On his way home from Vietnam, Thompson found himself in Columbus, Ohio. "We didn't have any idea how many there were," Mrs. Kopchak would later reflect. There may still be a market for baby lions and tigers (the consensus seems to be that realistic prices are a little higher than Stalf's figure), but there is virtually no market at all for adult tigers and lions. "You got cancer or something? She also helped with the feeding, and reminded him of some recent arrivals. There was, he told her, "a major problem." "And he always used to say, 'I don't like animals but I would never hurt one. 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. But the final blow was finding out that his wife, Marian, had left him. (Even Mr. Kopchak, forgotten in his barn, safely managed to make his way unescorted back to his house at nightfall.) Actor: Murder Comes to Town. The first involves his daughter and cancer. Terry Thompson(XIII) Visual Effects IMDbProStarmeterSee rank Terry Thompson is known for X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), Terminator Genisys (2015)and Free Guy (2021). To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. "When he was in Vietnam," says Mike Marshall, "he told me that he was befriended by a little monkey. How could you blame a woman you have spent forty years of your life with for that, if you were sane? At first the number of animals he came up with was forty-eight, but then his fiance arrived. "He threw up his arms," says Stilwell, "and said, 'She can just have it all.' 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. I don't know how else to explain it." What, too, of this practice of removing cubs from their big-cat mothers soon after birth and hand-rearing them by humans? From there, looking through a north-facing window, he watched the menagerie grow. 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. I don't know that.Okay. I asked, 'Why, Terry? The preserve is located in. Surely he must have broken every law that prevents your next-door neighbor from secretly housing an ambush of tigers? He and his wife liked to drive a decommissioned fireman's truck around town until one night he wrecked it. His farm was reportedly raided June 2008 . Byline: By TONY THOMPSON . His neighbor Fred Polk relates how two of Thompson's Rottweilers got out and killed a couple of Polk's calves. He was actually found with a pillowcase over his head and a gunshot wound to his stomach. It took his heart. ". The animals were only about ten or twelve feet away. Sitting up there, rusting away, is a brand-new '34 Ford steel body. Wayfair Huge Deal-A-Thon - Up to 60% off everything! We didn't talk about the deposition.Okay. "A little boy loses his arm to an African lion, 1972 or 1973, Tennessee," he remembers. These included a grizzly bear, three leopards and two monkeys all whom were then taken to the Columbus Zoo. He liked speed." 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. (And continued to becounty records show at least seven citations for failing to wear a seat belt. It kept him sane while he was there. I set out to find some of them. He was like royalty." The family stayed at the top of London's criminal tree for so long thanks to a string of extraordinary acquittals by juries. Terry Thompson died under the most dramatic of circumstances. That's where the famous, heartbreaking photo was takenit remains unclear who took itof all the bodies together in the early-morning light, the one that went round the world. "They had split before he actually went to prison," says Huntsman. He made mistakes, big mistakes, that the rest of us haven't made.". Terry Thompson: Ohio Zoo Owner The Inside Story - People After his death, footage emerged showing Thompson handing one of his lion cubs to Heidi Klum on a fashion shoot, and in 2008 he appeared on the Rachael Ray show as an animal handler. " Stalf, who had moved to Columbus only eighteen months earlier, didn't know who Thompson was, but others did. Nobody yet knew where Thompson was, and so there was concern for his safety. "And he did it. Zanesville Animal Escape took place in October 2011, in Zanesville, Ohio, when over 50 exotic animals were released from Muskingum County Animal Farm. The only notable substance in his blood was Benadryl. Due to the dangerous circumstances, the police spent nearly seven hours hunting the animals, and shot nearly all of them. He wouldn't ever know where the bullet went, though he assumed he must have hit the brain. All rights reserved. Frequently these are based on a confident assessment of the animals' happiness (a thorny notion), and on the pragmatic need to save animals from a place worse than where they are. It was all about Terry after that. Just sitting there on the ground, facing their way. In August, Thompson was moved to a halfway house in Columbus. Starring: Zac Aynsley , Craig Golias , Janea Kroc and Jeff McDunough. Personal testimonies from his closest staff and family tell a different story from the daily public barrage of criticisms by of the media. An incredible true story from the March 2012 issue of GQ. The bigger the bang that takes someone out, the more likely it is that the person at its center will be obscured. "I actually think that he expected this when he got home and kind of planned it," says Stilwell. Zanesville's exotic animal massacre, 10 years later - Axios It's hard to tell whether Thompson pushed his luck more as he got older, or whether he couldn't (or wouldn't) adapt as the looser times of his youth tightened up, or whether his luck just ran out. Drug smuggling. (At 6:04 p.m., Lutz shared this information on the police radio: "Okay, we have located the owner. 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. When the owners I meet with talk about the proposed new laws (which, in their most inflexible draft versions, would effectively close down everyone in Ohio whom I speak with, and so would inevitably lead to massive animal euthanization), there is one other common target of their ire, aside from Terry Thompson: Jack Hanna. And he never differentiated between themhe kind of liked the notoriety." It was also in Zanesville where he met his wife, Marian Sharp (Thompson), for the first time. Documentary Animation Short Over the course of 15 years Terry Thompson collected tigers, lions, bears, and other exotic animals. There was an apartment building just on the other side of the interstate that bordered Thompson's land. to my website where you will find interesting information and inspiration. Zanesville exotic-animal owner Terry Thompson lived and died on the "I was sick, shooting these animals, because they didn't ask to be there," he says. Only when the shape broke out of the circle could Kopchak see that it was a black bear. "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.". His death was part of a twenty-five-year plot to rid America of exotic animals. Mrs. Thompson chose the spot. 