"My father's gun," he told a government interviewer, "brought home from World War II in Germany, never been shot, never been cleaned, never been handled." ", Her son remained trapped in the barn. And finally, out back near the empty swimming pool, was a small grizzly bear, also in a birdcage. And also a lioness, anxiously scuttering around. On one of his last visits, Stilwell walked around the animal cages with Thompson. Director Ramon Bloomberg Writer Ramon Bloomberg Ordinary Heroes. The common assumption after the catastrophe at Zanesville was that when it came to Terry Thompson and his animals, he must have been a terrible man doing a terrible thing. Facebook gives people the power. "He had accused her of turning him in for the guns. How many tickets do you have in that book? Whether he was a daredevil hero or an idiot or an animal lover or an animal hater or a victim or a recluse or a good man betrayed, he was assumed to be a cartoon of a man whose whole life could be extrapolated from its final minutes. A twelve-year-old girl befriends a quirky teenage mermaid who's anything but mythical, and their friendship could heal an age-old feud. See, the guys who shot expert got killed in Vietnam.-Terry Thompson, secretly recorded in his home by a government informant, April and May 2008. After a while the four shooters ran low on ammo and called for more, and eventually they headed back toward where the body was. And that's when he then said, 'I'm gonna die.' Whatever the exact truth, it wasn't that simple, though different people suggest different time frames. And sometime in this period, Marian told Sam Kopchak that Terry was giving guitar lessons behind bars. Perhaps it is obvious to you that removing a monkey's teeth and dressing it up in pseudo-human-children's clothing (Hanna "Monk"tana two-piece panne velvet dress, $38) and diapers (infant starter pack, $35) is wrong? The house itself was disgusting. The sentences that go round my brain are ones that were said to me by one of the animal owners I spoke to, Nancy Wider. "Apparently," Tom Stalf theorizes, "he wanted the animals to eat him. Thompson's sounds like an idyllic small-town-America '60s childhood: bicycles, Boy Scouts, loving parents, sporting triumphs, souped-up cars, girls. When you've been through a firefight and you've got that warm machine gun, that's all you got. The seven-part true-crime docuseries dives deep into the dark and meaty underbelly of tiger trade, exposing the devastating reality underneath the eccentricities of Americas so-called animal lovers. Lutz described Thompson as "a guy who kind of kept to himself, was always willing to push the envelope a little bit." I'm going to put it that way. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. He then looked back for a moment at his wife and . He said he didn't have any control over it. He just couldn't keep his brain on the right track. "He smiled a lot. Her bond with them certainly seemed real. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. ", Thompson went to the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia, on November 17, 2010. But on their way back to the road, Moore spotted a body near the barn. I hear nothing to substantiate any of this, and the multitude and variety of the tales alone is enough to make one doubt any of them in particular. His son and wife were off to a literacy night so he was on his own. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt them.' "That's what happens when they send a guy to prison that don't deserve to go there. All evening it went on, the slaughter. He got off one shot. She would explain that she had spent $30,000 buying them, and that she used to sleep with the young female. "And, you know, I'm a cat person.". His friends refer to other such outingsa shoot with Newt Gingrich, for instanceand say that he took animals on two different occasions to a Bloomberg corporate summer picnic in New York. This is a [Mannlicher-Schoenauer]see the twists in the barrel.I do see that.Okay, hand built in Austria. The miracle of the great Zanesville zoo escapewhich began last fall when a depressed, desperate man named Terry Thompson set free his vast collection of exotic animalswas that not a single innocent person was hurt. By now the order had come over the radio: Put the animal down. Soon he was instructed to patrol the border between the Thompson property and Interstate 70, and over the evening he shot another wolf, two more lions, a tiger, andlater on, after its hiding place was revealed by a fireman's thermal-imaging cameraa grizzly bear. Friends talk of driving to Columbus, a baby bear with them in the front cab, or having naps at his house with baby lions asleep on them. "I've had three bad things happen in my life," he says, and proceeds to describe them. IMDbProStarmeterSee rank Add photos, demo reelsAdd to list View contact info at IMDbPro More at IMDbPro Contact info Agent info Known for X-Men: Days of Future Past 7.9 Likewise, there is wide disagreement