Bonnie Chapman, the daughter of Dog The Bounty Hunter stars Duane “Dog” Chapman and Beth Chapman, marked Mother’s Day Sunday with a heartbreaking tribute to her late mother. The post came after Duane shared his own tribute, in which he still referred to himself as the “husband of Beth Chapman.” Earlier this month, the Chapman family welcomed Francie Frane after Duane announced their engagement, which the 21-year-old Chapman has endorsed.
“I miss you, happy Mother’s Day mama. Hope heaven is treating you well,” Chapman wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of her parents. The post was met with hundreds of warm comments from fans. “She looks so beautiful,” Jamie Pilar Chapman, the wife of Chapman’s step-brother Leland Chapman, wrote in the comments section.
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Just a few hours before she shared her post, Duane posted a photo of Beth with Jamie. “I am DOG Chapman chiracahua Apache The best Bounty Hunter in the world I am the husband of Beth Chapman And I miss her so much,” he wrote. Chapman also acknowledged how difficult the holiday was for her family, tweeting, “Today is gonna be rough.”
It was a bittersweet Mother’s Day for the family. While it was the first without Beth, it also came just days after Duane announced his engagement to Frane. The couple have been dating for several months and, unlike Duane’s relationship with Moon Angell, caused no friction with his children. They have even come to his defense after a handful of fans criticized him for getting engaged 10 months after Beth’s death. Beth died in June 2019 following a long battle with cancer.
Chapman came to her father’s defense after the engagement news broke, begging trolls to let her father “live in peace” in a comment on his Instagram page. “Let him be happy, please for the love of god let him be,” she wrote at the time. “My father has gone through so much this past year without my mother. It’s been extremely difficult to see one parent pass, and the other so intent on following.”
Duane believes Beth would have supported his decision to marry Frane, and assured fans he would never forget his wife of 13 years. “There will never be another Mrs. Dog. There is not. Francie couldn’t do that. There will be a last Mrs. Chapman,” Duane told PEOPLE. “If Beth was here, and saw Francie and saw how she was raised, her morality and this and that, Beth would say, ‘Big daddy, don’t lose her.’”
