The bad boy from Brechin who became a real-life bounty hunter
Remarkable story of a young offender who now catches runaway criminals for a living
IN the movies, things rarely work out well for the bounty hunter. In one memorable scene from classic Western The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint Eastwood’s bad hombre is engaged in a nervous saloon bar stand-off with a rookie keen to claim the price on his head. ‘A man’s got to do something for a living these days,’ says the bounty hunter half-apologetically. Eastwood fixes him with a steely glare and delivers the killer line. ‘Dyin’ ain’t much of a living, boy,’ he says before despatching him with a single shot.
Christian Matlock recalls a similar sweaty-lipped tension as he embarked on his first case as a modern-day bounty hunter in one of the toughest districts of Washington DC.
As a callow 21-year-old relatively newly arrived in the US from Scotland, he had joined the chase for dangerous fugitives armed with little more than a tourist’s knowledge of a neighbourhood riven by drug-fuelled gang violence and his fresh-out-of-the-box bounty hunter’s licence which had arrived in the post that morning.
‘My first job was a nightmare,’ he said. ‘I was scared because here I was, 21 and driving about DC looking for a man who’d been on the run for almost a year. He was a big, tall black guy in his late 40s and I just had my ID card, a crappy set of aluminium handcuffs that I would laugh at today and nothing else. No protection, no gun, nothing.
‘I was in places where other people don’t want to walk down the street and I was like, “Hey, I’m looking for this person”, and the locals are going, “Wow, who is this psycho?” It was ignorance not bravado, but I think it might have helped me.
‘I went to his house and knocked on the door and this woman told me she hated him and hadn’t seen him in months but for some reason I could just tell she was lying. A couple of hours later, the dude just walked out of the house. He was there all along and I ended up chasing him on foot for about a mile-and-a-half and eventually cuffed him.
‘I couldn’t tell you who was shaking more as I pushed him to the floor, him or me. For me, it was a mix of fear and exhilaration, thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong. I didn’t even know where the jail was that I was taking him to. In the end, the guy was sat in the back of the car giving me directions.
‘It was a crazy day. I got my bounty hunter’s licence in the mail that morning, was given my first case in the afternoon and I had a guy nobody else could find in jail by eight o’clock that night. I just thought this is something I’m pretty good at.’
Since making history as the first licensed US bail enforcement agent from the UK, Matlock, now aged 28, has rarely looked back. He landed a full-time job at the firm which gave him his break before later opening his own business.
His story, as new BBC Scotland documentary The Scottish Bounty Hunter makes clear, is all the more remarkable given his family’s fears that the longer he stayed in Scotland, the more likely it was that he would end up occupying a jail cell.
HEAVILY into drinking and recreational drug-taking by his late teens, his name became well-known to local police. ‘I was just the loudmouth on the street, a general disturbance. I was at the centre of trouble and I think I put myself there intentionally, because I enjoyed the attention.
‘I think it would need a professional’s opinion to explain why. I don’t know – it’s just who I was back then. I had a good set of friends and we just got into bother for fun, fighting and drinking and whatnot – it’s just what we did.
‘I was picked up from weekend custody by my grandfather quite a few times. It was never a pleasant experience.’
Raised as Christian Allday by his mother Lesley and stepfather in Brechin, Angus, boredom and youthful disenchantment in this urban backwater led him astray. A teacher at Brechin High School once told his despairing mother he was heading for life behind bars by the time he was 25.
In 2007, things started to spiral out of control. He was fined £175 and ordered to pay £200 compensation by Forfar Sheriff Court for assaulting a man who allegedly threatened to squirt his then-girlfriend with a water pistol.
It was a minor offence, but a criminal record scuppered his hopes of joining the police. By 2010, he was working a dead-end job in an Arbroath factory when he realised the only way to break the cycle was to leave town: ‘One day I got up and realised I was throwing my life away.’
His trump card was the US citizenship gifted by his birth father Ricky Matlock, a US Marine who met his mother while stationed at RAF Edzell, near Brechin, before heading home when Christian was four.
MATLOCK says: ‘I made the decision [to go to America] on a Saturday and I left on the Wednesday. I can’t remember if one thing caused it; I had kind of just had enough.’
At first, he lived with his father and worked as a bouncer in DC’s clubs, where he could finally use his 6ft 2in, 17st frame to earn more than a black eye. Then, fate intervened, when he got chatting to a customer who turned out to be a bounty hunter and urged Matlock to give it a try.
He spent his wages on paying his way through bounty hunter school. ‘They teach you the law, the ins and outs of what you can and can’t do. There’s practicals, like handcuffing techniques, then it takes about a month for your card to be posted,’ he said.