about what kind of human intervention or interaction can be beneficial or justified. I think that was a lot of it. (Nearly everything. There may still be a market for baby lions and tigers (the consensus seems to be that realistic prices are a little higher than Stalf's figure), but there is virtually no market at all for adult tigers and lions. Terry Thompson's best friend Charlie Leasure reflects on his friend's final day. Vince Gill, Verlon Thompson, and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, as well as record executive Barry Poss. Moore said that he had last spoken with Thompson at nine o'clock the previous evening, and that Thompson, who was 62, had told him about a letter he'd received from an unnamed author saying that his wife, Marian, had been unfaithful. What if some of the cats were drawn toward them? As Tiger King reaches its gnawing conclusion, it makes us aware that not a single animal benefitted from all the greed, rivalries and betrayals that unravel in the series. It was about eighty yards away from him, but it fell at the first shot. There are plenty of colorful stories about his exploits. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. An African lioness crawled under the livestock fence and ran south down the road then headed toward someone's home, so he shot her before she could go farther. The white tiger was atop him. He once told Spires about someone repeatedly breaking the windows of his shop and vandalizing the place, and how he'd waited for three nights to catch the culprit. Terry Thompson was born in Belfast, he grew up on the Castlereagh Road in East Belfast. (2017). But an accident happened. ", As they passed by the lion cages Thompson talked about the split. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette May 14, 2012 6:27 AM ZANESVILLE, OHIO -- Residents in this small, struggling town knew a few things about Terry Thompson for sure: He was once an Eagle Scout. After the wolf went down, Merry fired a few more times to make sure. Only when the shape broke out of the circle could Kopchak see that it was a black bear. He never left it.". Unfortunately, one of the animals, a leopard-jaguar mix, was euthanized after he was severely injured from a cage door that fell on its neck. "He used to buzz my house," she says. They were told that it wasn't safe for them to try to tranquilize anything because so many animals were circulating and others were scattering outward. What, too, of this practice of removing cubs from their big-cat mothers soon after birth and hand-rearing them by humans? It didn't seem that big a dealthey all knew Thompson had animals and they'd been called out there again and again, mostly for loose horses. (Everyone knows somewhere else worse.). Bob Thompson Trailer from Jeffrey Cooper on Vimeo.. Facebook; Twitter; RSS; Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress You know what I mean? Matthew Lutz, the Muskingum County Sheriff described him as "a like-to-live-on-the-edge type of person". 4.74 avg rating 107 ratings published 2021 3 editions. one owner nonchalantly inquires, as it nestles up against the fencing inches away from me in his garage.) Rhino experts from around the world had gathered, and the zoo was throwing a cocktail party on the grounds of the polar-bear exhibit. Never had to think twice about it. And he was like, 'You know, I'm a lover, not a fighter.' "Oh, he didn't like it at all," Polk remembers. "And he did it. Neighbors describe Terry Thompson, the owner of the exotic animal farm where 56 animals escaped 10-19-2011. Because I can.' He liked speed." According to investigators he has been cited in the past for animal abuse and neglect. Week after week. ", "He would not have his position now," echoes another, Evelyn Shaw (one cougar, two servals, one lemur, one macaw, one skunk), "if he had not started out as a private owner. "And he always used to say, 'I don't like animals but I would never hurt one. Not that she was the only one who noticed. Blake sounded his horn outside Thompson's house, but there was no response, so he drove back, and at the foot of the drive he met John Moore, the caretaker who regularly fed the animals and had been alerted by a phone call from someone in the neighborhood. Okay? I hear different versions of what was being said: dead catsa white tiger and a cougarobserved lying on the property; animals getting loose; a 2-year-old lion being allowed to run around in the open; multiple animals in such bad health that they would have to be euthanized. It's what the Indians wanted.Terry Thompson, secretly recorded in his home by a government informant, May 2008. The first involves his daughter and cancer. Day after day. One of the surprising facts about owning animals like these in America right now is that while keeping them may not be cheap, buying them frequently is. Since 1957, GQ has inspired men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of style, culture, and beyond. "Back in the '70s," says Stilwell, "if