"Every day gets tougher," the actor said ahead of the release of 'Still: A Michael J. Along came a wolf. He was devastated to find the poor condition of the zoo when he returned, and was also heavily in debt. "Some of them were true," says Marshall. . "Remember, 1973 was much different than 2011. Terry Thompson was born in Belfast, he grew up on the Castlereagh Road in East Belfast. Terry Thompson Profiles | Facebook 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. "I've had three bad things happen in my life," he says, and proceeds to describe them. Terry was Terry. I'm Terry Gross. Michael J. Fox: Parkinson's Disease Battle Tougher, Won't Live to 80 T's World unpacks the events surrounding his 2011 animal release and suicide. Thompson's body was taken from the scene for an autopsy at the Licking County Coroner's, where it revealed a few of its secrets. 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. 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. He was released, forty pounds lighter than a year before, on the day of September 30. "He always bragged," says Marshall, "that when he sold his business he had 138 motorcycles, 138 cars, and 138 guns." 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. He lived in a hardback tentyou know, a wood frame and a wood floorand apparently a monkey kinda befriended him. "It's only half a boat," Thompson explained. Drug smuggling. Six of Terry Thompson's animals survived. From $999 to buy. ", "Terry, are you sick?" Already, he did things differently from other people. Smith asked why it was only half price. Terry Thompson: Songwriter, Storyteller and Actor Thompson clearly meant this as a testament to his popularity, though Keck wonders. Facebook gives people the power. It was the guns that eventually landed him in real trouble. 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. But if afterward Thompson would try to present his year of incarceration with the same old bravado, telling people that he was voted "Most Interesting Person in prison," the events in his marriage clearly had taken a toll. On the other side of the flimsy fence separating them from his neighbor Terry Thompson's property, Kopchak noticed that Thompson's horses seemed even more agitated. All the Under-$20 Style, Tech, and Home Goods We're Feeling This May, 62 Excellent Gift Ideas to Spoil All the Deserving Guys Out There, 51 Non-Boring Wedding Gifts for All Kinds of Cool Newlyweds, Why NBA MVP Voter Fatigue Is (Mostly) a Myth. (Even Mr. Kopchak, forgotten in his barn, safely managed to make his way unescorted back to his house at nightfall.) Shoot to Kill: The Ohio Animal Massacre - Terry Thompson's final day This riddle hardly bolsters any of the conspiracy theoriesif someone did this to Thompson, they too would have had to find a way of releasing the animals without coming to immediate harm (never mind to have escaped from the scene without being spotted). He knew what he'd do: put Red in the barn, go back to the house, report what he'd seen. Somehow, no one was hurt. A twelve-year-old girl befriends a quirky teenage mermaid who's anything but mythical, and their friendship could heal an age-old feud. It seems worth taking at least a moment to wonder whether it might be the other way around. On the worst days, there were more people to be rescued than they possibly could. Her bond with them certainly seemed real. "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. His gallbladder had been removed earlier in life, and he was suffering from severe atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. ", Her son remained trapped in the barn. 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. Thompson did things his own way even when it led him into trouble. 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. When the ATF raided his home in 2008, they took away 133 firearms and 36 rounds of ammunition. On October 18, 2011, Terry opened the cages of around 50 of his animals, and then shot himself in the head. Perhaps it is obvious to you that removing a monkey's teeth and dressing it up in pseudo-human-children's clothing (Hanna "Monk"tana two-piece panne velvet dress, $38) and diapers (infant starter pack, $35) is wrong? "He sold the monkey outside of the auction, because it wasn't legal to sell inside, for $3,500.". They agreed on 25 years. 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 his neighbour, Sam Kopchak, who first noticed that Terrys horses were unusually agitated. It wasn't quite that straightforward. "He was a broken individual," says Phil Cress. 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." When it turned up toward a house, Merry got his rifle from the trunk and followed on foot. "Jack needs to step back, take a breath, and look at Jack's history. I invite you to click around the site right now and come back . 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. As for the enemy: "He said he just had to keep mowing them down. ". All rights reserved. He had his pilot's license before he was 16. He was inspecting the body when word came over the radio that some colleagues had a lion cornered near the Thompson residence. The Crazy True Story of the Zanesville Zoo Escape | GQ (If you visit the Columbus Zoo, his face is everywhereeven on the Pepsi machines.) The catastrophic incident that took place in Ohio should have served as a cautionary tale for others in America. T's World: The Over Identification of Terry Thompson - IMDb He seems to have lived as though there weren't a rule invented that didn't deserve a little bending. When the zoo people returned to the site at five-thirty the next morning, they had been joined by Jack Hanna. "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. I hear different versions of what was being said: dead catsa white tiger and a cougarobserved lying on the property; animals getting loose; a 2-year-old lion being allowed to run around in the open; multiple animals in such bad health that they would have to be euthanized. Zanesville Animal Massacre Included 18 Rare Bengal Tigers The first big public warning sign that, when it came to Thompson's animals, all might not be as it should came in 2005. ("Ever been this close to a tiger?" IE 11 is not supported. ", "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. 