You Can Run but You Can't Hide (7 page)
Read You Can Run but You Can't Hide Online
Authors: Duane Dog Chapman
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scrawny, stoned-out hippie we were expecting. It was a big, ugly
guy named Running Dog, who had a crazy-looking snake tattoo
down the length of his face. When he saw us, he gave a mean scowl
but never said a word. He just glared.
This was one scary-looking dude. After one look at him, I had
doubts about the whole thing, but for some reason we stuck to our
plan. We started making our way down toward our camper, when I
heard gunshots zipping over my head. Holy crap! The hippies were
shooting at us. This was an unforeseen turn of events. There were
guys on the roof with rifles. They had spotted our lookout car
down the street, and they knew it was a setup.
There was instant chaos in all directions. Running Dog disap-
peared back into the house, while Paul, Tim and I were flat out on
the dirt front lawn like sitting ducks. The Rodriguez boys started
shooting back. I decided to make a run for the camper, but before I
had the chance, this long-haired freak came running down the front
steps with a pistol. He aimed the gun right at my face.
“You’re gonna lose your life, boy!” he shouted.
Blam!
There was a bright flash, and I hit my knees. “Ahhh!” I
yelled out, but I could feel no pain. Was I already going numb from
blood loss? I began patting my forehead, but there wasn’t any
blood. By some miracle, for the second time in my young life, the
bullet missed me. I bolted across the street toward the camper. I
could hear gunfire all around, so I stayed low. Since I didn’t have a
gun, I grabbed the curtains from the window of the camper and
wrapped them around a tire iron. I burst out of the camper onto the
street and held it out like it was a machine gun. It was just dark
enough so no one could tell the difference. All the guys on the front
lawn ran for cover. Tim and Paul sprinted toward the camper as we
were driving off.
It wasn’t long until the shooting picked up again. Just as he
jumped in through the door, Tim got shot in his ribs. Bullets were
ripping through the camper like a tin can. Tim was bleeding badly.
He used a curtain to apply pressure to his wound. The cops put up
a roadblock at the end of the street. They had their guns drawn and
made all of us climb slowly out of the shredded vehicle and lie face-
down in the middle of the road.
Since we’d all assumed it was going to be a breeze robbing the
hippies, none of us had thought to bring a weapon along. That was
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Yo u Ca n R u n , b u t Yo u Ca n ’ t H i d e
an incredible stroke of luck. Since the four of us in the camper were
all juveniles, we were released to our parents a few hours later. The
Rodriguez boys weren’t as fortunate. They ended up doing some
time in the joint. The SDS members were also arrested for their part
in what the local paper called the Shootout on Mission Hill.
The shootout probably should have caused me to take a few
steps back and reconsider the path I was on, but it didn’t. I was
young and felt invincible. Nothing was going to stop me or even
slow me down.
After the shootout
at Mission Hill, I reached a point where
I felt it was time for me to move on with my life. I was tired of
Phoenix, and the constant traveling back and forth to Denver was
burning me out. I lost interest in being the craziest badass biker in
the Disciples. Mostly, it was my own fault, because, over time, I had
created a monster. It was a role I had to live up to twenty-four hours
a day.
The rest of the guys were always pressuring me into fights I
didn’t want to be involved in, and then they stood off to the side to
hoot and holler. They’d be busy talking bull and laying down bets
while I was taking punches, making them rich.
I had been getting angry with Tom Tom because, every time a
few of us got into a fight with another gang, he finagled his way
out. Finally, one night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked over and
got right in his face. “Man, you are chickenshit. I ain’t sticking up
for you no more!”
He seemed genuinely surprised. Without giving it much thought,
I booted him right in the middle of the chest. When he got to his
feet, he glared at me. “You try that again and you are a dead man.”
The rest of the guys separated us before anything else could
happen. From then on, everyone treated me differently, because I
had lost my biggest ally. When my relationship with Tom Tom fell
away, so did my interest in being in the club. When I went to Hudat
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to let him know I was moving back to Denver, he just nodded his
head and went back to what he was doing. None of the Disciples
really seemed to care. It was like I was already gone.
The night before I headed for Denver, we had a party at the club-
house. I decided to take it easy, because I had a long day’s ride the
next day. The rest of the Disciples got completely wasted on pills
and booze. When I woke up early the next morning to finish pack-
ing my things, there were guys passed out all over the house. I
thought about all the fights they had pressured me into and the
money they had made off of me. I was pissed off. I wanted revenge.
Aside from a biker’s patches, the most important things to him are
his medals. Medals are badges of honor each club gives to members
for various deeds. They’re a little like merit badges. Some represent
helping a brother in the club, while others might reflect doing hard
time. I carefully made my way through the clubhouse, easing doors
open and climbing over bodies. In all, I was able to steal eleven
medals from different members. The medals weren’t worth any
cash, but they were priceless to me.
Before I could get the rest of my stuff completely packed, a few
of the guys woke up and noticed their medals were missing. Indian
came walking out with a few other guys. “Wait just a minute,
Dog,” he told me. “Where’s our stuff?”
“Huh? I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” I told
them.
They weren’t buying it. Hudat pushed me up against the wall
and started patting me down. Indian said, “Check his boots, boys.”
I had a sinking feeling. They ripped my boots off and shook
them out. The medals rolled out onto the wood floor.
