You finally just stop.". ", Her son remained trapped in the barn. Almost from the moment Mrs. Kopchak picked up her telephone and reported that wild animals were on the loose, it was taken for granted that the manner of Terry Thompson's death explained all anyone needed to know about the life that came before it. The craziest, most tangentially related rumor that I hear in Zanesville: Jack Hanna was supplying Charlie Sheen's tiger blood. 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." But Thompson explained how upset he was that he used to be able to go around his own private zoo and call his animals by name but could no longer do so. The incident made global news. 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." ", "He would not have his position now," echoes another, Evelyn Shaw (one cougar, two servals, one lemur, one macaw, one skunk), "if he had not started out as a private owner. ", Many of Thompson's friends believe that his time in Vietnam was the defining experience of his life. This is FRESH AIR. Before he retired four years ago, he used to teach seventh-grade science. Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. 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. 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. Others were noted on his torso and his legs. Only then did she call 911 and alert the world. He hurried back. Terry Thompson. Watch I AM A STALKER | Netflix Official Site Merry drove back up the hill, until he came across a deputy running back and forth near Thompson's driveway. It was this ATF raid that also forced real scrutiny for the first time on his exotic animals. Whatever the dynamic that drew them together, for the next four decades they presented themselves as a formidable partnership. 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. "His eyes were just beautiful." Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. This plan soon had to be revised. ", After it happened, one thing everyone wanted to understand was how a man who had loved animals enough to have gathered so many grand creatures could then have condemned them to what he had to know was certain death. On May 31, 2017, John Hernandez was murdered by Terry Thompson during a fight outside a restaurant in Sheldon, Texas, part of the Greater Houston area. Or, to spell it out: By the time the body was recovered, no part of his external genitalia remained. She was my grandmother's sister, one of ten children who grew up in Muhlenberg County Kentucky. "He hesitated. Forty-nine animals would be confirmed dead. People insist that the Terry Thompson they knew was too lazy to go to that kind of trouble. He seems to have lived as though there weren't a rule invented that didn't deserve a little bending. Lutz instructed that if there were animals outside Thompson's property they needed to be shot. How he was treated. According to investigators he has been cited in the past for animal abuse and neglect. 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." There are no sane people that would live in those conditions.". Why do you need so many?' He liked speed." Then he turned back, intending to deal with a black bear and a tiger along the roadway, but he was distracted by a cougar heading south, so he followed the cougar into another driveway where he met a male African lion coming the other way. Neighbors describe Terry Thompson, the owner of the exotic animal farm where 56 animals escaped 10-19-2011. The last few years of Terrys life were when things started going downhill for him. Month after month. But they assumed that these two runaways must have come from there, so the first thing Mrs. Kopchak did was to dial her neighbor's number. But for now most of the animals were kept in connected rows of cages along the driveway leading to his house, and to feed them he would often illegally collect roadkill deer. 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. What if some of the cats were drawn toward them? Terry Thompson's best friend Charlie Leasure reflects on his friend's final day. Ordinary Heroes. There are two mysteries about what happened along the driveway of 270 Kopchak Road that nobody has been able to explain. ". (2017). Jack Hanna's lion, at Jack Hanna's animal farm. Maybe there's a letter or a note that explains it all. "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. 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. By now the order had come over the radio: Put the animal down. He lived in a hardback tentyou know, a wood frame and a wood floorand apparently a monkey kinda befriended him. 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. I guess I am an expert in the military. Yeah, I am. Their cages had either been cut through or left open. 4.74 avg rating 107 ratings published 2021 3 editions. Three were leopards, still in their cages. And it just broke his heartthis is what I think. "If he liked it, he kept it. What did he ever do to his country?" Terry Thompson sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of John Hernandez. A nice girl." "And he did it. 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. They agreed on 25 years. Already, he did things differently from other people. Occasionally there were reports of more unusual creatures running free but nothing too bad had ever happened. He was pretty distraught." "It kind of took us by surprise," says Kanavel. And you've not spoken to your wife since her deposition [five weeks earlier]?No. If there is a line that divides the avid collector from the hoarder, at some point Thompson seems to have crossed it. But what about declawing cats, something considered quite acceptable in parts of the exotic owners' world? Where were you then? 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. But it doesnt seem to be the case as 5,000 to 10,000 tigers live in captivity in the country, while less than 4,000 remain in the wild. 1 distinct work Similar authors. There are plenty of colorful stories about his exploits. Murder of John Hernandez - Wikipedia 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. The animal lovers are the ones that hurt them.' Day after day. (If you visit the Columbus Zoo, his face is everywhereeven on the Pepsi machines.) "He was pretty dejected. How many tickets do you have in that book? And a second bear, this one much larger than the first. ", 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. But of course I've never killed anyone in civilian life.I understand.I don't even kill flies.Terry Thompson and a government informant in conversation at his home, secretly recorded in April 2008. 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. During the altercation, Thompson's wife, Chauna Thompson, a Harris County Sheriff 's deputy, arrived and called for assistance. Bo Keck, an officer who was there, told him he couldn't pull such a stunt. And then, as Thompson would tell it, everything changed. That's what happens when your death defines you. His son and wife were off to a literacy night so he was on his own. "You couldn't buy nothing off of him. But maybe she was a little rattled. Before she opened the cage, she sang to them a lullaby, and they clung to her as she took them one by one to their carriers. However, it was devastating to lose so many innocent lives, especially the Bengal tigers who are an endangered species. Now he only had his Glock. "There would be dogshit all over the showroom. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. I think he had a little touch of Agent Orange. (Everyone knows somewhere else worse.). "We didn't have any idea how many there were," Mrs. Kopchak would later reflect. Maybe. Soon, their collection grew into a private mini zoo as the couple took care of rescued animals, and also bought some themselves. 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. Terry Thompson's most popular book is The Martian Diaries: Vol.1 The Day Of The Martians (The . And that's when he then said, 'I'm gonna die.' Read on to find out the details. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. My guest, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, has made his directorial debut with the new documentary "Summer Of Soul." Questlove co-founded The Roots, which is,. "Betrayed by his family. So these animals were like her children. For a while there was a plane on the shop's roof. There was now only one unaccounted fora macaque. Code 16 [dead on arrival], possible 58 [suicide]. 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.

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