To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. It probably made all the difference. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt them.' Bo Keck, an officer who was there, told him he couldn't pull such a stunt. The exotic-animal world is a close-knit one, and in the year before Thompson's death, after he was sent to prison, word spread that there were problems with his animals. The animals were only about ten or twelve feet away. Over the days I spend visiting them I become strangely accustomed to the fact that, just around the back of an otherwise perfectly normal home in Ohio suburbia, there can be a tiger or a cougaror, in some cases, many of each. That's what it was like. Thompson seemed to need help, so Stilwell took up his Echo Weed Eater, and his lopper for the thicker growths, and his portable air compressor to pump up the flat tires of Thompson's Dually truck. These included a grizzly bear, three leopards and two monkeys all whom were then taken to the Columbus Zoo. "That's when Terry actually goes to [Moore] and asks him about Marian having cheated on him while he was in prison," says Deputy LeCocq. ), 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. How many tickets do you have in that book? Likewise, there is wide disagreement about what kind of human intervention or interaction can be beneficial or justified. Menu. Apply Bed Bath and Beyond Coupon and save 25% Off your entire purchase, Target Circle: up to 50% Off with Target promo code, Shop the new Polo Ralph Lauren x ASOS Exclusive Collection from $99, Michael Kors Promo Code: sign up for KORSVIP + Get 10% Off on first order, 2023 Cond Nast. Somehow, no one was hurt. His death was part of a twenty-five-year plot to rid America of exotic animals. She said, 'We have to goTerry Thompson's animals are out.' No one is sure how many there are, or where they are. What, then, about the way that male tigers are usually neutered in sanctuaries, but male lions are not, because when neutered they lose their manes? This is a [Mannlicher-Schoenauer]see the twists in the barrel.I do see that.Okay, hand built in Austria. The only reason I can think of is that it made it harder to undo what he had done, and so made it more of an act of irreversible destruction. "He would sometimes step on other guys' girlfriends. Apparently it worked. Well, let me tell you, if you want to kill a bunch of kids you take that camper and run into a schoolyard full of kids, you'll kill about a hundred of them. 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. And I have no problem with that. It just broke my heart. 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. [In 1976] Terry joined the Army Everest Expedition where he met his tragic death in a crevasse accident in the Western Cwm." - Mike Banks The Climber's Club Journal (London) 1976. ", "No other law-enforcement agency in the world has faced thisit's not like there was a manual," says Deputy LeCocq. Those around him believed that he was changed man after he returned from war, that he never fully recovered from its trauma. Three were leopards, still in their cages. "When he was in Vietnam," says Mike Marshall, "he told me that he was befriended by a little monkey. He eventually sold his bike shop and, for the rest of Thompson's life, his hobbies and whatever he did to make a living seemed to mingle in ways that were sometimes ill-defined. 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. "Kind of classyyou know," says Jim Stilwell, a longtime friend of Thompson's who went to school with Sharp. "I asked him what he was going to do when they turned the key on him," says Spires. Their cages had either been cut through or left open. Fast boats. All rights reserved. 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. Secret plane trips. But Thompson explained how upset he was that he used to be able to go around his own private zoo and call his animals by name but could no longer do so. He had a heart of gold. IMDbProStarmeterSee rank Add photos, demo reelsAdd to list View contact info at IMDbPro More at IMDbPro Contact info Agent info Known for Red Phone 2 5.7 TV Movie Writer 2003 The Red Phone: Manhunt 4.2 TV Movie Writer 2002 Planespotting 6.5 On the worst days, there were more people to be rescued than they possibly could. "Yes, they have every right to be angry with me, but do they know that I lost everything I had?" ", There were also pieces of raw chicken scattered around near the body. Usually he never hesitated. A nice girl." I don't know that.Okay. Due to the dangerous circumstances, the police spent nearly seven hours hunting the animals, and shot nearly all of them. And then Terry makes this statement back to him: 'Well, I have a plan to find out, and you will know it when it happens.' The Trump I know Documentary Film An insightful documentary film has just been released that reveals the true Donald Trump contrary to the constant misleading portrayals by his opposition. He never left it.". Thompson did things his own way even when it led him into trouble. After the sheriff spoke with Hanna and talked him through what happened, he gave interview after interview. The 73 acre farmland with the private zoo was owned by Terry Thompson. Garbage bags filled with garbage that were knocked over, and the filth. Code 16 [dead on arrival], possible 58 [suicide]. That was Terry Thompson's final grotesque parting gifta last meal for one of his animals, sometime before it, too, met its death by bullet on the sad night of October 18, 2011, near Zanesville, Ohio. "When he came back, they had been changed around in the cages. "He had accused her of turning him in for the guns. I don't know what happened to it when he left.". As Ed Hamell pointed . 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. He only looked back once, when they were about a third of the way to the barn. 