Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given (2010) (10 page)

I couldn’t believe I was standing behind the three Hebrew children.

Ugh!

Just my luck.

These three only did good deeds their entire life. After everything I’d been through, how would I look to God when I came walking in after their day of judgment? I knew God would see the raw, unedited truth about my life, what a whore I’d been in the past, the mistakes I made and the hurtful words I often said that I now regretted. I looked over and noticed a fourth man standing in front of me too. At first, I thought he looked like a pimp—with his big afro, velvet suit with a satin pinstripe down the leg, and platform shoes straight out of the 1970s disco era. I let out a loud sigh of relief because I figured he’d sinned more than I had. Surely God would show mercy on me after meeting with that macked-out pimp daddy dude. But then something strange happened. When the guy turned around, it was the Reverend Jesse Jackson! The realization that it was him freaked me out enough to wake me from my dream.

Even though I couldn’t fully explain the dream at the time, seeing the Reverend Jackson, a man I respect and admire, standing in front of me told me to be bold and confront my mistake. As far as I knew, no one had faced their public lashing for something like this head-on. The world was watching my every move. I had two choices. I could go underground until the dust settled, or I could own up to my wrongdoing, become a role model for others, and take whatever the Lord had planned for me like a man. The Bible says “the unsaved watch us all the time.” They’re judging everything we say, do, and whether or not we will live up to the standards they’ve set for us. I have tried to live by my convictions, my morals and values. If you are willing to sacrifice yourself for what you believe in, God will be there, and so I finally had my answer and knew what I had to do.

My survival instincts kicked in right there and then. I asked God if His plan was to brand me “N-Dog” for the rest of my life. Was this going to be my burden forever?

His answers to both questions came back “Yes.”

How can you argue with the Lord and His almighty plan? That’s simple. You can’t. The only thing I could do was speak my peace, apologize, and hope America would take mercy on my ignorance.

And while it took me some time to buck up, Beth had already shifted into doing whatever damage control needed to be done. One of the first things she did outside of juggling the media was send Baby Lyssa up to the house where Tucker lived to get Travis out. Tucker would have to weather this storm on his own. When she got there, Tucker and Lyssa almost got into a physical fight as she delivered the news. He ended up calling the police on her and then contacted photographers from the
National Enquirer
so they could come over and capture the confrontation. Ka-ching! More money for Tucker if they got the shot. It was clear he wasn’t going to leave without a struggle.

Luckily, Baby Lyssa got away by the skin of her teeth and without harm. The cops showed up just as she was leaving, and the photographers were too late to capture the exchange.

Someone told me Tucker had gone to work that very same day saying, “Ain’t gonna be no more
Dog the Bounty Hunter.
” He was gloating. My own son was basking in the hurt he had brought upon his own family.

Mutiny, by definition, is “a rebellion against legal authority, especially by soldiers or sailors refusing to obey an order and, often, attacking their officers.” While my children have made lots of mistakes over the years, I never once believed any of them would knowingly and purposefully try to destroy me. Sell me out? Yeah. It had happened once before this incident with my son Christopher. But he was just chasing money, not catastrophic retribution. The tabloids make it so easy for someone to make a few bucks by selling information—whether that information is true or not. But this time they had gone too far. They waved more money in my son’s face than he had ever dreamed of mak
ing. All he had to do was throw his old man to the wolves. He never looked back. What Tucker did was a mutiny of disastrous proportion, the depth and impact of which was painfully becoming more clear with every passing hour.

And if I had any hope about my son feeling remorse or guilt at the time over what he’d done, it was put to rest later that night after Tucker phoned Baby Lyssa. At first, she thought he might be calling to apologize for his behavior. Instead, he said to her, “Here’s your future” and flushed the toilet. It hurts my heart even now, thinking that my son feels this way about me. But I wasn’t the only one hurt by this.

I’m the Dog to you, but to my kids, I’m just Dad. They grew up in a house where I was pretty much always right, but this time Dad was wrong—
very
wrong. The family fallout was immediate. If Beth and I hadn’t had our young children, the impact of this blow might have been a little easier to take. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just me who took the hit. My entire family was attacked that day.

My nine-year-old daughter, Bonnie Jo, and my seven-year-old son, Gary Boy, came home from school on the day the story broke and said they heard the news from some of the kids in their class. Of course, we hadn’t thought to tell them about it before they left that morning because I thought the whole thing would blow over.

“Dad, you can’t use that word, you’re not a rapper,” Bonnie Jo said.

I just about died. I didn’t want any of my babies ashamed of me, but especially the little ones. I couldn’t stomach the thought of them hearing that their dad was a racist, or worse.

