Inside the Twisted Case of a Serial Rapist Who Impersonated a Former Child Star to Lure His Victims

After leaving Hollywood, former Family Ties actor Brian Bonsall wrestled with addiction and run-ins with the law.

Bonsall, who played Michael J. Fox’s adorable little brother, Andy Keaton, on the hit 1980s NBC sitcom, was a target of the dark side of fame when he learned a man he met in jail in 2004, now-convicted serial rapist Nathan Loebe, began impersonating him so he could lure women for the purpose of raping them.

“It’s really hard to tell that story,” Bonsall, 43, says in the upcoming episode of Investigation Discovery’s new six-part docuseries, Hollywood Demons, titled “Child Stars Gone Violent.”

“For one, it’s hard to like not cry,” he says. “There’s definitely a feeling of guilt. It’s so hard to explain. Those girls, they wanted to go on a date with me because I was a child actor. It even clicked in my head that I had met this person because of some of the mistakes I made.”

Convicted of raping seven women over a 12-year period, Loebe was sentenced in 2019 to 274 years in prison, according to ABC News and the Arizona Star.

Bonsall, now a musician, opens up about the ordeal and the pitfalls he encountered after leaving Hollywood behind in the riveting new Investigation Discovery series.

Airing Monday, March 31, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ID and streaming on Max, the episode takes an in-depth look at child stars of some of Hollywood’s most popular TV shows — including Bonsall and Dee Jay Daniels of The Hughleys — chronicling the struggles they faced when the curtain on their careers began to fall.

In Bonsall’s case, after leaving Hollywood and moving to Colorado with his mother, Kathleen, he began drinking and was arrested several times, including once for assault in 2007, which resulted in a two-year probation sentence.

In the episode, Bonsall recalls meeting Loebe. “I remember his crazy eyes,” he says. “I met him in 2004 in jail when I was in there for my second DUI and was there for a couple or a few nights or whatever and I guess he just got really obsessed with me right off the bat.”

After numerous arrests, authorities realized they had a serial rapist on their hands, former prosecutor Nicol Green says in the episode.

Bonsall had no idea about any of that until he met a woman who relayed some shocking information to him.

“She just looked over at me and said, ‘Oh, you’re the real Brian Bonsall,’” he says. “And I said, ‘What does that mean?’ And she said, ‘Well, I 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 meeting him.”

She told him the man “had a bunch of my tattoos in the same places,” he recalls, before she said the man “turned really abusive. It was the worst thing you want to hear.”

The episode details how Bonsall turned his life around after meeting his wife, Courtney Tuck Bonsall, with whom he shares a son.

Hollywood Demons: Child Stars Gone Violent, airs Monday, March 31, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ID and streams on Max.