terry thompson documentary terry thompson documentary

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. Red, a half-Arabian pinto, was acting skittish and had moved toward the far corner of the field. 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. In August, Thompson was moved to a halfway house in Columbus. Sheriff Matt Lutz was settling into an evening in front of the TV. As he neared the farm buildings he saw more animals. Terry Thompson sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of John Hernandez. He was just going off the deep end. They needed to find out for sure, and to see whether the person might still be alive. It was presumed that the remaining two animals were eaten by some of the bigger ones. The strange truth is: Nobody knows. "Other things will happen, but this is never going to happen again.". Cages only lead to more cages, unless a far worse reality awaits them. "When he came back, they had been changed around in the cages. Together, they returned to the house, finding nothing but two monkeys and a dog in cages. (Even Mr. Kopchak, forgotten in his barn, safely managed to make his way unescorted back to his house at nightfall.) The black bear fell about seven feet in front of Merry. Meanwhile, at the gateway of Thompson's property, the police were wondering how many animals might be loose. "Betrayed by his family. Month after month. "Very depressed. to my website where you will find interesting information and inspiration. Fox Movie,' a documentary about his life. Because he wouldn't take any clothes with him." 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. Instead, he walked over to Walmart, bought a Schwinn cruiser bicycle and rode nearly fifty miles through the rainy night along the old Route 40 until he reached his home. First they had to deal with a male African lion that managed to run between some junk cars after the first shotthere were dozens and dozens of old cars and RVs and tractors parked in clumps of rusted metal around the hillside, weeds growing around them. 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. In Taft's living room, a fence was built around his couch, and that is where he spent most of his time as he recuperated: safely inside a cage inside his own house, man looking out, tiger looking in. Terry was Terry. 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 was sick, shooting these animals, because they didn't ask to be there," he says. (At 6:04 p.m., Lutz shared this information on the police radio: "Okay, we have located the owner. 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. But I lean toward another theorythat in the end the animals were just what they've usually been in human history: incidental collateral damage. Thompson was involved with bad people and had fallen out with them. ", As they passed by the lion cages Thompson talked about the split. Byline: By TONY THOMPSON . "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.' At first the number of animals he came up with was forty-eight, but then his fiance arrived. She said, 'We have to goTerry Thompson's animals are out.' He didn't trust anybody after that. I said that he never left Vietnam. "There was never just one girl in his life," she remembers. Deliberately or not, he seemed to imply that Thompson's body was, aside from the gunshot wound suggesting a barrel placed in the mouth, otherwise fairly untouched. Fast airplanes. "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. How could you blame a woman you have spent forty years of your life with for that, if you were sane? Thompson told Spires of a visit on the day a friend of his had been killed. People insist that the Terry Thompson they knew was too lazy to go to that kind of trouble. "They could only get so many on the helicopter," says Cress, "and they actually had to pry their fingers off the helicopter so they could get off the ground." They agreed on 25 years. It kept him sane while he was there. He had a complicated relationship with the law, and his neighbours. But people will believe what they need to believe. "He hesitated. But maybe she was a little rattled. After the sheriff spoke with Hanna and talked him through what happened, he gave interview after interview. Likewise, there is wide disagreement about what kind of human intervention or interaction can be beneficial or justified. He told Spires that he was broke, that all he had was sixty horses, but Spires reassured him that he'd made money before and he could make money again. Perhaps it was the first of many telltale signs that Thompson, man of so many friends, didn't call anyone. As Tiger King reaches its gnawing conclusion, it makes us aware that not a single animal benefitted from all the greed, rivalries and betrayals that unravel in the series. "Everything he had was fast," says Marshall. She wasn't, but Terry was. . Daniel: Prophet at the King's Command, a Novel. "He had been dragged," says Kanavel. He got off one shot. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. He knew what he'd do: put Red in the barn, go back to the house, report what he'd seen. He was charged with animal cruelty relating to some livestock he kept on his parents' old property on the other side of town after three cows and a buffalo were said to have died of starvation and was sentenced to six months' house arrest. When he arrived, he could see, just inside Thompson's fence, a tiger, a black bear, and two lionesses. It's what the Indians wanted.Terry Thompson, secretly recorded in his home by a government informant, May 2008. 