you saw him with a toothbrush in his back pocket, you'd know he was going to go somewhere. (Whose feelings, exactly, are being taken into account there?) Wayfair Huge Deal-A-Thon - Up to 60% off everything! For a while there was a plane on the shop's roof. "When he would go into the house another buddy would hold an M16 out, protecting him, and then when he came out he would hold the M16, protecting his buddy. He started snarling, and went after the horses.". He was released, forty pounds lighter than a year before, on the day of September 30. ), Thompson flew regularly for a local millionaire, including a vintage World War IIera Stearman biplane, and also kept some of his own planes on the Kopchak Road propertyhe had the electric company move the power lines so that he could take off and land there. What about neutering, which is now considered not merely acceptable but responsible behavior when it comes to many nonexotic pets? An incredible true story from the March 2012 issue of GQ. But while it seems foolish to expect someone's actions on the verge of suicide to be consistent with their behavior before then, this actionthe cutting of the cagesdoes puzzle some for a different reason. At death Terry William Thompson was five feet five inches tall and weighed 174 pounds. _Thompson: _You might as well keep writing, because when I leave here I'm not fastening my seat belt. "He always laughed and would be real pleasant before," says Polk. These included a grizzly bear, three leopards and two monkeys all whom were then taken to the Columbus Zoo. Even if many of the animals were confused or scared, and not bloodthirsty for human flesh, some of the friendliest might have been expected to want to "play" with Thompsonand when a cat this big decides to play with you, you are in little less peril than when it decides to attack you. A fully grown male African lion. He knew that his colleagues would only have the two standard-issue weaponsthe .40-caliber Glock 22 they wear at their side and the shotgun that is locked above their heads in the patrol carsand that he was the only one with a rifle. "Our role in life is to care for animals and to educate and inspire people about these great creatures," says Stalf, "and to see them piled in the mudit was just a bad day, you know.". Terry became so verbally abusive to Marian. Kopchak had lived around here all of his life. ", A bond that tied two people for so long can take time to break completely. Where do you plan to live when you are released?At my house.Okay. In 1997, Terry and Marian attended an exotic animal auction, from which Terry gifted an ailing baby lion to Marian as a birthday gift. He had these wild animals. It was all about Terry after that. "I actually think that he expected this when he got home and kind of planned it," says Stilwell. to my website where you will find interesting information and inspiration. "He was a broken individual," says Phil Cress. So he settled on what he considered a brisk walking pace for himself and Red. But for now most of the animals were kept in connected rows of cages along the driveway leading to his house, and to feed them he would often illegally collect roadkill deer. Thompson opened a bike shop in town. Perhaps it was the first of many telltale signs that Thompson, man of so many friends, didn't call anyone. Together, they returned to the house, finding nothing but two monkeys and a dog in cages. "It's only half a boat," Thompson explained. He didn't even trust his own wife. Three days before Thompson died, Chuck Spires, the guitar instructor, spoke with him for about twenty minutes. Because she loved the animals as much as he did. Already, he did things differently from other people. As they pulled up between the barn and a row of cages, two tigers started out of the barn toward them. He became the local Harley dealer and also got a license to sell guns. When it turned up toward a house, Merry got his rifle from the trunk and followed on foot. Sheriff Matt Lutz was settling into an evening in front of the TV. He was upset with the army because he saw some horrible, ugly things." "Jack needs to step back, take a breath, and look at Jack's history. They were circling, and in the center of their troubled orbit there was some kind of dark shape. Terry Thompson is known for Red Phone 2 (2003), The Red Phone: Manhunt (2002)and Planespotting (2005). This makes it all the more relevant to remember the tragic event that took place in Zanesville almost a decade ago. "You got cancer or something? Blake drove Kanavel's Silverado crew cab, and four others sat on the bed of the truck behind him so that they wouldn't have to fire out of windows. "It stood up," says Kanavel, "and was standing there." Their assumption was that he had been thinking about the animals, and they couldn't work out his train of thought. And it just broke his heartthis is what I think. Young Queen Charlotte's marriage to King George of England sparks an epic love story and transforms high