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. 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. He was inspecting the body when word came over the radio that some colleagues had a lion cornered near the Thompson residence. In the song, the house in question is a New Orleans brothel, and the name was borrowed for similar establishments in Vietnam. There was now only one unaccounted fora macaque. The preserve is located in. And it just broke his heartthis is what I think. But an accident happened. 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 would sometimes step on other guys' girlfriends. "She was saying, 'Please, Mr. Hanna, don't take my children,'" says Hanna. Thompson's motives aren't exactly known, but he was deep in debt, had an estranged marriage and was facing house arrest after a year in prison for a gun conviction. Terry Thompson is known for Red Phone 2 (2003), The Red Phone: Manhunt (2002)and Planespotting (2005). Others were noted on his torso and his legs. Her bond with them certainly seemed real. (If you visit the Columbus Zoo, his face is everywhereeven on the Pepsi machines.) Menu. 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. Mike Marshall, who later flew civilian planes with him, says Thompson brought it up frequently. "Why him? 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. "Kind of uppity. Month after month. He wanted to clear his head. "Terry Thompson was a man who made mountaineering both his profession and his . "He threw up his arms," says Stilwell, "and said, 'She can just have it all.' The local police confirmed deaths of 48 animals which included eighteen Bengal tigers, three mountain lions, nine male lions, eight lionesses, six black bears, two grizzly bears, two wolves, one macaque, one monkey and one baboon. ". 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 knew what he'd do: put Red in the barn, go back to the house, report what he'd seen. "He always bragged," says Marshall, "that when he sold his business he had 138 motorcycles, 138 cars, and 138 guns." That was when he saw the black bear, at first facing him and then running straight toward him. At death Terry William Thompson was five feet five inches tall and weighed 174 pounds. "There would be dogshit all over the showroom. [7] In the years leading up to his death, he went to prison on federal gun charges, was heavily in debt, and his wife had left him. ", 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.' I saw a pair of pants on the ground and the belt was twine. His son and wife were off to a literacy night so he was on his own. Hannafamous for his TV shows and his appearances on shows like Lettermanestablished his career at the Columbus Zoo and remains its director emeritus. I'm Terry Gross. My blog posts are this Christ follower's perspectives on important issues facing our blessed America. "He loved blues more than anything," says Spires. The last few years of Terrys life were when things started going downhill for him. 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. She wasn't, but Terry was. "Every day gets tougher," the actor said ahead of the release of 'Still: A Michael J. 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. Or taking them to the McDonald's drive-thru? 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 sold the monkey outside of the auction, because it wasn't legal to sell inside, for $3,500.". When a life explodes like this, in a shower of sparks and shrapnel, people pick through the remains and see what suits them best. ", "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. I think he had a little touch of Agent Orange. She had to be convinced that the survivors should be taken to the zoo for safekeeping. They'd never had kids. His neighbor Fred Polk relates how two of Thompson's Rottweilers got out and killed a couple of Polk's calves. Netflixs Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness offers an expansive portrayal of private ownership of exotic animals in America. It seems worth taking at least a moment to wonder whether it might be the other way around. ", Toward the end, according to Cindy Huntsman, he seemed to treat his collection of animals in the same way. "Apparently," Tom Stalf theorizes, "he wanted the animals to eat him. "I don't know." 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. She was my grandmother's sister, one of ten children who grew up in Muhlenberg County Kentucky. "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.". "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. Vince Gill, Verlon Thompson, and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, as well as record executive Barry Poss. . And also a lioness, anxiously scuttering around. 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. Six of Terry Thompson's animals survived. 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. Terry Thompson died under the most dramatic of circumstances. Ordinary Heroes. Thompson's wife, Marian, arrived around lunchtime. One time Marshall discovered that Thompson had some convertibles in the barn next to two kangaroos: "a boat-tailed roadster, a Duesenberg or something like that, covered with dust and crap. It was his neighbour, Sam Kopchak, who first noticed that Terrys horses were unusually agitated. The strange truth is: Nobody knows. Thompson did speak to other friends in those days. He didn't trust anybody after that. Partly, I think, they talk because they're proud of what they do and the way they do it, but it's also because their way of life is under attack. 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. The final total was fifty-six. Or $0.00 with a Prime membership. "And, you know, I'm a cat person.". "He was a broken individual," says Phil Cress. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Thompson, 61, was recently released from prison after serving one year on federal weapons charges. 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. The black bear fell about seven feet in front of Merry. "He always laughed and would be real pleasant before," says Polk. Three were leopards, still in their cages. 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. The general impression seems to have been that it was a case of the good girl drawn to the wild boy. He started snarling, and went after the horses.". And sometime in this period, Marian told Sam Kopchak that Terry was giving guitar lessons behind bars. 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. People insist that the Terry Thompson they knew was too lazy to go to that kind of trouble. Animal attacks are terrible tragedies but so are attacks on animals and none more so than that which transpired in Zanesville, Ohio in 2011.On October 18th 2. "I was at an auction and he had a tiger that had ringworm and he had a baby monkey," says Nancy Wider, another owner. This is FRESH AIR. Because I can.' Before he retired four years ago, he used to teach seventh-grade science. Fast airplanes. 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. But the horrific tragedy of Zanesvilles animal massacre is enough to haunt the viewers as they see what follows. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt them.' 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." When he walked into a room, everyone stood up. "I think it's Terry," he said. When I interviewed Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson over the summer after the release of his documentary "Summer Of Soul," at the end of the. "He felt betrayed by the government, by the army, by society in general," claims Marshall. I mean, he was a gun man. On the worst days, there were more people to be rescued than they possibly could. Carried herself gracefully. His friend got killed and I guess they're thinking, 'That could be me tomorrow.' The tigers are actually bigger than the lions if they're fully grown. In 2010, he was sentenced to a year in prison on federal weapon charges. The cause of death seemed to be a gunshot to the head. Twenty-one other injuries, or clusters of injuries, were detailed just on the head and neck, the site of the most widespread damage. Personal testimonies from his closest staff and family tell a different story from the daily public barrage of criticisms by of the media. 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. It was also in Zanesville where he met his wife, Marian Sharp (Thompson), for the first time. Thompson also used to insist that he never sold exotic animals, but many in the animal world are scornful at this suggestion. Fox Movie,' a documentary about his life. Practical questions and answers regarding the gospel are presented at the Eternity page. Sams 85-year-old mother, Dolores, called 911, and soon the police were in the area. Two more were the macaques kept in the living room of the house in two small birdcages. 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. Terry Thompson sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of John Hernandez. The bigger the bang that takes someone out, the more likely it is that the person at its center will be obscured. "My dad really loved him, but I remember sitting at the dinner table and he buzzed our house and my dad said, 'I'm going to shoot that [she mumbles wordlessly] out of the sky.' A fully grown male African lion. Matthew Lutz, the Muskingum County Sheriff described him as a like-to-live-on-the-edge type of person. 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.
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