Dog the Bounty Hunter Captured Max Factor Heir Andrew Luster in Mexico—Now the Serial Rapist Is Free

Twenty-three years after Duane “Dog” Chapman tracked Max Factor heir Andrew Luster to Mexico and subdued him on a Puerto Vallarta street, the convicted serial rapist is once again free. Luster’s release comes despite an original sentence of 124 years.

“I hope he’s smart enough — and he’s smart — to never do anything like that again,” Chapman told News Outlet Wednesday, reflecting on the pursuit that helped turn him into a household name.

“I screamed, ‘You’re under arrest by the United States of America.’” — Dog the Bounty Hunter

Chapman, his son Leland and several others traveled to Mexico after receiving a tip that Luster was there. Luster had fled the United States months earlier, in the middle of a California rape trial. The team initially identified him through a photograph from the tipsters that revealed only a knee and a watch.

Chapman said he had spent weeks studying Luster’s face, but the watch also stood out because he had seen it during a televised interview. He credited his son with making the first full sighting of Luster, who was talking with a young woman inside a bar on June 18, 2003.

“When I saw him, you talk about an adrenaline rush went through my body,” Chapman told News Outlet Wednesday. “Tim got down … he snuck up behind him, and then I pushed him. He fell over. We all jumped on him, and I screamed, ‘You’re under arrest by the United States of America.’”

The group forced Luster into an SUV and started driving, but Mexican authorities stopped them on a road outside town. In the confusion, officers arrested everyone involved.

Luster told authorities he had been kidnapped, Chapman said. In response, Chapman gave the lead investigator what he described as a “bible” containing information about the case.

Luster, the great-grandson of cosmetics pioneer Max Factor, disappeared during a break in his trial. He was later convicted in absentia on 86 counts tied to the drugging and rape of three women between 1996 and 2000 at his home in Mussel Shoals, California.

It’s sort of a slap in the face to the victims and also just kind of the safety of the public too. — Jane Doe No. 3

One victim, who asked that her name be withheld because of safety concerns, said Luster’s release remains difficult to process even though she had expected it.

“It’s very unsettling knowing that he is not behind bars, not in a closed facility,” she told News Outlet Wednesday. “He is out in the public, in a community that just — it just doesn’t feel very good at all.”

The woman said she remains worried about her safety, her family, Luster’s other victims and even the investigators involved in the case. A notebook found in Luster’s Mexican hotel room contained what she described as a “payback list” bearing their names.

She said she dated Luster for five or six months without realizing that he had drugged and raped her the night they met. Detectives uncovered the assault years later after finding videotapes inside his home.

“It was me, comatose on his bed, wearing the clothes that I was wearing the first night I met him,” she said. “That’s how I knew when it happened, because I had just bought that outfit, and I was wearing it the night that I met him. So that’s how I figured out when it happened to me, which was absolutely horrifying.”

Investigators recovered more than 100 videos, she said. While not every recording showed criminal conduct, the ones that did were “mortifying,” with Luster addressing the camera as though he were playing with “a toy.”

“They’re pretty brutal,” she said. “The things that he did to us while we were completely unconscious were things that, I mean, had we been able to feel anything, it would have been awful. He narrated the video and talked to the camera throughout and thoroughly enjoyed the whole entire thing.”

He initially received consecutive sentences totaling 124 years — later reduced to 50, and he was released earlier this month after over two decades behind bars.

Prosecutors had opposed early release in 2024 and again in 2025. However, he was able to earn substantial early release credits under California’s controversial Proposition 57 criminal justice reforms, and his prison term came to an end on Oct. 11.

“I did not know that [Prop 57] meant that it was gonna make Andrew Luster’s crimes be deemed nonviolent,” Doe No. 3 told News Outlet. “That’s just so baffling. I just feel like if anybody could watch these tapes of what he did to me and all of these other women, just to look at that and try to put the word nonviolent on it, that word could not come out of your mouth. It just would be impossible.”

Chapman said he never received the bounty for Luster and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money for the operation and ensuing legal fallout.

Mexican law did not allow bounty hunters to apprehend fugitives. Chapman said he was arrested alongside his son Leland, longtime friend and associate Tim Chapman, who is not a blood relative, and members of a camera crew.

“He told me, ‘I’m going to get him for you,’ and he did,” Doe said of Chapman. So to help him get out after he put Luster back behind bars, she kicked off a legal fundraiser that she said attracted donations from around the country.

A judge in Mexico later dismissed the case.

The incident happened shortly before Chapman rose to fame with A&E’s reality series, “Dog the Bounty Hunter.”

Chapman is returning to the screen with a new YouTube series launching Saturday — “Dog the Bounty Hunter…Everyone Deserves a Second Chance.”

As part of the series, he plans to help bail out certain inmates with a history of good behavior and positive reports — but not for people facing serious felonies or sex abuse charges, he said.

“We’ll call out the ones that deserve a second chance, right, and you can’t be perfect OK, so if they run, yeehaw,” he said. “I don’t wish they would, but if they do, then I’m going to catch them.”

He said he’s got at least another five to seven years of bounty hunting left in him.