society in this "Bridgerton" universe prequel. He would have no sense of 'Okay, this is too many.' "Why him? When the ATF raided his home in 2008, they took away 133 firearms and 36 rounds of ammunition. Now he only had his Glock. He'd have a beautiful '57 or '55 Chevrolet and they'd be sitting there with half an inch of dust and chicken manure all over the top of it." You've had no conversation with her about that at all?No. ", Toward the end, according to Cindy Huntsman, he seemed to treat his collection of animals in the same way. I don't know what happened to it when he left.". But I find a few. It was decided that the dead animals be buried, there and then, on the property. The only surviving animals from Terrys zoo were the ones that were still in the cage. As for what actually happened on that day in October, I hear all kinds of theories, though most of them sound recklessly far-fetched. He set down his clipboard on the porch, where it would remain for the next few hours, ran to his patrol car, and followed the wolf. That's what happens when your death defines you. But, see, I just don't have that stuff, I've got the guts to use it.Terry Thompson and a government informant in conversation at his home, secretly recorded in May 2008. His farm was reportedly raided June 2008 . Tom Stalf at the Columbus Zoo suggests to me that you can buy a lion for $300cheaper than many pedigree dogs. Starring: Zac Aynsley , Craig Golias , Janea Kroc and Jeff McDunough. Now, the thing is, you know when everyone says this guy went into a schoolyard and kills a bunch of kids and he had an automatic rifle? Join Facebook to connect with Terry Thompson and others you may know. Kanavel's tactic was to shoot for the head a couple of times, and then move on to the body and keep putting rounds into it. Where were you then? Whatever the dynamic that drew them together, for the next four decades they presented themselves as a formidable partnership. They agreed on 25 years. (Even Mr. Kopchak, forgotten in his barn, safely managed to make his way unescorted back to his house at nightfall.) The black bear fell about seven feet in front of Merry. In 1977, Thompson went to an auction for exotic animals and bought his wife a baby tiger cub called Simba for her birthday. He kicked into the mode of what they taught him in Vietnambeat people up, kill people. Merry didn't know what was going on, so he stopped. The 39th Santa Barbara International Film Festival will resume in Santa Barbara, Calif., continuing to take . "There would be dogshit all over the showroom. "Beautiful blues eyesthat's what you noticed first," says Christine Perone, who dated him for some time in high school. ", "He had an ego that you wouldn't believe," says Stilwell. "Very depressed. View all posts . "You couldn't buy nothing off of him. "There was never just one girl in his life," she remembers. "He was tops in everything he did. Zanesville held a special significance for himhe went to school near here, enlisted in the army here, spent his honeymoon night here. I don't know that.Okay. So these animals were like her children. She also helped with the feeding, and reminded him of some recent arrivals. "Some of them were untrue. "He forgets where he came from," says one owner, Michael Stapleton (five tigers, four bears). You finally just stop.". She was my grandmother's sister, one of ten children who grew up in Muhlenberg County Kentucky. After that, Merry went back for his rifle. Thompson would speak of his grand plans for what he liked to call T's Wild Kingdom: a large octagonal building, a pond for the bears. Movies. Thompson was involved with bad people and had fallen out with them. I also hear about how Thompson would tell people he had slept together with his big white tigerthe same one, presumably, that was with him at the end. Garbage bags filled with garbage that were knocked over, and the filth. Terry Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran, was a lifelong collector of exotic animals. Thompson, 61, was recently released from prison after serving one year on federal weapons charges. He told Spires that he was broke, that all he had was sixty horses, but Spires reassured him that he'd made money before and he could make money again. Twenty-one other injuries, or clusters of injuries, were detailed just on the head and neck, the site of the most widespread damage. He was pretty distraught." 