http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/in ... xml&coll=1



Jersey bartender supports her Dog's Mexican fight
Friday, March 02, 2007
BY GREG HANLON
JERSEY JOURNAL
A Bayonne woman has adopted the Dog as her pet cause.

Duane Chapman, aka "Dog the Bounty Hunter," the star of an eponymous reality TV show on the A&E channel -- is sought by Mexican authorities on kidnapping charges after arresting a fugitive rapist there. He is currently out on bail in the U.S.

For the past week, Kathleen Corcia, 49, who lives in Bayonne but works as a bartender in Jersey City, has been circulating a "Free Dog the Bounty Hunter" petition and has collected about 200 signatures.

"How do you put a good guy in jail for capturing a bad guy?" an indignant Corcia asked. "This man needs a pardon for what he's done, if not a medal."

The story begins with Chapman's 2003 capture of convicted rapist Andrew Luster, the great-grandson of cosmetics tycoon Max Factor. Luster was convicted of using GHB -- the so-called "date rape drug" -- to assault three women between 1996 and 2000, but he fled to Mexico before he was sentenced.

Under Mexican law, however, bounty hunting is considered kidnapping, and on Sept. 14 of last year, Chapman was arrested by U.S. marshals in Hawaii at the request of Mexico. A court decision last month cleared the way for him to be extradited.

This does not sit well with Corcia.

"I understand that Mexico has its own laws, but this is an injustice," she said.

No stranger to grassroots political activism, Corcia gathered approximately 5,000 signatures in 2002 as part of a successful campaign to persuade Bayonne city officials to install a traffic light. Now she is at it again, carrying a stack of petition sheets wherever she goes.

"People I stop on the street, people in the bar where I work, I even ask people on the bus sitting next to me," she said. "I have to talk to each one of them and explain the story and how wrong it is that a good man can be punished for doing a good thing."




© 2007 The Star Ledger
© 2007 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.