"He would never sell anything," says Marshall. It wasn't quite that straightforward. I don't know what happened to it when he left.". And [Terry] just really beat him up so bad. Day after day. "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.". "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. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. He. "I think people were afraid of Terry. The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has announced it will return Feb. 7-17. ", 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.' Terry Thompson sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of John Hernandez. Terry in particular was always well dressed and in charge of whatever was going on. ", As they passed by the lion cages Thompson talked about the split. 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? 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. 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. And it just broke his heartthis is what I think. "), 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. His farm was reportedly raided June 2008 . As they pulled up between the barn and a row of cages, two tigers started out of the barn toward them. 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. "I think it's Terry," he said. "He threw up his arms," says Stilwell, "and said, 'She can just have it all.' But I lean toward another theorythat in the end the animals were just what they've usually been in human history: incidental collateral damage. And the second occurred when he was a young private owner exhibiting his exotic animals. It was so bad one time, he ran out of bullets.". Twenty-one other injuries, or clusters of injuries, were detailed just on the head and neck, the site of the most widespread damage. Vince Gill, Verlon Thompson, and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, as well as record executive Barry Poss. Jack doesn't need to be telling me anything. The wounds mentioned in the autopsy report, aside from the gunshot wound, begin with "a 2 1/4 inch vertical laceration on the right lower forehead and along the spine of the nose." Others were noted on his torso and his legs. Want to Read. Still, Lutz said he wasn't busy and would drive over. She would explain that she had spent $30,000 buying them, and that she used to sleep with the young female. He was charged with animal cruelty relating to some livestock he kept on his parents' old property on the other side of town after three cows and a buffalo were said to have died of starvation and was sentenced to six months' house arrest. ", Thompson went to the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia, on November 17, 2010. This 95-minute documentary follows Guy Clark, Susanna Clark, and Townes Van Zandt as they rise from obscurity to reverence. He had been wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and white briefs. "Kind of classyyou know," says Jim Stilwell, a longtime friend of Thompson's who went to school with Sharp. From where they were, they could see the man's body, flat on its back. And it planted the seed of caring for wild animals for the rest of his life. Forty miles away, at the Columbus Zoo, an event was being held for the International Rhino Foundation. 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. As for the enemy: "He said he just had to keep mowing them down. Personal testimonies from his closest staff and family tell a different story from the daily public barrage of criticisms by of the media. (2017). Fast boats. But the final blow was finding out that his wife, Marian, had left him. [8] Thompson: It'd better not beI'd be out of the truck by now. Week after week. 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. Even when a tranquilizer dose is successfully administered it needs about ten minutes to take effect, and great care is required to establish that it has done soimpossible with so many animals running around. "They told me," says one owner, Cindy Huntsman, "there were no laws on the books that would allow him to confiscate.". Red, a half-Arabian pinto, was acting skittish and had moved toward the far corner of the field. He was upset with the army because he saw some horrible, ugly things." And a second bear, this one much larger than the first. The house itself was disgusting. He got off one shot. Zanesville held a special significance for himhe went to school near here, enlisted in the army here, spent his honeymoon night here. There are plenty of colorful stories about his exploits. Only once you slide up and down these slippery moral slopes can you see how much easier it is for all of these owners to believe that they are acting with kindness to animals that they love, and that their love is on some level reciprocated. 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. Zanesville Animal Escape took place in October 2011, in Zanesville, Ohio, when over 50 exotic animals were released from Muskingum County Animal Farm. to my website where you will find interesting information and inspiration. 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. She was my grandmother's sister, one of ten children who grew up in Muhlenberg County Kentucky. ", I reiterate how angry animal owners are with him. And I have no problem with that. She said, 'We have to goTerry Thompson's animals are out.' 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. TV Shows. I don't know how else to explain it." "His eyes were just beautiful." 