True Crime
Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman Talks About How Late Wife Beth Prepared Him To Be Alone After Her Death
This is heartbreaking. Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman sat down for an interview to talk about life after the death of his late wife, Beth Chapman, and spoke of how she prepared him to be without her after she died. “For two to three years, she knew this might happen, Dog, 66, told Entertainment Tonight. “So she would say, ‘Who is going to sit next to you?’ And I said, ‘No one’ … ‘Big Daddy, you better not let another girl take my place.’ I said, ‘I won’t.'”
He also revealed that they both needed therapy to deal with her struggles near the end of her life. “I needed therapy and the therapy she used when she was sick was to hunt. Her therapy, you know, was hunting, bounty hunting, catching the bad guy,” he said. When it comes to being on the set of Dog’s Most Wanted without his beloved spouse, Dog said, “Even though she is not physically there, mentally and spiritually she is there.”
The former Dog the Bounty Hunter star also revealed what he’s doing to get through this difficult period. “[With any] new experience that you have, you don’t know how you’re doing because you’ve never experienced it … I have a lot of people who depend on me. All my supervisors said, ‘Dog, it’s time to man up.’ So I’m trying to man up.”
Beth passed away at just 51 years old after a long battle with cancer on June 26. She was first diagnosed with stage 2 throat cancer in September 2017, but after she went through cancer removal surgery and chemotherapy, she was officially cancer-free by December of that year. She maintained that cancer-free diagnosis for almost a year, but was rushed to the hospital again in November 2018 and had to undergo emergency surgery to remove a life-threatening blockage in her throat. Not long after that surgery, Beth learned that her cancer had returned and she went through more treatment. Sadly, she was not able to overcome the health challenge once more.
Beth’s family and friends held a memorial service in Waikiki, Hawaii, on June 29. They’re planning another one in Aurora, Colorado, on July 13, which is open to the public. We’re sure it’s tough for Dog to keep it together in the midst of all the arrangements, and our thoughts are with him and the whole Chapman family.
