Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given (2010) (13 page)

And, you know what? They reactivated the accounts. But a few days later they called and asked if we would kindly close out our accounts anyway. Instead of fighting over their decision, I kept my response simple and to the point.

“Sure. I’ll change banks. No problem.”

Roy Marasigan

W
hen I started out as a bounty hunter in Denver I worked with every bondsman in the city. One day on my way back from court, I stopped into a bail office that had just been taken over by a new bondsman in town. I was taken by surprise when I met the new owner, a woman named Mary Ellen. I had never worked with a female bondsman, but I sure knew what the tattooed cross on the top of her hand meant.

“You used to be a black widow, huh?”

She never confirmed or denied that she was in the girl gang, so I automatically assumed she was once a member. I used to date a few girls from that gang, so I knew the symbol. I also knew these girls were tough. They’re not the type of women you want to double cross. Later, she would confess she was never in the gang but she wanted me to think she was one tough cookie. She never let on to the truth when we first met.

“Are you Mexican?” I asked.

“Born and bred and proud of it,” she said.

Mary Ellen was the only Mexican working bail in Denver, which made her a double minority—a Mexican woman in a white man’s world. I knew right away she had the grit and moxie to make it big in the business. I was certain I’d be proud to work with her.

I was never averse to drumming up new business, and by the time I met Mary Ellen, I had already established a name for myself as the best
bounty hunter in Denver. Even though I was usually busy, I was always happy for new leads.

“If you ever have a client who runs, let me know,” I told her. There was something special about Mary Ellen. I liked her from the start. I walked her out to her car the day we met and noticed the rim around her back license plate that read, “We’ll put your feet on the street.” I thought that was a great slogan for a bondsman.

I began to spend lots of time with Mary Ellen and her husband, Fred. Whenever we walked into a bar or diner, everyone seemed to know her. The attention she got intrigued me. There was something else that made me stand up and take notice of Mary Ellen too: her kindness and compassion toward her clients combined with her wicked determination to make sure she didn’t get ripped off.

Mary Ellen wasn’t the type of woman who would just hand me her jumps. If I wanted her bounties, I had to be in her office first thing every morning to make sure I was there when the mail came. Mary Ellen never liked to open her mail. She’d tell the mailman to give it to me. He’d hand over all of her certified letters from the courts without ever looking up. I’d open each one and pull the coordinating file.

Mary Ellen had a work ethic that was the closest I’ve ever seen to my own. She is relentless, especially when her money is at risk. We could be out on a hunt all day, sometimes working until 11:30
P.M
. If I told Mary Ellen I needed to call it a night because I had to get up and drive my kids to school the next morning, she’d say, “Well then, we’ve got seven more hours to find him, don’t we! When we catch this SOB, we’ll all go home together and happy. You’ll be richer and I won’t be out my money.” Mary Ellen refused to quit until we got her man.

You have to have a mean streak to make it as a bail bondsman. We’re not teaching Sunday school, we’re dealing with criminals all day long. Mary Ellen’s heart was bigger than mine, but it was also meaner. I’d often hear about people she wrote bonds for that didn’t quite have all the money they needed to pay up front. She’d spot them the cash, but made it very,
very
clear she wasn’t going to be so understanding if they ran. She wasn’t going to let some thug lose his momma’s house she’d used as collateral to
save her son. As a precaution, she made sure her clients checked in with her on a weekly basis. If she didn’t hear from them, there would be hell to pay.

Sometimes, when we brought a fugitive in to jail, I’d slip him a few bucks, only to have Mary Ellen yell at me for doing that.

“You didn’t give that jerk any money, did you?” she’d ask, knowing full well I had.

“Of course not,” I’d always say, only to find out the next day that she’d given him money too. Naturally, she usually denied it because she didn’t want me to think she was soft, even though I already knew she had a gentle heart. She might have fooled most of the other bondsmen, but I could see the real Mary Ellen through that rough-and-tumble exterior.

