Hours after announcing that his wife Beth Chapman had died from throat cancer at the age of 51, Dog the Bounty Hunter star Duane “Dog” Chapman opened up to local reporters in Hawaii about her final moments of life. Chapman had been in a medically-induced coma at Honolulu’s Queen’s Medical Center since Saturday, though her final words are sticking with her family.
“It’s terrible, the most terrible time in someone’s life,” Dog told Hawaii News Now just after announcing in a tweet that his wife had “hiked the stairway to heaven” on Wednesday, June 26. “You kind of try to remember that you’re celebrating life, but right now we’re mourning the death, so it’s not good.”
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“The cancer gig, of course, we’ve gotta find a cure,” he added, “because all we have now is some get lucky, but most pass away.”
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Continuing, Dog recalled his wife’s final words, revealing that she had spoken of her family prior to her death.
“When she had an attack I didn’t know anything to do but to say ‘in Jesus’ name’ and hold her and when I said ‘in Jesus’ name’ she said, ‘Say it again, say it more,’” he recalled. “And then she told the girls and everybody, with her mouth — she came out of it a couple times — ‘I love you’ and ‘Are you guys all okay? Don’t worry,’ but she never accepted it.”
Chapman had initially been diagnosed with throat cancer in September of 2017. After undergoing a 13-hour procedure to remove the mass, doctors had declared her cancer free, though they discovered in November of 2018 that the cancer had returned and spread to other parts of her body.
Speaking of her long battle, Dog told reporters that his wife was a fighter until the end.
“She did it her way. There’s some things that they predicted that the doctors ended up saying, ‘We’ve never, ever, seen anything like this,’” he said. “Her way was to live. She wanted to live so bad and she fought so long, and the reason she fought, she liked life but she wanted to show people how to beat it and what to do when it got her.”
“One of the last things she said [was] ‘It’s a test of my faith,’” he continued. “She had faith and that was it. There’s things you go through when you’re dying, like steps like you do when you lose someone, right? You get mad at them, and then you go through all these steps.”
“Well, the last step when you’re dying is to accept it,” he added. “And she said to me the other day, ‘Honey, that last step, I ain’t taking…’So go Bethy.”
Dog added that his “final words are Beth isn’t dead, she’s sleeping… I hope there is a God and if there is, I’m gonna see my honey again. That’s all we can do is hope.”
