Brian Bonsall, known for playing Andy Keaton, Michael J. Fox's younger brother in Family Ties, revealed that a now-convictd serial rapist, Nathan Loebe, used Bonsall's identity to lure woman to carry out his despicable sexual crimes. Loebe was sentenced to more than 200 years in prison in connection to some of his rape cases.
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Bonsall revealed this dark episode of his life while speaking in an upcoming Hollywood Demons episode titled "Child Stars Gone Violent." As reported by the Daily Mail, Bonsall met Nathan Loebe in 2004 while serving time for his second DUI. Bonsall said that he remembered Loebe's "crazy eyes."
"I was there for a couple nights or whatever, and I guess he got really obsessed with me right off the bat," Bonsall said.
Bonsall didn't pay much attention to Loebe until one girl approached him and told him something worrying. A man, claiming to be Brian Bonsall, dated her and was using deceit to lure other women. This, unfortunately, was not the first time Bonsall heard a similar story.
"A friend of mine was working at Coyote Ugly and she said her friend that works there dated him too, and that she was locked in a room and forced to watch porn while he did heroin," Bonsall added.
In trying to figure out who this individual was, he attempted to involve the police. However, he was met with little support, attributing to his status as the "town drunk at the time."
"I went to the police department in Boulder, and I filed a police report," Bonsall recalled. "He was like, 'it is not illegal to tell somebody you're someone else to have sex with them.'"
Loebe Arrested
Courtney Bonsall, who married Brian in 2017, said in the docuseries episode that she also heard from different girls of similar incidents involving a man identifying himself as Brian Bonsall.
"Early into our relationship I heard from several girls who had claimed they had been raped by Brian Bonsall," Courtney said. "We were hearing from girls in Toledo, hearing from girls in the south, so we knew he was moving around. So we contacted the FBI."
Former prosecutor Nicol Green remembered learning of a case involving a Kentucky woman who reported being raped by Brian Bonsall. "She then reported it to the police. I looked up Brian Bonsall and learned that he was Andy Keaton on Family Ties," Green said. "I used to watch that television show all the time."
Green was aware of Bonsall posting on social media about his identity being stolen. By using CODIS, or the Combined DNA Index Systems, the system matched DNA evidence with Nathan Loebe. Authorities managed to connect him to over 40 cases of sexual assault, but he was only convicted of seven. He received a 274-year sentence.
Ever since this happened to him, Brian Bonsall has been struggling with what he has described as a "feeling of guilt."
"It's so hard to explain," Bonsall said. "Those girls wanted to go on a date with me because I was a child actor. It had also clicked that I had met this person because of some of the mistakes I made."
Brian Bonsall, ever since meeting Loebe in prison, was able to turn his life around, especially after meeting his now-wife Courtney. They share a son named Oliver, who was born in 2019.
The upcoming Hollywood Demons episode, "Child Stars Gone Violent," premieres on Max on Monday, March 31.
