Beth Chapman, the wife of Duane “Dog The Bounty Hunter” Chapman, 66, died on June 26 while in the ICU at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her husband revealed the tragic news with a heartbreaking message. “It’s 5:32 in Hawaii. This is the time she would wake up to go hike Koko Head mountain. Only today, she hiked the stairway to heaven.” Beth’s passing comes days after she was placed in a medically-induced coma while battling stage 4 cancer. While there was hope that Beth would beat cancer for a second time, sadly this would not be the case. Beth’s family soon joined her bedside to say one last good-bye.
Beth was first diagnosed with stage II throat cancer in 2017. By November of that year, it appeared Beth had beaten the disease. “Oh, I can breathe. Beth Chapman, you did it,” Dog said at the time. Unfortunately, the cancer returned just a year later and was more aggressive than before. Despite the challenge, Beth put on a happy face and did her best to stay optimistic while undergoing chemotherapy. Ultimately, it became a losing battle. Beth announced on Mother’s Day that she was discontinuing treatment.
Born Alice Elizabeth Smith on Oct. 29, 1967, in Denver, Colorado, Beth first met her future husband in 1988. The then-19-years old Beth immediately fell in love with Duane, though their first meeting could have been under better circumstances. Beth was working for a lawmaker at the time when, while in a grocery store, she had to take a call from her boss. She accidentally walked out of the store holding a lemon, and she was busted for “shoplifting.” She also had an unregistered, unlicensed gun in her pocket – which she had taken from her then-boyfriend after he got drunk. Oh, she also had an arrest warrant for unpaid parking tickets.
Beth’s father called Dog to bail her out of jail. When she went to his office to pick up some legal paperwork, she knew that Dog was the man for her. “He came walking out there, and I said, ‘Oh yes, he will be mine.‘ Let the stalking begin,” she told Rosie O’Donnell in 2011. However, Dog was married to someone else at the time. However, these two were destined to be together, and they finally became romantically involved in the mid-1990s. Dog proposed to Beth in 2005, and a year later, they would tie the knot.
Dog and Beth would have three children together: Bonnie Chapman, 20, Cecily Chapman, 26, and Garry Chapman, 18. Beth also has a son from a previous relationship, Dominic Davis, 34. She also considered Dog’s other nine kid her “bonus” children and loved them as if they were her own.
Our thoughts are with the Chapman family during this time of loss.