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. He had a complicated relationship with the law, and his neighbours. "Apparently," Tom Stalf theorizes, "he wanted the animals to eat him. The final total was fifty-six. Terry Thompson: Exotic animal preserve owner - YouTube And there were always planes. The house itself was disgusting. He never left it.". ("Ever been this close to a tiger?" "See," says Spires, "that's the way he was." "Very depressed. 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." How could a private citizen have amassed a collection of so many unusual and potentially dangerous animals in the first place? Thompson told Spires of a visit on the day a friend of his had been killed. "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. I think that was a lot of it. "He never really got over it," says Marshall. It was very sad to seehow someone clearly had lost their mind. There was now only one unaccounted fora macaque. All evening it went on, the slaughter. "His favorite song was 'House of the Rising Sun.' He became the local Harley dealer and also got a license to sell guns. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt them.' But I find a few. Vince Gill, Verlon Thompson, and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, as well as record executive Barry Poss. And that's when he then said, 'I'm gonna die.' Soon, their collection grew into a private mini zoo as the couple took care of rescued animals, and also bought some themselves. On May 31, 2017, John Hernandez was murdered by Terry Thompson during a fight outside a restaurant in Sheldon, Texas, part of the Greater Houston area. I always thought that was pretty funny." Jack Hanna's lion, at Jack Hanna's animal farm. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. He had acted as an animal handler on Wild Kingdom in 2008, and provided a lion cub to a photoshoot with Heidi Klum. "He was pretty dejected. His gallbladder had been removed earlier in life, and he was suffering from severe atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Menu. You've had no conversation with her about that at all?No. Inside the shop, along with the bikes and guns, were the kind of animals he favored in those early days. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. 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. "Fast motorcycles. 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. Maternity leave is over and it's time for these four moms to return to work while navigating kids, bosses, love and life in modern-day Toronto. However, it was devastating to lose so many innocent lives, especially the Bengal tigers who are an endangered species. But people will believe what they need to believe. And finally, out back near the empty swimming pool, was a small grizzly bear, also in a birdcage. There are plenty of colorful stories about his exploits. He had a heart of gold. There is little doubt at all that he once landed an ultralight on the county fairgrounds. Most seem to have stumbled into it, impulsively buying a bear or lion cub without thinking through how, as one puts it, "a year from now, it's not going to be so cuddly." A fully grown male African lion. Rhino experts from around the world had gathered, and the zoo was throwing a cocktail party on the grounds of the polar-bear exhibit. He kicked into the mode of what they taught him in Vietnambeat people up, kill people. He said he didn't have any control over it. An insightful documentary film has just been released that reveals the true Donald Trump contrary to the constant misleading portrayals by his opposition. "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. Whatever the dynamic that drew them together, for the next four decades they presented themselves as a formidable partnership. one owner nonchalantly inquires, as it nestles up against the fencing inches away from me in his garage.) He had his pilot's license before he was 16. It was about eighty yards away from him, but it fell at the first shot. Questlove spins the soundtrack of his life in 'Music is History' - NPR Okay, this is a .308, so I could have killed you when you came in the front gate. 4.74 avg rating 107 ratings published 2021 3 editions. He knew what he'd do: put Red in the barn, go back to the house, report what he'd seen. TERRY THOMPSON - Author, Blogger, Christ Follower He just couldn't keep his brain on the right track. The answer to the second question is: What laws? He lived in a hardback tentyou know, a wood frame and a wood floorand apparently a monkey kinda befriended him. 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. After that, Merry went back for his rifle. I'm going to put it that way. "He had accused her of turning him in for the guns. 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. When he arrived, he could see, just inside Thompson's fence, a tiger, a black bear, and two lionesses. A Mermaid's Tale (2017) - IMDb 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. [8] While he was waiting for Mrs. Kopchak to answer the door, he saw a large gray wolf running southward along the road behind him. He took care of that monkey most of the time he was over there. Twenty-one other injuries, or clusters of injuries, were detailed just on the head and neck, the site of the most widespread damage. I guess I am an expert in the military. Yeah, I am. After all, this is not the life they are meant to lead, and certainly not the one they deserve. 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. So he settled on what he considered a brisk walking pace for himself and Red. They'd never had kids. By now the order had come over the radio: Put the animal down. I invite you to click around the site right now and come back . "I think it's Terry," he said. "Oh, he didn't like it at all," Polk remembers. 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. Month after month. Directed by: Vlad Yudin. Some owners took food down to Thompson's property themselves, some say they contacted the sheriff's department. MY 10 YEARS WITH ADAMS FAMILY; EXCLUSIVE An 'associate' lifts the lid Thompson did things his own way even when it led him into trouble. 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. "Kind of uppity. 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. Soon after, he bought himself a brand-new Corvette. "He would never sell anything," says Marshall. Terry Thompson sentenced to 25 years in prison for man's murder outside Ohio animal Terry Thompson owner shot himself - police - BBC News 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. The black bear fell about seven feet in front of Merry. 