The American bounty hunter who caught the fugitive Max Factor heir is a colourful 50-year-old former convict who fell into the bail bonds business by accident.

Duane "Dog" Chapman, right, was arrested for armed robbery 18 times and was eventually imprisoned in the late 1970s over the fatal shooting of a man.

He told the Los Angeles Times that he and several other members of a Texas motorcycle gang – the Devil's Disciples - were jailed after a man was shot in a drug deal in, but said that he wasn't at the scene of the shooting.

After serving 18 months of a five-year sentence - for being an accessory to murder - and completing his parole, Mr Chapman says that a judge offered to take care of child support payments that mounted up while Mr Chapman was in prison if he tracked down a bail jumper. So he did, starting his career as a bounty hunter in 1979.

Not shy of publicity, the Honolulu-based Mr Chapman owns five bail bonds companies with his partner Beth Barmore, and proclaims on his website to be the best bounty hunter in the world.

"Just like death and taxes, this much is certain: If you're on the run, Dog is gonna get you," he says. He also describes himself as a "modern-day Billy the Kid" and expresses his pride at appearing on numerous television programmes.

He got his nickname from praying for another gang member who was always "mad at God". So he was dubbed Dog - God spelt backwards.

Telling FHM magazine of some of his tactics, he said that he once phoned a bail jumper and offered him a job "watching stuff" for $100 a day. The man came to him. He said that he profiles his targets until he "knows what cigarettes he smokes, who he loves, who he used to love…. I lie to everyone, trying to get a message to him… I think like a criminal."

He told the magazine that he once rang the mother of a bail jumper and said that her son could be the victim of a nasty crash in which the body couldn't be identified because it was so mangled, in order to find out when she last heard from him and where he was.

"Dog" says that he doesn't carry a gun, but often used to stuff his catches in the boot of his car to stop them attacking him or trying to grab the steering wheel. He used to drive long distances to take them to the state where they were wanted.

He joined the hunt for Andrew Luster, the heir to the Max Factor cosmetics fortune in April. Luster, sentenced in absentia to 124 years in prison for drugging and raping three women disappeared in January during a pause in his trial.

Last week someone called one of Mr Chapman's companies saying that they had seen Luster in a nightclub in Mexico and had photos of him there, it was reported. That person e-mailed the pictures to him to identify Luster. The fugitive was wearing the same shorts in one of the photos as in some of the photos released by police.

Chapman, who was raised in Denver, said that he joined the hunt to earn the $150,000 share of his $1 million bail. He has reviewed phone records and spoken to Luster's friends and relatives, and also told the Los Angeles Times (before receiving the photos) that he thought Luster may have had plastic surgery.

Mr Chapman said four years ago that he was nearing retirement and planned to set up a bounty hunter school in Hawaii where he could avoid the modern "politically correct" rules of the mainland and teach the "tricks of the trade".

His muscle-bound body is tattooed and he sports long blond hair and reportedly has a penchant for leather clothes and snakeskin boots, but he also has 12 children and says that he worries about supporting them.

"There's this really big misconception that Duane makes all this money," says Ms Barmore, his partner. "Most of the time, bondsmen can't pay."

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