Dogged Determination Nabbed Luster While the FBI Catnapped

So here’s what the FBI says about the capture of convicted rapist Andrew Luster, who was on the lam in Mexico before a bounty hunter nicknamed “Dog” beat the FBI at its own game and collared him:

A Seattle couple vacationed in Mexico this past April, went home, and saw a TV show about Luster the first week of June. They realized they had seen Luster in Mexico, so they called the FBI’s Seattle office.

That call was made Tuesday, June 10, according to FBI sources in Los Angeles and Ventura. But it wasn’t until the following week, on June 16, that the feds in Seattle notified their colleagues in L.A.

It took them a week.

Or at least that’s what the L.A. office told me. The FBI in Seattle had a different version of reality, claiming it got the tip on June 10 and e-mailed the L.A. office on Friday the 13th, not Monday the 16th.

When I asked about the discrepancy, an FBI spokeswoman in Seattle told me she couldn’t explain it. But she said it was “kind of splitting hairs as to whether it was Friday or Monday.”

Splitting hairs?

Andrew Luster drugged and raped three women and videotaped his crimes. He bolted in the middle of his trial five months ago, was convicted in absentia on 86 counts, and sentenced to 124 years in prison. Somebody spots the surf bum-turned-rapist frolicking in Mexico, surrounded by potential victims, and two or three days don’t matter to the federal agency that’s supposed to be after him?

Moments after I got off the phone with the FBI spokeswoman in Seattle, she called back to clarify something: the Luster tip was e-mailed to an L.A. agent on Friday the 13th, but he didn’t respond until the following Monday.

Whatever hopes you might have had for the FBI to capture Al Qaeda terrorists in our midst, forget it. Osama bin Laden could be spotted surfing in Puerto Vallarta, and the FBI would kill two or three days pushing paper.

When the tip was called in to Seattle, some bureaucrat filled out a form, the complaint desk did a write-up, someone searched to make sure Luster was a fugitive (anyone can see it in two seconds on the FBI’s own Web site), it was forwarded by internal mail to the violent-crime desk, which sent it to an agent, who, on the fourth day, e-mailed L.A.

The L.A. office notifies the FBI in Mexico City, which finally gets word to the FBI attache in Guadalajara sometime around the 18th.

Here’s a crazy thought:

Next time a citizen feeds the FBI a tip about a “most-wanted” fugitive from another district, pick up the phone.

Had Seattle called L.A. right away, an FBI agent could have made it to Mexico on a mule by the time the bounty hunter bagged Luster. Instead, while this hapless crew was picking daisies, Honolulu-based bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman was hot on the trail of Luster. Dog, who looks like a trailer park Siegfried or Roy, had gotten a call from the Seattle couple at roughly the same time the couple called the Seattle FBI.

Dog wasn’t sure he wanted to go sniffing up that trail at first, but he packed his bags the instant he got another phone call, this time from the owners of a Mexican hotel where Luster and the Seattle couple had stayed.

The hoteliers, who had been tipped off by the Seattle couple, also had tried raising the FBI and the American Consulate in Puerto Vallarta, but here’s a surprise -- they couldn’t get a response. “We were frustrated,” Min Labanauskas told The Times’ Megan Garvey, “but we weren’t about to wait.”

Neither was Chapman. Dog boarded a plane and high-tailed it to Mexico as soon as the hotel owners alerted him. He was chasing Luster for several days before the FBI rolled out of bed and realized the sun was shining.

On June 18, Dog made his bones. He and his crew nabbed party boy Luster at a taco stand before the FBI arrived on the scene. But next thing he knew, Dog and his pups were in a Mexican jail, and could be charged with the equivalent of kidnapping.

Sure, it’s a crime to go throw a net over somebody in another country, even if he is a fugitive creep. And Dog Chapman was probably after some publicity, if not a piece of a reward that he’ll probably never see.

But so what?

The FBI ought to be thanking him for taking care of business, and it ought to be twisting arms to get him sprung.

Instead, FBI talking heads have scolded Chapman for taking matters into his own hands. They also had the gall to say they were “very close to capturing Mr. Luster” and would have gotten the job done right, unlike Chapman.

“Very close” as in a couple of days, a couple of weeks, or a couple of months?

Or is that splitting hairs?

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.