View the profiles of people named Terry Thompson. Aunt Iris was old the day I met her, or so it seemed. Garbage bags filled with garbage that were knocked over, and the filth. 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. 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. He started snarling, and went after the horses.". Forty-nine animals would be confirmed dead. This makes it all the more relevant to remember the tragic event that took place in Zanesville almost a decade ago. Zanesville Animal Escape took place in October 2011, in Zanesville, Ohio, when over 50 exotic animals were released from Muskingum County Animal Farm. "He was tops in everything he did. She had to be convinced that the survivors should be taken to the zoo for safekeeping. It was this ATF raid that also forced real scrutiny for the first time on his exotic animals. In the song, the house in question is a New Orleans brothel, and the name was borrowed for similar establishments in Vietnam. Fast boats. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Month after month. "I was sick, shooting these animals, because they didn't ask to be there," he says. "And he always used to say, 'I don't like animals but I would never hurt one. 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. Or, to spell it out: By the time the body was recovered, no part of his external genitalia remained. [From a court deposition Thompson gave while incarcerated on March 28, 2011] Okay. "His eyes were just beautiful." Though Ohio legislators are now scrambling to rectify this, the state where Terry Thompson lived is one of a handful where the regulations on exotic-animal ownership have historically been very light. Terry Thompson has 36 books on Goodreads with 326 ratings. "Some of them were untrue. Terry became so verbally abusive to Marian. 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? Week after week. This plan soon had to be revised. Terry Thompson's best friend Charlie Leasure reflects on his friend's final day. Since 1957, GQ has inspired men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of style, culture, and beyond. The police took guidance from wildlife expert Jack Hanna, who insisted that killing the animals was a necessity in order to ensure the safety of the public. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Terry in particular was always well dressed and in charge of whatever was going on. 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. And he was like, 'You know, I'm a lover, not a fighter.' "So those animals were put down." 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." Still, Lutz said he wasn't busy and would drive over. He remembers Thompson picking up the bodies. He was just a bit different from the other ones. "She was saying, 'Please, Mr. Hanna, don't take my children,'" says Hanna. And sometime in this period, Marian told Sam Kopchak that Terry was giving guitar lessons behind bars. ", When Deputy Todd Kanavel, who normally heads up the drug squad, arrived at the scene, Sergeant Blake told him about the body that they had spotted. They see hypocrisy in much of what he now says, particularly given his past use of animals from private owners as props on TV shows. Thompson let the animals loose then killed himself. Facebook gives people the power. His friends and neighbour have revealed that he deeply loved his animals, which could explain why he set them free. Books by Terry Thompson (Author of The Construction Zone) - Goodreads "He had accused her of turning him in for the guns. I think that was a lot of it. The first big public warning sign that, when it came to Thompson's animals, all might not be as it should came in 2005. "You were able to tell that he had laid at one spot for a while and then he was dragged, it looked like by an arm, and his pants and stuff had been pulled down, and he had been chewed on. The animals were scooped by the bucketload, placed in the hole, and earth backhoed over them. They were circling, and in the center of their troubled orbit there was some kind of dark shape. Thompson also used to insist that he never sold exotic animals, but many in the animal world are scornful at this suggestion. "I actually think that he expected this when he got home and kind of planned it," says Stilwell. I'm Terry Gross. Even that statistic slightly obscures the situation. But the horrific tragedy of Zanesvilles animal massacre is enough to haunt the viewers as they see what follows. He was the type of person, you weren't real sure what he would do. 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. She was my grandmother's sister, one of ten children who grew up in Muhlenberg County Kentucky. All evening it went on, the slaughter. 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. "Garbage, and feces. "They told me," says one owner, Cindy Huntsman, "there were no laws on the books that would allow him to confiscate.". You finally just stop.". The Trump I know Documentary Film. Okay? A nice girl." Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Hannafamous for his TV shows and his appearances on shows like Lettermanestablished his career at the Columbus Zoo and remains its director emeritus. "I've had three bad things happen in my life," he says, and proceeds to describe them. . Matthew Lutz, the Muskingum County Sheriff described him as "a like-to-live-on-the-edge type of person". During the altercation, Thompson's wife, Chauna Thompson, a Harris County Sheriff 's deputy, arrived and called for assistance. "When he was in Vietnam," says Mike Marshall, "he told me that he was befriended by a little monkey. Thompson had only returned from his prison sentence three weeks before. "He always laughed and would be real pleasant before," says Polk. 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. "Some of them were true," says Marshall. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations. 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. Before he retired four years ago, he used to teach seventh-grade science. "I think it's Terry," he said. "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. The bigger the bang that takes someone out, the more likely it is that the person at its center will be obscured. This is FRESH AIR. ", "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. His wife-to-be, Marian Sharp, came from what was considered a good local family, and was an accomplished barrel racer and horsewoman. 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. The second, bigger mystery is how Thompson managed to let loose fifty animals without being seriously injured by any of them. "We didn't have any idea how many there were," Mrs. Kopchak would later reflect. "It's only half a boat," Thompson explained. ", A bond that tied two people for so long can take time to break completely. "It stood up," says Kanavel, "and was standing there." 