Just over a month after Dog's Most Wanted co-star David Robinson died at age 50, Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman is in the midst of a somewhat complicated situation regarding others involved with the short-lived reality TV show. The late Beth Chapman, who was married to Dog until her death in 2019, has been the namesake of a memorial fund that was established after her passing, and her daughters have now filed a lawsuit against the family friend and TV star who founded the charity.
Cecily Barmore and Bonnie Chapman have reportedly filed court papers that claim Dog’s Most Wanted vet Rainy Robinson, Beth Chapman’s best friend, has been handling the memorial fund in bad faith. Further, they claim Robinson hasn’t been forthcoming with the transferral of ownership that was previously discussed, which she’d allegedly promised them would happen, according to TMZ. They also claim Robinson never intended to do what she promised, and appeared ready to dissolve the fund and keep the money herself.
Dog the Bounty Hunter shared his response to the lawsuit being filed, claiming there’s no merit to the daughters’ allegations. In his words:
This is a bogus claim. The memorial fund was approved by Beth's estate, which I administrate. The lawsuit against the fund's founder is nothing more than harassment.
It’s clear that the Masked Singer vet doesn’t think the two daughters have much legal ground to stand on. The suit claims that Rainy Robinson has not only promised the pair a transfer of ownership, but that she’d even posted on social media about turning the funds over to Beth Chapman’s offspring. But they suggest that Robinson never intended to go forward with it, as evidenced by the woman allegedly turning tail after the daughters’ lawyer demanded accounting figures for how the money had been handled by the Dog’s Most Wanted co-star.
The fund was set up not long after Beth Chapman succumbed to cancer in 2019, ahead of Dog’s Most Wanted making it to air, and Robinson’s side of the story is that she’d been attempting to give Bonnie Chapman and Cecily Barmore ownership of the charity. She claims, however, that it was the two women who stopped communications, saying all it would have taken was direct conversations to make the fund transfer happen. Without those conversations, Robinson now plans to shutter the charitable fund down.
Robinson claims the Beth Chapman fund was intended to create a scholarship and a victim fund for the families of those whose loved ones were murdered. It’s unclear if these goals were ever reached.
The lawsuit’s filing comes not long after the death of Beth Chapman’s own mother, Bonnie Joan Johannsen, who passed away in November. Dog gave some of Beth’s cremated ashes to his former sister-in-law Melinda, with one of the mother’s final wishes stating she wanted to be laid to rest with Beth.
This news also comes on the heels of news that Justin Bihag, son of family friend Moon Angell, aims to publish a tell-all memoir that will spotlight a lot of Chapman family drama that fans probably aren’t aware of, on top of the drama that has been publicly reported on. That said, it’s unclear if it can be published due to past NDA signings.