Mary Ellen taught me to treat all of the jumps with respect. She reminded me over and over that they weren’t running from us, they were running from the consequences of the decisions that got them to us in the first place. We had an obligation to the court to make sure they were brought to justice. We aren’t the judge or jury. I have always respected that advice and have never forgotten those words.

I wanted to help Mary Ellen succeed, especially because so many of the Denver bondsman were determined to watch her fail. Whenever I’d tell her I’d heard someone say it was only a matter of time before she was out of the business, Mary Ellen would respond with something like “Those sons of bitches are going to be waiting until hell freezes over before I give up!” I loved her determination, and I still admire it today.

It wasn’t long before we began doing a lot of work together. Over the years she used me on hundreds of bail jumps and almost exclusively for her most dangerous criminals. She wrote every bond that rang in on the phone because she had me in her pocket. She’d write the bond and tell me, “This guy will jump so be ready to get him, Dog.”

She warned her clients she’d send the Dog after them if they ran. “He’ll beat you. You don’t think he does whatever I say? You don’t think Dog will kick your ass if I tell him to? If I send my Dog after you, he’s going to rip your head off, I promise. I’m coming to your house and there won’t be any white flag, pal, got it?” She loved using me as a threat so her clients
wouldn’t jump. I loved how cold-blooded Mary Ellen could be. Her cutthroat attitude helped build her business into one of the biggest and most profitable, eventually making her the Queen of Bail in Denver.

There aren’t a lot of women who can push my Beth around and live to tell their tale. Mary Ellen once shoved Beth, and I thought Beth was going to kill her. Beth turned around to respond, but Mary Ellen was already in her face screaming, “You want a piece of me, little girl? Little bitch!” Beth backed down and did nothing. Oh, she and Mary Ellen still argue plenty, but there’s a line that never gets crossed. There’s a lot of love and respect between the two of them. In fact, a few years later, Beth worked with Mary Ellen, but that was after I’d left Denver for Hawaii. Good thing too, because I’m not sure I would have survived those two at each other’s throats.

The more business we did together, the more money we made. I often teased Mary Ellen about her older model Toyota, until one day I told her it was time to get a new car. Bondsmen and bounty hunters drive their cars into the ground faster than most people because we put so many miles on the vehicle so quickly. I kept pushing Mary Ellen to come down to the dealership with me to check out a car, but she wasn’t all that interested. About a week or two after I suggested she get a new car, she finally agreed to see what I was making all the fuss over. I had picked out a real beauty for her. It was a particularly slow day at her office, so we headed down to the dealership for a test drive. The manager and his salesman met us at the door.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Dog the Bounty Hunter. I’m the guy you saw in the newspaper last week.” The owner recognized me right away. He rolled out the red carpet for us. He told Mary Ellen to figure out what she liked and he’d make it happen. Mary Ellen looked at every car in the showroom like she was inspecting racehorses before the Kentucky Derby. She kicked the tires, sat in the driver’s seat, opened the trunk, and looked under the hood of every single car. She finally settled on the car I’d originally picked out for her, a maroon Coupe de Ville. She handed over cash for her down payment and drove off the lot in her brand-new car with a smile as big as the Colorado River across her face.

I called her the next day to see how she was enjoying her new ride. I was so excited for her, you would have thought I was the one with the new car.

“It’s great! It’s the nicest car I’ve ever owned. I got up and wrote six bonds this morning.” I could tell she was ecstatic and that made me feel pretty good too. A couple of days later, Mary Ellen called to tell me the dealership was taking the car back, saying it had something to do with her financing. She told them to get screwed, pointing out she’d already signed the contract and the first payment had been paid. The financing was now their problem and not hers. I felt so bad thinking she was about to lose her car, I started giving her discounts on my fees so she would be able to make her car payments. When I reminded her of this story recently, she burst out into uncontrollable laughter.

