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. I think he had a little touch of Agent Orange. His gallbladder had been removed earlier in life, and he was suffering from severe atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. A white tiger appeared to be eating it, and they couldn't get closer. He lived in a hardback tentyou know, a wood frame and a wood floorand apparently a monkey kinda befriended him. These days many exotic-animal owners have learned to keep what they do to themselves, to avoid the unwanted attention of unhappy neighbors, animal-rights activists, and journalists who treat them as scary eccentrics or worse. ". He wouldn't ever know where the bullet went, though he assumed he must have hit the brain. ), 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. We sent Chris Heath to Zanesville, Ohio, to find out where the wild things areand what the hell they're doing there. " Stalf, who had moved to Columbus only eighteen months earlier, didn't know who Thompson was, but others did. Their cages had either been cut through or left open. He wanted to clear his head. Thompson: Well, where were you when I was in Vietnam in a foxhole, people shooting at me, if you're trying to protect me? He didn't trust anybody after that. The answer to the second question is: What laws? People insist that the Terry Thompson they knew was too lazy to go to that kind of trouble. And that's when he then said, 'I'm gonna die.' Thompson apologized and told Polk that he'd never see those dogs again, but three days later they were back and killed two more calves. Personal testimonies from his closest staff and family tell a different story from the daily public barrage of criticisms by of the media. Fast airplanes. It was also in Zanesville where he met his wife, Marian Sharp (Thompson), for the first time. On October 18, 2011, Terry opened the cages of around 50 of his animals, and then shot himself in the head. But of course I've never killed anyone in civilian life.I understand.I don't even kill flies.Terry Thompson and a government informant in conversation at his home, secretly recorded in April 2008. This is a [Mannlicher-Schoenauer]see the twists in the barrel.I do see that.Okay, hand built in Austria. "He always bragged," says Marshall, "that when he sold his business he had 138 motorcycles, 138 cars, and 138 guns." And he never differentiated between themhe kind of liked the notoriety." "Yes, they have every right to be angry with me, but do they know that I lost everything I had?" On his way home from Vietnam, Thompson found himself in Columbus, Ohio. From there, looking through a north-facing window, he watched the menagerie grow. "Terry Thompson was a man who made mountaineering both his profession and his . Thompson almost collapsed to his seat. All rights reserved. Matthew Lutz, the Muskingum County Sheriff described him as "a like-to-live-on-the-edge type of person". "Kind of uppity. ", "He had an ego that you wouldn't believe," says Stilwell. 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. 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. By now they had also decided that they would need to neutralize all of the animals that were loose, even those still on Thompson's property, so they formed a shooting party. It probably made all the difference. She said, 'We have to goTerry Thompson's animals are out.' "Remember, 1973 was much different than 2011. The general impression seems to have been that it was a case of the good girl drawn to the wild boy. "And he always used to say, 'I don't like animals but I would never hurt one. Encounters with animals that would normally have been remembered for a lifetime were forgotten moments later as the next came along. It was all about Terry after that. How many tickets do you have in that book? "I actually think that he expected this when he got home and kind of planned it," says Stilwell. There was, he told her, "a major problem." Want to Read. (Tigers are reputedly worth as much as $20,000 dead when their body parts are illegally sold off.) "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." "My animals were raised in a magnificent setting, creeks going through the place and everything was gorgeous. 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. Week after week. "He smiled a lot. At the second-largest of these, the Exotic Feline Rescue Center in rural Indiana east of Terre Haute, where most of the 230 cats seem to come with their own tale of horror, the center's founder, Joe Taft, tells me an incidental story that won't leave my mind, because it seems to encapsulate, this time in a rather beautiful way, what people will do in the elusive pursuit of accord and communion between man and animal. He became the local Harley dealer and also got a license to sell guns. Terry Thompson is known for Red Phone 2 (2003), The Red Phone: Manhunt (2002)and Planespotting (2005). 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. And they have every right to think, 'Oh, here's Jack, he had his fun with animalsnow we can't have our fun.' And he was like, 'You know, I'm a lover, not a fighter.' Secret plane trips. By the time the Columbus Zoo team had arrived at the holding area, it was dark. This riddle hardly bolsters any of the conspiracy theoriesif someone did this to Thompson, they too would have had to find a way of releasing the animals without coming to immediate harm (never mind to have escaped from the scene without being spotted). I don't know that.Okay. During the altercation, Thompson's wife, Chauna Thompson, a Harris County Sheriff 's deputy, arrived and called for assistance. His son and wife were off to a literacy night so he was on his own. He was just a bit different from the other ones. I invite you to click around the site right now and come back . The cause of death seemed to be a gunshot to the head. The second, bigger mystery is how Thompson managed to let loose fifty animals without being seriously injured by any of them. Vince Gill, Verlon Thompson, and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, as well as record executive Barry Poss. Actor: Murder Comes to Town. Spires mentions that one morning he found a note from Marian in his mailbox, with a stamped addressed envelope, asking if he would write to Terry in prison. So, she hasn't told you that during her deposition, she told me that you weren't going to be living with her, you two were not going to be living together when you got out?No. The first is why Thompson seems to have cut open so many of the cages when he simply could have opened them. The Mexican cartel. 