'Because I can. "You were able to tell that he had laid at one spot for a while and then he was dragged, it looked like by an arm, and his pants and stuff had been pulled down, and he had been chewed on. Maybe there's a letter or a note that explains it all. Maybe something went very astray with Terry Thompson, and so of course it is now in the interests of the other owners to draw a firm line between what he did and what they do, but my hunch is that if one had visited him a few years ago, he would have expressed the same love and care and concern for his animals, and done so with conviction. The 73 acre farmland with the private zoo was owned by Terry Thompson. To breed or exhibit or commercially transport animals across state lines he would need a USDA license, requiring that his facilities be inspected periodically to check that they met some basic standardsbut other than that there are no special checks or controls. [8] In the fifteen minutes it took him to get to the scene, as the reports he was receiving over the radio escalated, the seriousness and strangeness became clear. For a while he raced drag boats, and is said to have set a world record in his boat Master Blaster by going from zero to 158 miles per hour on a quarter-mile course in an open cockpit. Your neighbor could buy as many tigers, lions, cougars, and other exotic animals as he so desired and would be under no obligation to tell anyone. He was like royalty." The family stayed at the top of London's criminal tree for so long thanks to a string of extraordinary acquittals by juries. . I think he would say, 'That's just what I expect.' Hannafamous for his TV shows and his appearances on shows like Lettermanestablished his career at the Columbus Zoo and remains its director emeritus. Spires says Thompson told him that he only pleaded guilty because otherwise they were also going to charge his wife as a co-owner of the property; Thompson told the judge that he pleaded guilty because he and his wife couldn't afford further legal fees. His neighbor Fred Polk relates how two of Thompson's Rottweilers got out and killed a couple of Polk's calves. Dr. Michael Barrie, the zoo's director of animal health, had been up at Thompson's property to inspect his large private collection of animals in 2008, accompanying an ATF raid that eventually led to Thompson's imprisonment for a year on gun charges. The solution was elegant, if unusual. He seems to have lived as though there weren't a rule invented that didn't deserve a little bending. There are two mysteries about what happened along the driveway of 270 Kopchak Road that nobody has been able to explain. Terry Thompson sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of John Hernandez. "So those animals were put down." As time passed, people got used to the way he might turn up at the local airfield, say, with a baby bear or lion. Now, I may have talked to her a couple times on the phone. That's where the famous, heartbreaking photo was takenit remains unclear who took itof all the bodies together in the early-morning light, the one that went round the world. Ad Choices, 18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and 1 Man Dead in Ohio. "For Terry, it started out as a love. One detail Sheriff Lutz chose to release to the press at the time was that there was a sizable laceration on Thompson's head that was consistent with a big cat's bite. I just know that I learned the lesson the hard way, that's all.". His probation officer also visited, and Thompson told him how distraught he was at the prospect of being hooked up for a year's electronic home confinement. Almost from the moment Mrs. Kopchak picked up her telephone and reported that wild animals were on the loose, it was taken for granted that the manner of Terry Thompson's death explained all anyone needed to know about the life that came before it. By Ryan Gajewski Staff Editor, Digital "I'm not gonna lie, it . After his death, footage emerged showing Thompson handing one of his lion cubs to Heidi Klum on a fashion shoot, and in 2008 he appeared on the Rachael Ray show as an animal handler. "Everything he had was fast," says Marshall. Carried herself gracefully. A lot of things seemed to be missing from the property and it was a mess: "The weeds were up over the cageshe couldn't even get in his house when he got home." (Tigers are reputedly worth as much as $20,000 dead when their body parts are illegally sold off.) Aunt Iris was old the day I met her, or so it seemed. Others were noted on his torso and his legs. Though Ohio legislators are now scrambling to rectify this, the state where Terry Thompson lived is one of a handful where the regulations on exotic-animal ownership have historically been very light. I asked, 'Why, Terry? Before she opened the cage, she sang to them a lullaby, and they clung to her as she took them one by one to their carriers. Matthew Lutz, the Muskingum County Sheriff described him as a like-to-live-on-the-edge type of person. Surely he must have broken every law that prevents your next-door neighbor from secretly housing an ambush of tigers? Merry drove back up the hill, until he came across a deputy running back and forth near Thompson's driveway. Personal testimonies from his closest staff and family tell a different story from the daily public barrage of criticisms by of the media. Jim Stilwell only found out that Thompson was back by accident when he drove up to the house in early October, expecting Marian to be there. Unknown for sure on that. How could a private citizen have amassed a collection of so many unusual