I invite you to click around the site right now and come back . Fox Movie,' a documentary about his life. "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. Sitting up there, rusting away, is a brand-new '34 Ford steel body. . 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. He didn't know who was who. "If he liked it, he kept it. (If you visit the Columbus Zoo, his face is everywhereeven on the Pepsi machines.) I've shot more rounds through a machine gun than all the cops in Zanesville put together, but I had to stay alive so it wasn't a fun thing. And that's when he then said, 'I'm gonna die.' 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. He then caught the sight of a lion, and then a bear, and soon realized what happened. Want to Read. Nonetheless it was clearly impossible to allow a boisterous feline to clamber freely over someone who has just had major heart surgery. Only then did she call 911 and alert the world. 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. 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. ", "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. TERRY THOMPSON. 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. It kept him sane while he was there. he says. 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. Maybe the animals had somehow busted out, and he was injured, in need of help. 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. Marian insisted on removing the macaques from their cages herself, waving off the zoo personnel's advice about the risk she was taking. 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. I just know that I learned the lesson the hard way, that's all.". 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. He wanted to clear his head. He was actually found with a pillowcase over his head and a gunshot wound to his stomach. There are plenty of colorful stories about his exploits. Others were noted on his torso and his legs. ", "He had an ego that you wouldn't believe," says Stilwell. And [Terry] just really beat him up so bad. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. Ten years ago, after a heart attack, Taft had a quintuple-bypass operation. Fast boats. 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. 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. How could a private citizen have amassed a collection of so many unusual and potentially dangerous animals in the first place? For a while there was a plane on the shop's roof. Terry in particular was always well dressed and in charge of whatever was going on. And none of it was taken care of. ", "Terry, are you sick?" It broke my heart. "Kind of uppity. They'd never had kids. And it just broke his heartthis is what I think. Meanwhile, at the gateway of Thompson's property, the police were wondering how many animals might be loose. 4.74 avg rating 107 ratings published 2021 3 editions. But they assumed that these two runaways must have come from there, so the first thing Mrs. Kopchak did was to dial her neighbor's number. 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." 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. "It's only half a boat," Thompson explained. The 62-year-old owner of an exotic animal farm freed his 56 wild animals on Tuesday (including lions, Bengal tigers, wolves and. In 2010, he was sentenced to a year in prison on federal weapon charges. Somehow, no one was hurt. The charge didn't stick. That's what happens when your death defines you. Day after day. It was decided that the dead animals be buried, there and then, on the property. Still, Lutz said he wasn't busy and would drive over. "A little boy loses his arm to an African lion, 1972 or 1973, Tennessee," he remembers. Those around him believed that he was changed man after he returned from war, that he never fully recovered from its trauma. He had his pilot's license before he was 16. "Like riding on the end of a pencil, sitting on the hood ornament of your car as it accelerates from zero to 158 miles an hour," says Marshall. He knew what he'd do: put Red in the barn, go back to the house, report what he'd seen. He had a funny look. ", A bond that tied two people for so long can take time to break completely. 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. 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. By Ryan Gajewski Staff Editor, Digital "I'm not gonna lie, it . 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. Bo Keck, an officer who was there, told him he couldn't pull such a stunt. "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. Thompson: It'd better not beI'd be out of the truck by now. 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. ", Thompson went to the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia, on November 17, 2010. 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. 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. And sometime in this period, Marian told Sam Kopchak that Terry was giving guitar lessons behind bars. "She was saying, 'Please, Mr. Hanna, don't take my children,'" says Hanna. I don't know how else to explain it." "I think it's Terry," he said. In August, Thompson was moved to a halfway house in Columbus. And finally, out back near the empty swimming pool, was a small grizzly bear, also in a birdcage. Likewise, there is wide disagreement about what kind of human intervention or interaction can be beneficial or justified. Thompson was a door gunner on a Huey helicopter; he told Marshall they had to soften up landing zones, drop soldiers off and pick them up under hostile fire, make emergency medical evacuations: "Dragged both bodies and wounded and maimed soldiers into the helicopter," Marshall says. But people will believe what they need to believe. 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 His friends and neighbour have revealed that he deeply loved his animals, which could explain why he set them free. Lutz instructed that if there were animals outside Thompson's property they needed to be shot. ", Many of Thompson's friends believe that his time in Vietnam was the defining experience of his life. 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. On the worst days, there were more people to be rescued than they possibly could. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. View the profiles of people named Terry Thompson. 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. Their assumption was that he had been thinking about the animals, and they couldn't work out his train of thought. Terry Thompson. What if some of the cats were drawn toward them? Because I can.' Thompson had only returned from his prison sentence three weeks before. It was his neighbour, Sam Kopchak, who first noticed that Terrys horses were unusually agitated. "Apparently," Tom Stalf theorizes, "he wanted the animals to eat him. ". ", After it happened, one thing everyone wanted to understand was how a man who had loved animals enough to have gathered so many grand creatures could then have condemned them to what he had to know was certain death. 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." But maybe she was a little rattled. Thompson almost collapsed to his seat. 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. He was pretty distraught." Where they should have been, there was nothing but a raw gap. The 73 acre farmland with the private zoo was owned by Terry Thompson. Now, I may have talked to her a couple times on the phone. I think he would say, 'That's just what I expect.' 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. Apparently it worked. I don't know what happened to it when he left.". 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. "Why him? 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. Fast airplanes. Terry Thompson died under the most dramatic of circumstances. And it planted the seed of caring for wild animals for the rest of his life. to my website where you will find interesting information and inspiration. "So those animals were put down." "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. "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.' (And continued to becounty records show at least seven citations for failing to wear a seat belt. I'm not an expert. 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. And he was like, 'You know, I'm a lover, not a fighter.' 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. ", "No other law-enforcement agency in the world has faced thisit's not like there was a manual," says Deputy LeCocq. Twenty-one other injuries, or clusters of injuries, were detailed just on the head and neck, the site of the most widespread damage. Rhino experts from around the world had gathered, and the zoo was throwing a cocktail party on the grounds of the polar-bear exhibit. However, it was devastating to lose so many innocent lives, especially the Bengal tigers who are an endangered species. "Beautiful blues eyesthat's what you noticed first," says Christine Perone, who dated him for some time in high school. As they pulled up between the barn and a row of cages, two tigers started out of the barn toward them. He just couldn't keep his brain on the right track. Directed by: Vlad Yudin. It probably made all the difference. He was inspecting the body when word came over the radio that some colleagues had a lion cornered near the Thompson residence.
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