It was also in Zanesville where he met his wife, Marian Sharp (Thompson), for the first time. The black bear fell about seven feet in front of Merry. 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. 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. "), 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 wrestled with the biblical thing: 'I guess I'll never go to heaven because I killed people,' " says Chuck Spires, his friend and guitar teacher. His son and wife were off to a literacy night so he was on his own. Merry didn't know what was going on, so he stopped. As he neared the farm buildings he saw more animals. "Some of them were true," says Marshall. It was the guns that eventually landed him in real trouble. I always thought that was pretty funny." When he arrived, he could see, just inside Thompson's fence, a tiger, a black bear, and two lionesses. These included a grizzly bear, three leopards and two monkeys all whom were then taken to the Columbus Zoo. He wouldn't ever know where the bullet went, though he assumed he must have hit the brain. (Even Mr. Kopchak, forgotten in his barn, safely managed to make his way unescorted back to his house at nightfall.) He reported back to the sheriff that, whether the body was Thompson's or someone else's, it was deceased. Here in the field. As they pulled up between the barn and a row of cages, two tigers started out of the barn toward them. 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. After that, Merry went back for his rifle. 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." "Yes, they have every right to be angry with me, but do they know that I lost everything I had?" 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. "He raised Dobermans back then," says Stilwell. "I was sick, shooting these animals, because they didn't ask to be there," he says. In August, Thompson was moved to a halfway house in Columbus. During the altercation, Thompson's wife, Chauna Thompson, a Harris County Sheriff 's deputy, arrived and called for assistance. 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 had these wild animals. Director Ramon Bloomberg Writer Ramon Bloomberg Okay? And they have every right to think, 'Oh, here's Jack, he had his fun with animalsnow we can't have our fun.' For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. 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. Some owners took food down to Thompson's property themselves, some say they contacted the sheriff's department. Where were you then? "Remember, 1973 was much different than 2011. It is believed that in 2012, Marian Thompson retrieved the surviving animals from the Zoo. Watch I AM A STALKER | Netflix Official Site The craziest, most tangentially related rumor that I hear in Zanesville: Jack Hanna was supplying Charlie Sheen's tiger blood. It's what the Indians wanted.Terry Thompson, secretly recorded in his home by a government informant, May 2008. 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. 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. ". From there, looking through a north-facing window, he watched the menagerie grow. They agreed on 25 years. [From a court deposition Thompson gave while incarcerated on March 28, 2011] Okay. IE 11 is not supported. I think it was the only way he felt that he could really punish Marian was to take something that she loved, too. "My father didn't like animals," she told me. Thompson: It'd better not beI'd be out of the truck by now. 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. A Mermaid's Tale (2017) - IMDb The Aftermath From top: a nearby highway sign warns drivers; the gathered bodies of the slaughtered animals. It was all about Terry after that. Want to Read. (If you visit the Columbus Zoo, his face is everywhereeven on the Pepsi machines.) The preserve is located in. 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. one owner nonchalantly inquires, as it nestles up against the fencing inches away from me in his garage.) He wanted to clear his head. 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. He had his pilot's license before he was 16. In Vietnam we were so much more interested in lightweight because we were on the move a lot. I'm not an expert. He didn't even trust his own wife. 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. The film, partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, makes good use of Clark's songs, family photographs and . He and Red had taken only a few steps toward the barn when Kopchak saw something else, close by, just ahead of them on the other side of the fence. It was beyond anything that you would ever want to experience. Thompson was involved with bad people and had fallen out with them. Cages only lead to more cages, unless a far worse reality awaits them. It is believed Thompson released nearly all of his 56 animals, following a mental breakdown which led him to take his own life. And also a lioness, anxiously scuttering around. But it isn't easy to work out what is right when it comes to animals like these, either morally or practically, which may be why there are so many shades of opinion. Sams 85-year-old mother, Dolores, called 911, and soon the police were in the area. "I think it's Terry," he said. "The Trump I Know" Documentary Film - TERRY THOMPSON "His eyes were just beautiful." Terry Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran, was a lifelong collector of exotic animals. I asked, 'Why, Terry? . There are all kinds of ways that tragedy and fate can reach across decades to taunt us and trap us. 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. By Ryan Gajewski Staff Editor, Digital "I'm not gonna lie, it . Somehow, no one was hurt. Fast airplanes. Murder of John Hernandez - Wikipedia We sent Chris Heath to Zanesville, Ohio, to find out where the wild things areand what the hell they're doing there. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Movies. Near 5:30 p.m. on October 18, 2011 -- the day the world's remaining wildness seemingly died in Zanesville, Ohio, of all places -- Sergeant Steven Blake, of the Muskingum County sheriff's. It was his neighbour, Sam Kopchak, who first noticed that Terrys horses were unusually agitated. 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. I was in a helicopter so I was a machine gunner with an M60that was on a bipod. After the sheriff spoke with Hanna and talked him through what happened, he gave interview after interview. "He would never sell anything," says Marshall. I saw a pair of pants on the ground and the belt was twine. He became the local Harley dealer and also got a license to sell guns. The house itself was disgusting. 