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. My guest, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, has made his directorial debut with the new documentary "Summer Of Soul." Questlove co-founded The Roots, which is,. Thompson almost collapsed to his seat. Three days before Thompson died, Chuck Spires, the guitar instructor, spoke with him for about twenty minutes. He didn't know who was who. When you've been through a firefight and you've got that warm machine gun, that's all you got. "On the third night," says Spires, "this guy showed up, started beating windows out. Patrolman: I don't knowprobably seventy-five. Hanna was a trusted animal advocate, and as he emotively articulated his pain at the deaths that had taken place, his unequivocal insistence that the sheriff's department had no other option than to act as they did served as a powerful antidote to the other obvious narrativethat a thoughtless small-town law-enforcement brigade had murdered dozens of noble beasts because they were too dumb and trigger-happy to think of a better alternative. 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. 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. My blog posts are this Christ follower's perspectives on important issues facing our blessed America. 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. For a while there was a plane on the shop's roof. "They told me," says one owner, Cindy Huntsman, "there were no laws on the books that would allow him to confiscate.". (And continued to becounty records show at least seven citations for failing to wear a seat belt. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. His friend got killed and I guess they're thinking, 'That could be me tomorrow.' Not the weapon you'd want when you're facing down 350 pounds of charging bear. Because she loved the animals as much as he did. _Thompson: _You might as well keep writing, because when I leave here I'm not fastening my seat belt. The catastrophic incident that took place in Ohio should have served as a cautionary tale for others in America. Forty-nine animals would be confirmed dead. 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 had been wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and white briefs. "He threw up his arms," says Stilwell, "and said, 'She can just have it all.' "It kind of took us by surprise," says Kanavel. You know, Terry always had to be number onethat was Terry," she says. 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. 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. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I just know that I learned the lesson the hard way, that's all.". They need people to know that not everybody who has a tiger or three tucked away behind their house is a Terry Thompson. By the time the Columbus Zoo team had arrived at the holding area, it was dark. What about giving primates TV to watch? The only surviving animals from Terrys zoo were the ones that were still in the cage. Their cages had either been cut through or left open. Tom Stalf at the Columbus Zoo suggests to me that you can buy a lion for $300cheaper than many pedigree dogs. Her bond with them certainly seemed real. And that's when he then said, 'I'm gonna die.' 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. 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. "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. Nearly all of the exotic-animal owners I speak with, deeply skeptical of the official account, identify the same "true" culprit: animal-rights activists. How he was treated. "Kind of classyyou know," says Jim Stilwell, a longtime friend of Thompson's who went to school with Sharp. Nearby, they found bolt cutters and a stainless-steel Ruger .357 magnum revolver. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. 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. Those around him believed that he was changed man after he returned from war, that he never fully recovered from its trauma. But for those who'd prefer a Rosebud moment, here's one more story from forty years earlier, from the time when an Ohio youth with beautiful blue eyes found himself forsaken and lost, deep in the kind of darkness and damage that some never completely escape. There are all kinds of ways that tragedy and fate can reach across decades to taunt us and trap us. While animal advocates have agreed that there was little the authorities could do in the matter, the brutal massacre serves as a reminder of why privately owned exotic animals are considered to be ticking bombs. "See," says Spires, "that's the way he was." You've had no conversation with her about that at all?No. 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." For the majority of Americans who know little about the world of exotic animals, the astonishing events in Zanesville begged some obvious questions. And a second bear, this one much larger than the first. The film, partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, makes good use of Clark's songs, family photographs and . He just couldn't keep his brain on the right track. At the time there was a young tiger cub living with him and when Taft returned from the hospital he was unwilling to displace it. I was in a helicopter so I was a machine gunner with an M60that was on a bipod. His son and wife were off to a literacy night so he was on his own. Ten years ago, after a heart attack, Taft had a quintuple-bypass operation. It broke my heart. His friends and neighbour have revealed that he deeply loved his animals, which could explain why he set them free. Maybe the animals had somehow busted out, and he was injured, in need of help. He was upset with the army because he saw some horrible, ugly things." He. Terry Thompson has 36 books on Goodreads with 326 ratings. Thompson did speak to other friends in those days. 