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. As one friend puts it: "Who is the guy who would piss my dad off the most?" 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. 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. After returning from war, Terry opened a motorcycle shop which he ran till the 90s, and then sold licensed firearms for some years. These included a grizzly bear, three leopards and two monkeys all whom were then taken to the Columbus Zoo. However, it was devastating to lose so many innocent lives, especially the Bengal tigers who are an endangered species. I saw a pair of pants on the ground and the belt was twine. Director Dustin Rikert Writers Fred Hogge Rafael Jordan Stars Caitlin Carmichael Sydney Scotia Jerry O'Connell See production, box office & company info Watch on The Roku Channel with subscription As Ed Hamell pointed . A little before five o'clock on the evening of October 18, 2011, as the day began to ebb away, a retired schoolteacher named Sam Kopchak left the home he shared with his 84-year-old mother and headed into the paddock behind their house to attend to the horse he'd bought nine days earlier. 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. There was now only one unaccounted fora macaque. Even that statistic slightly obscures the situation. Jack Hanna's lion, at Jack Hanna's animal farm. ", There were also pieces of raw chicken scattered around near the body. There was gray powder residue on his left hand that appeared to be from a gun being fired. "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. 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. He only looked back once, when they were about a third of the way to the barn. You know what I mean? The incident made global news. Not that she was the only one who noticed. He liked speed." I hear many tales of devotion and care that try to emphasize the ordinariness of what is being done ("We live a very normal life," one mother tells me, "besides the fact that I have alternative animals"); I hear from a man who had a bear escape and only averted disaster by luring it back into its cage with a trail of vanilla-cream cookies; I hear from a man who shared his house and bed with a leopard for nineteen years ("I know certainly if I would have done the wrong thing when she was getting possessive about things, she would have certainly killed me"); I hear from a couple who have not been on holiday for seven years because they won't abandon their six bobcats and who are planning to leave the state rather than be separated from their animals; I hear from a woman who says she will do absolutely anything"shoveling shit in hell, sucking cock for fifty bucks"to feed and protect her cats. Thompson also used to insist that he never sold exotic animals, but many in the animal world are scornful at this suggestion. _Thompson: _You might as well keep writing, because when I leave here I'm not fastening my seat belt. He seems to have lived as though there weren't a rule invented that didn't deserve a little bending. The last few years of Terrys life were when things started going downhill for him. "On the third night," says Spires, "this guy showed up, started beating windows out. The strange truth is: Nobody knows. Somehow, no one was hurt. His gallbladder had been removed earlier in life, and he was suffering from severe atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Then he turned back, intending to deal with a black bear and a tiger along the roadway, but he was distracted by a cougar heading south, so he followed the cougar into another driveway where he met a male African lion coming the other way. 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. Deputy Tony Angelo, a sniper on their SWAT team, had a bolt-action rifle, Deputy Ryan Paisley had a nine-millimeter HK MP5 submachine gun, Deputy Jay Lawhorne and Kanavel had assault rifles. And you've not spoken to your wife since her deposition [five weeks earlier]?No. In Vietnam we were so much more interested in lightweight because we were on the move a lot. Already, he did things differently from other people. 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. Terry Thompson is known for Murder Comes to Town (2014) and Not for Rent! He had a heart of gold. Because I can.' I'm not an expert. "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. ", Her son remained trapped in the barn. I always thought that was pretty funny." "Kind of uppity. Fox Movie,' a documentary about his life. Bob Thompson Trailer from Jeffrey Cooper on Vimeo.. Facebook; Twitter; RSS; Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress He was devastated to find the poor condition of the zoo when he returned, and was also heavily in debt. "He always laughed and would be real pleasant before," says Polk. Only when the shape broke out of the circle could Kopchak see that it was a black bear. 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 was inspecting the body when word came over the radio that some colleagues had a lion cornered near the Thompson residence. He hurried back. Byline: By TONY THOMPSON . 