Six months after his first successful case, Matlock paid for firearms training, which allows him to draw a weapon legally and ‘shoot to kill’ if necessary as he tracks felons from murderers to sex offenders, petty thieves to drug dealers.
He has been shot at, attacked with a bicycle, arrested people who were half-naked or dressed as Kermit the Frog, but he has never again felt that first-day panic.
Despite his formidable presence – complete with beard and 30-odd tattoos, including ‘Scotland’ emblazoned on his knuckles – Matlock finds his deep Scots brogue can prove as disarming as his Beretta .38 handgun.
‘I’ve found my accent does a lot of the work for me. It’s helped defuse potentially lethal situations when the criminal will suddenly ask: “Where are you from?” When I say Scotland, they automatically back off.’
The hour-long BBC documentary catches up with Matlock six years after that first arrest. He has moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he runs his own company and is the only person in the State who works both as a bounty hunter, taking a 10 per cent cut of the bail money for every absconder he returns to jail, and a bail bondsman, standing bail for those awaiting trial.
So who does he call when one of his own clients skips bail? ‘Myself,’ he smiles. ‘Really, I’m chasing idiots. People that are stupid, that have missed court or that have ongoing issues with misusing drugs.’
Success in staying one step ahead of the ‘skips’ – slang for those who skip bail – relies on a modern approach to detective work using social media and other online resources: ‘I have several fictitious Facebook pages, a black female, a black male, a Hispanic guy.
‘I tracked a woman near Virginia Beach using Facebook. She would
check in at this coffee shop every morning, posting, “Getting coffee, on my way to school”. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, she checks in, then Thursday? No check-in, because I’d checked her in to West Winchester Jail.’
Another weapon is to interview friends or, better still, enemies: ‘Bounties have usually upset someone – a girlfriend, a landlord, whoever. On a bail form you have all their details so often they’ll happily spill.’
Virginia Beach has a huge heroin problem and on the day we speak, he is heading out to find a man charged with petty larceny – stealing items worth less than $200.
‘More than likely done to feed a drugs habit,’ he adds, with a worldweary sigh.
His own background gives him an insight into his clients’ chaotic lives: ‘I was never really around heroin in Scotland. But it’s still a drug taking over someone’s life and there’s a lot of wasted potential with these people that’s just getting burned away.’ That distant echo of his own past may explain Matlock’s avuncular concern for some of his clients, almost as if he feels he can save them like he saved himself.
In the BBC film, he is shown helping to prepare a young convict called Colby, who succumbed to heroin addiction following an industrial accident, for release.
BARELY out of prison, however, Colby commits even more serious crimes and is facing a long stretch inside. But Matlock is standing by him: ‘I keep in touch and he knows he can call me whenever he needs to. I never want to turn my back on anyone. Out of everybody I try and help maybe only a handful will make it, but I try my hardest for everybody.’
In one of the documentary’s most telling moments, Matlock reveals he has put more than mere miles between himself and his former wastrel life when he admits that he no longer regards the land of his birth as his home.
During a trip back to Brechin, where his old friends clearly still regard him as a bit of a folk hero, an exhortation to go out and ‘cause carnage’ on the streets like the old days is halted with a sharp ‘No!’ and a wag of the finger. Besides, Matlock seems more interested in receiving an update from the States on a case he has spent weeks on.
His workaholic lifestyle leaves little room for romance, he admits. ‘I am currently single, but I’m not really that available right now. This industry has destroyed every relationship that I have had.
‘My last relationship, she’s really nice and we’re still friends. But I told her I can’t give a woman the attention a woman needs because I’m driven by work. I’ve left dates at dinner tables and movies and whatever because my phone has rung with a job and I’m gone.’
Four years ago, the relentless 24/7 pursuit of outlaws left him burned out and he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, to work as a gopher in a custom motorcycle shop. He lasted six weeks: ‘It was too boring just having a normal job.’
Since then, he may not have earned the sacks of gold always depicted in the movies, but Matlock enjoys a comfortable life, earning enough to indulge his love of motorbikes, his fanatical devotion to the Nashville Predators ice hockey team and pay for the apartment he shares with his Siamese cat, Titan. He has plans to expand his business into Nashville, Tennessee. ‘There’s a lot of work down there.’
He is due back in Brechin later this year to attend his sister’s wedding, but Matlock will not be truly happy until his plane home touches down on American soil.
‘I believe everything that happened to me and that I went through in Scotland played a part in moulding and sculpting me to eventually come here and be the best in this industry,’ he said.
‘And that’s what I believe I am. I think I have found my calling.’
For once, it seems, the bounty hunter gets to have the last word.
The Scottish Bounty Hunter, BBC One Scotland, Monday, February 13, 10.40pm.