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. Vince Gill, Verlon Thompson, and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, as well as record executive Barry Poss. Or $0.00 with a Prime membership. We didn't talk about the deposition.Okay. 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. Whatever the dynamic that drew them together, for the next four decades they presented themselves as a formidable partnership. But the horrific tragedy of Zanesvilles animal massacre is enough to haunt the viewers as they see what follows. "And his answer, to the way I recall, was he didn't know whether she did or she didn't. 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. But the final blow was finding out that his wife, Marian, had left him. "And he did it. Fast airplanes. one owner nonchalantly inquires, as it nestles up against the fencing inches away from me in his garage.) Smith asked why it was only half price. "I don't know." He just couldn't keep his brain on the right track. In the later years it became very overwhelming because Terry went a little off the deep end. But for those who'd prefer a Rosebud moment, here's one more story from forty years earlier, from the time when an Ohio youth with beautiful blue eyes found himself forsaken and lost, deep in the kind of darkness and damage that some never completely escape. In Vietnam we were so much more interested in lightweight because we were on the move a lot. This reality is revealed to us through Zanesville Animal Escape that briefly makes its presence felt during the first half of the series. But it isn't easy to work out what is right when it comes to animals like these, either morally or practically, which may be why there are so many shades of opinion. Along came a wolf. Thompson did speak to other friends in those days. What happened: 10 years ago today, exotic animal collector Terry Thompson set 50 animals loose before fatally shooting himself on his 73-acre farm west of Zanesville. Personal testimonies from his closest staff and family tell a different story from the daily public barrage of criticisms by of the media. The road his and Thompson's properties abutted was named Kopchak Road after his great-uncle. "Beautiful blues eyesthat's what you noticed first," says Christine Perone, who dated him for some time in high school. Thompson was involved with bad people and had fallen out with them. The truth is that while, on a practical level, we may feel as though we can distinguish between better and worse owners, it is logically impossible to know for certain what the animals are thinking or experiencing. Byline: By TONY THOMPSON . "He felt betrayed by the government, by the army, by society in general," claims Marshall. He had acted as an animal handler on Wild Kingdom in 2008, and provided a lion cub to a photoshoot with Heidi Klum. The cause of death seemed to be a gunshot to the head. Only then did she call 911 and alert the world. Never had to think twice about it. 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. "I think people were afraid of Terry. He was actually found with a pillowcase over his head and a gunshot wound to his stomach. What if some of the cats were drawn toward them? 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. I think he had a little touch of Agent Orange. Marian became a well-respected local schoolteacher and a prizewinning rider. Thompson told Spires of a visit on the day a friend of his had been killed. He didn't know who was who. he says. Terry Thompson. And I had to go and pick up the arm. At the time there was a young tiger cub living with him and when Taft returned from the hospital he was unwilling to displace it. ", Her son remained trapped in the barn. After all, this is not the life they are meant to lead, and certainly not the one they deserve. But maybe she was a little rattled. 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. I can see a logic in some kind of extreme libertarian position (people should be able to do what they want with animals unless they are clearly shown to be doing harm) and, conversely, in a hard-core animal-rights position (no animals should be used for any human purpose whatsoever), but the arguments for everything in between seem murky. "A little boy loses his arm to an African lion, 1972 or 1973, Tennessee," he remembers. My guest, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, has made his directorial debut with the new documentary "Summer Of Soul." Questlove co-founded The Roots, which is,. In 1997, Terry and Marian attended an exotic animal auction, from which Terry gifted an ailing baby lion to Marian as a birthday gift. Because she loved the animals as much as he did. Terry Thompson's most popular book is The Martian Diaries: Vol.1 The Day Of The Martians (The . "Remember, 1973 was much different than 2011. Thompson had only returned from his prison sentence three weeks before. Terry in particular was always well dressed and in charge of whatever was going on. "Very depressed. "And then," he says, "I saw a tiger. He liked speed." "Every day gets tougher," the actor said ahead of the release of 'Still: A Michael J. An incredible true story from the March 2012 issue of GQ. So these animals were like her children. "I actually think that he expected this when he got home and kind of planned it," says Stilwell. And that's when he then said, 'I'm gonna die.' "Terry Thompson was a man who made mountaineering both his profession and his . Thompson: It'd better not beI'd be out of the truck by now. Their assumption was that he had been thinking about the animals, and they couldn't work out his train of thought. What, too, of this practice of removing cubs from their big-cat mothers soon after birth and hand-rearing them by humans? Patrolman: I don't knowprobably seventy-five. Where were you then? ", Many of Thompson's friends believe that his time in Vietnam was the defining experience of his life. 