Family Ties‘ Brian Bonsall’s struggles since his child star days got even worse when a man stole his identity to rape women before being sentenced to 274 years in prison.
Investigation Discovery’s Hollywood Demons special, premiering on Monday, March 31, checks back in with several actors who went from life in the spotlight to a string of legal issues, addiction problems, violent run-ins and more.
After playing Andy on NBC’s Family Ties, Bonsall, now 43, retired from acting to explore a music career. Several prison stints later, Bonsall recalled hitting a new rock bottom when various women told him someone was pretending to be him in order to date — and then harm — them.
“She said she dated a guy for three months who was nice at first. She had said that he was using my name to coax her into coming over and meet him,” Bonsall shared in the upcoming special. “He had a bunch of my tattoos in the same places and she went on to say he turned really abusive. It was the worst thing you want to hear.”
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Dr. Drew Pinsky weighed in on the scandal, telling the cameras during the special, “It seemed like someone had adopted Brian’s identity. He presents himself as the former child star and he gets tattoos identical to Brian in order to exert his reign of terror on women.”
Bonsall warned his now-wife, Courtney Tuck, when they initially met about a dangerous individual “victimizing women” in his name. Once the situation “started escalating a lot,” Bonsall attempted to get the authorities involved.
“I started to hear more stories. A friend of mine said she knew someone who dated him and she was locked in a room and forced to watch porn while he did heroin,” he continued. “I went to the police in Boulder, Colorado, and I filed a report. He was like, ‘It is not illegal to tell someone you are someone else to have sex with them.’”
Bonsall added: “The response I got was, ‘Why don’t you go handle this yourself?’ So I left there with nothing but an inactive business number. This cop did not take me seriously at all and maybe it is because I was borderline the town drunk at the time.”
Bonsall and Tuck ultimately got the FBI involved. “I started to hear from several girls who thought they were raped by Brian,” she explained. “We were hearing from girls in Toledo and in the South so we knew he moved around.”
A case in Kentucky that involved a woman who was sexually assaulted resulted in enough evidence that linked Bosnall’s claims back to Nathan Loebe.
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“I remember meeting him. I remember his crazy eyes,” Bonsall revealed. “I met him in 2004 in jail when I was in there for my second DUI. I guess he got really obsessed with me right off the bat. They connected him to over 40 cases and he was convicted of seven and sentenced to 274 years.”
It was reported in 2019 that Loebe was convicted of raping seven women over a 12-year period after police received a grant to test rape kits.
“The old view was if you have a situation where the victim reported it was without consent but the defendant or suspect reported that it was with consent and there was nothing to corroborate either way, there was the idea that maybe it wasn’t worth testing the sexual assault kit because it doesn’t show consent versus lack of consent,” Deputy Attorney for Pima County Nicol Green told ABC News at the time.
Loebe was found guilty on 12 counts of sexual assault, five counts of kidnapping, three counts of stalking and one count of attempted sexual assault for cases that occurred between 2003 and 2015.
“Victims reported that they met a man in a bar or through an online dating site. He provided false names and lied about who he was,” Pima County Attorney’s Office wrote via Facebook. “Most of the victims reported that they had drinks with the man, and then they either lost consciousness or became incapacitated. The man then sexually assaulted them.”
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Before his arrest, Loebe was previously a suspect in several sexual assault cases but claimed any sexual activity he participated in had occurred with consent. Loebe was arrested in Kentucky in 2017 in connection with an alleged sexual assault. He was also wanted in Colorado, Massachusetts and Ohio before being extradited to Tucson.
Bonsall said on the Investigation Discovery special that he has since felt “guilt” about the situation, adding, “Those girls wanted to go on a date with me because I was a child actor.” Elsewhere in the docuseries, Bonsall broke down his biggest challenges after being catapulted into stardom as a child.
According to the official synopsis, Hollywood Demons follows former child actors Bonsall and The Hughleys‘ Dee Jay Daniels as they “unpack the harsh reality of life after fame, while producers from Home Improvement and That’s So Raven reveal their brush with young stars who ended up behind bars.”
Hollywood Demons airs Mondays on ID at 9 p.m. EST.
