Dog and Beth Chapman battle crime and cancer on WGN America's 'Dog's Most Wanted'
To the end, Beth Chapman always had her husband Duane “Dog” Chapman's back, even while battling stage 4 lung cancer. Her fight against the disease and their quest to bring the most dangerous criminals to justice are front and center of a series premiering this week on WGN America.
Filmed prior to her death at age 51 in June, “Dog's Most Wanted,” premiering Wednesday, Sept. 4, finds husband and wife and their “Dirty Dozen” bounty hunting team chasing his bucket list of fugitives most wanted by the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and individual states, offenders who have committed, in Chapman's words, “horrendous, felonious crimes against persons.”
The challenge in this, the former “Dog the Bounty Hunter” star says, is staying out of the government agents' way when they're both on the same trail.
“I'll locate them, sit outside and call you, Marshal Joe,” Chapman explains. “So you've got to stay, as a bounty hunter, in your own realm. Because these guys go in, they hit a time clock just like if you work at Safeway and they ... give a pay thing to their boss to get paid on John Doe. So they're out there using their time and money and here comes Hotrod Doggie ..., right? So you've got to be very, very careful with them.”
“I swear to God I've got ESP,” he continues. “I can sit there and look at the mug shot and know where this guy might be at. I know it's incredible but wait until you see the (show). ... We're using drones, we're using night vision. I got a guy the other day and we used all that ... on him and got him, and he's like, ‘Dog ... I love you but you're cheating.'”
During all of this, Beth Chapman was fighting what would become a losing battle against cancer. Different scenes in the trailer show her talking about her “incurable” disease and at the hospital with Dog and loved ones. Despite her illness, she was determined to remain active in hunting down fugitives, which Chapman says proved therapeutic for them both.
“She took one treatment of chemo, it almost killed her,” Chapman says. “And she said, ‘Honey, I'm not letting you go by yourself out there. Somebody's going to kill you, Big Daddy, without me. I gotta be there.' She was a control freak, bad.”
“Because I gave her so many assignments, she was so happy ...,” he continues. “This show, she didn't die because of it but she did die for it. It was very important to her and she wanted to show people how to beat cancer. And then she got so depressed. I said, ‘Honey, it's all right. You beat it anyway. You're out there filming, you're doing all this Beth. You're all right.' So that's why she wanted to do that. She was just a leader.”
• • •
“Dog's Most Wanted”
Premiering at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 4, on WGN America