and potentially dangerous animals in the first place? All the Under-$20 Style, Tech, and Home Goods We're Feeling This May, 62 Excellent Gift Ideas to Spoil All the Deserving Guys Out There, 51 Non-Boring Wedding Gifts for All Kinds of Cool Newlyweds, Why NBA MVP Voter Fatigue Is (Mostly) a Myth. TV Shows. While animal advocates have agreed that there was little the authorities could do in the matter, the brutal massacre serves as a reminder of why privately owned exotic animals are considered to be ticking bombs. When he walked into a room, everyone stood up. His wife-to-be, Marian Sharp, came from what was considered a good local family, and was an accomplished barrel racer and horsewoman. "He would sometimes step on other guys' girlfriends. "I don't know." Due to the dangerous circumstances, the police spent nearly seven hours hunting the animals, and shot nearly all of them. He had been wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and white briefs. "When he came back, they had been changed around in the cages. The guy was able to stumble to his feet and try to run, and Terry caught up to him, so at that moment he took off to run it was no longer self-defense." [From a court deposition Thompson gave while incarcerated on March 28, 2011] Okay. Okay, this is a .308, so I could have killed you when you came in the front gate. And the guys that had a wife and children are in Arlington?". They see hypocrisy in much of what he now says, particularly given his past use of animals from private owners as props on TV shows. He was actually found with a pillowcase over his head and a gunshot wound to his stomach. How could you blame a woman you have spent forty years of your life with for that, if you were sane? The Trump I know Documentary Film. Marian became a well-respected local schoolteacher and a prizewinning rider. The animals were scooped by the bucketload, placed in the hole, and earth backhoed over them. I mean, he was a gun man. The tigers are actually bigger than the lions if they're fully grown. The first big public warning sign that, when it came to Thompson's animals, all might not be as it should came in 2005. Thompson's wife, Marian, arrived around lunchtime. "Yes, they have every right to be angry with me, but do they know that I lost everything I had?" Up near the house, where no media could see them, the officers laid the dead animals out in rows, by species, to ease the counting. Terry was also a Vietnam war veteran. They'd never had kids. Sams 85-year-old mother, Dolores, called 911, and soon the police were in the area. Along came a wolf. Occasionally there were reports of more unusual creatures running free but nothing too bad had ever happened. When a state patrolman stopped him for having a taillight out, this is how Thompson described to Spires what happened next: Patrolman: Oh, by the way, you don't have your seat belt fastenedI've got to ticket you for that. "His favorite song was 'House of the Rising Sun.' The previous day he was doing an event at Penn State, and although he'd just had knee surgery, he drove straight here "a hundred miles an hour." What did he ever do to his country?" It was presumed that the remaining two animals were eaten by some of the bigger ones. He had his pilot's license before he was 16. "Remember, 1973 was much different than 2011. He had a funny look. He made mistakes, big mistakes, that the rest of us haven't made.". Maybe Marian understands. And there were always planes. But what about declawing cats, something considered quite acceptable in parts of the exotic owners' world? And [Terry] just really beat him up so bad. ", When Deputy Todd Kanavel, who normally heads up the drug squad, arrived at the scene, Sergeant Blake told him about the body that they had spotted. His friends, and there do seem to be many of them, talk of Thompson with a deep devotion, and testify at length to his goodness, generosity, and freeness of spirit, though they concede that he was certainly no lover of authority, and would maybe even go out of his way to rub up against it. Though ultimately no action was taken concerning the animals after Thompson moved to improve his facilities, Barrie had been horrified at what he saw up there in terms of security, cleanliness, and animal cruelty. But it doesnt seem to be the case as 5,000 to 10,000 tigers live in captivity in the country, while less than 4,000 remain in the wild. The film, partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, makes good use of Clark's songs, family photographs and . Forty miles away, at the Columbus Zoo, an event was being held for the International Rhino Foundation. "He wrestled with the biblical thing: 'I guess I'll never go to heaven because I killed people,' " says Chuck Spires, his friend and guitar teacher. After Deputy Merry headed down the road in pursuit of a wolf, Sergeant Steve Blake, who'd been first on the scene, decided he should drive up to Thompson's house.
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