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. Whatever the exact truth, it wasn't that simple, though different people suggest different time frames. Terry Thompson sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of John Hernandez. Merry drove back up the hill, until he came across a deputy running back and forth near Thompson's driveway. I'm telling you, the lion is bad enough, and the lioness is bad enough, and the wolf is bad, and the bear, butdon't be around the tiger. Nobody yet knew where Thompson was, and so there was concern for his safety. It also thrust into daylight, if only for a brief moment, a secret world of privately owned exotic animals living off the grid, and often right next door. Given the situationfifty animals, mostly large and potentially aggressive carnivores set loose toward the day's endthings could have gone so much worse. 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. I'm not an expert. Her bond with them certainly seemed real. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. "That's what happens when they send a guy to prison that don't deserve to go there. She also helped with the feeding, and reminded him of some recent arrivals. "On the third night," says Spires, "this guy showed up, started beating windows out. The lion was in the same place as a moment ago, still on the other side of the fence, though it was quite obvious that the animal could get over the fence anytime it wanted to. "He smiled a lot. 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." Terry Thompson died under the most dramatic of circumstances. He was inspecting the body when word came over the radio that some colleagues had a lion cornered near the Thompson residence. Mrs. Thompson chose the spot. As time passed, people got used to the way he might turn up at the local airfield, say, with a baby bear or lion. I guess I am an expert in the military. Yeah, I am. "He said, you stand in line for two hours to get to the phone," remembers Stilwell, "and then you call home and there's no answer. They'd long known that there were strange and unusual animals kept out of sight over the brow of the hill around Thompson's houseoften they could hear lions bellow and roar. 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. "See," says Spires, "that's the way he was." "Jack needs to step back, take a breath, and look at Jack's history. View the profiles of people named Terry Thompson. ", Toward the end, according to Cindy Huntsman, he seemed to treat his collection of animals in the same way. Lutz described Thompson as "a guy who kind of kept to himself, was always willing to push the envelope a little bit." It's what the Indians wanted.Terry Thompson, secretly recorded in his home by a government informant, May 2008. "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" is a lively and insightful documentary about the late great journalist who exploded the myth of objectivity. (Nearly everything. to my website where you will find interesting information and inspiration. 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. As he got out of the car, he grabbed for his rifle on the passenger seat, but it snagged on the computer stand so he left it. 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. But I find a few. Without a USDA license, he wasn't allowed to supply animals for photo shoots and commercial events, though he sometimes got around it by using fellow owner Cindy Huntsman's animals and accreditation. By the time he got there, the culling had begun. "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.". "He always laughed and would be real pleasant before," says Polk. [Talking about the property on which he lived and died]It's the high ground. Maybe a mile away was a school soccer gamekids yelling and screaming in the open air. He had a complicated relationship with the law, and his neighbours. When he arrived, he could see, just inside Thompson's fence, a tiger, a black bear, and two lionesses. Instead, he walked over to Walmart, bought a Schwinn cruiser bicycle and rode nearly fifty miles through the rainy night along the old Route 40 until he reached his home. Deliberately or not, he seemed to imply that Thompson's body was, aside from the gunshot wound suggesting a barrel placed in the mouth, otherwise fairly untouched. He made mistakes, big mistakes, that the rest of us haven't made.". Still, Lutz said he wasn't busy and would drive over. He had these wild animals. "He was a broken individual," says Phil Cress. They needed to find out for sure, and to see whether the person might still be alive. It seems worth taking at least a moment to wonder whether it might be the other way around. Though sanctuaries try to avoid pregnancies, sometimes new arrivals are pregnant and occasionally accidents happen, and when there are baby cubs they are hand-raised by humans. 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. The answer to that first question: It's surprisingly easy. 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. Kopchak wasn't overly alarmed by this sight, unexpected as it was, maybe because the bear wasn't too big as black bears go, and maybe because it was running away from him. The solution was elegant, if unusual. Terry Thompson is known for Murder Comes to Town (2014) and Not for Rent! I saw a pair of pants on the ground and the belt was twine. He had a funny look. There are no sane people that would live in those conditions.". "One of our vets came into the cocktail area," says Tom Stalf, the zoo's chief operating officer, "and you could see the panic on her face. By Ryan Gajewski Staff Editor, Digital "I'm not gonna lie, it . His farm was reportedly raided June 2008 . Six of Terry Thompson's animals survived. Actor: Murder Comes to Town. 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. Twenty-one other injuries, or clusters of injuries, were detailed just on the head and neck, the site of the most widespread damage. The incident made global news. And the straw that broke the camel's back was, when he went to jail, he came back and his wife had abandoned him.
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