts and T-shirts most of the
time. Luster used money as a tool to manipulate women. He lived
by the “golden rule”: He who has the gold, makes the rules. In fact,
Tonja Doe, one of Luster’s victims, testified that after she and Lus-
ter broke up, he sued her for twenty-five hundred dollars he claimed
he loaned her for some medical expenses.
I needed to know more about Luster’s victims. Who were they?
How did they meet Luster? How did he go about seducing and ulti-
mately raping them? I wanted as much information as I could find.
Somewhere there were clues that would lead me to his door, wher-
ever he was hiding. Knowing the details of his crimes, having an
idea of the hurt and pain he inflicted on these women, became yet
another reason to get this guy.
For their privacy and safety, the victims’ identities were kept
private during the trial. They were only referred to as Carey Doe,
Shawna Doe, and Tonja Doe. Despite their secret identities, Beth
tracked down two of them, who agreed to share all of the informa-
tion they had to help us track down their rapist.
Shawna Doe spoke to us first. She described the July morning
in 2001 when she awoke in Luster’s bed with a throbbing pain that
felt like a jackhammer inside her head. She didn’t remember a thing
from the night before, which wasn’t typical for her. She liked to
party, but she never blacked out. As she began to get her bearings, it
suddenly dawned on her that she might have been raped, maybe
more than once. She was panic-stricken. She frantically searched
for her tattered clothes so she could get dressed and go home.
When Beth asked Shawna to tell her how it happened, she said
she remembered having a few beers with her friend David the night
before. Afterward, they went to O’Malley’s bar, where she met a
good-looking guy named Drew who kept offering to buy them
drinks. She ordered a Long Island Iced Tea and a Cosmopolitan.
The last thing she remembered from the bar was taking a glass of
water from Drew, who thought she looked thirsty from dancing and
partying. Shawna said she couldn’t remember ever feeling so wasted.
Next she told Beth that Drew took her to the beach, where they
walked on the pier above the thunderous waves. He kept taunting
her to get naked and jump into the water until she finally did. The
water was much colder than she expected, and the current was very
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strong. She struggled to make it back to shore. When she finally
climbed onto the beach, she was shivering and very cold. Drew
scooped her up and took her to his place. Shawna remembered tak-
ing a hot shower to warm up.
She told Beth that Drew stepped into the shower and began forc-
ing her to have sex. She was too drunk, or so she thought, to tell
him to get out. She couldn’t speak. She wanted to scream, yell, tell
him to stop, but the words never came.
Later that night, Shawna came out of her blackout to find her-
self half-naked on Drew’s sofa. There were a couple of other guys
in the next room, but she had no idea who they were. She had never
seen them before.
Drew gave her another drink of what she believed was booze.
Shawna shot it back. Almost instantly, she began to get woozy. The
room was spinning. She thought she was going to get sick or pass out.
She slurred her words when she asked Drew what she had just
swallowed. He told her it was liquid Ecstasy, something Shawna
said she had never done. Once again, she passed out.
The next morning, segments of the night flashed through her
head. She remembered Drew forcing himself on her several times.
She believed there was another naked man too. Shawna wept as she
told Beth her story. It was hard to speak of, and yet she knew we
had to hear all of the painful details if we were going to find Luster.
“Liquid Ecstasy” is not Ecstasy but GHB, known on the street as
a date-rape drug. It’s a clear liquid that is easy to slip into any drink.
It has a slightly salty flavor that can easily be hidden in a mixed
drink, especially one that contains salt, like a margarita. Mixed with
alcohol, GHB is a very dangerous drug. Someone has to know ex-
actly how much to use to avoid an accidental overdose, which can
often be lethal. With alcohol, it can render unsuspecting victims
helpless, because they commonly pass out. When they awaken, they
have little, if any, recollection of what happened.
After her frightening night, Shawna Doe went to the police to
tell them she believed she’d been drugged and raped. The investi-
gating detectives convinced her to get Luster to admit he drugged
her so they could confirm her story and build their assault and rape
case against him. She agreed. While the police listened in, Shawna
phoned Luster and got him to admit he’d given her GHB. That ad-
mission was enough for investigators to pursue him.
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Luster was shocked when detectives knocked on his door and
told him they had a warrant for his arrest. He angrily accused
Shawna of lying. That was a crucial mistake on his part: The police
had never mentioned whose behalf they were acting on. A routine
search turned up several vials of a liquid suspected to be GHB—as
well as a little cocaine and a collection of homemade videotapes of
various naked women who appeared to be drugged. Two in partic-
ular, labeled “Shawna GHBing” and “Real Hidden Video—Living
Room” caught the attention of the detectives. They weren’t sure
what they had stumbled onto, but it was beginning to look like
Shawna Doe wasn’t Luster’s only victim.
The tapes were graphic. Not only did they show Luster having
sex with a number of different women; they showed him sodomiz-
ing the girls, who were clearly unaware of what was happening. One