One of the reasons Dog the Bounty Hunter is so eager to find fugitive Brian Laundrie is so that he can resume his honeymoon in Florida, he said in a new interview.
Dog, whose real name is Duane Chapman, told the Sun that he and his new wife, Francie Frane, traveled to the Sunshine State for their honeymoon because she was born there.
“I asked her before we got married, ‘Where would you like to go?’ And she said, ‘To Florida to put my feet in the sand, and my ocean,’” the 68-year-old celebrity bounty hunter told the news outlet.
The reality TV star had been celebrating his sixth marriage at the JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort near Naples before he embarked on his quest to find the fugitive, the Daily Mail reported.
He told the Sun that the couple had been following the Gabby Petito case “because of what was happening, because they went through Colorado and were close to us. So we followed it, then all of a sudden all my fans are like, ‘Dog, Dog, Dog, this is up your alley!’”
Chapman became emotional when he mentioned losing his eldest daughter, Barbara Katy Chapman, in 2006, when she was killed in a car accident at age 23 — just a year older than Petito was at the time of her death.
“Dog, Dog, Dog the ‘D’ is in the sky,” Chapman told the Sun through tears.
“Then we came down here and I said to Francie, ‘Honey, it’s eight hours away. Honey, I need it so bad. My skin is crawling, I’m getting goosebumps,’” he said.
His wife agreed, he said, saying, “Well, honey, let’s go get that boy.”
“So three or four days we were going and we were full of mosquitoes and gnats … we see snakes and alligators,” Chapman said, leading his wife to note that their honeymoon was on ice.
“So one of the last reasons that I want to catch him — so I could continue my honeymoon. I hope that’s not any disrespect to anybody involved in this case because it’s terrible, but that’s where we stand now, in our honeymooning,” he told the outlet.