Duane Lee and Leland came over the morning this was all going down too. They sat in my living room and broke down. They were in tears over the news. Duane Lee told me about an exchange he’d had with Tucker two nights before the news broke. He confronted Tucker with his anger that Tucker was refusing to go to court with Beth to be a witness on a case she was involved in.

“You have to be in court to help the family, Tucker,” Duane Lee told him, doing his best to compel Tucker to do the right thing.

“No way. I’m not going to court.” Tucker’s response was so angry. Of course, I now understand he had his fingers in his ears just waiting for the bomb to explode at any moment. But at the time, none of us could understand why he was being so short-tempered with everyone.

On a hunch, Duane Lee asked Tucker, “You haven’t done anything to hurt Dad, have you?”

“Ugh! I can’t believe you would ask me something like that. What kind of dick do you think I am?” Tucker was so defensive that Duane Lee backed right down. But now, two days later, as Duane Lee shared this story with us, Tucker’s erratic behavior began to make sense.

Duane Lee and Leland insisted that I cut all ties with Tucker. His actions had a trickle-down effect on everyone associated with the show, including those boys, who felt as betrayed by Tucker as I did.

They pointed out that their own brother had failed to take his brothers and sisters into consideration. It was pretty obvious that he didn’t care about them. He didn’t care about Big Travis, the father of Barbara Katie’s son, and someone who was his roommate and a close friend, nor did he consider the impact on little Travis, who looked up to Tucker like a big brother. He didn’t consider the fallout this would have on our bail bonds business or the television show that had clothed and fed not only all of us, but many others who had depended upon our show for their livelihood over the past several years. Producers, cameramen, editors, and hundreds of others worked at the network, where a hit show helps pay the salaries—and all with families of their own. None of those people entered his mind when he sold the tape of our conversation. He couldn’t even fathom what he had done. His only thought was to hurt Beth and me.

By mid-afternoon, prominent leaders in the black community were already calling for my television show to be pulled from the network. Roy Innis, who has served as the chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, also known as CORE, a United States civil rights organization that played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement, was leading the charge, saying I shouldn’t have my show and that I needed to answer for my behavior. He was asking A&E to take swift action in response
to my statements. And he wasn’t alone. Several civil rights leaders were pretty much saying the same thing.

Almost immediately, Alan Nevins, my manager, and Beth were fielding calls from various groups who had booked me to do special appearances and were now saying they were canceling. I was scheduled to be the grand marshal at Mardi Gras in New Orleans—canceled. Grand Marshal of the Fiesta Bowl parade—canceled. I had a deal in place to launch my own line of slot machines in Vegas—canceled. All of my licenses went away. Online sales of merchandise tanked. Stores yanked my products off their shelves. My first book, which had been enjoying a long ride on the
New York Times
bestseller list, was pulled from almost every store and returned to the publisher. It was devastating. I suddenly realized that all of my eggs were in the A&E basket, something that I had been grateful for but was now quite concerned about.

I didn’t know what I would do. Bounty hunting was all I had. I could still do that, but the probability of doing it in front of the cameras ever again seemed to be quickly slipping away.

Courtesy of Dog Corp.

A
lthough we were already wrapped for the season, the network announced the same day the story broke that they were halting production on any remaining shows. They thought that by doing this they might appease civic leaders who were applying tremendous amounts of pressure on them to take the show off the air. We held our breath for two days hoping that the craziness would die down. No such luck. The debate was just getting started. Two days later, after two main advertisers pulled out from the show, A&E, under pressure from so many different sources, called us with the bad news. They were making the announcement that
Dog the Bounty Hunter
was off the network’s schedule for the “foreseeable future.” The wording of the announcement made it clear the show wasn’t being canceled, merely shelved. Regardless, that news impacted the lives of eighty-six people who depended on my television show to support their families. When A&E shelved us, every single one of those people indefinitely lost their jobs too.

Beth was angry about the network’s decision. She called Marty Singer, our entertainment lawyer, in Los Angeles to assess the situation and talk about our options. There was no way I would ever agree to bring legal action against my own son. Beth argued that Don Imus walked away with half the value of his contract when he was fired for
racially insensitive comments and wondered if Marty could work out some financial arrangement too.

It’s funny when I think back to those first few days because money was the last thing on my mind. I didn’t care about contracts and felonies. Everyone was arguing that Tucker had recorded a personal conversation that we’d had in the privacy of our own home. I didn’t go on a public racial tirade like so many others before me. I was having a heart-to-heart conversation with my son. Yeah, I heard a lot of “justification” over those first few days on how I was victimized and getting burned. The more I heard it, the more I wanted to scream
STOP!