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. "Garbage, and feces. Whatever people knew of the real situation, and of the hard decisions that had to be made, when you saw that image all you could think was: This is a photo of a place where dozens of big beautiful animals were massacred. At death Terry William Thompson was five feet five inches tall and weighed 174 pounds. "He hesitated. "So those animals were put down." ", Thompson went to the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia, on November 17, 2010. You had to watch where you stepped." "But you'll know when I go.". Those around him believed that he was changed man after he returned from war, that he never fully recovered from its trauma. And you've not spoken to your wife since her deposition [five weeks earlier]?No. He made mistakes, big mistakes, that the rest of us haven't made.". He had a complicated relationship with the law, and his neighbours. "If he liked it, he kept it. An incredible true story from the March 2012 issue of GQ. Now he only had his Glock. Fox Movie,' a documentary about his life. In 1977, Thompson went to an auction for exotic animals and bought his wife a baby tiger cub called Simba for her birthday. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. "He loved blues more than anything," says Spires. A lot of things seemed to be missing from the property and it was a mess: "The weeds were up over the cageshe couldn't even get in his house when he got home." All rights reserved. Terry Thompson's story went round the world, but it was also barely told at all. "He never really got over it," says Marshall. Up near the house, where no media could see them, the officers laid the dead animals out in rows, by species, to ease the counting. T's World: The Over Identification of Terry Thompson - IMDb Personal testimonies from his closest staff and family tell a different story from the daily public barrage of criticisms by of the media. 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 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." Secret plane trips. Lutz described Thompson as "a guy who kind of kept to himself, was always willing to push the envelope a little bit." Now, I may have talked to her a couple times on the phone. Thompson: Well, where were you when I was in Vietnam in a foxhole, people shooting at me, if you're trying to protect me? Bob Thompson Trailer from Jeffrey Cooper on Vimeo.. Facebook; Twitter; RSS; Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress "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. "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." "He had no reason why he was spared," says Cress. He had a funny look. She was my grandmother's sister, one of ten children who grew up in Muhlenberg County Kentucky. Forty miles away, at the Columbus Zoo, an event was being held for the International Rhino Foundation. TV Shows. 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? She would explain that she had spent $30,000 buying them, and that she used to sleep with the young female. Already, he did things differently from other people. The final total was fifty-six. Terry was Terry. 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. I think he had a little touch of Agent Orange. 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. He had acted as an animal handler on Wild Kingdom in 2008, and provided a lion cub to a photoshoot with Heidi Klum. 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. Inside the shop, along with the bikes and guns, were the kind of animals he favored in those early days. What about neutering, which is now considered not merely acceptable but responsible behavior when it comes to many nonexotic pets? 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. "Kind of classyyou know," says Jim Stilwell, a longtime friend of Thompson's who went to school with Sharp. He shot the lion while some other deputies shot the cougar. MY 10 YEARS WITH ADAMS FAMILY; EXCLUSIVE An 'associate' lifts the lid Even if many of the animals were confused or scared, and not bloodthirsty for human flesh, some of the friendliest might have been expected to want to "play" with Thompsonand when a cat this big decides to play with you, you are in little less peril than when it decides to attack you. He seems to have lived as though there weren't a rule invented that didn't deserve a little bending. Michael J. Fox: Parkinson's Disease Battle Tougher, Won't Live to 80 Only when the shape broke out of the circle could Kopchak see that it was a black bear. Zanesville held a special significance for himhe went to school near here, enlisted in the army here, spent his honeymoon night here. "That's what happens when they send a guy to prison that don't deserve to go there. ", 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.' "He had been dragged," says Kanavel. Apparently it worked. And there was the lion he had seen before, now pacing back and forth. Thompson, 61, was recently released from prison after serving one year on federal weapons charges. I said that he never left Vietnam. "He'd ride his bicycle over, watch the airplanes, and wanted to fly," says Dr. Ralph Smith, a local vet who now lives on a lake where Terry used to go camping as a Boy Scout. He would have no sense of 'Okay, this is too many.' 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. After returning from war, Terry opened a motorcycle shop which he ran till the 90s, and then sold licensed firearms for some years. 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. Others were noted on his torso and his legs. Terry Thompson's most popular book is The Martian Diaries: Vol.1 The Day Of The Martians (The . "And he did it. Not the weapon you'd want when you're facing down 350 pounds of charging bear. 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. "Oh, he didn't like it at all," Polk remembers. The answer to that first question: It's surprisingly easy. 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. "It kind of took us by surprise," says Kanavel. Your neighbor could buy as many tigers, lions, cougars, and other exotic animals as he so desired and would be under no obligation to tell anyone. She wasn't, but Terry was. Terry Thompson. ". 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. I mean, he was a gun man. Unknown for sure on that. "Other things will happen, but this is never going to happen again.". (Nearly everything. 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. Sheriff Matt Lutz was settling into an evening in front of the TV. 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. 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. Given the situationfifty animals, mostly large and potentially aggressive carnivores set loose toward the day's endthings could have gone so much worse. 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. 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.