“Dog honey, that never happened. I was joking with you. For Christ’s sake, what dealership would have let me keep the car if that were true? They call that grand theft auto, honey!” I had to laugh because I always thought that she’d held onto the car in spite of them wanting it back. Yes, Mary Ellen…you got me!

I was truly grateful for the work Mary Ellen threw my way. I paid her back by returning every single one of her fugitives. Well, almost.

Back in 1986, a guy named Michael Volosin and his wife got into an argument with their neighbor David Guenther on the doorstep of the Guenther home, about a party at Volosin’s earlier that night that had gotten loud and out of control. The conversation escalated and began to get very heated. Guenther pulled out a gun and shot the Volosins, killing the wife with a bullet to the heart, wounding Michael in the thigh and wrist, and accidentally shooting a neighbor, who was injured from catching a round in the abdomen during the shooting.

Although Guenther claimed self-defense, saying he feared for his and his family’s life, the cops arrested him. Mary Ellen posted the ten-thousand-dollar bond for Guenther. She had a bad feeling about him from the start, but she wrote the bond anyway.

Guenther’s case was the first time the “Make My Day” defense would be tested. This was a landmark law in Colorado that protects people from
any criminal charge or civil suit if they use force—including deadly force—against an invader of their home. The law is named for the famous line uttered by Clint Eastwood in the film
Sudden Impact, “Go ahead, make my
day.” Guenther was acquitted on all charges stemming from that incident. Mary Ellen was just about to be released from the original bond when Guenther, who had a history of spousal abuse, shot his wife dead in front of their children. He fled the scene of that crime and was on the run. The district attorney called Mary Ellen to tell her Guenther was gone. Since she was still on the first bond, he was considered a fugitive. That’s when Mary Ellen called me.

Now, most people know I don’t carry a gun. First, I’m a convicted felon, so by law, I am not allowed to. Second, there are already too many unnecessary deaths from the use of firearms, especially by people who aren’t trained to properly use their weapon. I am now and have always been adamantly against the bullet. However, several years ago I used to have a toy machine gun that was an exact replica of Bonnie and Clyde’s Woody Woodpecker, a .45 Thompson fully automatic. No one knew it was a fake gun, because it was a perfect copy—not even Mary Ellen or Fred, who had both seen it numerous times. I used the gun on several bounties over the years in Denver, especially when I had to go into one of the city’s rougher neighborhoods. I’d walk up and down the streets holding that gun up saying, “This ain’t Avon calling!” I’d warn whoever I was chasing they’d better surrender or it would be
rat-a-tat-tat
time.

When Mary Ellen called about David Guenther, I told her and Fred it was time to bust out old Woody. I started developing leads on Guenther and was soon able to track him down to an old phone booth he’d used to make several calls. I took a black Magic Marker and left him a note right next to the coin slot that simply said, “David, this is Dog. I’m going to catch you.”

People often ask me how I can tell when someone will respond to something like that. Here’s how I know. Have you ever stood on line at a bank after coming right from the gym? You’re wearing workout clothes, maybe a sweat-soaked shirt and a baseball hat, while everyone else in the
bank is dressed up for the day. You feel grungy, but you stand there anyway so you can make your deposit or withdrawal.

Multiply that feeling times one hundred to walk into that same bank with a gun and say, “Everybody in this fricken place put your hands in the air!” That takes a lot of guts, bravado, stupidity, and a certain amount of smarts. Now, if someone moves to shoot, that’s beyond guts. It’s insane. That’s the guy I look for when I’m out on a hunt. I ask myself,
How far will this guy go?

I know the answer because I was once that guy, and still am that guy on the other side of the law. I know exactly how he thinks, and feels, and what his next move will be. He will go to the edge of death and I am willing to chase him to the gates of hell. When he has nothing to lose and I have everything to gain, the hunt is on. No one has ever outrun me and they never will. Sometimes I’ll taunt those guys by saying, “You’ll be famous if you can outrun me. You’ll be the cat that got away from the Dog!” because I want him to run. If he does, I will catch him because he will, without a doubt, mess up.