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. 1 distinct work Similar authors. "That means they're happy," Stilwell says. "So we shot them," says Polk. And the second occurred when he was a young private owner exhibiting his exotic animals. The catastrophic incident that took place in Ohio should have served as a cautionary tale for others in America. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Okay? "), That was all the five of them could learn for now because they were urgently redeployed to the southern end of the property where some cats had been spotted readying to cross the boundary fence. He was kind of a loner. Maybe Marian understands. He was actually found with a pillowcase over his head and a gunshot wound to his stomach. That's when Moore told Deputy Jeff LeCocq something that would later appear in the official police report and came to be taken as a kind of explanation for what had happened, albeit one that prompted many further questions. The charge didn't stick. "Apparently," Tom Stalf theorizes, "he wanted the animals to eat him. An insightful documentary film has just been released that reveals the true Donald Trump contrary to the constant misleading portrayals by his opposition. Marian insisted on removing the macaques from their cages herself, waving off the zoo personnel's advice about the risk she was taking. As for the enemy: "He said he just had to keep mowing them down. It was very sad to seehow someone clearly had lost their mind. [From a court deposition Thompson gave while incarcerated on March 28, 2011] Okay. His neighbor Fred Polk relates how two of Thompson's Rottweilers got out and killed a couple of Polk's calves. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. 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. And none of it was taken care of. And it just broke his heartthis is what I think. 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. After returning from war, Terry opened a motorcycle shop which he ran till the 90s, and then sold licensed firearms for some years. He didn't even trust his own wife. 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. He had his pilot's license before he was 16. ", "I think he knew when he did what he did that he was going to put himself and Zanesville, Ohio, on the map," Stilwell says. 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." She sounded calm when she reported what her son had seen, as though there was really nothing too strange or alarming about a lion and a bear running loose on an October afternoon in Ohio. Due to the dangerous circumstances, the police spent nearly seven hours hunting the animals, and shot nearly all of them. As Ed Hamell pointed . His wife-to-be, Marian Sharp, came from what was considered a good local family, and was an accomplished barrel racer and horsewoman. Fox Movie,' a documentary about his life. "He would never sell anything," says Marshall. TV Shows. And I had to go and pick up the arm. Workin' Moms. . 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." Select Page. ", Since Thompson died, Chuck Spires has been told by two people that Thompson had told them the same thing, and that he said it to the first of them before he even went to prison: "Basically, 'I should kill my wife and then me.' Drug smuggling. That was how it started. His friends and neighbour have revealed that he deeply loved his animals, which could explain why he set them free. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. "Kind of classyyou know," says Jim Stilwell, a longtime friend of Thompson's who went to school with Sharp. Movies. He had a complicated relationship with the law, and his neighbours. (At 6:04 p.m., Lutz shared this information on the police radio: "Okay, we have located the owner. As for what actually happened on that day in October, I hear all kinds of theories, though most of them sound recklessly far-fetched. 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. What about neutering, which is now considered not merely acceptable but responsible behavior when it comes to many nonexotic pets? The third is what happened that night in Zanesville. "Garbage, and feces. He had been wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and white briefs. "His favorite song was 'House of the Rising Sun.' 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. There are plenty of colorful stories about his exploits. "If he liked it, he kept it. And he said, 'Well, I got through Vietnam' ", When John Moore told the police about a letter accusing Marian Thompson of adultery that Thompson had received on the day before his death, the implication seemed to be that he had received some fresh, devastating news about his marriage. 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. 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. It just broke my heart. Just as "good" private owners explain why they should exist and why "bad" private owners should not, sanctuaries may suggest that they should endure while private owners are phased out, and zoos can loftily assume there are clear reasons that they should be cherished while most kinds of non-zoo ownership should be frowned upon. 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. Thompson did things his own way even when it led him into trouble. I asked, 'Why, Terry? From there, he walked the fifty or so miles east to his parents' house. Though no trace would be found of it, dead or alive, it was eventually decided that it had most likely been eaten by one of the cats. You finally just stop.". 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. View the profiles of people named Terry Thompson. The white tiger had gone. In this era there were also numerous complaints of loose animals. What, too, of this practice of removing cubs from their big-cat mothers soon after birth and hand-rearing them by humans? That's what it was like. Informant: You're crazy.Thompson: That's what they all say. He didn't know too much about lions, but he had heard that it was unwise to challenge them by looking them in the eye, and that if you ran away they had a tendency to chase you. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. He hurried back. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The first involves his daughter and cancer. 