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. "He threw up his arms," says Stilwell, "and said, 'She can just have it all.' 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. The 73 acre farmland with the private zoo was owned by Terry Thompson. Sams 85-year-old mother, Dolores, called 911, and soon the police were in the area. "See," says Spires, "that's the way he was." The only notable substance in his blood was Benadryl. 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. Carried herself gracefully. The preserve is located in. The house itself was disgusting. He. Ordinary Heroes. He took care of that monkey most of the time he was over there. The cause of death seemed to be a gunshot to the head. 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. 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. I was in a helicopter so I was a machine gunner with an M60that was on a bipod. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson The 62-year-old owner of an exotic animal farm freed his 56 wild animals on Tuesday (including lions, Bengal tigers, wolves and. "I actually think that he expected this when he got home and kind of planned it," says Stilwell. Terry Thompson: Ohio Zoo Owner The Inside Story - People After all, this is not the life they are meant to lead, and certainly not the one they deserve. I'm going to put it that way. The Trump I know Documentary Film. Thompson, 61, was recently released from prison after serving one year on federal weapons charges. ", As they passed by the lion cages Thompson talked about the split. Since 1957, GQ has inspired men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of style, culture, and beyond. Likewise, there is wide disagreement about what kind of human intervention or interaction can be beneficial or justified. Even that statistic slightly obscures the situation. You've had no conversation with her about that at all?No. Maybe there's a letter or a note that explains it all. One time Thompson offered Dr. Smith a boat for half price. He made mistakes, big mistakes, that the rest of us haven't made.". 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. He was actually found with a pillowcase over his head and a gunshot wound to his stomach. They were circling, and in the center of their troubled orbit there was some kind of dark shape. 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. View all posts . The craziest, most tangentially related rumor that I hear in Zanesville: Jack Hanna was supplying Charlie Sheen's tiger blood. Zanesville Animal Escape: How Many Animals Died? Terry Thompson Zoo 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. Sheriff Matt Lutz was settling into an evening in front of the TV. Given the situationfifty animals, mostly large and potentially aggressive carnivores set loose toward the day's endthings could have gone so much worse. Usually he never hesitated. 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. Garbage bags filled with garbage that were knocked over, and the filth. "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. People insist that the Terry Thompson they knew was too lazy to go to that kind of trouble. That evening, the zoo assembled its capture-and-recovery team, armed with both tranquilizer-dart guns and regular weapons, and set out for Zanesville. He had a funny look. (Thompson was not unusual in routinely taking his cats to the vet for declawing.) Marian insisted on removing the macaques from their cages herself, waving off the zoo personnel's advice about the risk she was taking. Thompson opened a bike shop in town. It broke my heart. I think he had a little touch of Agent Orange. She wasn't, but Terry was. [From a court deposition Thompson gave while incarcerated on March 28, 2011] Okay. 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. "We didn't have any idea how many there were," Mrs. Kopchak would later reflect. Maybe. "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. 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. "He was tops in everything he did. So he settled on what he considered a brisk walking pace for himself and Red. Workin' Moms. He was pretty distraught." TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. (2017). Documentary Animation Short Over the course of 15 years Terry Thompson collected tigers, lions, bears, and other exotic animals. He had these wild animals. As they pulled up between the barn and a row of cages, two tigers started out of the barn toward them. That's what it was like. Secret plane trips. The last few years of Terrys life were when things started going downhill for him. "Well," Thompson retorted, "find someone to file a complaint on me." The answer to the second question is: What laws? "It stood up," says Kanavel, "and was standing there." Apparently it worked. Red, a half-Arabian pinto, was acting skittish and had moved toward the far corner of the field. 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.
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