I knew in my heart that I wasn’t the victim in all of this. Private conversations ought to still follow the path of right and wrong. And, in this situation, I was way wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts…I was out of line. Just because my words were used in private didn’t lessen the impact, especially coming from me, a guy who was supposed to be a role model for my family, friends, and fans. My sole focus was on figuring out ways to fix the damage, to repent, and then to heal.

The network begged us to lay low for a while and let some time go by. They made it pretty clear they had to back off and wash their hands of the mess I had created. Civil rights leaders weren’t satisfied with their decision to remove the show from the schedule. Several coalition groups sent letters to the network demanding our cancellation. The timing couldn’t have been worse since Citadel Broadcasting Corporation had just announced Don Imus’s return to radio the day after my story broke. This enraged many people because they felt that Imus had been fired and shown the front door while CBC was quietly rehiring him through the back. A&E’s open-ended announcement gave these groups enough fuel to say the same would happen with me.

Even with all of the drama surrounding A&E’s decision, Beth was determined to fight for the show. Frankly, I didn’t have much of a fight left in me. The show seemed so unimportant compared to making amends. Even so, the overwhelming sadness of losing my show combined with losing my son was taking a tremendous toll.

People in the entertainment industry had warned me for years that
I could lose all of my success with the snap of a finger. Lord knows I’d come close many times. Though I always heard the message, it had never made more sense to me than it did in that moment.

But I had to get those thoughts out of my mind. You become what you think. I had no plan to roll over and die. I’d lick my wounds for a while, but I planned on coming back and emerging from the flames stronger than ever. And time was of the essence to me, because I couldn’t shake the feeling there might be people who would die thinking I was a racist before I could get out there and apologize. There were no books or manuals that could help me navigate these uncharted waters. I was on my own to do what I thought was right. Don’t ever count out the underdog, especially when that underdog is
the
Dog.

There were thousands of media requests for me to give an interview on the matter. After careful consideration, we went to two of the biggest names in television news, Sean Hannity and Larry King. I wanted to be certain I would reach as many people as I could with the limited time I’d get on these shows. When I spoke with Sean Hannity, he warned me in advance that I’d better be sincere or he would take me down for good.

“If I don’t believe in you,” he said, “you’re done.”

Beth put Sean and his team through the wringer before agreeing to do his show. She insisted that he read my first book before the interview, even going so far as telling Sean she was going to quiz him by asking questions about it before I went on the air.

A&E was advising me to simply respond to the press and media with a standard “No comment,” but to me that was the same as saying, “I’m guilty and afraid to face the consequences.” I didn’t think this would ever die until I spoke. So, against the network’s wishes, I set up the two interviews, with Sean Hannity on November 7 and with Larry King the following night.

Knowing the interviews were all set up, I had less than a week to figure out what I was going to say. I sought out the advice of many trusted and more experienced advisors on what I needed to do to right the wrong act I had committed. The first person I wanted to reach out to was my pastor, Tim Storey, who is himself an African-American.

The Bible tells us that God will send people into our lives who are there to help us, but you’ve got to test them first to make sure they are who they say they are. When you test them, you’ll see the truth. Fortunately, I’m a born tester, especially when it comes to holy rollers. Some are fake while others are the real deal. Tim Storey is more than the real deal—which is why he’s
my
pastor.

Several years ago, long before I had my own television show, a friend invited Beth and me to hear Tim Storey preach at her church. She told me how cool he was and how inspiring his sermons were. Now, I was never the type of guy who went to church to connect with God. I felt I had my own relationship with Him wherever I was. I didn’t need a steeple to feel like I could pray. Even so, my friend was adamant that I go with her, so I gave in.

Beth and I got dressed and made our way to the church one beautiful Hawaiian Sunday morning. We sat down in the second row; I was on the aisle while Beth was inside to my left. Tim was slaying people in the spirit, praying for them and casting out evil spirits. I was mesmerized by his dramatic and engaging style. Suddenly, I got a feeling about the next man going up to the altar. I heard the Lord tell me, “Watch out for that guy.” An evil feeling came over me like a cloak.

I sprung into action. I instinctively knew something bad was about to go down. Tim prayed for the guy, laid hands on him, and knocked him back in the name of the Lord. That’s when I jumped on the altar and pinned the guy to the ground. Tim was trying not to pay attention to the ruckus I was causing, but it was hard to ignore a six-foot-tall, long-haired blond man sitting on top of another guy. I reached into his pocket and pulled out a four-inch knife. I yelled for security.

I asked the guy what he was doing.

“God told me to stab Tim Storey,” he answered. He was there to kill the pastor.

“Security, get this guy out of here,” I said. Tim Storey was still preaching while the guards carried his assailant away.

After the service, Tim asked the local pastor if he knew who I was, because he wanted to meet me.