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." For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Given the situationfifty animals, mostly large and potentially aggressive carnivores set loose toward the day's endthings could have gone so much worse. Meanwhile, at the gateway of Thompson's property, the police were wondering how many animals might be loose. Due to the dangerous circumstances, the police spent nearly seven hours hunting the animals, and shot nearly all of them. A white tiger appeared to be eating it, and they couldn't get closer. Thompson's sounds like an idyllic small-town-America '60s childhood: bicycles, Boy Scouts, loving parents, sporting triumphs, souped-up cars, girls. The 62-year-old owner of an exotic animal farm freed his 56 wild animals on Tuesday (including lions, Bengal tigers, wolves and. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. Terry Thompson's best friend Charlie Leasure reflects on his friend's final day. First they had to deal with a male African lion that managed to run between some junk cars after the first shotthere were dozens and dozens of old cars and RVs and tractors parked in clumps of rusted metal around the hillside, weeds growing around them. There are no sane people that would live in those conditions.". 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. You finally just stop.". Some people just said, 'Oh, that's T.' ". His friends and neighbour have revealed that he deeply loved his animals, which could explain why he set them free. People insist that the Terry Thompson they knew was too lazy to go to that kind of trouble. "He raised Dobermans back then," says Stilwell. Join Facebook to connect with Terry Thompson and others you may know. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. "Apparently," Tom Stalf theorizes, "he wanted the animals to eat him. He knew what he'd do: put Red in the barn, go back to the house, report what he'd seen. 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. Thompson almost collapsed to his seat. Lutz instructed that if there were animals outside Thompson's property they needed to be shot. Netflixs Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness offers an expansive portrayal of private ownership of exotic animals in America. And then there was what the coroner described like this: "a 5 3/4 x 4 inch gaping laceration involving the pubic region and bilateral medial thighs with the absence of genitalia, exposure of the pubic bones and adjacent soft tissue." ". "But you'll know when I go.". 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. It just broke my heart. Thompson had only returned from his prison sentence three weeks before. Why do you need so many?' And the guys that had a wife and children are in Arlington?". "He forgets where he came from," says one owner, Michael Stapleton (five tigers, four bears). He became the local Harley dealer and also got a license to sell guns. "Terry Thompson was a man who made mountaineering both his profession and his . Deputy Jonathan Merry was two hours into his shift, serving a court summons a couple of miles away in Zanesville, when the call came through about a lion and a bear on the loose. It kept him sane while he was there. Nonetheless it was clearly impossible to allow a boisterous feline to clamber freely over someone who has just had major heart surgery. Since 1957, GQ has inspired men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of style, culture, and beyond. 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. "Well," Thompson retorted, "find someone to file a complaint on me." An insightful documentary film has just been released that reveals the true Donald Trump contrary to the constant misleading portrayals by his opposition. When he walked into a room, everyone stood up. Smith asked why it was only half price. A nice girl." 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. "Jack needs to step back, take a breath, and look at Jack's history. On October 18, 2011, Terry opened the cages of around 50 of his animals, and then shot himself in the head. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt them.' When you've been through a firefight and you've got that warm machine gun, that's all you got. Thompson was a collector of exotic animals, who grew up in Zanesville, and was well-known around the area for the wild things he did. 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. At death Terry William Thompson was five feet five inches tall and weighed 174 pounds. 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 probably made all the difference. Friends say that Thompson loved having something that nobody else had, and he industriously accumulated objects that might fit the bill. Okay, this is a .308, so I could have killed you when you came in the front gate. "And then," he says, "I saw a tiger. Cages only lead to more cages, unless a far worse reality awaits them. "He used to buzz my house," she says. It had a special meaning." Maybe there's a letter or a note that explains it all. "There was never just one girl in his life," she remembers. Terry William Thompson grew up just east of Zanesville on his parents' farm, close to the airport. The 39th Santa Barbara International Film Festival will resume in Santa Barbara, Calif., continuing to take . The craziest, most tangentially related rumor that I hear in Zanesville: Jack Hanna was supplying Charlie Sheen's tiger blood. "He hesitated. 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. [Talking about the property on which he lived and died]It's the high ground.

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