"Oh, he didn't like it at all," Polk remembers. 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. He got off one shot. Mike Marshall, who later flew civilian planes with him, says Thompson brought it up frequently. Ad Choices, 18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and 1 Man Dead in Ohio. There was an apartment building just on the other side of the interstate that bordered Thompson's land. Three were leopards, still in their cages. As they moved toward other escapees spread over the hillside, they used the truck to give themselves elevation, trying to engage the animals from seventy to a hundred yards away, firing on them two at a time until they went down. "For Terry, it started out as a love. Where do you plan to live when you are released?At my house.Okay. It had a special meaning." 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." [In 1976] Terry joined the Army Everest Expedition where he met his tragic death in a crevasse accident in the Western Cwm." - Mike Banks The Climber's Club Journal (London) 1976. Because she loved the animals as much as he did. Friends say that Thompson loved having something that nobody else had, and he industriously accumulated objects that might fit the bill. I always thought that was pretty funny." This 95-minute documentary follows Guy Clark, Susanna Clark, and Townes Van Zandt as they rise from obscurity to reverence. He had been wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and white briefs. "I think it's Terry," he said. How could you blame a woman you have spent forty years of your life with for that, if you were sane? 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. "She was saying, 'Please, Mr. Hanna, don't take my children,'" says Hanna. 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. The road his and Thompson's properties abutted was named Kopchak Road after his great-uncle. "Well," Thompson retorted, "find someone to file a complaint on me." The 73 acre farmland with the private zoo was owned by Terry Thompson. He became the local Harley dealer and also got a license to sell guns. They agreed on 25 years. Fast airplanes. 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. 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. The government stole his heart. 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." Terry Thompson is known for Red Phone 2 (2003), The Red Phone: Manhunt (2002)and Planespotting (2005). "Very depressed. She had to be convinced that the survivors should be taken to the zoo for safekeeping. 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. Only three weeks after getting out, he released the animals, and shot himself. Red, a half-Arabian pinto, was acting skittish and had moved toward the far corner of the field. View the profiles of people named Terry Thompson. I will hear confident estimates of the number of big catstigers, lions, and so onin Ohio that vary from the low hundreds to the low thousands. "He was a broken individual," says Phil Cress. 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. He said he didn't have any control over it. Aunt Iris was old the day I met her, or so it seemed. In the song, the house in question is a New Orleans brothel, and the name was borrowed for similar establishments in Vietnam. Zanesville held a special significance for himhe went to school near here, enlisted in the army here, spent his honeymoon night here. He didn't even trust his own wife. Lutz described Thompson as "a guy who kind of kept to himself, was always willing to push the envelope a little bit." Mrs. Thompson chose the spot. There was now only one unaccounted fora macaque. We sent Chris Heath to Zanesville, Ohio, to find out where the wild things areand what the hell they're doing there. "It stood up," says Kanavel, "and was standing there." I'm not an expert. 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. (Whose feelings, exactly, are being taken into account there?) Documentary Animation Short Over the course of 15 years Terry Thompson collected tigers, lions, bears, and other exotic animals. Thompson had only returned from his prison sentence three weeks before. " Stalf, who had moved to Columbus only eighteen months earlier, didn't know who Thompson was, but others did. The first big public warning sign that, when it came to Thompson's animals, all might not be as it should came in 2005. The Trump I know Documentary Film An insightful documentary film has just been released that reveals the true Donald Trump contrary to the constant misleading portrayals by his opposition. In this era there were also numerous complaints of loose animals. It also thrust into daylight, if only for a brief moment, a secret world of privately owned exotic animals living off the grid, and often right next door. 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. "He had no reason why he was spared," says Cress. 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. 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's wife, Marian, arrived around lunchtime. He would rather say he owned it. Drug smuggling. There are all kinds of ways that tragedy and fate can reach across decades to taunt us and trap us. ", Her son remained trapped in the barn. "My father didn't like animals," she told me. I said that he never left Vietnam. An incredible true story from the March 2012 issue of GQ. The white tiger was atop him. "I've had three bad things happen in my life," he says, and proceeds to describe them. And I had to go and pick up the arm. The last few years of Terrys life were when things started going downhill for him. 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. They need people to know that not everybody who has a tiger or three tucked away behind their house is a Terry Thompson. In 2010, he was sentenced to a year in prison on federal weapon charges. 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. Their cages had either been cut through or left open. Okay, this is a .308, so I could have killed you when you came in the front gate. The Aftermath From top: a nearby highway sign warns drivers; the gathered bodies of the slaughtered animals. He didn't know who was who. 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." Terry Thompson's story went round the world, but it was also barely told at all. On one of his last visits, Stilwell walked around the animal cages with Thompson. Terry Thompson. When it turned up toward a house, Merry got his rifle from the trunk and followed on foot. She said, 'We have to goTerry Thompson's animals are out.' He lived in a hardback tentyou know, a wood frame and a wood floorand apparently a monkey kinda befriended him. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. At first the number of animals he came up with was forty-eight, but then his fiance arrived. Maybe there's a letter or a note that explains it all. ", There were also pieces of raw chicken scattered around near the body. People insist that the Terry Thompson they knew was too lazy to go to that kind of trouble. This is a [Mannlicher-Schoenauer]see the twists in the barrel.I do see that.Okay, hand built in Austria. Ten years ago, after a heart attack, Taft had a quintuple-bypass operation. 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. Week after week. Well, let me tell you, if you want to kill a bunch of kids you take that camper and run into a schoolyard full of kids, you'll kill about a hundred of them. Ordinary Heroes. 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. "He would sometimes step on other guys' girlfriends. Bob Thompson Trailer from Jeffrey Cooper on Vimeo.. Facebook; Twitter; RSS; Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress I invite you to click around the site right now and come back . "Some of them were untrue. "), 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. By the time he got there, the culling had begun. Whatever the dynamic that drew them together, for the next four decades they presented themselves as a formidable partnership. And of the time when he and Marianshe seems to have been a full and enthusiastic participant in many of these adventuresturned up with a baby bear at a friend's fiftieth birthday party, held in their friend's newly decorated basement where everythingcarpet, walls, furniturewas white, and seemed quite unperturbed by the upset caused when the bear did what bears tend to do on the nearest white rug. After that, Merry went back for his rifle. 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. Daniel: Prophet at the King's Command, a Novel. 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. Perhaps it was the first of many telltale signs that Thompson, man of so many friends, didn't call anyone. Soon, their collection grew into a private mini zoo as the couple took care of rescued animals, and also bought some themselves. The second, bigger mystery is how Thompson managed to let loose fifty animals without being seriously injured by any of them. In August, Thompson was moved to a halfway house in Columbus. "Kind of uppity. What about neutering, which is now considered not merely acceptable but responsible behavior when it comes to many nonexotic pets? 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? View all posts . Informant: You're crazy.Thompson: That's what they all say. When Thompson said that as soon as he had some in his pocket he'd be back for more guitar lessons, Spires told him not to worry about that. She was my grandmother's sister, one of ten children who grew up in Muhlenberg County Kentucky. How he was treated. He took care of that monkey most of the time he was over there. 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. It was all about Terry after that. Thompson almost collapsed to his seat. Merry didn't know what was going on, so he stopped. 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. Secret plane trips. 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. "He raised Dobermans back then," says Stilwell. 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 For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. You finally just stop.". In the later years it became very overwhelming because Terry went a little off the deep end. "It kind of took us by surprise," says Kanavel. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt them.' While he was waiting for Mrs. Kopchak to answer the door, he saw a large gray wolf running southward along the road behind him.