“Backstabbing motherfucker,” I said to Indian. What a rat. He
knew me well enough to know I had those medals stuck in my
boots.
I was in serious trouble. They had me boxed in from all sides.
There was nowhere to run. I thought back to my days of battling
with Flash. I thought back to all the ass-whippings I had talked my
way out of.
Keep talking. Keep them thinking and not acting.
“Listen, I’m only a minor. I’m seventeen.”
Nobody made a move. Hudat looked over at me. “I knew you’d
use that on us one day,” he said.
Indian stepped in and held a few guys back. “Listen, if we mess
L e av i n g t h e D i s c i p l e s
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him up, they’ll come after us and we’ll be up shit’s creek,” he told
everyone. He looked back over at me and said, “You better get the
hell out of here before we change our minds.”
I wasn’t going to wait around while they thought it over. Juvenile
or not, all it would take would be one guy to make the decision to
take a swing at me, and the rest would join in.
I tore out on my bike and didn’t look back. As I made my way
up the ramp onto the Interstate, a crap-eating grin came over my
face. I still had four of their medals.
My time with the Disciples may have been over, but that didn’t
stop me from being a criminal. When I went back to Denver, I mar-
ried LaFonda and picked up right where I left off—robbing and
stealing.
When I found myself in a courtroom once again, my lawyer,
Gary Lozow, who had known and represented me since I was fif-
teen, pulled me aside. I liked Gary and respected him very much. In
fact, he’s still my lawyer today. He told me I had to get straight, be-
cause I was on a path of destruction. He asked if I had ever consid-
ered joining the army.
The war in Vietnam was in full swing at the time, and shooting
machine guns and blowing stuff up sounded like fun. At the recruit-
ing office, they had me fill out a long application. When I got to the
section where they wanted me to list all of my arrests, I ended up
running out of space on the paper. I wrote all over it. Then I flipped
the paper over and started writing even more. I sat in the waiting
room until they called me back into the office. The recruiter ex-
plained that, between my involvement in the Devil’s Disciples and
my lengthy police record, it didn’t look like the United States Army
wanted a guy like me. The recruiter told me, “We’d rather take
women and children before we take you. You’re classified 1-F. You’re
done, Chapman.” Ouch!
LaFonda and I needed a change of scenery. To be honest, I
wasn’t being a very faithful husband. My mom sat me down and
told me to leave town before everything caught up with me.
I took her advice and moved with LaFonda to Plainview, Illinois,
just outside of Chicago. I immediately got work operating a back-
hoe, digging graves and holes for septic tanks. I should have been
satisfied with LaFonda, but I just couldn’t stay loyal to my wife.
Women have always been my biggest weakness.
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One night, I hooked up with a sexy older chick I met in a bar.
We decided to head back to her place. On the way, I had my head in
between her legs while she was driving. When she had an orgasm,
she jerked the wheel, sending the car skidding across the road into
a tree. We both managed to escape without any serious injuries—
that is, until LaFonda showed up and one of the cops told her what
happened. LaFonda had had enough. She left for her mother’s
house in Pampa, Texas, the next day.
I tried to convince myself that I was better off without her, but I
wasn’t. I missed her like crazy. I was really in love with LaFonda,
and I needed her. I was stupid to let her walk out of my life. I had to
go down to Texas and prove my love. To my surprise, when I called
her to tell her to expect me, she begged me to come. So of course
I did.
I ar ri ved in
Pampa in September 1972. LaFonda was living
with her mother. She was five months pregnant with our first child,
Duane Lee. Our marriage had been on the rocks since before we
moved to Illinois, but catching me with that other woman was the
last straw. It took me two months to follow after her. But once I re-
alized how much I loved her, I had to go win her back.
LaFonda and I had to sleep in a tiny bedroom on the top floor of
her parents’ house. We couldn’t make any noise when we had sex,
because her mother’s room was directly beneath us. Her family had
never met anyone like me. I was a long-haired biker who looked
meaner than I really was.
I began searching for a home so we could have our own place be-
fore the baby was born. I scoured the paper for available houses to
rent. Everything I looked at was either too expensive or unlivable.
Finally, LaFonda’s mother told me about a friend of hers whose
husband had recently died and who was leaving her place vacant. I
didn’t care that the old man had died in the house, so I went down
to Roberta Street to see it.
It was beautiful, with plush carpeting and wood paneling in
every room. It was perfect for us. The homes in the neighborhood
were all well-kept cottages. I thought the house was worth sixty to
seventy thousand dollars. The dead man’s wife told me she wanted
to sell the house in a package deal with the one next door, which
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they also owned. I couldn’t afford to buy one house, let alone two.
But then she said, “I’ll sell both to you for five thousand dollars!” It
was too good to be true.
Even though the asking price was extremely reasonable, I didn’t
have that kind of money. LaFonda wanted the house as much as I
did, but how would we ever qualify for a loan? Up to that point,
I had been a career criminal. I was only nineteen years old. I didn’t
have enough credit to get a loan even if I did have a steady job. I
thought, what the hell, I’ll go to the bank, anyway. It can’t hurt to
ask, right?
We thought LaFonda’s mom, Elwanda, might be able to help se-
cure a loan, because she owned a bunch of real estate in the area.
We went to the bank and sat outside while she talked to the loan of-
ficer. I could see him shaking his head no through the glass window.
My mother-in-law came out and told us he wouldn’t give her any