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. And he said, 'Well, I got through Vietnam' ", When John Moore told the police about a letter accusing Marian Thompson of adultery that Thompson had received on the day before his death, the implication seemed to be that he had received some fresh, devastating news about his marriage. He made mistakes, big mistakes, that the rest of us haven't made.". "He was pretty dejected. 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. As for the enemy: "He said he just had to keep mowing them down. He became the local Harley dealer and also got a license to sell guns. And they have every right to think, 'Oh, here's Jack, he had his fun with animalsnow we can't have our fun.' His farm was reportedly raided June 2008 . [From a court deposition Thompson gave while incarcerated on March 28, 2011] Okay. 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. He liked speed." Three were leopards, still in their cages. 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. Neighbors describe Terry Thompson, the owner of the exotic animal farm where 56 animals escaped 10-19-2011. He had a funny look. 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. 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. And he was like, 'You know, I'm a lover, not a fighter.' Every human who interacts with an animal and then makes claims about what that interaction means to the animalin backyards or zoos or even on the plains of Africais making a claim neither they nor anyone else can verify. The first is why Thompson seems to have cut open so many of the cages when he simply could have opened them. Netflixs Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness offers an expansive portrayal of private ownership of exotic animals in America. Terry Thompson is known for Red Phone 2 (2003), The Red Phone: Manhunt (2002)and Planespotting (2005). What if some of the cats were drawn toward them? "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. What did he ever do to his country?" 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. Personal testimonies from his closest staff and family tell a different story from the daily public barrage of criticisms by of the media. "Many of them I'm sure died right there in his arms." Before he retired four years ago, he used to teach seventh-grade science. "He raised Dobermans back then," says Stilwell. 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. 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. So he settled on what he considered a brisk walking pace for himself and Red. 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). 4.74 avg rating 107 ratings published 2021 3 editions. 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 I'm Terry Gross. Lutz instructed that if there were animals outside Thompson's property they needed to be shot. IMDbProStarmeterSee rank Add photos, demo reelsAdd to list View contact info at IMDbPro More at IMDbPro Contact info Agent info Known for Red Phone 2 5.7 TV Movie Writer 2003 The Red Phone: Manhunt 4.2 TV Movie Writer 2002 Planespotting 6.5 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. 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. 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. By now the order had come over the radio: Put the animal down. He seems to have lived as though there weren't a rule invented that didn't deserve a little bending. His death was part of a twenty-five-year plot to rid America of exotic animals. And there were always planes. In the later years it became very overwhelming because Terry went a little off the deep end. It probably made all the difference. In the bottom of my heart, I think Terry was thumbing his nose at everybody, and he wanted to destroy that which Marian loved the most. "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." 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. It was also in Zanesville where he met his wife, Marian Sharp (Thompson), for the first time. "He wanted people to know that he was there. After returning from war, Terry opened a motorcycle shop which he ran till the 90s, and then sold licensed firearms for some years. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. Thompson's wife, Marian, arrived around lunchtime. Actor: Murder Comes to Town. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt them.' I don't know what happened to it when he left.". asked Stilwell. "Garbage, and feces. "And then," he says, "I saw a tiger. This reality is revealed to us through Zanesville Animal Escape that briefly makes its presence felt during the first half of the series. Jack doesn't need to be telling me anything. It seems worth taking at least a moment to wonder whether it might be the other way around. In Vietnam we were so much more interested in lightweight because we were on the move a lot. "When he was in Vietnam," says Mike Marshall, "he told me that he was befriended by a little monkey. A twelve-year-old girl befriends a quirky teenage mermaid who's anything but mythical, and their friendship could heal an age-old feud. Why do you need so many?' Thompson also used to insist that he never sold exotic animals, but many in the animal world are scornful at this suggestion. The first big public warning sign that, when it came to Thompson's animals, all might not be as it should came in 2005. 