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. He didn't trust anybody after that. The 39th Santa Barbara International Film Festival will resume in Santa Barbara, Calif., continuing to take . Week after week. Daniel: Prophet at the King's Command, a Novel. Zanesville Animal Massacre Included 18 Rare Bengal Tigers "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. What did he ever do to his country?" The first big public warning sign that, when it came to Thompson's animals, all might not be as it should came in 2005. Want to Read. Terry was Terry. Friends talk of driving to Columbus, a baby bear with them in the front cab, or having naps at his house with baby lions asleep on them. 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 There is a belief that unites the exotic-animal owners of Ohio: If only the right people had listened, what happened with Terry Thompsonand all the trouble now following in its wakecould have been avoided. So these animals were like her children. I don't know what happened to it when he left.". Carried herself gracefully. "It stood up," says Kanavel, "and was standing there." 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. They need people to know that not everybody who has a tiger or three tucked away behind their house is a Terry Thompson. And the guys that had a wife and children are in Arlington?". Why do you need so many?' Some people just said, 'Oh, that's T.' ". ". 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. His friends, and there do seem to be many of them, talk of Thompson with a deep devotion, and testify at length to his goodness, generosity, and freeness of spirit, though they concede that he was certainly no lover of authority, and would maybe even go out of his way to rub up against it. "You couldn't buy nothing off of him. He hurried back. He remembers Thompson picking up the bodies. His friends and neighbour have revealed that he deeply loved his animals, which could explain why he set them free. You finally just stop.". And there was the lion he had seen before, now pacing back and forth. ", As they passed by the lion cages Thompson talked about the split. There are all kinds of ways that tragedy and fate can reach across decades to taunt us and trap us. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. "My father didn't like animals," she told me. 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. She wasn't, but Terry was. "There was never just one girl in his life," she remembers. 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. They are effectively worthless, because there are usually more people trying to unload them than wanting to purchase them, which is also why across America there are a surprising number of sizable big-cat sanctuaries, several with over a hundred animals. And I had to go and pick up the arm. ", I reiterate how angry animal owners are with him. The government stole his heart. Thompson, 61, was recently released from prison after serving one year on federal weapons charges. Terry Thompson's story went round the world, but it was also barely told at all. During the altercation, Thompson's wife, Chauna Thompson, a Harris County Sheriff 's deputy, arrived and called for assistance. 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. Whether he was a daredevil hero or an idiot or an animal lover or an animal hater or a victim or a recluse or a good man betrayed, he was assumed to be a cartoon of a man whose whole life could be extrapolated from its final minutes. When I interviewed Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson over the summer after the release of his documentary "Summer Of Soul," at the end of the. "There would be dogshit all over the showroom. And he was like, 'You know, I'm a lover, not a fighter.' (Tigers are reputedly worth as much as $20,000 dead when their body parts are illegally sold off.) GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. [From a court deposition Thompson gave while incarcerated on March 28, 2011] Okay. 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. ", A bond that tied two people for so long can take time to break completely. 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. . 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. His friend got killed and I guess they're thinking, 'That could be me tomorrow.' Movies. Friends say that Thompson loved having something that nobody else had, and he industriously accumulated objects that might fit the bill. Fox Movie,' a documentary about his life. "Jack needs to step back, take a breath, and look at Jack's history. This is FRESH AIR. Others were noted on his torso and his legs. Almost from the moment Mrs. Kopchak picked up her telephone and reported that wild animals were on the loose, it was taken for granted that the manner of Terry Thompson's death explained all anyone needed to know about the life that came before it. "It's like Noah's Ark wrecking," he proclaimed, "right here in Zanesville, Ohio.". He seems to have lived as though there weren't a rule invented that didn't deserve a little bending. 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. And you've not spoken to your wife since her deposition [five weeks earlier]?No. This 95-minute documentary follows Guy Clark, Susanna Clark, and Townes Van Zandt as they rise from obscurity to reverence. This was his high school sweetheart. 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. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Already, he did things differently from other people. 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. The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has announced it will return Feb. 7-17. 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." Tom Stalf at the Columbus Zoo suggests to me that you can buy a lion for $300cheaper than many pedigree dogs. From there, he walked the fifty or so miles east to his parents' house. "If he liked it, he kept it. The first is why Thompson seems to have cut open so many of the cages when he simply could have opened 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. "The Trump I Know" Documentary Film - TERRY THOMPSON That evening, the zoo assembled its capture-and-recovery team, armed with both tranquilizer-dart guns and regular weapons, and set out for Zanesville. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. The general impression seems to have been that it was a case of the good girl drawn to the wild boy.
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