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Celebrity Big Brother 2012


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Dog gone: US bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman denied visa to appear on Celebrity Big Brother

He had his bags packed to appear on the show but he's been stopped due to a murder conviction from the 1970s

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A Celebrity Big Brother contestant has been denied a visa into the country because of a murder conviction from the 1970s.

Bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman had his bags packed to appear on Big Brother, which starts tonight, but he was denied a UK visa.

in 1976 when Chapman was 23 he was in a car outside a house in Pampa, Texas, where a friend had gone inside to buy marijuana.

He said the friend got into an argument with the dealer and shot him. He and the others in the group were all found guilty of murder.

Chapman was sentenced to five years in prison but was freed on parole after 18 months.

"It's something that follows you the rest of your life, no matter who you become or who you are," Chapman, 59, said from Honolulu, Hawaii, where he lives.

"I'm not proud of it. In Texas in the 70s, if you were present, you were just as guilty.

"I shouldn't have went and I shouldn't have been the person I was back then," he said.

But Chapman said he was frustrated that it had stopped him from visiting the UK.

"It feels terrible. I'm dumbfounded. I can't believe it, after all these years," he said.

"I've got to make a living. It's really stunned us financially."

While he has been denied a visa to visit the UK in the past, his temporary worker visa application notes he has travelled outside the United States, including to Mexico, where he went to capture serial rapist and fugitive Andrew Luster in 2003.

Former Pampa police officer Charles Love, who was the responding officer in 1976, submitted a declaration saying that "Chapman's role in the crime was minor" and that he was a model inmate until he was granted early release.

"He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people," Mr Love, now a deputy sheriff with the Roberts County sheriff's office in Miami, Texas, said last night.

"I know they have rules, but that's 35 years ago. I think he deserves a chance."

Regardless of whether it will sway the British government, an emotional Chapman said he had waited 30 years for Mr Love's words, which he saw as vindication.

"I'm so grateful for it," he said "I have been telling the truth."

The Home Office said it did not comment on individual cases.

"All visa applicants are required to declare any criminal convictions when applying to come to the UK.

"The UK Border Agency subjects all applications for visas to the same rigorous checks," a statement said.

According to the UK Border Agency's refusal notice provided by the Chapmans, the visa was denied because of the conviction and because his application did not include enough information about his visit.

Production company Endemol UK submitted a letter saying it was sponsoring Chapman's trip and that he was selected for the show "due to his public interest in his lifestyle and celebrity personality".

Chapman is appealing against the visa refusal and hoping for a last-minute decision.

His wife Beth called the visa decision "insulting" because of her husband's charity work.

"For 30 years he's lived with the X on his back," she said. "Society just doesn't let it go."

http://www.mirror.co...ed-visa-1261773

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