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. It was his neighbour, Sam Kopchak, who first noticed that Terrys horses were unusually agitated. He hurried back. It was decided that the dead animals be buried, there and then, on the property. We sent Chris Heath to Zanesville, Ohio, to find out where the wild things areand what the hell they're doing there. Kopchak had lived around here all of his life. Rhino experts from around the world had gathered, and the zoo was throwing a cocktail party on the grounds of the polar-bear exhibit. The tigers are actually bigger than the lions if they're fully grown. Twenty-one other injuries, or clusters of injuries, were detailed just on the head and neck, the site of the most widespread damage. 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. 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. What, then, about the way that male tigers are usually neutered in sanctuaries, but male lions are not, because when neutered they lose their manes? After that, Merry went back for his rifle. He lived in a hardback tentyou know, a wood frame and a wood floorand apparently a monkey kinda befriended him. Thompson: It'd better not beI'd be out of the truck by now. John Moore mentally ran through the rows of cages he would feed. "Beautiful blues eyesthat's what you noticed first," says Christine Perone, who dated him for some time in high school. She was my grandmother's sister, one of ten children who grew up in Muhlenberg County Kentucky. Due to the dangerous circumstances, the police spent nearly seven hours hunting the animals, and shot nearly all of them. From there, he walked the fifty or so miles east to his parents' house. ", "He had an ego that you wouldn't believe," says Stilwell. He was kind of a loner. Terry Thompson. 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." 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. 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 couldn't understand," says his friend Phil Cress, "why he got taken away from his life here to be drafted to go to Vietnam. He was actually found with a pillowcase over his head and a gunshot wound to his stomach. Jack Hanna's lion, at Jack Hanna's animal farm. The Zookeeper Terry Thompson, 62, born and raised in Zanesville, Ohio. And there was the lion he had seen before, now pacing back and forth. These days many exotic-animal owners have learned to keep what they do to themselves, to avoid the unwanted attention of unhappy neighbors, animal-rights activists, and journalists who treat them as scary eccentrics or worse. Carried herself gracefully. In this era there were also numerous complaints of loose animals. A white tiger appeared to be eating it, and they couldn't get closer. By the time he got there, the culling had begun. "Remember, 1973 was much different than 2011. Lutz described Thompson as "a guy who kind of kept to himself, was always willing to push the envelope a little bit." "Kind of uppity. The road his and Thompson's properties abutted was named Kopchak Road after his great-uncle. Practical questions and answers regarding the gospel are presented at the Eternity page. 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. There are no sane people that would live in those conditions.". "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. His neighbor Fred Polk relates how two of Thompson's Rottweilers got out and killed a couple of Polk's calves. 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. And it just broke his heartthis is what I think. The Mexican cartel. "Well," Thompson retorted, "find someone to file a complaint on me." After all, this is not the life they are meant to lead, and certainly not the one they deserve. I don't know how else to explain it." 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. During the altercation, Thompson's wife, Chauna Thompson, a Harris County Sheriff 's deputy, arrived and called for assistance. Informant: You're crazy.Thompson: That's what they all say. "He always laughed and would be real pleasant before," says Polk. Here in the field. The Trump I know Documentary Film. 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. Only when the shape broke out of the circle could Kopchak see that it was a black bear. The third is what happened that night in Zanesville. At death Terry William Thompson was five feet five inches tall and weighed 174 pounds. "My animals were raised in a magnificent setting, creeks going through the place and everything was gorgeous. Where they should have been, there was nothing but a raw gap. Maybe a mile away was a school soccer gamekids yelling and screaming in the open air. Workin' Moms. He then looked back for a moment at his wife and . 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'd already hung up his uniform and finished his dinner when, at around 5:20 p.m., he got the call reporting that Terry Thompson had an animal out. 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? These included a grizzly bear, three leopards and two monkeys all whom were then taken to the Columbus Zoo.