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. Never had to think twice about it. Zanesville Animal Massacre Included 18 Rare Bengal Tigers 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. As time passed, people got used to the way he might turn up at the local airfield, say, with a baby bear or lion. The first involves his daughter and cancer. Ten years ago, after a heart attack, Taft had a quintuple-bypass operation. I saw a pair of pants on the ground and the belt was twine. The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has announced it will return Feb. 7-17. And I had to go and pick up the arm. Maybe the animals had somehow busted out, and he was injured, in need of help. Red, a half-Arabian pinto, was acting skittish and had moved toward the far corner of the field. That evening, the zoo assembled its capture-and-recovery team, armed with both tranquilizer-dart guns and regular weapons, and set out for Zanesville. "Well," Thompson retorted, "find someone to file a complaint on me." But I lean toward another theorythat in the end the animals were just what they've usually been in human history: incidental collateral damage. His son and wife were off to a literacy night so he was on his own. Apparently it worked. Terry was also a Vietnam war veteran. 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. (2017). Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Their cages had either been cut through or left open. View all posts . ), Spires is one of the best-known guitar teachers in this part of the country and was Thompson's teacher in his other great passion of these years. He knew that his colleagues would only have the two standard-issue weaponsthe .40-caliber Glock 22 they wear at their side and the shotgun that is locked above their heads in the patrol carsand that he was the only one with a rifle. "He smiled a lot. Mrs. Thompson chose the spot. But what about declawing cats, something considered quite acceptable in parts of the exotic owners' world? When the 911 operator asked for her first name, Mrs. Kopchak answered "Dolores," the name on her birth certificate but one she never uses: "I've been called Dolly for eighty-four years. You'll never kill one hundred with an AR because the gun will jam or you'll run out of ammo or someone will shoot you before.Terry Thompson, secretly recorded in his home by a government informant, April 2008. 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. What if some of the cats were drawn toward them? Vince Gill, Verlon Thompson, and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, as well as record executive Barry Poss. 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. Usually he never hesitated. Unknown for sure on that. 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. Because she loved the animals as much as he did. 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. Whatever the dynamic that drew them together, for the next four decades they presented themselves as a formidable partnership. 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. And the straw that broke the camel's back was, when he went to jail, he came back and his wife had abandoned him. What about neutering, which is now considered not merely acceptable but responsible behavior when it comes to many nonexotic pets? 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. 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. I can see that. "He would never sell anything," says Marshall. The Mexican cartel. Terry Thompson was born in Belfast, he grew up on the Castlereagh Road in East Belfast. Questlove spins the soundtrack of his life in 'Music is History' - NPR 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. Questlove Revives 'Black Woodstock' In 'Summer Of Soul' Documentary After returning from war, Terry opened a motorcycle shop which he ran till the 90s, and then sold licensed firearms for some years. Michael J. Fox: Parkinson's Disease Battle Tougher, Won't Live to 80 ", Toward the end, according to Cindy Huntsman, he seemed to treat his collection of animals in the same way. "And, you know, I'm a cat person.". 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. GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. He liked speed." Fred Polk, a farmer and scrap dealer who was one of Thompson's neighbors and sometimes tangled with him, also knew him before and after he went away to war. The cats looked healthy enough, apart from one who had ribs showing, and they were rubbing their heads against the fences. The first came in 1985 when Tommy Adams . By the time he got there, the culling had begun. Forty miles away, at the Columbus Zoo, an event was being held for the International Rhino Foundation. Fast airplanes. Bo Keck, an officer who was there, told him he couldn't pull such a stunt. Marian insisted on removing the macaques from their cages herself, waving off the zoo personnel's advice about the risk she was taking. "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.". "He forgets where he came from," says one owner, Michael Stapleton (five tigers, four bears). 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. 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. However, it was devastating to lose so many innocent lives, especially the Bengal tigers who are an endangered species. 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. Three days before Thompson died, Chuck Spires, the guitar instructor, spoke with him for about twenty minutes. Now, I may have talked to her a couple times on the phone. 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. What did he ever do to his country?" When a life explodes like this, in a shower of sparks and shrapnel, people pick through the remains and see what suits them best. It broke my heart. 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. "If he liked it, he kept it. one owner nonchalantly inquires, as it nestles up against the fencing inches away from me in his garage.) Or taking them to the McDonald's drive-thru? Shoot to Kill: The Ohio Animal Massacre - Terry Thompson's final day 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. "He would sometimes step on other guys' girlfriends. Informant: You're crazy.Thompson: That's what they all say. 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 reported back to the sheriff that, whether the body was Thompson's or someone else's, it was deceased. Want to Read. The white tiger had gone. The solution was elegant, if unusual. (If you visit the Columbus Zoo, his face is everywhereeven on the Pepsi machines.) "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. Actor: Murder Comes to Town. Sep 12, 2009. It was so bad one time, he ran out of bullets.".
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