The pastor said, “That’s Dog the Bounty Hunter.” I’m not sure if Tim had any idea who I was, but he was eager to say hello.

One of the security guards came over to me and said, “Preacher wants to see you after the meeting.”

I walked up to Tim and shook his hand like I was greeting an old friend.

“How ya doing, brotha?” I asked Tim.

“I’m fine. Let me tell you what that guy was going to do.”

I interrupted the pastor and said, “I know, I heard.”

“That was the second time he tried to kill me,” Tim said.

“And if I’m ever sitting in the congregation, my brotha, he ain’t getting past the first row ever again.”

Suddenly, the pastor jumped up from his chair and started pacing, rubbing his hands on his head and firing questions at me, one after another.

“What do you do for a living? What do you know about the Lord?”

And then, he stopped cold in his tracks.

“Oh no,” he said.

I knew what was coming next. God was talking to the preacher. I’d know that look anywhere, because it’s the look someone gets when he hears the voice of the Almighty.

“Something big is going to happen with you. You’ve got to remember to put every bit of your faith, every ounce of it, your reserve faith, your mother’s faith, in God’s hands. He will see you through. You’re going to be one of the biggest in the world, friend, but you’ve got to trust in God.”

Whoa. “Where do you want your offering?” was all I could think of saying. When an average Joe tells you something like that, you might believe him. But when a preacher says it, you can bet he’s telling you the truth.

Two weeks later,
MidWeek,
a Hawaiian weekly newspaper, ran an article with a photo of me on the front cover. We found out about the story on a Sunday afternoon, three full days before the first copy was expected off the press. Anxious to see the piece, Beth and I decided to
bounty hunt down a copy before it hit the newsstand on Wednesday. We went to the warehouse where they distributed the paper. Luckily, we caught the foreman just as he was lifting the last load onto a pallet. He recognized us right away.

“Hey, you’re the guy on the cover this week!”

“Yeah, that’s me. I was wondering if you could find your way to letting us take a look at an advance copy?”

The guy invited us in to see for ourselves. We stood inside this massive warehouse staring at thousands of copies with me on the cover. I looked at Beth and said, “That’s a good preacher!”

The next time I spoke to Tim, I told him the story about the paper. He shook his head and said, “No, I don’t think that was the big thing God was talking about, Duane.” I had no way of knowing it at the time, but he was right.

It wasn’t until I was standing in a jail cell in Mexico that I fully understood what Tim Storey told me about faith and placing my trust in God. The district attorney came into the cell to tell the boys and me that the judge was trying to decide between the deprivation of liberty charge and kidnapping. I walked to the corner of my cell and wept. That’s when it occurred to me that Tim had warned me that I’d be in a situation that would take all of the faith I had.
This must be what he was talking about,
I thought.

Earlier that week, before the arrest, the boys and I had visited a place in Mexico where the sea turtles carry in their gullet one grain of sand from where they were born. They swim for years and then come back to the exact spot to lay their eggs. Scientists have theorized that it’s that one grain of sand that brings them home. The Bible says if you have faith even the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. I fell to my knees and prayed. For the next ten minutes, I prayed like Billy Graham. Shortly after that, we got word the Mexican authorities were going to release us. That’s when I knew Tim Storey would be my preacher forever.

Whenever an extreme emergency hits, I reach out to Tim for advice and counseling. I know for sure that what God gives him about me is
real, and I need to listen to what he has to say. No big decision is made in my life without first consulting my preacher.

When the “N” word debacle broke, I am proud to say Tim firmly stood by me. I told him I was planning to appear with Sean Hannity and Larry King to talk about what had happened. Unsure of what I planned to say, I asked Tim for his opinion of what message he thought I should convey during those interviews.

Tim began speaking like he was reading from the Bible. “I sayeth unto thee, open thy mouth and I shall fill it.”

I spent the next couple of days thinking about that advice, hoping and praying that the Lord knew what He wanted me to say on television, because I didn’t have a clue!

After talking to Tim, I wanted to reach out to my old cellmate from Huntsville, Whitaker. I tried to reach him all day but couldn’t track him down. So I did the next best thing and called his momma.

“Those sons of bitches,” she said. “Don’t they know you can use that word?”

I explained how I tried to tell everyone the same thing, but then she got quiet and said something so insightful. “Well, Dog. You’re out there in television land now, honey.” She wanted to support me as if I was her own son, but she knew I had messed up.

“I’m very sorry, Momma Whitaker.” That’s all I could say before I began to cry so hard that no more words came out of my mouth. I was so ashamed. Calling Momma Whitaker was worse than facing my own mother, because I knew deep down that I’d hurt her with my words.