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. When it turned up toward a house, Merry got his rifle from the trunk and followed on foot. There was now only one unaccounted fora macaque. "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. There are all kinds of ways that tragedy and fate can reach across decades to taunt us and trap us. Three were leopards, still in their cages. Netflixs Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness offers an expansive portrayal of private ownership of exotic animals in America. (If you visit the Columbus Zoo, his face is everywhereeven on the Pepsi machines.) It kept him sane while he was there. It was his neighbour, Sam Kopchak, who first noticed that Terrys horses were unusually agitated. 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. Meanwhile, at the gateway of Thompson's property, the police were wondering how many animals might be loose. There are two mysteries about what happened along the driveway of 270 Kopchak Road that nobody has been able to explain. Home Fred Polk, a farmer and scrap dealer who was one of Thompson's neighbors and sometimes tangled with him, also knew him before and after he went away to war. That was when he saw the black bear, at first facing him and then running straight toward him. Jack doesn't need to be telling me anything. 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. He had these wild animals. Hanna acknowledges that he is not universally popular for supporting what happened that night, and for supporting the laws being drafted. Mr Thompson had been released from federal prison three weeks earlier after serving a one-year term on firearms charges, according to the AFP news agency. 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. (Thompson was not unusual in routinely taking his cats to the vet for declawing.) His friend got killed and I guess they're thinking, 'That could be me tomorrow.' After the wolf went down, Merry fired a few more times to make sure. 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. Where they should have been, there was nothing but a raw gap. Directed by: Vlad Yudin. Maybe there's a letter or a note that explains it all. "I think it's Terry," he said. Why do you need so many?' All he remembered was the sight of the bear's head coming at him, and he also remembered what had been drilled into him at weapons training: Shoot what you see. The preserve is located in. 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 Aunt Iris was old the day I met her, or so it seemed. "There would be dogshit all over the showroom. I wonder how I might bring up the dark moment that the exotic-animal owners think of as his great never mentioned dirty secret, but I don't need to. Only three weeks after getting out, he released the animals, and shot himself. Menu. They'd never had kids. Somehow, no one was hurt. What about giving primates TV to watch? ", "No other law-enforcement agency in the world has faced thisit's not like there was a manual," says Deputy LeCocq. As they moved toward other escapees spread over the hillside, they used the truck to give themselves elevation, trying to engage the animals from seventy to a hundred yards away, firing on them two at a time until they went down. Thompson: It'd better not beI'd be out of the truck by now. He'd already hung up his uniform and finished his dinner when, at around 5:20 p.m., he got the call reporting that Terry Thompson had an animal out. A twelve-year-old girl befriends a quirky teenage mermaid who's anything but mythical, and their friendship could heal an age-old feud. "He never really got over it," says Marshall. He knew what he'd do: put Red in the barn, go back to the house, report what he'd seen. I don't know what happened to it when he left.". ", As they passed by the lion cages Thompson talked about the split. Merry didn't know what was going on, so he stopped. In the end, as his friends point out, Thompson was only convicted for ownership of a gun without a serial number (he said it was too old to have one) and the possession of a single machine gun. His farm was reportedly raided June 2008 . (Whose feelings, exactly, are being taken into account there?) 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. Now he only had his Glock. "A little boy loses his arm to an African lion, 1972 or 1973, Tennessee," he remembers. "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. Patrolman: I don't knowprobably seventy-five. "Every day gets tougher," the actor said ahead of the release of 'Still: A Michael J. 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. Thompson's sounds like an idyllic small-town-America '60s childhood: bicycles, Boy Scouts, loving parents, sporting triumphs, souped-up cars, girls. The police took guidance from wildlife expert Jack Hanna, who insisted that killing the animals was a necessity in order to ensure the safety of the public. Terry Thompson. "My father didn't like animals," she told me. Six of Terry Thompson's animals survived. They needed to find out for sure, and to see whether the person might still be alive. 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. "He wanted people to know that he was there. And there were always planes. You know, I'm crazy, but I live in the big house on the hill with the biggest horse and the fastest boat, fastest bike. But an accident happened. Even that statistic slightly obscures the situation. 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. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt 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. It was so bad one time, he ran out of bullets.". The white tiger was atop him. A fully grown male African lion. Others were noted on his torso and his legs. Merry drove back up the hill, until he came across a deputy running back and forth near Thompson's driveway. And then, as Thompson would tell it, everything changed. Terry became so verbally abusive to Marian. "See," says Spires, "that's the way he was." 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. Practical questions and answers regarding the gospel are presented at the Eternity page. The government stole his heart. "He was tops in everything he did. It wasn't quite that straightforward. The final total was fifty-six. Occasionally there were reports of more unusual creatures running free but nothing too bad had ever happened. This reality is revealed to us through Zanesville Animal Escape that briefly makes its presence felt during the first half of the series. Where do you plan to live when you are released?At my house.Okay. "He felt betrayed by the government, by the army, by society in general," claims Marshall. Terry William Thompson grew up just east of Zanesville on his parents' farm, close to the airport. Powered by WordPress.com VIP.
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